Hero's Shade Quotes

Sometimes I wonder if there's something wrong with me. Perhaps I've spent too long in the company of my literary romantic heroes, and consequently my ideals and expectations are far too high.

In myths, the hero survives. The evil is vanquished. The world is set right. Sometimes there are celebrations, and sometimes there are funerals. The dead are buried. The living move on. Nothing changes. Everything changes. This is a myth. This is not a myth.

He remembered Apollo, smiling and tanned and completely cool in his shades. Thalia had said, He’s hot. He’s the sun god, Percy replied. That’s not what I meant. Why was Nico thinking about that now? The random memory irritated him, made him feel jittery.

Between the radiant white of a clear conscience and the coal black of a conscience sullied by sin lie many shades of gray--where most of us live our lives. Not perfect but not beyond redemption.

We’re coming near to the end of the bridge, and the road is once more bathed in the neon light of the street lamps so his face is intermittently in the light and the dark. And it’s such a fitting metaphor. This man, whom I once thought of as a romantic hero, a brave shining white knight—or the dark knight, as he said. He’s not a hero; he’s a man with serious, deep emotional flaws, and he’s dragging me into the dark. Can I not guide him into the light?

A sword wields no strength unless the hand that holds it has courage

The Vamp Council hung a portrait of me on their hero wall. How's that for ironic?' 'Especially since they showed it to you just before they tortured you for Serena's turning,' Shade said. Wraith snorted again. 'Fuckers'.

He rushed past the usual fragments of painful memories – his mother smiling down at him, her face illuminated by the sunlight rippling off the Venetian Grand Canal; his sister Bianca laughing as she pulled him across the Mall in Washington, D.C., her green floppy hat shading her eyes and the splash of freckles across her nose. He saw Percy Jackson on a snowy cliff outside Westover Hall, shielding Nico and Bianca from the manticore as Nico clutched a Mythomagic figurine and whispered, I’m scared. He saw Minos, his old ghostly mentor, leading him through the Labyrinth. Minos’s smile was cold and cruel. Don’t worry, son of Hades. You will have your revenge.

Baby, you read me like one of your books; except I’m not the hero. I’ll never be the hero.

He knows the sniper will fire again, but he isn't afraid. At this moment fear doesn't exist. There's no such thing as bravery. There are no heroes, no villains, no cowards. There's what he can do, and what he can't. There's right and wrong and nothing else. The world is binary. Shading will come later.

In myths, the hero survives. The evil is vanquished. The world is set right. Sometimes there are celebrations, and sometimes there are funerals. The dead are buried. The living move on. Nothing changes. Everything changes. This is a myth. This is not a myth.

Do you know, Princess," said I with a shade of annoyance, "that one should never spurn a repentant sinner, for out of sheer desperation he may become twice as sinful . . .

Good isn't always good, and bad isn't always bad. You've always seen the shades of grey.

I do not like the killers, and the killing bravely and well crap. I do not like the bully boys, the Teddy Roosevelt’s, the Hemingways, the Ruarks. They are merely slightly more sophisticated versions of the New Jersey file clerks who swarm into the Adirondacks in the fall, in red cap, beard stubble and taut hero’s grin, talking out of the side of their mouths, exuding fumes of bourbon, come to slay the ferocious white-tailed deer. It is the search for balls. A man should have one chance to bring something down. He should have his shot at something, a shining running something, and see it come a-tumbling down, all mucus and steaming blood stench and gouted excrement, the eyes going dull during the final muscle spasms. And if he is, in all parts and purposes, a man, he will file that away as a part of his process of growth and life and eventual death. And if he is perpetually, hopelessly a boy, he will lust to go do it again, with a bigger beast.

