Gates Of Fire Book Quotes

The Frays had never been a religiously observant family, but Clary loved Fifth Avenue at Christmas time. The air smelled like sweet roasted chestnuts, and the window displays sparkled with silver and blue, green and red. This year there were fat round crystal snowflakes attached to each lamppost, sending back the winter sunlight in shafts of gold. Not to mention the huge tree at Rockefeller Center. It threw its shadow across them as she and Simon draped themselves over the gate at the side of the skating rink, watching tourists fall down as they tried to navigate the ice. Clary had a hot chocolate wrapped in her hands, the warmth spreading through her body. She felt almost normal—this, coming to Fifth to see the window displays and the tree, had been a winter tradition for her and Simon for as long as she could remember. “Feels like old times, doesn’t it?” he said, echoing her thoughts as he propped his chin on his folded arms. She chanced a sideways look at him. He was wearing a black topcoat and scarf that emphasized the winter pallor of his skin. His eyes were shadowed, indicating that he hadn’t fed on blood recently. He looked like what he was—a hungry, tired vampire. Well, she thought. Almost like old times. “More people to buy presents for,” she said. “Plus, the always traumatic what-to-buy-someone-for-the-first-Christmas-after-you’ve-started-dating question.” “What to get the Shadowhunter who has everything,” Simon said with a grin. “Jace mostly likes weapons,” Clary sighed. “He likes books, but they have a huge library at the Institute. He likes classical music …” She brightened. Simon was a musician; even though his band was terrible, and was always changing their name—currently they were Lethal Soufflé—he did have training. “What would you give someone who likes to play the piano?” “A piano.” “Simon.” “A really huge metronome that could also double as a weapon?” Clary sighed, exasperated. “Sheet music. Rachmaninoff is tough stuff, but he likes a challenge.” “Now you’re talking. I’m going to see if there’s a music store around here.” Clary, done with her hot chocolate, tossed the cup into a nearby trash can and pulled her phone out. “What about you? What are you giving Isabelle?” “I have absolutely no idea,” Simon said. They had started heading toward the avenue, where a steady stream of pedestrians gawking at the windows clogged the streets. “Oh, come on. Isabelle’s easy.” “That’s my girlfriend you’re talking about.” Simon’s brows drew together. “I think. I’m not sure. We haven’t discussed it. The relationship, I mean.” “You really have to DTR, Simon.” “What?” “Define the relationship. What it is, where it’s going. Are you boyfriend and girlfriend, just having fun, ‘it’s complicated,’ or what? When’s she going to tell her parents? Are you allowed to see other people?” Simon blanched. “What? Seriously?” “Seriously. In the meantime—perfume!” Clary grabbed Simon by the back of his coat and hauled him into a cosmetics store that had once been a bank. It was massive on the inside, with rows of gleaming bottles everywhere. “And something unusual,” she said, heading for the fragrance area. “Isabelle isn’t going to want to smell like everyone else. She’s going to want to smell like figs, or vetiver, or—” “Figs? Figs have a smell?” Simon looked horrified; Clary was about to laugh at him when her phone buzzed. It was her mother. where are you? It’s an emergency.

You realize I had half my guard out searching for you?” Eddard Stark said when they were alone. “Septa Mordane is beside herself with fear. She’s in the sept praying for your safe return. Arya, you know you are never to go beyond the castle gates without my leave.” “I didn’t go out the gates,” she blurted. “Well, I didn’t mean to. I was down in the dungeons, only they turned into this tunnel. It was all dark, and I didn’t have a torch or a candle to see by, so I had to follow. I couldn’t go back the way I came on account of the monsters. Father, they were talking about killing you! Not the monsters, the two men. They didn’t see me, I was being still as stone and quiet as a shadow, but I heard them. They said you had a book and a bastard and if one Hand could die, why not a second? Is that the book? Jon’s the bastard, I bet.

arrived here a King’s Hand, riding through the gates at the head of my own sworn men, Tyrion reflected, and I leave like a rat scuttling through the dark, holding hands with a spider.

Both Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae and Tides of War: A Novel of Alcibiades and the Peloponnesian War are well-told accounts of crucial events in Greek history.

