“
There is a certain beauty in chaos, magnificence in the uncontrollable.
”
”
Hafsah Faizal (We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya, #1))
“
Will!” he shouted. “Will, she bit me!”
“Did she, Henry?” Will, looking amused as usual, appeared like a summoned spirit from the chaos of smoke and flames. . .Will raised an eyebrow in Tessa’s direction. “It’s bad form to bite,” he informed her. “Rude, you know. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that?”
“It’s also rude to go about grabbing at ladies you haven’t been introduced to,” Tessa said stiffly. “Hasn’t anyone told you that?
”
”
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
“
He could offer her an eternity of challenges and passion, of quiet, tender moments stolen in the depths of riotous flames and ravaging storms--tranquility amidst the chaos.
”
”
A.G. Howard (The Moth in the Mirror (Splintered, #1.5))
“
During the flames of controversy, opinions, mass disputes, conflict, and world news, sometimes the most precious, refreshing, peaceful words to hear amidst all the chaos are simply and humbly 'I don't know.
”
”
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
“
Power, true power, comes from the belief in true things, and the willingness to stand behind that belief, even if the universe itself conspires to thwart your plans. Chaos may settle; flames may die;
worlds may rise and fall. But true things will remain so, and will never fail to guide you to your goals.
”
”
James A. Owen (Here, There Be Dragons (Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, #1))
“
Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored;
Light dies before thy uncreating word:
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And universal darkness buries all.
”
”
Alexander Pope (The Dunciad)
“
She lives her life like a flame; a dance of purposeful chaos.… Her enchanting light can guide you and quell your fears… She’s hot; warming those who respect her and burning those who don’t... She is a flame with an unforgettable glow… A weak man will try to dim her luminance... but her soul mate will take pleasure in fanning the blaze.
”
”
Steve Maraboli
“
My evening star. If the sun burned out tomorrow, your flame would light the world.
”
”
Samantha Shannon (The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1))
“
Brenna Kelly, meet Alice Price-Healy. Grandma, meet Breanna. No one is shooting, stabbing or immolating anyone in this hotel room."
"Please," added Dominic. "I have to sleep here."
"HAIL!" Rejoiced the mice. "HAIL THE LACK OF STABBING, SHOOTING AND FLAME!
”
”
Seanan McGuire (Chaos Choreography (InCryptid, #5))
“
Where was the excitement in dependability? Where was the spontaneity in a predictable world? He could offer her an eternity of challenges and passion, of quiet, tender moments stolen in the depths of riotous flames and ravaging storms—tranquility amidst the chaos.
She belonged with him, wearing regal robes. He had so much to teach her about the nether realm, about the glories of manipulation and madness.
”
”
A.G. Howard (The Moth in the Mirror (Splintered, #1.5))
“
That was one of the most fundamental and sacred duties good friends and families performed for one another! They tended the flame of memory, so no one’s death meant an immediate vanishment from the world; in some sense the deceased would live on after their passing, at least as long as those who loved them lived. Such memories were an essential weapon against the chaos of life and death, a way to ensure some continuity from generation to generation, an order of endorsement and meaning.
”
”
Dean Koontz (The Bad Place)
“
I am frightened at the prospect of how much I might love you, because I know the price it brings, and just thinking of you has begun the investment process within my heart. It would be easier to never invest at all, to hold all vulnerability close to my chest, not allowing anyone to enter my safe. But what a cruel thing it would be, to deny an opportunity to love a soul as beautiful as yours. I’m going to hope, and hope, and hope, until one day I do something. Maybe then, we’ll be able to find that place that we have both wanted for so long. Maybe then, we’ll have each other. I’m not reaching for stars anymore. I’m reaching for you, and honestly, that’s far more beautiful than a night full of dancing flames. I am not good with words, but still my words dance out of chaos, forming something beautiful.
”
”
T.B. LaBerge (Unwritten Letters to You)
“
Merlin had, according to legend, created the White Council of Wizards from the chaos of the fall of the Roman Empire. He plunged into the flames of the burning Library of Alexandria to save the most critical texts, helped engineer the Catholic Church as a vessel to preserve knowledge and culture during Europe's Dark Ages, and leapt tall cathedrals in a single bound.
”
”
Jim Butcher (Cold Days (The Dresden Files, #14))
“
The greatest love stories are unexpected, unexplained... choreographed chaos played out in God’s timing. It feels like a chance encounter with a familiar stranger... Like a rekindling of an eternal flame.
”
”
Steve Maraboli
“
I could never get enough books or read enough words to escape the reality of the world
”
”
Amelia Hutchins (Flames of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms, #1))
“
Their breaths were hushed, held in anticipation of a knock on the door, a key in the lock, a torch to bare their union. It would light a flame of scandal, and the fire would rise untill it scorched them both. But Ead called fire her friend, and she would plunge into the furnace for Sabran Berthnet, for just one night with her. Let them come with their swords and their torches. Let them come.
”
”
Samantha Shannon (The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1))
“
Real love was more than a moment. It was everything that happened after. Chaos in one instant, simplicity in the next. Everything and nothing in the space of a simple breath.
”
”
Renée Ahdieh (Smoke in the Sun (Flame in the Mist, #2))
“
To whom do I owe the power behind my voice, what strength I have become, yeasting up like sudden blood from under the bruised skin's blister?
My father leaves his psychic print upon me, silent, intense, and unforgiving. But his is a distant lightning. Images of women flaming like torches adorn and define the borders of my journey, stand like dykes between me and the chaos. It is the images of women, kind and cruel, that lead me home.
”
”
Audre Lorde
“
The silence of the Great Bedchamber was vast. Vast as night and all its stars. Ead heard each rustle of silk, each brush of hand on skin on sheets. Their breaths were hushed, held in anticipation of a knock on the door, a key in the lock, and a torch to bare their union. It would light a flame of scandal, and the fire would rise until it scorched them both. But Ead called fire her friend, and she would plunge into the furnace for Sabran Berethnet, for just one night with her. Let them come with their swords and their torches. Let them come.
”
”
Samantha Shannon (The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1))
“
It will never end.
Till the world ends in the chaos of Ragnarok, we will fight for our women, for our land, and for our homes. Some Christians speak of peace, of the evil of war, and who does not want peace? But then some crazed warrior comes screaming his god's filthy name into your face and his only ambitions are to kill you, to rape your wife, to enslave your daughters, and take your home, and so you must fight.
”
”
Bernard Cornwell (The Flame Bearer (The Saxon Stories, #10))
“
She’d be a broken, destroyed thing that no amount of magic could fix, and it terrified her—and worse, it excited her. Good. It should.
”
”
Amelia Hutchins (Flames of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms #1))
“
Let’s go to war, asshole. I’m about to rock your fucking foundation and rewrite history.
”
”
Amelia Hutchins (Flames of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms #1))
“
A predisposition toward blood and chaos. How she thrives in flames and ravaging storms. How her magic can both inspire and tame pandemonium. How she finds beauty in the morbid and bizarre.
