Ged Quotes

It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.

Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.

In that moment Ged understood the singing of the bird, and the language of the water falling in the basin of the fountain, and the shape of the clouds, and the beginning and end of the wind that stirred the leaves; it seemed to him that he himself was a word spoken by the sunlight.

Who knows a man's name, holds that man's life in his keeping. Thus to Ged, who had lost faith in himself, Vetch had given him that gift that only a friend can give, the proof of unshaken, unshakeable trust.

A child who can love the oddities of a fantasy book cannot possibly be xenophobic as an adult. What is a different color, a different culture, a different tongue for a child who has already mastered Elvish, respected Puddleglums, or fallen under the spell of dark-skinned Ged?

To see a candle's light one must take it into a dark place.

You fear them because you fear death, and rightly: for death is terrible and must be feared,' the mage said...'And life is also a terrible thing,' Ged said, 'and must be feared and praised.

Why are men afraid of women?" "If your strength is only the other's weakness, you live in fear," Ged said. "Yes; but women seem to fear their own strength, to be afraid of themselves." "Are they ever taught to trust themselves?" Ged asked, and as he spoke Therru came in on her work again. His eyes and Tenar's met. "No," she said. "Trust is not what we're taught." She watched the child stack the wood in the box. "If power were trust," she said. "I like that word. If it weren't all these arrangements - one above the other - kings and masters and mages and owners - It all seems so unnecessary. Real power, real freedom, would lie in trust, not force." "As children trust their parents," he said.

What is evil?" asked the younger man. The round web, with its black center, seemed to watch them both. "A web we men weave." Ged answered.

If women had power, what would men be but women who can't bear children? And what would women be but men who can?" "Hah!" went Tenar; and presently, with some cunning, she said, "Haven't there been queens? Weren't they women of power?" "A queen's only a she-king," said Ged. She snorted. "I mean, men give her power. They let her use their power. But it isn't hers, is it? It isn't because she's a woman that she's powerful, but despite it.

Master,” said Ged, “I cannot take your name from you, not being strong enough, and I cannot trick your name from you, not being wise enough. So I am content to stay here, and learn or serve, whatever you will: unless by chance you will answer a question I have.” “Ask it.” “What is your name?” The doorkeeper smiled, and said his name; and Ged, repeating it, entered for the last time into that House.

Which of us saved the other from the Labyrinth, Ged?

Later, when Ged thought back upon that night, he knew that had none touched him when he lay thus spirit-lost, had none called him back in some way, he might have been lost for good. It was only the dumb instinctive wisdom of the beast who licks his hurt companion to comfort him, and yet in that wisdom Ged saw something akin to his own power, something that went as deep as wizardry. From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.

Am I going to be able to provide a real home for her, man? An education? A real life? What's her college application going to look like: 'Raised on Spooky Island by wizard with GED, please help'?

On the sea he wished to meet it, if meet it he must. He was not sure why this was, yet he had a terror of meeting the thing again on dry land. Out of the sea there rise storms and monsters, but no evil powers: evil is of earth. And there is no sea, no running of river or spring, in the dark land where once Ged had gone. Death is the dry place.

The heavy work requiring muscle and the skilled work with crops and sheep was done by Ged, Shandy, and Tenar, while the two old men who had been there all their lives, his father's men took him about and told him how they managed it all, and truly believed they were managing it all, and shared their believe with him.

Ged stood sick and haggard. He said at last, “Better I had died.” “Who are you to judge that, you for whom Nemmerle gave his life?—You are safe here. You will live here, and go on with your training. They tell me you were clever. Go on and do your work. Do it well. It is all you can do.

I had said that Le Guin's worlds were real because her people were so real, and he said yes, but the people were so real because they were the people the worlds would have produced. If you put Ged to grow up on Anarres or Shevek in Earthsea, they would be the same people, the backgrounds made the people, which of course you see all the time in mainstream fiction, but it's rare in SF.

Lots of people want to be invisible. Maybe they even think they can pretend to be. But someone always sees." -Archmage_Ged-

Then Ged pitied her. She was like a white deer caged, like a white bird wing-clipped, like a silver ring in an old man's finger.

And he began to see the truth, that Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.

He began to see the truth, that Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark. In the Creation of Ea, which is the oldest song, it is said, 'Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky.