The Light and the Darkness both flow in to Delhi. Gurgaon, where Mr. Ashok lived, is the bright, modern end of the city, and this place. Old Delhi is the other end. Full of things that the modern world forget all about rickshaws, old stone buildings and Muslims. On a Sunday, though, there is something more: if you keep pushing through the crowd that is always there, go past the men clearing the other men’s ears by poking rusty metal rods into them, past the men selling small fish trapped in green bottles full of brine, past the cheap shoe market and the cheap shirt market, you come great secondhand book market Darya Ganj. You may have heard of this market, sir, since it is one of the wonders of the world. Tens of thousands of dirty, rotting, blackened books on every subject- Technology, Medicine, Sexual Pleasure, Philosophy, Education, and Foreign Countries — heaped upon the pavement from Delhi Gate onwards all the way until you get to the market in front of the Red Fort. Some books are so old they crumble when you touch them; some have silverfish feasting on them- some look like they were retrieved from a flood, or from a fire. Most shops on the pavement are shuttered down; but the restaurants are still open, and the smell of fried food mingles with the smell of rotting paper. Rusting exhaust fans turn slowly in the ventilators of the restaurants like the wings of giant moths. I went amid the books and sucked in the air; it was like oxygen after the stench of the brothel.

There was something elemental in the air, something that heated the blood and brought to the conscious mind desires long suppressed. Serena's body felt heavy and warm as she swayed involuntarily to the compelling music. The fire on such a steamy night was too much, and she felt an irresistible impulse to tear off her elaborate gown so she could dance freely in the sheer coolness of her chemise. Dance to the insistent music with one man's dark eyes watching her, devouring her, till he was forced to leap up and join her as was the young man who leaped up beside the Spanish woman.

I came to the gate, where some dozen or so of devils were playing tennis . . . in their hands they held rackets of fire; but what amazed me still more was that books, apparently full of wind and rubbish, served them for tennis balls, a strange and marvellous thing." (Cervantes, Don Quixote, Chapter 70).

Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset, There must be one (which, I am not sure) That I by now have walked for the last time Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws, Sets up a secret and unwavering scale for all the shadows, dreams, and forms Woven into the texture of this life. If there is a limit to all things and a measure And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness, Who will tell us to whom in this house We without knowing it have said farewell? Through the dawning window night withdraws And among the stacked books which throw Irregular shadows on the dim table, There must be one which I will never read. There is in the South more than one worn gate, With its cement urns and planted cactus, Which is already forbidden to my entry, Inaccessible, as in a lithograph. There is a door you have closed forever And some mirror is expecting you in vain; To you the crossroads seem wide open, Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus. There is among all your memories one Which has now been lost beyond recall. You will not be seen going down to that fountain Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon. You will never recapture what the Persian Said in his language woven with birds and roses, When, in the sunset, before the light disperses, You wish to give words to unforgettable things. And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake, All that vast yesterday over which today I bend? They will be as lost as Carthage, Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt. At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent Murmur of crowds milling and fading away; They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by; Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.

And finally, Felisin. Ah, now who is this woman in a child's raiment? Pleasures of the flesh devoid of pleasure. Selves surrendered one after another. Kindness yearned for behind every cruel word she utters. She believes in nothing. A crucible fired clean, empty. Heboric possesses hands unseen and what they now grasp is a power and a truth that he cannot yet sense. Felisin's hands... ah, they have grasped and touched, they have been slick and they have been soiled, and yet have held nothing. Life slips through them like a ghost.

Civil war had ignited, deadly as that storm in the sky. Families were being torn asunder, from the Citadel itself down to the meanest homes of the commons. And blood painted Kharkanas and there was nowhere to run. Through the gate, and then, even as despair choked all life from Endest Silann, he saw him approaching. From the city below. His forearms sheathed in black glistening scales, his bared chest made a thing of natural armour. The blood of Tiam ran riot through him, fired to life by the conflation of chaotic sorcery, and his eyes glowed with ferocious will. Endest fell to his knees in Anomander's path. 'Lord! The world falls!' 'Rise, priest,' he replied. 'The world does not fall. It but changes. I need you. Come.' And so he walked past, and Endest found himself on his feet, as Lord Anomander's will closed about his heart like an iron gauntlet, pulling him round and into the great warrior's wake.