”
”
A.G. Howard (Untamed (Splintered, #3.5))
“
My hunger to piece together her puzzle tethered me to sanity and fed the tiny part of me that still believed in goodness and humanity. It was the order to my chaos, the flame to my ice. Without it, I would be unmoored, and that would be the ultimate danger—both to myself and the people around me.
”
”
Ana Huang (Twisted Lies (Twisted, #4))
“
I preferred romance or fantasy to escape and live a thousand lives I'd never experience without the author giving me the chance to climb inside their soul, making their books my home for a little while.
”
”
Amelia Hutchins (Flames of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms, #1))
“
Often I'd take out my magnifying glass and stare into the chaos that was her face. Most people would have found it grotesque, but when you're in love nothing is so abstract or horrible that it can't be thought of as cute.
”
”
David Sedaris (When You Are Engulfed in Flames)
“
Out of Chaos came light,
Out of Will came life,
Without form, without time
From iron black space
Through beads of crystal flame.
Cosmic rays of light and sound,
Spinning in seas of universal ether,
Piercing the armatures of spheres.
From the Mysteries—it comes.
From Legend—it comes.
From ancestors of a thousand ages—it comes.
The Spirit,
The Will,
The Wisdom,
Temple of Wotan.
”
”
Ron McVan
“
So…’Commander’, huh?” I tease with a sultry lilt.
“That is the title you granted me, is it not? Jarek responded dryly, not the least bit fazed.
“It is … But why am I picturing some weird commander-and-servant role-playing thing between you two now?”
“Because you’re a pervert,” he throws back.
I mock gasp. “Is that how you talk to your queen?”
“Because you’re a pervert, Your Highness.
”
”
K.A. Tucker (A Queen of Thieves & Chaos (Fate & Flame, #3))
“
2100 Hours: The lights went out inside the compound. People throughout the auditorium began to shriek. It was chaos.
Then they experienced what felt like a sonic boom. Pack’s vehicle had blown apart, metal fragments hurled a quarter mile away. The CEV had knocked the main gate over as if it were a fist going through papier-mache. Once the explosion had run its course, the car was in flames, which caught some of the crew still wearing the night vision devices off guard.
”
”
John M Vermillion (Packfire (Simon Pack, #9))
“
Tamsin gave a strangled cry, sweeping her arm across her cluttered tabletop, relishing the chaos and clatter of her belongings tumbling to the stone floor. A crystal splintered. Her mug shattered, scattering chunks of hardened clay across the room. Loose papers floated into the fire, the flames devouring the dark ink until the words no longer existed.
”
”
Adrienne Tooley (Sweet & Bitter Magic)
“
I thought you wanted to fuck Dimitri?” “If I had wanted to fuck him, he’d be fucked.” “Interesting, considering every time you lose control of your beast, you end up on my dick,” he said, watching me carefully. “It’s good dick, Knox.” He chuckled, pulling me closer as he nuzzled my ear before slipping his fingers through mine, dragging me toward the creek.
”
”
Amelia Hutchins (Flames of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms #1))
“
Some of the families with the least are the most generous in this country.
”
”
Tessa Gratton (Chaos & Flame (Chaos & Flame, #1))
“
You are the worthiest of causes I have ever met, that I ever will meet, and I will follow you into the rift if you ask it of me. But do not ever ask me to leave your side.
”
”
K.A. Tucker (A Queen of Thieves & Chaos (Fate & Flame, #3))
“
She doesn’t have to work to blend in because in the French Quarter, all you have to do to blend in is dance with the chaos.
”
”
Christopher Rice (Kiss the Flame (Desire Exchange #1.5))
“
You might want to stop touching yourself. You’re starting to look like a murder victim; it’s giving me a fucking hard-on.
”
”
Amelia Hutchins (Flames of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms #1))
“
It soaked your cunt at the idea of my teeth claiming your throat; that’s dangerous, Aria.
”
”
Amelia Hutchins (Flames of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms #1))
“
Are you planning to fight me, or fuck me, little monster?” “Both, and then I will eat you.” I shrugged nonchalantly. “It matters little in which order the events occur.
”
”
Amelia Hutchins (Flames of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms #1))
“
We are explorers. We are at present, as far as we know, the only explorers of the universe. For a long time we thought that ours was the only planet that could support life. Then we found others that could – a few. For still longer we thought we were unique – the only intelligent form of life – a single, freakish pinpoint of reason in a vast, adventitious cosmos – utterly lonely in the horrid wastes of space.… Again we discovered we were mistaken…
But intelligent life is rare… very rare indeed… the rarest thing in creation…
But the most precious…
For intelligent life is the only thing that gives meaning to the universe. It is a holy thing, to be fostered and treasured.
Without it nothing begins, nothing ends, there can be nothing through all eternity but the mindless babblings of chaos…
Therefore, the nurture of all intelligent forms is a sacred duty. Even the merest spark of reason must be fanned in the hope of a flame. Frustrated intelligence must have its bonds broken. Narrow-channelled intelligence must be given the power to widen out. High intelligence must be learned from. That is why I have stayed here.
”
”
John Wyndham
“
And it was in that moment of distress and confusion that the whip of terror laid its most nicely calculated lash about his heart. It dropped with deadly effect upon the sorest spot of all, completely unnerving him. He had been secretly dreading all the time that it
would come - and come it did.
Far overhead, muted by great height and distance, strangely thinned and wailing, he heard the crying voice of Defago, the guide.
The sound dropped upon him out of that still, wintry sky with an effect of dismay and terror unsurpassed. The rifle fell to his feet. He stood motionless an instant, listening as it were with his whole body, then staggered back against the nearest tree for support, disorganized hopelessly in mind and spirit. To him, in that moment, it seemed the most shattering and dislocating experience he had ever known, so that his heart emptied itself of all feeling whatsoever as by a sudden draught.
'Oh! oh! This fiery height! Oh, my feet of fire! My burning feet of fire...' ran in far, beseeching accents of indescribable appeal this voice of anguish down the sky. Once it called - then silence through all the listening wilderness of trees.
And Simpson, scarcely knowing what he did, presently found himself running wildly to and fro, searching, calling, tripping over roots and boulders, and flinging himself in a frenzy of undirected pursuit after the Caller. Behind the screen of memory and emotion with which experience veils events, he plunged, distracted and half-deranged, picking up false lights like a ship at sea, terror in his eyes and heart and soul. For the Panic of the Wilderness had called to him in that far voice - the Power of untamed Distance - the Enticement of the Desolation that destroys. He knew in that moment all the pains of someone hopelessly and irretrievably lost, suffering the lust
and travail of a soul in the final Loneliness. A vision of Defago, eternally hunted, driven and pursued across the skyey vastness of those ancient forests fled like a flame across the dark ruin of his thoughts...
It seemed ages before he could find anything in the chaos of his disorganized sensations to which he could anchor himself steady for a moment, and think...
The cry was not repeated; his own hoarse calling brought no response; the inscrutable forces of the Wild had summoned their victim beyond recall - and held him fast.
("The Wendigo")
”
”
Algernon Blackwood (Monster Mix)
“
Fire it was, purposefully wrought - fire as makes a blade, for slaughter. Its eyes seethed with flame, not good nor evil, the sanctarian read in her mind, but also that which makes a wyrm, that is, its cunning, and its malice.