You want to work spells,' Ogion said presently, striding along. 'You've drawn too much water from that well. Wait. Manhood is patience. Mastery is nine times patience. What is that herb by the path?' 'Strawflower.' 'And that?' 'I don't know.' 'Fourfoil, they call it.' Ogion had halted, the coppershod foot of his staff near the little weed, so Ged looked closely at the plant, and plucked a dry seedpod from it, and finally asked, since Ogion said nothing more, 'What is its use, Master?' 'None I know of.' Ged kept the seedpod a while as they went on, then tossed it away. 'When you know the fourfoil in all its seasons root and leaf and flower, by sight and scent and seed, then you may learn its true name, knowing its being: which is more than its use. What, after all, is the use of you? or of myself? Is Gont Mountain useful, or the Open Sea?' Ogion went on a half mile or so, and said at last, 'To hear, one must be silent.

Gedding old is no way to stop being young.

To hold the courage to let another witness our tears, while refuting fears invitation to shield face, is to grant the most privileged of all loving intimacies to them.

As he came to the bank Ogion, waiting, reached out his hand and clasping the boy’s arm whispered to him his true name: Ged.

Invent a way not to ged old,” he said. “It is a terrible goddem trick to play on someone. Gedding old is no way to stop being young.

Ged stood still a while, like one who has received great news, and must enlarge his spirit to receive it.

But Ged went on, falcon-winged, falcon-mad, like an unfalling arrow, like an unforgotten thought, over the Osskil Sea and eastward into the wind of winter and the night.

Disturbing as it may be, the raw truth is that often enough, the people showing up to your medical emergency do so because this was the only respectable job they could get with a GED and a clean driving record.

But I know him, Moss. It’s Sparrowhawk.” Saying the name, Ged’s use-name, released a tenderness in her, so that for the first time she thought and felt that this was he indeed, and that all the years since she had first seen him were their bond. She saw a light like a star in darkness, underground, long ago, and his face in the light.

I named you once, I think," he said, and then strode to his house and entered, bearing the bird still on his wrist.

Life writes the poetry, but it will always call for witnesses and scribes alike to tattoo its echoes upon the ghosts of trees.

Yet I have an idea of what you should do. It is a hard thing to say to you.” Ged’s silence demanded truth, and Ogion said at last, “You must turn around.” “Turn around?” “If you go ahead, if you keep running, wherever you run you will meet danger and evil, for it drives you, it chooses the way you go. You must choose. You must seek what seeks you. You must hunt the hunter.” Ged said nothing.

I felt like there was some kind of cliche 'only on TV' ad playing in the background as we walked down the hall into a growing blackness where the power had failed. 'Hormones got you in a bind? Feeling overwhelmed by your biological impulses? Are you hot for the only unavailable male around for miles?' As if I didn't have enough to worr yabout, all I could think of was when arme-i-gedding-screwed.

In fantasy stories we learn to understand the differences of others, we learn compassion for those things we cannot fathom, we learn the importance of keeping our sense of wonder. The strange worlds that exist in the pages of fantastic literature teach us a tolerance of other people and places and engender an openness toward new experience. Fantasy puts the world into perspective in a way that 'realistic' literature rarely does. It is not so much an escape from the here-and-now as an expansion of each reader's horizons." "A child who can love the oddities of a fantasy book cannot possibly be xenophobic as an adult. What is a different color, a different culture, a different tongue for a child who has already mastered Elvish, respected Puddleglums, or fallen under the spell of dark-skinned Ged?

Darkness is the womb from which a poet is born.

Endings and beginnings are merely paired facets of an imagined stone curtain, behind which a plethora of opportunities await.

Thus to Ged who had lost faith in himself, Vetch had given that gift only a friend can give, the proof of unshaken, unshakable trust.

Ged had not saved a little child, though he had slain dragons.

She heard Ged speak. He said, “In dying is life.

Ged, who was always very strong-minded, always saying things that surprised me and doing things he wasn't supposed to do, took over completely in this book. He was determined to show me how his life must end, and why. I tried to keep up with him, but he was always ahead. I rewrote the book more times than I want to remember, trying to keep him under some kind of control.

For they were alone, and he was one of the seven persons in the world who knew the Archmage's name. The others were the Master Namer of Roke; and Ogion the Silent, the wizard of Re Albi, who long ago on the mountain of Gont had given Ged that name; and the White Lady of Gont, Tenar of the Ring; and a village wizard in Iffish called Vetch; and in Iffish again, a house-carpenter's wife, mother of three girls, ignorant of all sorcery but wise in other things, who was called Yarrow; and finally, on the other side of Earthsea, in the farthest west, two dragons: Orm Embar and Kalessin.