In 2003, while working on my third book of poetry, I read an essay on Wheatley written by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in The New Yorker. It was an excerpt from his soon-to-be-published book, a treatment of Wheatley juxtaposed against the racism of Enlightenment scholars such as Immanuel Kant, and more specifically, Thomas Jefferson. As someone who explored American history in my poetry, I found Gates’s thesis fascinating: He believed Wheatley was important in dispelling derisive eighteenth-century notions about black humanity; her poetry had rebutted Kant’s ordering of the nations with Africans down at the very bottom. Because of Wheatley’s important symbolism for black humanity, Thomas Jefferson’s negative response to Wheatley’s poetry—“[t]he compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism”—was a symbol as well. It meant that the struggle for black equality on all fronts was not yet won.

As I understand things,’ Cotillion replied, ‘once these dragons did what K’rul asked of them, they were compelled to return to Starvald Demelain. As the sources of sorcery, they could not be permitted to interfere or remain active across the realms, lest sorcery cease to be predictable, which in turn would feed Chaos – the eternal enemy in this grand scheme. But the Soletaken proved a problem. They possessed the blood of Tiam, and with it the vast power of the Eleint. Yet, they could travel as they pleased. They could interfere, and they did. For obvious reasons. Scabandari was originally Edur, and so he became their champion—’ ‘After murdering the royal line of the Edur!’ Eloth said in a hiss. ‘After spilling draconean blood in the heart of Kurald Emurlahn! After opening the first, fatal wound upon that warren! What did he think gates were?’ ‘The Tiste Andii for Anomandaris,’ Cotillion continued. ‘Tiste Liosan for Osserc. The T’lan Imass for Olar Ethil. These connections and the loyalties born of them are obvious. Draconus is more of a mystery, of course, since he has been gone a long time—’ ‘The most reviled of them all!’ Eloth shrieked, the voice filling Cotillion’s skull so that he winced. Stepping back, he raised a hand. ‘Spare me, please. I am not really interested in all that, to be honest. Apart from discovering if there was enmity between Eleint and Soletaken. It seems there is, with the possible exception of Silanah—’ ‘Seduced by Anomandaris’s charms,’ snapped Eloth. ‘And Olar Ethil’s endless pleadings…’ ‘To bring fire to the world of the Imass,’ Cotillion said. ‘For that is her aspect, is it not? Thyr?’ Ampelas observed, ‘He is not so uncomprehending as you believed, Kalse.’ ‘Then again,’ Cotillion continued, ‘you too claim Thyr, Eloth. Ah, that was clever of K’rul, forcing you to share power.’ ‘Unlike Tiam,’ Ampelas said, ‘when we’re killed we stay dead.

When in distress turn to chocolate. Always chocolate. Trust me.

Pusszilla,

I could see that he was dressed in a black suit, white shirt and red tie.

Lady Meliara?” There was a tap outside the door, and Oria’s mother, Julen, lifted the tapestry. Oria and I both stared in surprise at the three long sticks she carried so carefully. “More Fire Sticks?” I asked. “In midwinter?” “Just found them outside the gate.” Julen laid them down, looked from one of us to the other, and went out. Oria grinned at me. “Maybe they’re a present. You did save the Covenant last year, and the Hill Folk know it.” “I didn’t do it,” I muttered. “All I did was make mistakes.” Oria crossed her arms. “Not mistakes. Misunderstandings. Those, at least, can be fixed. Which is all the more reason to go to Court--” “And what?” I asked sharply. “Get myself into trouble again?” Oria stood silently, and suddenly I was aware of the social gulf between us, and I knew she was as well. It happened like that sometimes. We’d be working side by side, cleaning or scraping or carrying, and then a liveried equerry would dash up the road with a letter, and suddenly I was the countess and she the servant who waited respectfully for me to read my letter and discuss it or not as I saw fit. “I’m sorry,” I said immediately, stuffing the Marquise’s letter into the pocket of my faded, worn old gown. “You know how I feel about Court, even if Bran has changed his mind.” “I promise not to jaw on about it again, but let me say it this once. You need to make your peace,” Oria said quietly. “You left your brother and the Marquis without so much as a by-your-leave, and I think it’s gnawing at you. Because you keep watching that road.” I felt my temper flare, but I didn’t say anything because I knew she was right. Or half right. And I wasn’t angry with her. I tried my best to dismiss my anger and force myself to smile. “Perhaps you may be right, and I’ll write to Bran by and by. But here, listen to this!” And I picked up the book I’d been reading before the letter came. “This is one of the ones I got just before the snows closed the roads: ‘And in several places throughout the world there are caves with ancient paintings and Iyon Daiyin glyphs.’” I looked up from the book. “Doesn’t that make you want to jump on the back of the nearest horse and ride and ride until you find these places?” Oria shuddered. “Not me. I like it fine right here at home.” “Use your imagination!” I read on. “‘Some of the caves depict constellations never seen in our skies--’” I stopped when we heard the pealing of bells. Not the melodic pattern of the time changes, but the clang of warning bells at the guardhouse just down the road. “Someone’s coming!” I exclaimed. Oria nodded, brows arched above her fine, dark eyes. “And the Hill Folk saw them.” She pointed at the Fire Sticks. “‘Them?’” I repeated, then glanced at the Fire Sticks and nodded. “Means a crowd, true enough.” Julen reappeared then, and tapped at the door. “Countess, I believe we have company on the road.” She looked in, and I said, “I hadn’t expected anyone.” Then my heart thumped, and I added, “It could be the fine weather has melted the snows down-mountain--d’you think it might be Branaric at last? I don’t see how it could be anyone else!” “Branaric needs three Fire Sticks?” Oria asked. “Maybe he’s brought lots of servants?” I suggested doubtfully. “Perhaps his half year at Court has given him elaborate tastes, ones that only a lot of servants can see to. Or he’s hired artisans from the capital to help forward our work on the castle. I hope it’s artisans,” I added. “Either way, we’ll be wanted to find space for these newcomers,” Julen said to her daughter. She picked up the Fire Sticks again and looked over her shoulder at me. “You ought to put on one of those gowns of your mother’s that we remade, my lady.” “For my brother?” I laughed, pulling my blanket closer about me as we slipped out of my room. “I don’t need to impress him, even if he has gotten used to Court ways!