”
”
Samantha Shannon (A Day of Fallen Night (The Roots of Chaos, #0))
“
The girl. She brings you peace and tranquality. which is intresting because she is nothing but chaos, but she is the quiet for your storm. Now that´s irony. Be careful, child, don´t play with fire unless you intend to get burnes; that girl is nothing but flames.
”
”
M. Robinson (The Good Ol’ Boys (The Good Ol' Boys, #1-4))
“
Let me be accursed. Let me be vile and base, only let me kiss the hem of the veil in which my God is shrouded. Though I may be following the devil, I am Thy son, O Lord, and I love Thee, and I feel the joy without which the world cannot stand. Joy everlasting fostereth The soul of all creation, It is her secret ferment fires The cup of life with flame. 'Tis at her beck the grass hath turned Each blade towards the light And solar systems have evolved From chaos and dark night, Filling the realms of boundless space Beyond the sage's sight. At bounteous Nature's kindly breast, All things that breathe drink Joy, And birds and beasts and creeping things All follow where She leads. Her gifts to man are friends in need, The wreath, the foaming must, To angels- vision of God's throne, To insects- sensual lust.
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
“
The silence of the Great Bedchamber was vast. Vast as night and all its stars. Ead heard each rustle of silk, each brush of hand on skin on sheets. Their breaths were hushed, held in anticipation of a knock on the door, a key in the lock, and a torch to bare their union. It would light a flame of scandal, and the fire would rise until it scorched them both.
But Ead called fire her friend, and she would plunge into the furnace for Sabran Berethnet, for just one night with her. Let them come with their swords and their torches.
Let them come.
”
”
Samantha Shannon (The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1))
“
From chaos the universe was born, from void came life. From the abyss of despair came the spirit of survival. Flowers from earth. Gold from fire. I burn like fire. Little flames bloom first at my toes, then my stomach, then my heart. Now my soul is on fire. Do you feel the heat?
”
”
Sanjay Bahadur (The Sound of Water: A Novel)
“
He just stood there in the center of chaos with flames blazing, water spraying, and the shouts of responders all around, and he was completely still.
He was the anchor to my drifting boat. The roots to my growing tree. Without him, I surely would have floated away into some kind of unreachable place within the confines of my brain.
”
”
Cambria Hebert (Torch (Take It Off, #1))
“
Across the hillside, above the chaos of Montfort’s left flank, a scarlet banner was raised by Edward’s men, the dragon at its centre a terror wreathed in golden flames, a sign that there was to be no mercy. The noblemen who survived the battle would be taken prisoner and ransomed, but no such chivalry awaited the foot soldiers beyond.
”
”
Robyn Young (Insurrection (The Insurrection Trilogy, #1))
“
She was small. Her shadow moved in the dance of chaos before her as the inferno blazed behind her and licked the sky with its many tongues. She clutched an indistinguishable toy with both arms tightly. Her face was serene. Her eyes shone with courage more immense than the surrounding flames. She was small, but at that moment, I've never seen a bigger person.
”
”
H.T. Martin
“
Once, in Tóurin, two princesses were born
Of mortal blood, but divinely sworn
When monsters of chaos prowled the night,
To protect the queendom, the girls took flight
To the old hallowed lands, where they first swore an oath
To pay the greatest price and sever them both,
So there the merciless earth took its claim,
binding on to the throne, and one to the flame
”
”
Alexandra Overy (These Feathered Flames (These Feathered Flames, #1))
“
In an age of nothing,
at time when we stand at the brink of our own destruction.
Strengthen your belief in yourself,
in the future of humanity,
in the things of this world which cannot easily be percieved,
awaken that which lies dormant now within your soul.
Re-ignite the flame of your consciousness,
and measure the strength of your conviction.
Reveal the lie,
renounce your hatred.
Seek, find and embrace the truths
you are fortunate enough to discover.
Cherish them,
use them to anchor you in the sea of chaos that is the world we live in.
When twilight drwas near,
when you are pushed to the very limits of your soul,
when it seems that all you have left are the dead remnants
of the fabric of your life...
Believe.
”
”
Disturbed (Believe, Guitar Tab/Bass Edition)
“
As for chaos,” Mamoud said, “chaos is not what is happening around you, but how you conduct yourself around … chaos.” The earth erupted in explosion and flames not forty feet from the turret. Mamoud didn’t flinch, but Jonathan definitely did. Even Lady Insult put her spyglass down. The tower shuddered from the footfall of the elephants. There was a sour smell like sulfur.
”
”
Jeff VanderMeer (A Peculiar Peril (The Misadventures of Jonathan Lambshead, #1))
“
Roman senators did not sit idly by as their political institutions lapsed into chaos, nor did they simply fan the flames of the crisis to their own short-term advantage (though there was certainly a bit of that). Many of them, from different ends of the political spectrum, tried to find some effective remedies. We should not allow our hindsight, their ultimate failure or the succession of civil wars and assassinations to blind us to their efforts,
”
”
Mary Beard (SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome)
“
Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow
as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
that is not mine, but is a made place,
that is mine, it is so near to the heart,
an eternal pasture folded in all thought
so that there is a hall therein
that is a made place, created by light
wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.
Wherefrom fall all architectures I am
I say are likenesses of the First Beloved
whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady.
She it is Queen Under The Hill
whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words
that is a field folded.
It is only a dream of the grass blowing
east against the source of the sun
in an hour before the sun’s going down
whose secret we see in a children’s game
of ring a round of roses told.
Often I am permitted to return to a meadow
as if it were a given property of the mind
that certain bounds hold against chaos,
that is a place of first permission,
everlasting omen of what is.
”
”
Robert Duncan (The Opening of the Field: Poetry (New Directions Paperbook))
“
You were burning in the middle of the worst solar storm our records can remember. (...) Everyone else fled. All your companions and crew left you alone to wrestle with the storm.
“You did not blame them. In a moment of crystal insight, you realized that they were cowards beyond mere cowardice: their dependence on their immortality circuits had made it so that they could not even imagine risking their lives. They were all alike in this respect. They did not know they were not brave; they could not even think of dying as possible; how could they think of facing it, unflinching?
“You did not flinch. You knew you were going to die; you knew it when the Sophotechs, who are immune to pain and fear, all screamed and failed and vanished.
“And you knew, in that moment of approaching death, with all your life laid out like a single image for you to examine in a frozen moment of time, that no one was immortal, not ultimately, not really. The day may be far away, it may be further away than the dying of the sun, or the extinction of the stars, but the day will come when all our noumenal systems fail, our brilliant machines all pass away, and our records of ourselves and memories shall be lost.
“If all life is finite, only the grace and virtue with which it is lived matters, not the length. So you decided to stay another moment, and erect magnetic shields, one by one; to discharge interruption masses into the current, to break up the reinforcement patterns in the storm. Not life but honor mattered to you, Helion: so you stayed a moment after that moment, and then another. (...)