Heckman discovered that when you consider all kinds of important future outcomes—annual income, unemployment rate, divorce rate, use of illegal drugs—GED recipients look exactly like high-school dropouts, despite the fact that they have earned this supposedly valuable extra credential, and despite the fact that they are, on average, considerably more intelligent than high-school dropouts.

In other ways my story didn’t follow the tradition. Its subversive elements attracted little attention, no doubt because I was deliberately sneaky about them. A great many white readers in 1967 were not ready to accept a brown-skinned hero. But they weren’t expecting one. I didn’t make an issue of it, and you have to be well into the book before you realize that Ged, like most of the characters, isn’t white.

When I made it to the living room, I wasn’t surprised to see that the only one actually taking a practice GED was Dean. Lia was filing her nails. Sloane appeared to be constructing some kind of catapult out of pencils and rubber bands. Lia caught sight of me first. “Good morning, sunshine,” she said. “I’m no Michael, but based on the expression on your face, I’m guessing you’ve been spending some quality time with the lovely Agent Sterling.” Lia beamed at me. “Isn’t she the best?” The eerie thing about Lia was that she could make anything sound genuine. Lia wasn’t fond of the FBI in general, and she was the type to flout rules based on principle alone, but even knowing her enthusiasm was feigned, I couldn’t see through it. “There’s something about that Agent Sterling that just makes me want to listen to what she has to say,” Lia continued earnestly. “I think we might be soul mates.” Dean snorted, but didn’t look up from his practice test. Sloane set off her catapult, and I had to duck to keep from taking a pencil to the forehead.

When I first met him (Michael) at the beginning of the year and found out that I would have to be his lab partner in bio and the year-long series of projects in AP English, I seriously considered taking night school classes and getting a GED just to avoid him.

It was a rite of passage each year at Manhattan Life Insurance Company. The golden doors would open every summer to a new crop of bright-eyed college students, all of which were over-qualified for a job that required little more than a high school-equivalent GED and a fully loaded MetroCard.

Angie has never had sticking power. She dropped out of high school; she walked out of the GED exam. Her longest relationship, prior to falling for Andy, was seven months. But then they’d met (no epic tale there—the game was on at a hometown bar), and something in her character was spontaneously altered.

They met at the high school up on 131st. At night there were adult classes. He was working on his GED and she taught ESL to Dominicans and Poles in the classroom next door. He waited to finish the course before he asked her out. Earned his certificate and feeling proud and it was one of those moments that make you realize you have no one in your life who cares about the occasional triumph. He'd had the thought of getting his GED in the back of his mind for a while. Tended to it like a candle flame cupped in his hand out of the wind. He kept seeing the ads on the subway--Complete Your Studies at Night on Your Own Terms--and was so happy to get that piece of paper that he said,

Later, when Ged thought back upon that night, he knew that had none had touched him when he lay thus spirit-lost, had none called him back in some way, he might have been lost for good. It was only the dumb instinctive wisdom of the beast who licks his hurt companion to comfort him, and yet in that wisdom Ged saw something akin to his own power, something that went as deep as wizardry. From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.

We all have the same pallet of emotional paints. It is how we pigment them on the canvas of life that dictates our artistry.

If you don't plant something, nature will and nature is messy.

Most people dream in bed then let those dreams fade as the sun rises. Others chase their dreams to the moon and back.

I do so love hearing people speak passionately on any subject, other than themselves.

And he began to see the truth, that Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life’s sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.

The word power has two different meanings. There is power to: strength, gift, skill, art, the mastery of a craft, the authority of knowledge. And there is power over: rule, dominion, supremacy, might, mastery of slaves, authority over others. Ged was offered both kinds of power. Tenar was offered only one. Heroic fantasy descends to us from an archaic world. I hadn’t yet thought much about that archaism. My story took place in the old hierarchy of society, the pyramidal power structure, probably military in origin, in which orders are given from above, with a single figure at the top. This is the world of power over, in which women have always been ranked low. In such a world, I could put a girl at the heart of my story, but I couldn’t give her a man’s freedom, or chances equal to a man’s chances. She couldn’t be a hero in the hero-tale sense. Not even in a fantasy? No. Because to me, fantasy isn’t wishful thinking, but a way of reflecting, and reflecting on reality. After all, even in a democracy, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, after forty years of feminist striving, the reality is that we live in a top-down power structure that was shaped by, and is still dominated by, men. Back in 1969, that reality seemed almost unshakable. So I gave Tenar power over—dominion, even godhead—but it was a gift of which little good could come. The dark side of the world was what she had to learn, as Ged had to learn the darkness in his own heart.