Child, you do not know me. You have created a mythical being in my likeness whom you have set up as a god. It is not I. Many times, infant, I have told you that I am no hero, but I think you have not believed me. I tell you now that I am no fit mate for you...My reputation is damaged beyond repair, child. I come from vicious stock, and I have brought no honor to the name I bear. To no women have I been faithful; behind me lies scandal upon sordid scandal...You have seen perhaps the best of me; you have not seen the worst' 'Ah, Monseigneur, you need not have told me this! I know--I have always known, and still I love you. I do not want a boy. I only want Monseigneur.

There’s no way I’m facing them on my own.” “Which one are you afraid of? Lord Sol-in-Ar?” “Cora.” “The Veskan princess?” Kell laughed. “She’s just a child.” “She was just a child—and a nightmarish one at that—but I’ve heard she’s grown into something truly fearsome.” Kell shook his head. “Come on, then,” he said, slinging his arm around the prince’s shoulder. “I’ll defend you.” “My hero.

He remembered Apollo, smiling and tan and completely cool in his shades. Thalia had said, He’s hot. He’s the sun god, Percy replied. That’s not what I meant.

Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life. If they observed this duty conscientiously, they would give us fewer pictures chequered with vivid contrasts of light and shade; they would seldom elevate their heroes and heroines to the heights of rapture — still seldomer sink them to the depths of despair; for if we rarely taste the fulness of joy in this life, we yet more rarely savour the acrid bitterness of hopeless anguish.

Stories can justify anything. It doesn’t matter if the boy with the heart of stone is a hero or a villain; it doesn’t matter if he got what he deserved or if he didn’t. No one can reward him or punish him, save the storyteller. And she’s the one who shaded the tale so we’d feel whatever way we feel about him in the first place.

What you have with Sadie is nothing like what I have with Sadie, so it doesn't even matter. You can fuck anyone," he says. "You can't make games with anyone, though." "I make games with both of you," you point out. "I named Ichigo, for God's sake. I have been with both of you every step of the way. You can't say I haven't been here." "You've been here, sure. But you're fundamentally unimportant. If you weren't here, it would be someone else. You're a tamer of horses. You're an NPC, Marx." An NPC is a character that is not playable by a gamer. It is an AI extra that gives a programmed world verisimilitude. The NPC can be a best friend, a talking computer, a child, a parent, a lover, a robot, a gruff platoon leader, or the villain. Sam, however, means this as an insult---in addition to calling you unimportant, he's saying you're boring and predictable. But the fact is, there is no game without the NPCs. "There's no game without the NPCs," you tell him. "There's just some bullshit hero, wandering around with no one to talk to and nothing to do.

He's not a hero; he's a man with serious, deep emotional flaws, and he's dragging me into the dark. Can I not guide him into the light?

Perhaps I’ve spent too long in the company of my literary romantic heroes, and consequently my ideals and expectations are far too high.

In myths, the hero survives. The evil is vanquished. The world is set right. Sometimes there are celebrations, and sometimes there are funerals. The dead are buried. The living move on. Nothing changes. Everything changes. This is a myth. This is not a myth. The

I don’t give a damn about your self-sacrificing notions, your need to be the hero.

That doesn't make him a hero. Our country is doomed, don't you see? Our fate is death, no matter whose hands we fall into.

There are an infinite number of shades

Do you really think that when this body expires, you cease to exist? That you fall into some oblivion, as if you had never been alive at all? No. There is a place beyond death for all of us,

Nico unsheathed his sword. “You know the Underworld? Would you like me to arrange a visit?” Bryce laughed. His front teeth were two different shades of yellow. “Do you think you can frighten me? I’m a descendant of Orcus, the god of broken vows and eternal punishment. I’ve heard the screams in the Fields of Punishment firsthand. They’re music to my ears. Soon, I’ll be adding one more damned soul to the chorus.

It grey louder. Louder. They were singing, singing at the top of their lungs. Andrius joined, and then my brother and the gray-haired man. And finally, the bald man joined in, singing out national anthem. 'Lithuania, land of heroes...