“You saw the plasma erupting through shield after shield (...) Chaos was attempting to destroy your life’s work, and major sections of the Solar Array were evaporated. Chaos was attempting to destroy your son’s lifework, and since he was aboard that ship, outside the range of any noumenal circuit, it would have destroyed your son as well.
“The Array was safe, but you stayed another moment, to try to deflect the stream of particles and shield your son; circuit after circuit failed, and still you stayed, playing the emergency like a raging orchestra.
“When the peak of the storm was passed, it was too late for you: you had stayed too long; the flames were coming. But the radio-static cleared long enough for you to have last words with your son, whom you discovered, to your surprise, you loved better than life itself. In your mind, he was the living image of the best thing in you, the ideal you always wanted to achieve.
“ ‘Chaos has killed me, son,’ you said. ‘But the victory of unpredictability is hollow. Men imagine, in their pride, that they can predict life’s each event, and govern nature and govern each other with rules of unyielding iron. Not so. There will always be men like you, my son, who will do the things no one else predicts or can control. I tried to tame the sun and failed; no one knows what is at its fiery heart; but you will tame a thousand suns, and spread mankind so wide in space that no one single chance, no flux of chaos, no unexpected misfortune, will ever have power enough to harm us all. For men to be civilized, they must be unlike each other, so that when chaos comes to claim them, no two will use what strategy the other does, and thus, even in the middle of blind chaos, some men, by sheer blind chance, if nothing else, will conquer.
“ ‘The way to conquer the chaos which underlies all the illusionary stable things in life, is to be so free, and tolerant, and so much in love with liberty, that chaos itself becomes our ally; we shall become what no one can foresee; and courage and inventiveness will be the names we call our fearless unpredictability…’
“And you vowed to support Phaethon’s effort, and you died in order that his dream might live.
”
”
John C. Wright (The Golden Transcendence (Golden Age, #3))
“
I stick to the road out of habit, but it’s a bad choice, because it’s full of the remains of those who tried to flee. Some were incinerated entirely. But others, probably overcome with smoke, escaped the worst of the flames and now lie reeking in various states of decomposition, carrion for scavengers, blanketed by flies. I killed you, I think as I pass a pile. And you. And you. Because I did. It was my arrow, aimed at the chink in the force field surrounding the arena, that brought on this firestorm of retribution. That sent the whole country of Panem into chaos. In my head I hear President Snow’s words, spoken the morning I was to begin the Victory Tour. “Katniss Everdeen, the girl who was on fire, you have provided a spark that, left unattended, may grow to an inferno that destroys Panem.” It turns out he wasn’t exaggerating or simply trying to scare me. He was, perhaps, genuinely attempting to enlist my help. But I had already set something in motion that I had no ability to control. Burning. Still burning, I think numbly. The fires at the coal mines belch black smoke in the distance. There’s no one left to care, though. More than ninety percent of the district’s population is dead. The remaining eight hundred or so are refugees in District 13 — which, as far as I’m concerned, is the same thing as being homeless forever. I know I shouldn’t think that; I know I should be grateful for the way we have been welcomed. Sick, wounded, starving, and empty-handed. Still, I can never get around the fact that District 13 was instrumental in 12’s destruction. This doesn’t absolve me of blame — there’s plenty of blame to go around. But without them, I would not have been part of a larger plot to overthrow the Capitol or had the wherewithal to do it. The citizens of District 12 had no organized resistance movement of their own. No say in any of this. They only had the misfortune to have me. Some survivors think it’s good luck, though, to be free of District 12 at last. To have escaped the endless hunger and oppression, the perilous mines, the lash of our final Head Peacekeeper, Romulus Thread. To have a new home at all is seen as a wonder since, up until a short time ago, we hadn’t even known that District 13 still existed.
”
”
Suzanne Collins (Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3))
“
An old man, Elias Caldwell, death already smothering his breast, tries to tell a child something of all he has learned, something of what he would have her live by – and hears only incoherent words come out. Yet the thoughts revolve, revolve and whirl, a scorching nebula in his breast, sending forth flaming suns that only shatter against the walls and return to chaos. How can it be said? Once I lived in softness and ease and sickened. Once I chose a stern life, turning to people hard, bitter and strong – obscure people, the smell of soil and sweat about them – the smell of life…But I failed. I brought them nothing. To die, how bitter when nothing was done with my life. And the nebula whirls and revolves, sending its scorching suns that break in a chaos of inarticulateness about this child with a sound of fear. Nothing of it said.
”
”
Tillie Olsen (Yonnondio: From the Thirties)
“
In 1968, at fifteen, she turned on the television and watched chaos flaring up across the country like brush fires. Martin Luther King, Jr., then Bobby Kennedy. Students in revolt at Columbia. Riots in Chicago, Memphis, Baltimore, D.C.—everywhere, everywhere, things were falling apart. Deep inside her a spark kindled, a spark that would flare in Izzy years later. Of course she understood why this was happening: they were fighting to right injustices. But part of her shuddered at the scenes on the television screen. Grainy scenes, but no less terrifying: grocery stores ablaze, smoke billowing from their rooftops, walls gnawed to studs by flame. The jagged edges of smashed windows like fangs in the night. Soldiers marching with rifles past drugstores and Laundromats. Jeeps blocking intersections under dead traffic lights. Did you have to burn down the old to make way for the new? The carpet at her feet was soft. The sofa beneath her was patterned with roses. Outside, a mourning dove cooed from the bird feeder and a Cadillac glided to a dignified stop at the corner. She wondered which was the real world.
”
”
Celeste Ng (Little Fires Everywhere)
“
Darkness:
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twin'd themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress—he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak'd up,
And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects—saw, and shriek'd, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe.
”
”
Lord Byron
“
That which is unnamed was first,” it said. “But I am named, flesh queen. Remember.” Its pupils thinned. “The cold one on the ship. She was your kin.” Glorian looked at the other skull. “She fell to my flame. So will this land. We will finish the scouring, for we are the teeth that harrow and turn. The mountain is the forge and smith, and we, its iron offspring—come to avenge the first, the forebear, he who sleeps beneath.”
Every warrior should know fear, Glorian Brightcry. Without it, courage is an empty boast.
“You confess,” Glorian said, “that you slew the blood of the Saint.”
Her voice kept breaking. “Do you then declare war on Inys?”
Fyredel—the wyrm—let out a rattle. A score of complex scales and muscles shifted in its face.
“When your days grow long and hot,” he said, “when the sun in the North never sets, we shall come.”
On both sides of the Strondway, those who had not fled were rooted to the spot, fixated on Glorian. She realized what they must be thinking. If she died childless, the eternal vine was at its end.
What she did next could define how they saw the House of Berethnet for centuries to come.
Start forging your armour, Glorian. You will need it.
She looked down once more at her parents’ remains, the bones the wyrms had dumped here like a spoil of war. In her memory, her father laughed and drew her close. He would never laugh again. Never smile. Her mother would never tell her she loved her, or how to calm her dreams.
And where there had been fear, there was anger.
“If you—If you dare to turn your fire on Inys,” Glorian bit out, “then I will do as my ancestor did to the Nameless One.” She forced herself to lift her chin in defiance. “I will drive you back with sword and spear, with bow and lance!” Shaking, she heaved for air. “I am the voice, the body of Inys. My stomach is its strength—my heart, its shield— and if you think I will submit to you because I am small and young, you are wrong.”