Ged saw all these things from outside and apart, alone, and his heart was very heavy in him, though he would not admit to himself that he was sad. As night fell he still lingered in the streets, reluctant to go back to the inn. He heard a man and a girl talking together merrily as they came down the street past him towards the town square, and all at once he turned, for he knew the man's voice. He followed and caught up with the pair, coming up beside them in the late twilight lit only by distant lantern-gleams. The girl stepped back, but the man stared at him and then flung up the staff he carried, holding it between them as a barrier to ward off the threat or act of evil. And that was somewhat more than Ged could bear. His voice shook a little as he said, "I thought you would know me, Vetch." Even then Vetch hesitated for a moment. "I do know you," he said, and lowered the staff and took Ged's hand and hugged him round the shoulders-" I do know you! Welcome, my friend, welcome! What a sorry greeting I gave you, as if you were a ghost coming up from behind– and I have waited for you to come, and looked for you-

Light and darkness met, and joined, and were one. [...] Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life’s sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.

Holy crap! I still have to pinch myself that I have not one, but TWO books out there that are Amazon bestsellers and I'm about to publish my third. I just want to shout out to anyone out there that felt like maybe they weren't good enough. YOU ARE! I struggled with this shit for years, but I'm so grateful that I just followed my gut. DON'T let anyone make you feel you are not worth it. This is coming from a high school dropout that only got her GED (Yeah, whatever, nothing to brag about) But is fulfilling her dreams now as a writer. What I'm saying is, take the dive, you may sink for a little, but doggy paddling along of what you want is so much more than learning the proper stroke on things...if that makes any sense? Be YOU and don't give a f*ck! ~Natalie Barnes

The powers she serves are not the powers I serve: I do not know her will, but I know she does not will me well. Ged, listen to me now. Have you never thought how danger must surround power as shadow does light? This sorcery is not a game we play for pleasure or for praise. Think of this: that every word, every act of our Art is said and is done either for good, or for evil. Before you speak or do you must know the price

Later, when Ged thought back upon that night, he knew that had none had touched him when he lay thus spirit-lost, had none called him back in some way, he might have been lost for good. It was only the dumb instinctive wisdom of the beast who licks his hurt companion to comfort him, and yet in that wisdom Ged saw something akin to his own power, something that went as deep as wizardry. From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the greet slow gestures of trees.

To the man standing on the corner holding the sign that said “God hates gays.” I’ve never seen, exactly who it is that you paperclip your knees, meld your hands together and pray to But I think I know what he looks like: I bet your God is about 5’10”. I bet he weighs 185. Probably stands the way a high school diploma does when it’s next to a GED. I bet your god has a mullet. I bet he wears flannel shirts with no sleeves, a fanny pack and says words like “getrdun.” I bet your god—I bet your god—I bet your god watches FOX news, Dog the Bounty Hunter, voted for John McCain, and loves Bill O’Reilly. I bet your god lives in Arizona. I bet his high school served racism in the cafeteria and offered “hate speech” as a second language. I bet he has a swastika inside of his throat, and racial slurs tattooed to his tongue just to make intolerance more comfortable in his mouth. I bet he has a burning cross as a middle finger and Jim Crow underneath his nails. Your god is a confederate flags wet dream conceived on a day when the sky decided to slice her own wrists, I bet your god has a drinking problem. I bet he sees the bottom of the shot glass more often than his own children. I bet he pours whiskey on his dreams until they taste like good ideas, Probably cusses like an electric guitar with Tourette’s plugged into an ocean. I bet he yells like a schizophrenic nail gun, damaging all things that care about him enough to get close. I bet there are angels in Heaven with black eyes and broken halos who claimed they fell down the stairs. I bet your god would’ve made Eve without a mouth and taught her how to spread her legs like a magazine that she will never ever ever be pretty enough to be in. Sooner or later you will realize that you are praying to your own shadow, that you are standing in front of mirrors and are worshipping your own reflection. Your God stole my god’s identity and I bet he’s buying pieces of heaven on eBay. So next time you bend your knees, next time you bow your head I want you to tell your god— that my god is looking for him.