This attitude arose partly out of his tendency to see the world in binary terms. A person was either a hero or a bozo, a product was either amazing or shit. But he could be stymied by things that were more complex, shaded, or nuanced: getting married, buying the right sofa, committing to run a company.

Considering they were on the passenger manifest for a Lufthansa flight into Hamburg—not to mention the fact that Soldano is a priest and God really doesn’t like it when priests lie—Holy shit!” Jules stared out the car window as a bus roared past with both Adam and Robin’s face on the side—part of a giant advertisement for the movie American Hero. Der Amerikanische Held. Ab Donnerstag. Manche Kriege fuhrst Du in Dir-- which had to be a translation of the movie’s tag line, The War is Within. “Jesus!” “What?” “Nothing,” Jules said. “Sorry.” He’d thought he’d be safe here, that Hollywood movies about World War II wouldn’t be particularly well received in Germany. Color him on very deep shade of wrong.

I just haven’t met anyone who… well, whom I’m attracted to, even though part of me longs for those trembling knees, heart-in-my-mouth, butterflies-in-my-belly, sleepless nights. Sometimes I wonder if there’s something wrong with me. Perhaps I’ve spent too long in the company of my literary romantic heroes, and consequently my ideals and expectations are far too high. But in reality, nobody’s ever made me feel like that. ~Anastasia

I’m missing the need-a-boyfriend gene, but the truth is I just haven’t met anyone who…well, whom I’m attracted to, even though part of me longs for the fabled trembling knees, heart-in-my-mouth, butterflies-in-my-belly moments. Sometimes I wonder if there’s something wrong with me. Perhaps I’ve spent too long in the company of my literary romantic heroes, and consequently my ideals and expectations are far too high. But in reality, nobody’s ever made me feel like that.

It was not the blatant evil that broke the soul. No, in the face of utter darkness, the human spirit often rose to soaring heights. It was the shades of gray, the nuances and subtleties that wore people down. It was dealing with sellouts and side deals, small injustices and petty grievances that turned heroes into stoop-shouldered, weary old men. That was how they crumbled, idealists like this young man. They tripped on the garbage heap of miserly greed and fearful half-measures.

He had one room above a thrift store. He had a trunk of books by Ayn Rand. He was short-sighted and reclusive, resisting pleas to take his photograph. He drew a super-hero comic. He saw the world in terms of black and white. He said 'A day's work for a day's pay. That is our one and only right.' He takes a card and shades one half of it in dark So he can demonstrate to you just what he means. He says, 'There’s black and there is white, And there is wrong, and there is right, And there is nothing, nothing in between.' That’s what Mr. A says.

Antiheroes Aren't just black and white; they exploit the mystery and allure of shadow, of shades of grey. For the writer, they offer more story possibilities than heroes. They could tip either way, either supporting or fighting him. Reformed antiheroes could revert to bad ways, and even on the side of good, but they cab still use methods that would make a true hero blush or flinch. The only problem is that the characteristics that make them antiheroes can, if use for good, transform them into heroes; and then life tends to be much less entertaining.

Fabrice had gone no more than five hundred paces when his nag stopped dead: a corpse lay right across the path, striking horror into both horse and rider. Fabrice’s face, naturally very pale, turned a pronounced shade of green; the canteen-keeper, after looking at the dead body, said, as if to herself, ‘It’s not from our division.’ Then, turning her gaze upon our hero, she burst out laughing. ‘Haha! me dear!’ she cried, ‘Tasty, ain’t it!’ Fabrice remained frozen. What he was most struck by was the filthy state of the feet of the corpse, which had been stripped of its shoes and of everything except an awful pair of trousers badly stained with blood.