Sweat was running down her back. She had never been so afraid in her life.
“I am not afraid,” she said.
At this, the wyrm unfurled its wings to their full breadth. From tip to hooked tip, they were as wide as two longships facing each other. People scrambled out of their shadow.
“So be it, Shieldheart.” It steeped the word in mockery. “Treasure your darkness, for the fire comes. Until then, a taste of our flame, to light your city through the winter. Heed my words.
”
”
Samantha Shannon (A Day of Fallen Night (The Roots of Chaos, #0))
“
Negroes have proceeded from a premise that equality means what it says, and they have taken white Americans at their word when they talked of it as an objective. But most whites in America in 1967, including many persons of goodwill, proceed from a premise that equality is a loose expression for improvement. White America is not even psychologically organized to close the gap—essentially it seeks only to make it less painful and less obvious but in most respects to retain it. Most of the abrasions between Negroes and white liberals arise from this fact.
White America is uneasy with injustice and for ten years it believed it was righting wrongs. The struggles were often bravely fought by fine people. The conscience of man flamed high in hours of peril. The days can never be forgotten when the brutalities at Selma caused thousands all over the land to rush to our side, heedless of danger and of differences in race, class and religion.
After the march to Montgomery, there was a delay at the airport and several thousand demonstrators waited more than five hours, crowding together on the seats, the floors and the stairways of the terminal building. As I stood with them and saw white and Negro, nuns and priests, ministers and rabbis, labor organizers, lawyers, doctors, housemaids and shopworkers brimming with vitality and enjoying a rare comradeship, I knew I was seeing a microcosm of the mankind of the future in this moment of luminous and genuine brotherhood.
But these were the best of America, not all of America. Elsewhere the commitment was shallower. Conscience burned only dimly, and when atrocious behavior was curbed, the spirit settled easily into well-padded pockets of complacency. Justice at the deepest level had but few stalwart champions.
A good many observers have remarked that if equality could come at once the Negro would not be ready for it. I submit that the white American is even more unprepared.
”
”
Martin Luther King Jr. (Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?)
“
It was through this imposed accumulation of chaos that she struggled to move now: beyond it lay simplicity, unmeasurable, residence of perfection, where nothing was created, where originality did not exist: because it was origin; where once she was there work and thought in causal and stumbling sequence did not exist, but only transcription: where the poem she knew but could not write existed, ready-formed, awaiting recovery in that moment when the writing down of it was impossible: because she was the poem. Her hand tipped toward the paper, black stroke the pen made there, but only that stroke, line of uncertainty. She called her memory, screamed for it, trying to scream through it and beyond it, damned accumulation that bound her in time: my memory, my bed, my stomach, my terror, my hope, my poem, my God: the meanness of my. Must the flames of hell be ninety-story blazes? or simply these small sharp tongues of fire that nibble and fall to, savouring the edges and then consume, swept by the wind of terror at exposing one's self, losing the aggregate of meannesses which compose identity, in flames never reaching full roaring crescendo but scorch through a life like fire in grass, in the world of time the clock tells. Every tick, synchronised, tears off a fragment of the lives run by them, the circling hands reflected in those eyes watching their repetition in an anxiety which draws the whole face toward pupiled voids and finally, leaves lines there, uncertain strokes woven into the flesh, the fabric of anxiety, double-webbed round dark-centered jellies which reflect nothing. Only that fabric remains, pleached in the pattern of the bondage which has a beginning and an end, with scientific meanness in attention to details, of a thousand things which should not have happened, and did; of myriad mean events which should have happened, and did not: waited for, denied, until life is lived in fragments, unrelated until death, and the wrist watch stops.
”
”
William Gaddis (The Recognitions)
“
We have not begun to live’, Yeats writes, ‘until we conceive life as a tragedy.’ Newman confessed that he considered most men to be irretrievably damned, although he spent his life ‘trying to make that truth less terrible to human reason’. Goethe could call his life ‘the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again forever’. Martin Luther told a woman who wished him a long life: ‘Madam, rather than live forty more years, I would give up my chance of paradise.’ No, the Outsider does not make light work of living; at the best, it is hard going; at the worst (to borrow a phrase from Eliot) ‘an intolerable shirt of flame’,
It was this vision that made Axel declare: ‘As for living, our servants will do that for us.’ Axel was a mystic; at least, he had the makings of a mystic. For that is just what the mystic says: ‘I refuse to Uve.’ But he doesn’t intend to die. There is another way of living that involves a sort of death: ‘to die in order to Uve’. Axel would have locked himself up in his castle on the Rhine and read Hermetic philosophy. He saw men and the world as Newman saw them, as Eliot saw them in ‘Burnt Norton’:
... strained, time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time
But he was not willing to regard himself as hopelessly damned merely because the rest of the world seems to be. He set out to find his own salvation; and although he did it with a strong romantic bias for Gothic castles and golden-haired girls, he still set out in the right direction.
And what are the clues in the search for self-expression? There are the moments of insight, the glimpses of harmony. Yeats records one such moment in his poem ‘Vacillation’:
My fiftieth year had come and gone
I sat, a solitary man
In a crowded London shop
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness
That I was blessed, and could bless
It is an important experience, this moment of Yea-saying, of reconciliation with the ‘devil-ridden chaos’, for it gives the Outsider an important glimpse into the state of mind that the visionary wants to achieve permanently.
”
”
Colin Wilson
“
The day-to-day horror of writing gave me a notion of tournament time. Writing novels is tedious. When will this book be finished, when will it reveal its bright and shining true self? it takes freakin’ years. At the poker table, you’re only playing a fraction of the hands, waiting for your shot. If you keep your wits, can keep from flying apart while those around you are self-destructing, devouring each other, you’re halfway there. … Let them flame out while you develop a new relationship with time, and they drift away from the table. 86-7
Coach Helen’s mantra: It’s OK to be scared, but don’t play scared. 90
[During a young adult trip to Los Vegas] I was contemplating the nickel in my hand. Before we pushed open the glass doors, what the heck, I dropped it into a one-armed bandit and won two dollars.
In a dank utility room deep in the subbasements of my personality, a little man wiped his hands on his overalls and pulled the switch: More. Remembering it now, I hear a sizzling sound, like meat being thrown into a hot skillet. I didn't do risk, generally. So I thought. But I see now I'd been testing the House Rules the last few years. I'd always been a goody-goody. Study hard, obey your parents, hut-hut-hut through the training exercises of Decent Society. Then in college, now that no one was around, I started to push the boundaries, a little more each semester. I was an empty seat in lecture halls, slept late in a depressive funk, handed in term papers later and later to see how much I could get away with before the House swatted me down.
Push it some more. We go to casinos to tell the everyday world that we will not submit. There are rules and codes and institutions, yes, but for a few hours in this temple of pure chaos, of random cards and inscrutable dice, we are in control of our fates. My little gambles were a way of pretending that no one was the boss of me. …
The nickels poured into the basin, sweet music. If it worked once, it will work again.