The little Otak was hiding in the rafters of the house, as it did when strangers entered. There it stayed while the rain beat on the walls and the fire sank down and the night wearing slowly along left the old woman nodding by the hearthpit. Then the otak crept down and came to Ged where he lay stretched stiff and still upon the bed. It began to lick his hands and wrists, long and patiently, with its dry leaf-brown tongue. Crouching beside his head it licked his temple, his scarred cheek, and softly his closed eyes. And very slowly under that soft touch Ged roused. He woke, not knowing where he had been or where he was or what was the faint grey light in the air about him, which was the light of dawn coming to the world. Then the otak curled up near his shoulder as usual, and went to sleep. Later, when Ged thought back upon that night, he knew that had none touched him when he lay thus spirit-lost, had none called him back in some way, he might have been lost for good. It was only the dumb instinctive wisdom of the beast who licks his hurt companion to comfort him, and yet in that wisdom Ged saw something akin to his own power, something that went as deep as wizardry. From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees

Ged issò la vela. Tutto aveva l'aria di essere stato usato a lungo, faticosamente, sebbene la vela rossocupa fosse rattoppata con grande cura e la barca fosse pulita e ben tenuta. erano come il loro padrone: erano andate lontano, e la vita non le aveva trattate con dolcezza. — Ora — disse Ged, — ora siamo partiti, ora siamo liberi, siamo andati, Tenar. Lo senti anche tu? Lei lo sentiva. Una mano tenebrosa aveva allentato la stretta che aveva serrato il suo cuore per tutta la vita. Ma non provava più gioia, come l'aveva provata invece tra le montagne. Abbassò la testa tra le braccia e pianse, e le sue guance erano umide e salmastre. Piangeva per lo spreco dei suoi anni, asserviti a un male inutile. Piangeva di dolore, perché era libera. Aveva incominciato ad apprendere il peso della libertà. La libertà è un fardello oneroso, un grande e strano fardello per lo spirito che se l'addossa. Non è agevole. Non è un dono ma una scelta, e la scelta può essere dura. La strada sale, verso la luce: ma il viandante oberato può anche non raggiungerla mai.

V信83113305：The concept of a "People's University" in the United States reflects an educational model focused on accessibility, affordability, and community engagement. Unlike traditional institutions, such universities prioritize lifelong learning, vocational training, and practical skills over elitism or exclusivity. Often rooted in local communities, they cater to working adults, low-income students, and underrepresented groups by offering flexible schedules, online courses, and low tuition fees. Programs range from GED preparation to technical certifications, empowering learners to advance careers or pursue personal growth. Some examples include community colleges and non-profit initiatives like the "Free University" movement, which challenges the high-cost barrier of higher education. By democratizing knowledge, these institutions embody the ideal of education as a public good, fostering social mobility and civic participation. While not without challenges—such as funding limitations—they represent a grassroots response to inequality in America’s education system.，UOTP民众大学-多少钱, UOTP民众大学电子版毕业证与美国UOTP学位证书纸质版价格, University of the People文凭制作流程确保学历真实性, University of the Peoplediploma安全可靠购买University of the People毕业证, Offer(University of the People成绩单)民众大学如何办理?, UOTP留学成绩单毕业证, 美国民众大学毕业证成绩单在线制作办理

The Master Hand looked at the jewel that glittered on Ged's palm, bright as the prize of a dragon's hoard. The old Master murmured one word, "Tolk," and there lay the pebble, no jewel but a rough grey bit of rock. The Master took it and held it out on his own hand. "This is a rock; tolk in the True Speech," he said, looking mildly up at Ged now. "A bit of the stone of which Roke Isle is made, a little bit of the dry land on which men live. It is itself. It is part of the world. By the Illusion-Change you can make it look like a diamond – or a flower or a fly or an eye or a flame – " The rock flickered from shape to shape as he named them, and returned to rock. "But that is mere seeming. Illusion fools the beholder's senses; it makes him see and hear and feel that the thing is changed. But it does not change the thing. To change this rock into a jewel, you must change its true name. And to do that, my son, even to so small a scrap of the world, is to change the world. It can be done. Indeed it can be done. It is the art of the Master Changer, and you will learn it, when you are ready to learn it. But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow..." He looked down at the pebble again. "A rock is a good thing, too, you know," he said, speaking less gravely. "If the Isles of Eartbsea were all made of diamond, we'd lead a hard life here. Enjoy illusions, lad, and let the rocks be rocks.