He was no hero. These were just things he did, sweeping up small crimes while he chased nightmares through the night. Back when he'd attempted to sleep, he'd been tortured by them. Eventually, those nightmares had seeped into the daylight, following him from the dark until they filled every corner of every room. Shades and specters. The ghosts of those he'd killed, of those who'd endeavored to kill him. Of the souls he'd failed to save and the monsters who'd escaped justice. For decades they'd haunted him, tormented him endlessly each time he dared close his eyes. Until he'd done something about it. He became the thing from which nightmares ran.

This intensity encouraged a binary view of the world. Colleagues referred to the hero/shithead dichotomy. You were either one or the other, sometimes on the same day. The same was true of products, ideas, even good: Something was either "the bes thing ever," or it was shitty, brain-dead, inedible. As a result, any perceived flaw could set off a rant. The finish on a piece of metal, the curve of the head of a screw, the shade of blue on a box, the intuitiveness of a navigation screen - he would declare them to "completely suck" until that moment when he suddenly pronounced them "absolutely perfect.". He thought of himself as an artist, which he was, and he indulged in the temperament of one.

Nothing could have appealed more strongly to Miss Wantage's youthful taste, so as soon as she had changed the chip-straw hat for an Angouleme bonnet of white thread-net trimmed with lace, she sallied forth once more with Mr. Ringwood, tripping beside him with all the assurance of one who knew herself to be dressed in the pink of fashion. The Angouleme bonnet most becomingly framed her face; she had taken great pains to comb her curls into modish ringlets; and if the figured muslin gown was less dashing than a certain pomona green silk which Mr. Ringwood had assured her, in some agitation, Sherry wouldn't like at all, no fault could be found with her little blue kid shoes, or her expensive gloves and ridicule, or with the sophisticated sun-shade which she carried to the imminent danger of the passers-by.

If I could have chosen a flag back then, it would have been embroidered with a portrait of Malcolm X, dressed in a business suit, his tie dangling, one hand parting a window shade, the other holding a rifle. The portrait communicated everything I wanted to be—controlled, intelligent, and beyond the fear. I would buy tapes of Malcolm’s speeches—“Message to the Grassroots,” “The Ballot or the Bullet”—down at Everyone’s Place, a black bookstore on North Avenue, and play them on my Walkman. Here was all the angst I felt before the heroes of February, distilled and quotable. “Don’t give up your life, preserve your life,” he would say. “And if you got to give it up, make it even-steven.” This was not boasting—it was a declaration of equality rooted not in better angels or the intangible spirit but in the sanctity of the black body.

He felt like a character in a book. He thought of Mary Lennox as she discovered her secret garden. The blackberry bushes had become too thick to ride through and Percy dismounted, leaving Prince beneath the shade of a thick-trunked oak tree. He chose a strong whip of wood and started carving his way through the knotted vines. He was no longer a boy whose legs didn't always do as he wished; he was Sir Gawain on the lookout for the Green Knight, Lord Byron on his way to fight a duel, Beowulf leading an army upon Grendel. So keen was his focus on his swordplay that he didn't realize at first that he'd emerged from the forested area and was standing now on what must have been the top of a gravel driveway. Looming above him was not so much a house as a castle. Two enormous floors, with mammoth rectangular windows along each face and an elaborate stone balustrade of Corinthian columns running around all four sides of its flat roof. He thought at once of Pemberley, and half expected to see Mr. Darcy come striding through the big double doors, riding crop tucked beneath his arm as he jogged down the stone steps that widened in an elegant sweep as they reached the turning circle where he stood.