We hit the street. 106-8
[Matt Matros, 3x bracelet winner; wrote The Making of a Poker Player]: “One way or another you’re going to have a read, and you’re going to do something that you didn’t expect you were going to do before, right or wrong. Obviously it’s better if you’re right, but even if you’re wrong, it can be really satisfying to just have a read, a feeling, and go with it. Your gut.”
I could play it safe, or I could really play. 180
Early on, you wanted to stay cool and keep out of expensive confrontations, but you also needed to feed the stack. The stack is hungry. 187
The awful knowledge that you did what you set out to do, and you would never, ever top it. It was gone the instant you put your hands on it. It was gambling. 224
”
”
Colson Whitehead (The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death)
“
When we are young, we yearn for battle. In the firelit halls we listen to the songs of heroes; how they broke the foemen, splintered the shield wall, and soaked their swords in the blood of enemies. As youngsters we listen to the boast of warriors, hear their laughter as they recall battle, and their bellows of pride when their lord reminds them of some hard-won victory. And those youngsters who have not fought, who have yet to hold their shield against a neighbour's shield in the wall, are despised and disparaged. So we practise. Day after day we practise, with spear, sword, and shield. We begin as children, learning blade-craft with wooden weapons, and hour after hour we hit and are hit. We fight against men who hurt us in order to teach us, we learn not to cry when the blood from a split skull sheets across the eyes, and slowly the skill of the sword-craft builds.
Then the day comes when we are ordered to march with the men, not as children to hold the horses and to scavenge weapons after the battle, but as men. If we are lucky we have a battered old helmet and a leather jerkin, maybe even a coat of mail that hangs like a sack. We have a sword with a dented edge and a shield that is scored by enemy blades. We are almost men, not quite warriors, and on some fateful day we meet an enemy for the first time and we hear the chants of battle, the threatening clash of blades on shields, and we begin to learn that the poets are wrong and that the proud songs lie. Even before the shield walls meet, some men shit themselves. They shiver with fear. They drink mead and ale. Some boast, but most are quiet unless they join a chant of hate. Some men tell jokes, and the laughter is nervous. Others vomit. Our battle leaders harangue us, tell us of the deeds of our ancestors, of the filth that is the enemy, of the fate our women and children face unless we win, and between the shield walls the heroes strut, challenging us to single combat, and you look at the enemy's champions and they seem invincible. They are big men; grim-faced, gold hung, shining in mail, confident, scornful, savage.
The shield wall reeks of shit, and all a man wants is to be home, to be anywhere but on this field that prepares for battle, but none of us will turn and run or else we will be despised for ever. We pretend we want to be there, and then the wall at last advances, step by step, and the heart is thumping fast as a bird's wing beating, the world seems unreal. Thought flies, fear rules, and then the order to quicken the charge is shouted, and you run, or stumble, but stay in your rank because this is the moment you have spent a lifetime preparing for, and then, for the first time, you hear the thunder of shield walls meeting, the clangour of battle swords, and the screaming begins.
It will never end.
Till the world ends in the chaos of Ragnarok, we will fight for our women, for our land, and for our homes. Some Christians speak of peace, of the evil of war, and who does not want peace? But then some crazed warrior comes screaming his god's filthy name into your face and his only ambitions are to kill you, to rape your wife, to enslave your daughters, and take your home, and so you must fight.
”
”
Bernard Cornwell (The Flame Bearer (The Saxon Stories, #10))
“
The Monk in the Kitchen
I
ORDER is a lovely thing;
On disarray it lays its wing,
Teaching simplicity to sing.
It has a meek and lowly grace,
Quiet as a nun's face.
Lo—I will have thee in this place!
Tranquil well of deep delight,
All things that shine through thee appear
As stones through water, sweetly clear.
Thou clarity,
That with angelic charity
Revealest beauty where thou art,
Spread thyself like a clean pool.
Then all the things that in thee are,
Shall seem more spiritual and fair,
Reflection from serener air—
Sunken shapes of many a star
In the high heavens set afar.
II
Ye stolid, homely, visible things,
Above you all brood glorious wings
Of your deep entities, set high,
Like slow moons in a hidden sky.
But you, their likenesses, are spent
Upon another element.
Truly ye are but seemings—
The shadowy cast-oft gleamings
Of bright solidities. Ye seem
Soft as water, vague as dream;
Image, cast in a shifting stream.
III
What are ye?
I know not.
Brazen pan and iron pot,
Yellow brick and gray flag-stone
That my feet have trod upon—
Ye seem to me
Vessels of bright mystery.
For ye do bear a shape, and so
Though ye were made by man, I know
An inner Spirit also made,
And ye his breathings have obeyed.
IV
Shape, the strong and awful Spirit,
Laid his ancient hand on you.
He waste chaos doth inherit;
He can alter and subdue.
Verily, he doth lift up
Matter, like a sacred cup.
Into deep substance he reached, and lo
Where ye were not, ye were; and so
Out of useless nothing, ye
Groaned and laughed and came to be.
And I use you, as I can,
Wonderful uses, made for man,
Iron pot and brazen pan.
V
What are ye?
I know not;
Nor what I really do
When I move and govern you.
There is no small work unto God.
He required of us greatness;
Of his least creature
A high angelic nature,
Stature superb and bright completeness.
He sets to us no humble duty.
Each act that he would have us do
Is haloed round with strangest beauty;
Terrific deeds and cosmic tasks
Of his plainest child he asks.
When I polish the brazen pan
I hear a creature laugh afar
In the gardens of a star,
And from his burning presence run
Flaming wheels of many a sun.
Whoever makes a thing more bright,
He is an angel of all light.
When I cleanse this earthen floor
My spirit leaps to see
Bright garments trailing over it,
A cleanness made by me.
Purger of all men's thoughts and ways,
With labor do I sound Thy praise,
My work is done for Thee.
Whoever makes a thing more bright,
He is an angel of all light.
Therefore let me spread abroad
The beautiful cleanness of my God.
VI
One time in the cool of dawn
Angels came and worked with me.
The air was soft with many a wing.
They laughed amid my solitude
And cast bright looks on everything.
Sweetly of me did they ask
That they might do my common task
And all were beautiful—but one
With garments whiter than the sun
Had such a face
Of deep, remembered grace;
That when I saw I cried—"Thou art
The great Blood-Brother of my heart.
Where have I seen thee?"—And he said,
"When we are dancing round God's throne,
How often thou art there.
Beauties from thy hands have flown
Like white doves wheeling in mid air.
Nay—thy soul remembers not?
Work on, and cleanse thy iron pot.
”
”
Anna Hempstead Branch
“
I’m becoming a moth to a flame, but just like the moth, my idiotic self won’t be able to stay away
”
”
S.M. Soto (Deception and Chaos (Chaos, #1))
“
Where was the excitement it dependability? Where was the spontaneity in a predictable world? He could offer her an eternity of challenges and passion, of quiet, tender moments stolen in the depths of riotous flames and ravaging storms - tranquillity amidst the chaos.