I heard the fear in the first music I ever knew, the music that pumped from boom boxes full of grand boast and bluster. The boys who stood out on Garrison and Liberty up on Park Heights loved this music because it told them, against all evidence and odds, that they were masters of their own lives, their own streets, and their own bodies. I saw it in the girls, in their loud laughter, in their gilded bamboo earrings that announced their names thrice over. And I saw it in their brutal language and hard gaze, how they would cut you with their eyes and destroy you with their words for the sin of playing too much. “Keep my name out your mouth,” they would say. I would watch them after school, how they squared off like boxers, vaselined up, earrings off, Reeboks on, and leaped at each other. I felt the fear in the visits to my Nana’s home in Philadelphia. You never knew her. I barely knew her, but what I remember is her hard manner, her rough voice. And I knew that my father’s father was dead and that my uncle Oscar was dead and that my uncle David was dead and that each of these instances was unnatural. And I saw it in my own father, who loves you, who counsels you, who slipped me money to care for you. My father was so very afraid. I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, which he applied with more anxiety than anger, my father who beat me as if someone might steal me away, because that is exactly what was happening all around us. Everyone had lost a child, somehow, to the streets, to jail, to drugs, to guns. It was said that these lost girls were sweet as honey and would not hurt a fly. It was said that these lost boys had just received a GED and had begun to turn their lives around. And now they were gone, and their legacy was a great fear. Have they told you this story? When your grandmother was sixteen years old a young man knocked on her door. The young man was your Nana Jo’s boyfriend. No one else was home. Ma allowed this young man to sit and wait until your Nana Jo returned. But your great-grandmother got there first. She asked the young man to leave. Then she beat your grandmother terrifically, one last time, so that she might remember how easily she could lose her body. Ma never forgot. I remember her clutching my small hand tightly as we crossed the street. She would tell me that if I ever let go and were killed by an onrushing car, she would beat me back to life. When I was six, Ma and Dad took me to a local park. I slipped from their gaze and found a playground. Your grandparents spent anxious minutes looking for me. When they found me, Dad did what every parent I knew would have done—he reached for his belt. I remember watching him in a kind of daze, awed at the distance between punishment and offense. Later, I would hear it in Dad’s voice—“Either I can beat him, or the police.” Maybe that saved me. Maybe it didn’t. All I know is, the violence rose from the fear like smoke from a fire, and I cannot say whether that violence, even administered in fear and love, sounded the alarm or choked us at the exit. What I know is that fathers who slammed their teenage boys for sass would then release them to streets where their boys employed, and were subject to, the same justice. And I knew mothers who belted their girls, but the belt could not save these girls from drug dealers twice their age. We, the children, employed our darkest humor to cope. We stood in the alley where we shot basketballs through hollowed crates and cracked jokes on the boy whose mother wore him out with a beating in front of his entire fifth-grade class. We sat on the number five bus, headed downtown, laughing at some girl whose mother was known to reach for anything—cable wires, extension cords, pots, pans. We were laughing, but I know that we were afraid of those who loved us most. Our parents resorted to the lash the way flagellants in the plague years resorted to the scourge.

«Sai cosa voglio, Kai? Voglio girare questa dannata scena, che tu mi faccia impazzire e poi voglio leggere il tuo certificato GED e mostrarti cosa possiamo fare con il resto delle nostre vite»

Little girls play with dolls. Little girls play weddings. Little girls had that creepy board game growing up in the nineties where there was a phone in the middle and a load of cards with what were supposed to be sexy teenage guys but actually more closely resembled middle-aged men on them who you would call and they would give you clues as to which one had a crush on you and where to meet them … like some kind of paedophile roulette.

But as the day passed, his impatience turned from a fear to a kind of glad fierceness. At least he sought this danger of his own will; and the nearer he came to it the more sure he was that, for this time at least, for this hour perhaps before his death, he was free.

to be rescheduled. I’m already feeling like a bad mom when her teacher starts our conversation by asking, ‘Did you know Lucy has trouble reading?’ Kev’s not here, of course. He never comes to meetings like these. ‘What do you mean by trouble?’ Mrs. Bryant puts on reading glasses and takes Lucy’s test, pinched between two fingers, like it’s Exhibit A from some courtroom drama. ‘According to the tests I’ve done this year,’ she informs me in a cool tone, ‘Lucy has the reading level of a seven-year-old, if that.’ The ‘if that’ catches me on the raw. She sounds so accusing, so judgmental. ‘You weren’t aware of this, Mrs. McCleary?’ ‘No.’ My jaw is tight, my hands clenched in my lap. Mrs. Bryant is one of those stern, iron-haired teachers who looks down on pretty much anyone, at least anyone she suspects is stupid. Maybe she knows I didn’t finish high school, never mind that I have my GED now. And then there’s Kev too, with his straight

Fire broke from the far, black peaks of the mountains called Pain, the fire that burns in the heart of the world, the fire that feeds dragons. He looked into the sky over those mountains and saw, as he and Ged had seen them once above the western sea, the dragons flying on the wind of morning.