I live in a world not at all like your own. In this world, there are four essential places. The Green is the places above ground, the places where trees and grass grow, where mountains rise up, the places where cows might moo woefully, waiting for a purpose in their lives. We live in the Green. There is the Underground, all places which must be reached from caves or mine shafts or great rifts in the ground. These are the places where the sun does not and never has touched, where the creatures of story and legend are said to roam. There is the Nether, a horrible, blasted landscape overrun by fire and the beasts that embody it, where infernal castles and strongholds dot the maps which never are finished. This place must be reached from a certain archway made of black stone, anointed with a drop of blood and burned. There is the End, from which no man has ever returned. There are legends that talk of a grand gate somewhere in the Green that pulsates with an acrid energy, which can only be seen by the stricken eyes of the already-dead. Nobody knows what is there.

…After seventeen minutes of panicky crowds destroying everything in their path, Eric could distinguish, despite all the chaos and hellish noise, the slight buzz of a second plane. He started counting to himself, watching the blazing inferno at the North Tower: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven… The second Boeing glided into the South Tower, WTC-2, and it seemed to Eric that this plane was flying slowly, that its impact was a soft one… Due to the pandemonium all around, the impact itself seemed not to be as loud as the first hit. Still, in a moment the second twin was also blazing. Both skyscrapers were on fire now. Novack looked up again at what had happened a minute before: the terror attack of the century. Then he started walking fast down Church Street, away from the huge buildings that were now on fire. He knew that in about an hour, the South Tower was to collapse completely, and half an hour after that, the same was to happen to the North Tower, which was also weakened by the impact. He knew there were tons of powerful Thermate in both buildings. Over the course of the previous two months, some fake repairmen had brought loads of it into the towers and put them in designated places around the trusswork. It was meant to make buildings collapse like card towers, which would only happen when the flames reached a certain point. The planes had started an unstoppable countdown as soon as they hit the buildings: these were the last minutes of their existence. Next in line was the third building: 7 WTC, which stood north of the Twin Towers. It counted forty-seven floors, and it too was stuffed with Thermate. Novack started getting concerned, however, that the third plane seemed to be late. Where’s the third plane? Why is it late? It’s already fifty minutes after the first impact, and they were supposed to hit the three targets with a time lag of about twenty minutes. Where are you, birdie number three? You are no less important than the first two, and you were also promised to my clients… People were still running in all directions, shouting and bumping into each other. Sirens wailed loudly, heartrendingly; ambulances were rushing around, giving way only to firefighters and emergency rescue teams. Suddenly hundreds of policemen appeared on the streets, but it seemed that they didn’t really know what they were supposed to do. They mostly ran around, yelling into their walkie-talkies. At Thomas Street, Eric walked into a parking lot: the gate arm was up and the security guy must have left, for the door of his booth stood wide open… …Two shots rang out simultaneously during the fifth and the longest second. They were executed synchronously, creating a single, stinging, deadly sound. The bullet from the sixth floor of the book depository went straight up into the sky, as planned. The second bullet shot out of a sniper rifle, held confidently in the arms of a woman behind the hedge, on the grassy knoll. It was her bullet that struck the head of the 35th US president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The woman walked quickly down the grassy knoll. Stepping only about five meters away, she put her rifle into a baby pram waiting there, with a real six-month-old baby boy whimpering inside it. She put on thick glasses and started walking away, exhibiting no haste. Only thirty seconds after the second shot, the woman was gone, nowhere to be seen… After the second or, rather, the third shot, the one from the knoll, President Kennedy’s head was tossed back. Jackie somehow managed to crawl onto the back hood of the car. A security agent from the escort car had already reached them. The motorcade picked up speed and disappeared under the overpass. Zapruder’s camera kept whirring for some seconds. He must have filmed the whole operation – that is, the assassination of an acting US president. But now he simply stood there without saying a word, completely dumbfounded...