”
”
A.G. Howard (The Moth in the Mirror (Splintered, #1.5))
“
It is a sad reality that so many, even those of the faith, seem to effectively kneel before Ares. This idolatry of violence and war is in such contrast to worshiping at the feet of the Prince of Peace. Sometimes it feels as if the entire world is marching toward destruction and chaos. Worst of all is that we know the mistakes made in our histories, but we seem to learn nothing from history (other than that we learn nothing). We do it all again and again. Sin after sin.
When posterity comes to judge us will they look upon the arms trade unchecked, the governments unhindered in iniquity and the vast lands of earth bursting into flame? Or will they look and see a people who voiced against the arms trade, the war mongers and the hell fire worshippers?
Either way, it is hard to not get depressed. But, take heart peaceful brothers and sisters. Though this dark night of evil brings such bitter sorrow, joy comes in the morning. That morning will come and swords will be of no use, for the learning of war will be no more.
Will it happen before or after the King arrives? God knows, but heed the encouragement given by Adin Ballou:
"The earth, so long a slaughter field, Shall yet an Eden bloom. The tiger to the lamb shall yield, And war descend the tomb."
Amen
Choose this day who you will serve!
O Lord, let it be Christós!
”
”
David Holdsworth
“
Nearby soldiers stopped to stare at the flame-haired, cloud-riding, staff-bearing figure rushing towards them. “He
”
”
Brian Wilkerson (Looming Shadow (Journey to Chaos #2))
“
I get under your skin. Cause the chaos within. You merely don't win. Against your soul twin - Soul Trigger
”
”
Farah Ayaad (Coming Home)
“
power of a free press. Its power was amplified when everyone had a voice. Theories without a foundation in facts or basis in reality could take flight and go viral. No barriers to entry. No editors. No fact checking, or if there was, it couldn’t be trusted; “fact checkers” had biases and agendas, too, after all. The loudest voices dominated the chaos that was social media hysteria, and all of it contributed to the chaos. Suppression and censorship only fueled the flames.
”
”
Jack Carr (The Devil's Hand (Terminal List, #4))
“
the power of a free press. Its power was amplified when everyone had a voice. Theories without a foundation in facts or basis in reality could take flight and go viral. No barriers to entry. No editors. No fact checking, or if there was, it couldn’t be trusted; “fact checkers” had biases and agendas, too, after all. The loudest voices dominated the chaos that was social media hysteria, and all of it contributed to the chaos. Suppression and censorship only fueled the flames.
”
”
Jack Carr (The Devil's Hand (Terminal List, #4))
“
Why do you follow him? What can he offer you?
Knowledge, child. There is no keener mind in the galaxy than that sour chunk of meat that occupies his skull. He has forgotten more about the inner workings of man and xenos alike than any Apothecary has ever known. I came to him to learn how to craft new and better contagions, so that Grandfather's blessings might be shared more freely. There are secret plagues from Old Night in these containers and virulent infections culled from crumbling bones of long dead aeldari. And with these raw materials and his aid, I have made wonders and horrors undreamt of by even the most glopsome of my brothers. Plagues that would devour even the rubbery flesh of Grandfather's children...
Daemons are not susceptible to mortal plagues.
No, they are not. And yet I have seen the results myself. That is what he offers me, child. In his shadow, I grow pleasingly feculent.
And what does he get out of it?
Were you not listening? Plagues, child. Swift plagues that can ravage entire systems at impossible rates. Oh, his mind is a thing of broken beauty. Even Abaddon cannot conceive of genocide on such a scale - it is not war to our Chief Apothecary, but simply...pest control. Imagine it. A great silence, falling all at once across a system. A sector. Every imperfect thing, snuffed out like a candle flame. And then... Ah, and then, a new beginning.
”
”
Josh Reynolds (Fabius Bile: The Omnibus (Fabius Bile: Warhammer 40,000))
“
Here’s what’s going on, intuitively. Lurking within the network is a connected subset of nodes that Duncan calls the vulnerable cluster. The geometric structure of this cluster—the way it percolates through the rest of the network—is what matters. In marketing language the vulnerable cluster is composed of “early adopters”: not innovators themselves but nodes that are poised and ready to tip, if just one of their neighbors has already toppled. Close to the second tipping point, the vulnerable cluster is spindly and almost invisible—it occupies a very small percentage of the whole network—so the odds of igniting it with a random seed are small. But once ignited, it spreads a slow-burning fire to its neighbors, enough of which pass it on to their neighbors, continuing inexorably until the entire giant component (the vast, interconnected meshwork of nodes that dominates the system) is engulfed in flame.
”
”
Steven H. Strogatz (Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life)
“
It was through this imposed accumulation of chaos that she struggled to move now: beyond it lay simplicity, unmeasurable, residence of perfection, where nothing was created, where originality did not exist: because it was origin; where once she was there work and thought in causal and stumbling sequence did not exist, but only transcription: where the poem she knew but could not write existed, ready-formed, awaiting recovery in that moment when the writing down of it was impossible: because she was the poem. Her hand tipped toward the paper, black stroke the pen made there, but only that stroke, line of uncertainty. She called her memory, screamed for it, trying to scream through it and beyond it, damned accumulation that bound her in time: my memory, my bed, my stomach, my terror, my hope, my poem, my God: the meanness of my. Must the flames of hell be ninety-story blazes? or simply these small sharp tongues of fire that nibble and fall to, savouring the edges and then consume, swept by the wind of terror at exposing one's self, losing the aggregate of meannesses which compose identity, in flames never reaching full roaring crescendo but scorch through a life like fire in grass, in the world of time the clock tells. Every tick, synchronised, tears off a fragment of the lives run by them, the circling hands reflected in those eyes watching their repetition in an anxiety which draws the whole face toward pupiled voids and finally, leaves lines there, uncertain strokes woven into the flesh, the fabric of anxiety, double-webbed round dark-centered jellies which reflect nothing. Only that fabric remains, pleached in the pattern of the bondage which has a beginning and an end, with scientific meanness in attention to details, of a thousand things which should not have happened, and did; of myriad mean events which should have happened, and did not: waited for, denied, until life is lived in fragments, unrelated until death, and the wrist watch stops.
”
”
William Gaddis, The Recognitions
“
She’s Adeline Boo Pond, trainee of Landregath the Great Devourer, Protector of Imps, Slayer of Hunters, Life Giver to Torch the Tiny Flame, Rider of Storms, Drinker of Ice Ages, Embracer of Chaos. You’d best let her pass before the demons of destruction come looking for her.
”
”
L.L. Frost (Falling (Succubus Dreams #3; Succubus Harem #25))
“
It happened a long time ago, wolf. I’m not that scared little girl anymore, nor do I give a shit what others think of me. Life is a bitch, and you can let it destroy you, or you can face it head-on and show that it doesn’t define who you choose to become in life.
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Amelia Hutchins (Flames of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms #1))
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There were storm clouds in his eyes, shadows of the sweetest darkness I’d ever witnessed danced within them, and I craved to taste it on my flesh.
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Amelia Hutchins (Flames of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms #1))
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Aria Hecate, is that you, trouble?