High schools routinely classified students who quit high school as transferring to another school, returning to their native country, or leaving to pursue a General Equivalency Diploma (GED)—none of which count as dropping out in the official statistics. Houston reported a citywide dropout rate of 1.5 percent in the year that was examined; 60 Minutes calculated that the true dropout rate was between 25 and 50 percent. The statistical chicanery with test scores was every bit as impressive. One way to improve test scores (in Houston or anywhere else) is to improve the quality of education so that students learn more and test better. This is a good thing. Another (less virtuous) way to improve test scores is to prevent the worst students from taking the test. If the scores of the lowest-performing students are eliminated, the average test score for the school or district will go up, even if all the rest of the students show no improvement at all. In Texas, the statewide achievement test is given in tenth grade. There was evidence that Houston schools were trying to keep the weakest students from reaching tenth grade. In one particularly egregious example, a student spent three years in ninth grade and then was promoted straight to eleventh grade—a deviously clever way of keeping a weak student from taking a tenth-grade benchmark exam without forcing him to drop out (which would have showed up on a different statistic).

Don’t mess with the Min, yo! Not even from the back row! When the Min is miaowing, You should be bowing, Or you’ll get a scratch on your chin, yo!

This is a book after all, not a video game. Easier on the thumbs,

Like a cat outta hell.

But Tuck was already snoring, deep in dreams which, given his tenuous grasp on reality at the best of time, are ideally left undescribed.

When a fox running at full hunting speed trips in a forest in the middle of the night, does it make a sound? Yes, it blooming well does. It goes bang, crash, wallop, cacrumble, snap, crump, crump, caproomph - crash, tinkle-tinkle boomph!!! Bang. Clatter-clatter bump.

A BIT WITH A BAZOOKA

What’s the nastiest thing in the world, for example? Personally, I’d say poop is probably the most horrible thing in the world. But, hey, if there was no poop then all the food you’d ever eaten would still be inside your body, sitting there, gassy and rotting, and washing about your insides. You’d look like a politician!

Rodney and Janice were … Wait for it … Can you guess? No, not vampires! What is it with everyone and vampires these days? Get over the vampires thing already, it’s so last season. No, Rodney and Janice Burringo were witches!

Ooh,’ said Tuck, pointing at the shiny doors. ‘What are those?’ Now, Ginger was a pretty smart cat as you might have guessed. This was why the Burringos had got her, after all. But she also had a sharp tongue, and unfortunately for her, this sharp tongue sometimes acted before her brain did. ‘It’s a rocket ship. You go to the moon in it. What do you think it is, you moron? It’s a lift.’ ‘The moon!’ said Tuck, his eyes flashing green as they picked up the reflection of an old curry stain in the carpet. ‘I want to go to the moon!’ ‘I was joking,’ said Ginger, who despite having four legs still couldn’t actually kick herself.

the trouble with nice dreams is that you have to wake up from them. Horrible dreams are much better, and nightmares are best. Then you wake up and think, ‘Phew! Thank goodness I didn’t really steal a shark from the aquarium and put it in my teacher’s bath and get double detention. Life is sweet after all!

You told that fat pig in there that a huge, big monster was out there.’ ‘How rude!’ said Mildred, who’d started listening again. ‘Beryl, that cat called you fat, did you hear?

Picking the lock that night was far easier than Tuck had imagined. For a physically-intelligent animal like him, anything which involved using his various body parts to do different things at the same time comes very easily. That is why I will never have it said that Tuck is stupid. Intellectually-challenged, perhaps; academically lacking, definitely; but stupid, no. Because, physically, Tuck was a genius. Do remember, dear reader, everyone’s good at something, and just because it’s not the same thing as you, doesn’t mean that they’re smarter or dumber than you are. Truly stupid beings are as rare as truly ugly ones, and can normally be identified by the fact they use words like ‘stupid,’ or ‘ugly’ to describe anyone.

As their eyes met, a bird sang aloud in the branches of the tree. In that moment Ged understood the singing of the bird, and the language of the water falling in the basin of the fountain, and the shape of the clouds, and the beginning and end of the wind that stirred the leaves: it seemed to him that he himself was a word spoken by the sunlight.