One of my favorite prayers in Gates of Prayer, the New Union Prayer Book, is called “Welcoming Sabbath” and it goes like this: Our noisy day has now descended with the sun beyond our sight. In the silence of our praying place we close the door upon the hectic joys and fears, the accomplishments and anguish of the week we have left behind. What was but moments ago the substance of our life has become memory; what we did must now be woven into what we are. On this day we shall not do, but be. We are to walk the path of our humanity, no longer ride un-seeing through a world we do not touch and only vaguely sense. No longer can we tear the world apart to make our fire. On this day heat and warmth and light must come from deep within ourselves.6

Destroyed, that is, were not only men, women, and thousands of children but also restaurants and inns, laundries, theater groups, sports clubs, sewing clubs, boys’ clubs, girls’ clubs, love affairs, trees and gardens, grass, gates, gravestones, temples and shrines, family heirlooms, radios, classmates, books, courts of law, clothes, pets, groceries and markets, telephones, personal letters, automobiles, bicycles, horses—120 war-horses—musical instruments, medicines and medical equipment, life savings, eyeglasses, city records, sidewalks, family scrapbooks, monuments, engagements, marriages, employees, clocks and watches, public transportation, street signs, parents, works of art.

The man richer than Bill Gates, smarter than Albert Einstein, more powerful than an American president, and more influential than the pope amassed a harem rivaled only by men who are porn addicts who collect women in their minds. Despite having sexually sinful parents who conceived his older brother through adultery, he did not learn his lesson. Despite being the wisest man to ever walk the earth other than Jesus Christ, he did not learn his lesson. Despite marrying a beautiful and sexually free woman who loved him, as recorded in the Song of Songs, he did not learn his lesson. Instead, he intermarried with seven hundred godless pagan women and kept three hundred additional sexual concubines from many other nations who helped turn his sinful heart away from God so that he worshipped false gods, even building pagan altars where sexual sin was conducted in worship to demon gods.a This includes his support of Ashtoreth, the Canaanite demon goddess of sex worshipped around male phallices symbolized by poles around which orgies occurred. He also funded the worship of Molech, the demon god who demanded children be sacrificed by fire; and of Chemosh, the Moabite god who demanded child sacrifice not unlike abortion. Solomon’s example reveals that the longer we wait to repent, the more damage we do. Solomon himself wrote an entire book of the Bible, Ecclesiastes, in part to repent and warn us not to follow his folly.