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Amelia Hutchins (Flames of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms #1))
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The truth lies in the uncharted seas of the unknown. Chaos and confusion, when entered and confronted, transmute into purifying flames, catastrophic and beautiful.
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Søren Sørenson (Mystical Mushroom Musings)
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Now she was reborn through the fire and pain she’d endured, and was still beautiful, maybe even more so because of what she’d been through.
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Amelia Hutchins (Flames of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms #1))
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You little bitch, you will pay!” Her screaming cracked as she bounced off the floor again, hitting the desk, which unseated a few books and sent papers across the floor. “You know, it actually sounds like something my evil bitch mother would do. Sending some wannabe witch into our home to take grimoires she’s very aware cannot be removed. The book you’re holding, it can’t leave the house. Period. Not even if the House of Magic is down and exposed. Here, let me show you,” I stated, turning with my finger in the air, forcing her to follow as she continued to hover, waving her arms while holding on to the grimoire for dear life.
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Amelia Hutchins (Flames of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms #1))
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Yes, I’ll say my prayers,” I smirked, preparing to whisper the witches’ prayer. “I am the fire of the cauldron that heats the realms. I am the wind that fills the land and sails the ships upon the rough seas. I am the earth that grows the crops and feeds those within the Nine Realms. I am the water that bathes the soul. I am of Hecate, created from within her soul. I am the magic that creates the land and feeds it power. I leave neither child nor a mother behind who will grieve me, only my magic to be returned to the land from which it was given. I give it back on this day. I now go to my grave without regrets. I go to where pain cannot touch thy soul. I leave this vessel of flesh and go to lands of plenty, and land of promised peace. Blessed be, for the ones who will go on, do not weep or grieve for me, for I am finally free.” I lifted my eyes to his and smiled wickedly as I held my arms out with my palms held up. “I am ready to die—go time, fucker.
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Amelia Hutchins (Flames of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms #1))
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I guess it changed me, my own mother trying to murder me. No one else spoke about it either, since no one else even cared that she had tried to kill her own daughter. I’m pretty sure after all that happened, no one wanted to speak about the incident—or me. It was easier to hide from the pitying stares or the whispers of the people in this town.
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Amelia Hutchins (Flames of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms #1))
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You have every alpha in this room watching to see if you make a move on one of them, and deciding if you could be easily subdued. You are something strong; even I can smell it on your flesh. You are the talk of the town. Apparently, the male they sent to save us is smitten with you. His scent clings to you in warning, sweet girl. You’ve been with him, and he wants everyone to know it.
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Amelia Hutchins (Flames of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms #1))
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I’m a woman, Knox. We only need a few minutes to rain hell down upon men. I wish you luck because you will need it. I’m about to rattle your fucking soul and bring you to your knees.
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Amelia Hutchins (Flames of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms #1))
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wanted to set the little bitch on fire and watch as she burned; to see what the fuck stepped out of the ashes when she rose still covered in the dust. I wanted to set her world on fire and fuck her in the ashes of it, watching as she realized just how ruined she was when I was finished with her.
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Amelia Hutchins (Flames of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms #1))
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Knox watched me coming undone for him, watched me breaking apart and shattering into a million pieces. Pieces he picked up and held together while I scrambled to rearrange who I was before him and who I would become after him.
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Amelia Hutchins (Flames of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms #1))
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That when I find it with the perfect mate, it better be exactly like that...I don't want no basic bitch romance. I want to rip it apart and watch it grow from the ground up. I want to build it so fucking fortified that no one can ever touch it because me and my guy, we'd fight the entirety of the nine realms to keep it safe. That is what I want. And I won't find that here, and sure in the hell wont be with you. YOU LIVE WITH GHOSTS AND ARE FUELED BY THE NEED TO AVENGE THEM. I LIVE IN THE NOW.
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Amelia Hutchins (Flames of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms, #1))
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That’s so hard to do. To voluntarily reduce oneself to ashes and then rise again. It’s so hard that most choose to stand in the flames and burn.
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Michael R. Miller (Unbound (Songs of Chaos, #2))
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We’ll have chaos no matter what. So we might as well go down in flames loving instead of hating each other.
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Laurie Forest (The Demon Tide (The Black Witch Chronicles, #4))
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I’d known he had a fire in him that could burn us up together, and now that he was releasing it, I wanted nothing more than to go to all the way up in flames.
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Eva Chance (The Chaos Crew: The Complete Series (Devil's Dozen Box Sets Book 2))
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marriage is an union between two persons not three
In our businesses, work environment school etc... We do what we call third party credibility in order for the person you are exposing a business or an item to be sure and convince . But this should not be applied on a marriage couple. Because the third party credibility in marriage, brings confusion and chaos. People get married and still live with their family and their wives or husbands are always living hell at home because of the interaction. Marriage is a fellowship, two fellows in the same ship. We can't be more than two in that ship. Try it and you will see the flames consuming the ship or water( quarrel or confusion) entering the ship. Whether biological sister, brother, mother, father and friends we should stay in our position not to be cursed by God for destroying people's homes with the seed of discrepancy. Listen and listen carefully, God is the only first, second and third party we could imagine for with Him, there isn't confusion by Grace. God bless you.
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Jean Faustin Louembe
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Seeing her hit him in the chest, the burn in his gut moving up to flame in his lungs, compressing them, making it suddenly hard to catch a breath. He
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Kristen Ashley (Own the Wind (Chaos, #1))
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It felt like a vast left-wing conspiracy to pretend to have found Eric André’s performance funny. This was everyday life on social media, each side lurching toward mockery and attack — fanning the flames of the divisive chaos from which Trump, the Twitter candidate, had risen. But
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Jon Ronson (The Elephant in the Room)
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Douady and Hubbard used a brilliant chain of new mathematics to prove that every floating molecule does indeed hang on a filigree that binds it to all the rest, a delicate web springing from tiny outcroppings on the main set, a "devil's polymer," in Mandelbrot's phrase. The mathematicians proved that any segment-no matter where, and no matter how small-would, when blown up by the computer microscope, reveal new molecules, each resembling the main set and yet not quite the same. Every new molecule would be surrounded by its own spirals and flame-like projections, and those, inevitably, would reveal molecules tinier still, always similar, never identical, fulfilling some mandate of infinite variety, a miracle of miniaturization in which every new detail was sure to be a universe of its own, diverse and entire.
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James Gleick (Chaos: Making a New Science)
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The world might be going up in flames, but we have to carry on as normal
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Darren Shan (Bec (The Demonata, #4))
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This was everyday life on social media, each side lurching toward mockery and attack — fanning the flames of the divisive chaos from which Trump, the Twitter candidate, had risen.
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Jon Ronson (The Elephant in the Room)
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The man kissed like he was going to war... and my mouth was the enemy he wanted to destroy.:
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Amelia Hutchins (Flames of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms, #1))
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You are the flame that warms, Tunuva Melim. The flame that seals a wound.
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Samantha Shannon (A Day of Fallen Night (The Roots of Chaos #0))
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It’s all you are.” I think, But it’s not all I want to be.
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Justina Ireland (Chaos & Flame (Chaos & Flame, #1))