Have you ever seen a blizzard? It’s like the heaviest windstorm you’ll ever see combined with the heaviest snow you’ll ever see. A snowstorm, you could call it. In fact, you could probably replace the word ‘blizzard’ with the word ‘snowstorm’ in most situations and no one would ever notice. Unless, of course, you’re playing Scrabble, in which case I want to know where the second ‘Z’ came from in the first place.

RECOMMENDED READING Brooks, David. The Road to Character. New York: Random House, 2015. Brown, Peter C., Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel. Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014. Damon, William. The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life. New York: Free Press, 2009. Deci, Edward L. with Richard Flaste. Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation. New York: Penguin Group, 1995. Duhigg, Charles. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. New York: Random House, 2012. Dweck, Carol. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House, 2006. Emmons, Robert A. Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007. Ericsson, Anders and Robert Pool. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. Heckman, James J., John Eric Humphries, and Tim Kautz (eds.). The Myth of Achievement Tests: The GED and the Role of Character in American Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Kaufman, Scott Barry and Carolyn Gregoire. Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind. New York: Perigee, 2015. Lewis, Sarah. The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014. Matthews, Michael D. Head Strong: How Psychology is Revolutionizing War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. McMahon, Darrin M. Divine Fury: A History of Genius. New York: Basic Books, 2013. Mischel, Walter. The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control. New York: Little, Brown, 2014. Oettingen, Gabriele. Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation. New York: Penguin Group, 2014. Pink, Daniel H. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. New York: Riverhead Books, 2009. Renninger, K. Ann and Suzanne E. Hidi. The Power of Interest for Motivation and Engagement. New York: Routledge, 2015. Seligman, Martin E. P. Learned Optimism: How To Change Your Mind and Your Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Steinberg, Laurence. Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. Tetlock, Philip E. and Dan Gardner. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. New York: Crown, 2015. Tough, Paul. How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Willingham, Daniel T. Why Don’t Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009.

So she talked along, woman’s babble, saving him from having to make any answer or misread any silence, until he had got over the crisis of shame, and eaten a little, and drunk a glass of the old, soft, red wine.

Ged, listen to me now. Have you never thought how danger must surround power as shadow does light? This sorcery is not a game we play for pleasure or for praise. Think of this: that every word, every act of our Art is said and is done either for good, or for evil. Before you speak or do you must know the price that is to pay!

And I don’t mention that while they are familiar with lots of acronyms from MBA to MRS, the only one I’m acquainted with is GED.

Ged, who admired the Cormorant's handsome, cheerful face, found himself dry and hard. He did not know that the Cormorant thought that the wounds that left deep marks on his face were the claw marks of a dragon, and that he was jealous because he saw them as signs and symptoms of a hero.

At the spring of the River Ar I named you,' the mage said, 'a stream that falls from the mountain to the sea. A man would know the end he goes to, but he cannot know it if he does not turn, and return to his beginning, and hold that beginning in his being. If he would not be a stick whirled and whelmed in the stream, he must be the stream itself, all of it, from its spring to its sinking in the sea. You returned to Gont, you returned to me, Ged. Now turn clear round, and seek the very source, and that which lies before the source. There lies your hope of strength.

This you will hear in the old saying: Bheirinn cuid-oidhche dha ged a bhiodh ceann fir fo ’achlais. (I would give him food and lodging for the night even if he had a man’s head under his arm.) Our ancestors knew that giving begat giving, that care begat care, and thus they said: Gus an tràighear a’ mhuir le cliabh, cha bhi fear fial falamh. (Until the ocean is emptied with a basket, the generous man will never be empty-handed.)

It was an ugly face, pale, coarse, and cruel, but Ged feared no man, though he might fear where such a man would guide him.

Mystery haunts knowledge like a sweet aria abating on dead ears.

You fear them because you fear death, and rightly: for death is terrible and must be feared,” the mage said. He laid new wood on the fire and blew on the small coals under the ashes. A little flare of brightness bloomed on the twigs of brushwood, a grateful light to Arren. “And life also is a terrible thing,” Ged said, “and must be feared and praised.

ติว ged ที่ไหนดี เรียน GED รับรองผล ติว GED พร้อมแนวข้อสอบจริงของทุกรอบ และเนื้อหาที่ออกสอบบ่อยสุดที่ The Planner Education สอบไม่ผ่านเรียนซ้ำฟรี ติว GED ที่ไหนดีมองเราเท่านั้น

When I dropped out, they ostracized me. I stopped going to school, got my GED, and started working here. I needed to find a new path, forge a future that I could live with. To find some forgiveness for my stupidity.” She waved a hand in the air, swatting away the memories.