Blessed be any wind that blows us into the port of our Saviour's love! Happy wounds, which make us seek the beloved Physician. Ye tempted ones, come to your tempted Saviour, for he can be touched with a feeling of your infirmities, and will succour every tried and tempted one. Morning, October 4 "At evening time it shall be light." Zechariah 14:7 Oftentimes we look forward with forebodings to the time of old age, forgetful that at eventide it shall be light. To many saints, old age is the choicest season in their lives. A balmier air fans the mariner's cheek as he nears the shore of immortality, fewer waves ruffle his sea, quiet reigns, deep, still and solemn. From the altar of age the flashes of the fire of youth are gone, but the more real flame of earnest feeling remains. The pilgrims have reached the land Beulah, that happy country, whose days are as the days of heaven upon earth. Angels visit it, celestial gales blow over it, flowers of paradise grow in it, and the air is filled with seraphic music. Some dwell here for years, and others come to it but a few hours before their departure, but it is an Eden on earth. We may well long for the time when we shall recline in its shady groves and be satisfied with hope until the time of fruition comes. The setting sun seems larger than when aloft in the sky, and a splendour of glory tinges all the clouds which surround his going down. Pain breaks not the calm of the sweet twilight of age, for strength made perfect in weakness bears up with patience under it all. Ripe fruits of choice experience are gathered as the rare repast of life's evening, and the soul prepares itself for rest. The Lord's people shall also enjoy light in the hour of death. Unbelief laments; the shadows fall, the night is coming, existence is ending. Ah no, crieth faith, the night is far spent, the true day is at hand. Light is come, the light of immortality, the light of a Father's countenance. Gather up thy feet in the bed, see the waiting bands of spirits! Angels waft thee away. Farewell, beloved one, thou art gone, thou wavest thine hand. Ah, now it is light. The pearly gates are open, the golden streets shine in the jasper light. We cover our eyes, but thou beholdest the unseen; adieu, brother, thou hast light at even-tide, such as we have

Morning, October 4 "At evening time it shall be light." Zechariah 14:7 Oftentimes we look forward with forebodings to the time of old age, forgetful that at eventide it shall be light. To many saints, old age is the choicest season in their lives. A balmier air fans the mariner's cheek as he nears the shore of immortality, fewer waves ruffle his sea, quiet reigns, deep, still and solemn. From the altar of age the flashes of the fire of youth are gone, but the more real flame of earnest feeling remains. The pilgrims have reached the land Beulah, that happy country, whose days are as the days of heaven upon earth. Angels visit it, celestial gales blow over it, flowers of paradise grow in it, and the air is filled with seraphic music. Some dwell here for years, and others come to it but a few hours before their departure, but it is an Eden on earth. We may well long for the time when we shall recline in its shady groves and be satisfied with hope until the time of fruition comes. The setting sun seems larger than when aloft in the sky, and a splendour of glory tinges all the clouds which surround his going down. Pain breaks not the calm of the sweet twilight of age, for strength made perfect in weakness bears up with patience under it all. Ripe fruits of choice experience are gathered as the rare repast of life's evening, and the soul prepares itself for rest. The Lord's people shall also enjoy light in the hour of death. Unbelief laments; the shadows fall, the night is coming, existence is ending. Ah no, crieth faith, the night is far spent, the true day is at hand. Light is come, the light of immortality, the light of a Father's countenance. Gather up thy feet in the bed, see the waiting bands of spirits! Angels waft thee away. Farewell, beloved one, thou art gone, thou wavest thine hand. Ah, now it is light. The pearly gates are open, the golden streets shine in the jasper light. We cover our eyes, but thou beholdest the unseen; adieu, brother, thou hast light at even-tide, such as we have not yet.

I wanted nothing more than to be frozen in this immortal embrace forever.

it is literally a sea of penises out here.

His favorite book was Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire,

My father is very fond of spiked heads, especially those of people who have annoyed him in some fashion. And a face as noble as yours, well, no doubt he saw you decorating the city wall above the King’s Gate. I think you would have looked very striking up there.” “Thank you,” Ser Jaremy replied with a sardonic smile. Lord

the teacher’s force lies in the conviction that men are convertible,” he wrote, adding cheerfully, “and they are.” He was also newly alive to the requirements of good writing. “In good prose,” he said, quoting Schlegel, “every word should be underscored.” And he already knew that one needed to aim for the main gate. In preparing to write, as in everything else, “the material is so much that the spiritual is overlaid and lost.” As the writer starts to think about a subject, first “a society must be collected, and books consulted and much paper blotted.  .  .  .  Alien considerations come in, personal considerations” until finally he loses the thing one meant to say in the first place. “It was no superfluous rule he gave who said, when you write do not omit the thing you meant to say.”11 Emerson’s mood was

Do I want a conversation? No, I do not. What’s to say? Anomander killed Hood, Dassem killed Anomander, Brood shattered Dragnipur, and now Draconus walks free. Burn trembles, the Gate of Starvald Demelain rages with fire, and cruel twisted warrens the like of which we’ve never before seen now lie in wait – when will they awaken? What will they deliver?