Ione III. TO-DAY my skies are bare and ashen, And bend on me without a beam. Since love is held the master-passion, Its loss must be the pain supreme — And grinning Fate has wrecked my dream. But pardon, dear departed Guest, I will not rant, I will not rail; For good the grain must feel the flail; There are whom love has never blessed. I had and have a younger brother, One whom I loved and love to-day As never fond and doting mother Adored the babe who found its way From heavenly scenes into her day. Oh, he was full of youth's new wine, — A man on life's ascending slope, Flushed with ambition, full of hope; And every wish of his was mine. A kingly youth; the way before him Was thronged with victories to be won; so joyous, too, the heavens o'er him Were bright with an unchanging sun, — His days with rhyme were overrun. Toil had not taught him Nature's prose, Tears had not dimmed his brilliant eyes, And sorrow had not made him wise; His life was in the budding rose. I know not how I came to waken, Some instinct pricked my soul to sight; My heart by some vague thrill was shaken, — A thrill so true and yet so slight, I hardly deemed I read aright. As when a sleeper, ign'rant why, Not knowing what mysterious hand Has called him out of slumberland, Starts up to find some danger nigh. Love is a guest that comes, unbidden, But, having come, asserts his right; He will not be repressed nor hidden. And so my brother's dawning plight Became uncovered to my sight. Some sound-mote in his passing tone Caught in the meshes of my ear; Some little glance, a shade too dear, Betrayed the love he bore Ione. What could I do? He was my brother, And young, and full of hope and trust; I could not, dared not try to smother His flame, and turn his heart to dust. I knew how oft life gives a crust To starving men who cry for bread; But he was young, so few his days, He had not learned the great world's ways, Nor Disappointment's volumes read. However fair and rich the booty, I could not make his loss my gain. For love is dear, but dearer, duty, And here my way was clear and plain. I saw how I could save him pain. And so, with all my day grown dim, That this loved brother's sun might shine, I joined his suit, gave over mine, And sought Ione, to plead for him. I found her in an eastern bower, Where all day long the am'rous sun Lay by to woo a timid flower. This day his course was well-nigh run, But still with lingering art he spun Gold fancies on the shadowed wall. The vines waved soft and green above, And there where one might tell his love, I told my griefs — I told her all! I told her all, and as she hearkened, A tear-drop fell upon her dress. With grief her flushing brow was darkened; One sob that she could not repress Betrayed the depths of her distress. Upon her grief my sorrow fed, And I was bowed with unlived years, My heart swelled with a sea of tears, The tears my manhood could not shed. The world is Rome, and Fate is Nero, Disporting in the hour of doom. God made us men; times make the hero — But in that awful space of gloom I gave no thought but sorrow's room. All — all was dim within that bower, What time the sun divorced the day; And all the shadows, glooming gray, Proclaimed the sadness of the hour. She could not speak — no word was needed; Her look, half strength and half despair, Told me I had not vainly pleaded, That she would not ignore my prayer. And so she turned and left me there, And as she went, so passed my bliss; She loved me, I could not mistake — But for her own and my love's sake, Her womanhood could rise to this! My wounded heart fled swift to cover, And life at times seemed very drear. My brother proved an ardent lover — What had so young a man to fear? He wed Ione within the year. No shadow clouds her tranquil brow, Men speak her husband's name with pride, While she sits honored at his side —

The morning after / my death” The morning after my death we will sit in cafés but I will not be there I will not be * There was the great death of birds the moon was consumed with fire the stars were visible until noon. Green was the forest drenched with shadows the roads were serpentine A redwood tree stood alone with its lean and lit body unable to follow the cars that went by with frenzy a tree is always an immutable traveller. The moon darkened at dawn the mountain quivered with anticipation and the ocean was double-shaded: the blue of its surface with the blue of flowers mingled in horizontal water trails there was a breeze to witness the hour * The sun darkened at the fifth hour of the day the beach was covered with conversations pebbles started to pour into holes and waves came in like horses. * The moon darkened on Christmas eve angels ate lemons in illuminated churches there was a blue rug planted with stars above our heads lemonade and war news competed for our attention our breath was warmer than the hills. * There was a great slaughter of rocks of spring leaves of creeks the stars showed fully the last king of the Mountain gave battle and got killed. We lay on the grass covered dried blood with our bodies green blades swayed between our teeth. * We went out to sea a bank of whales was heading South a young man among us a hero tried to straddle one of the sea creatures his body emerged as a muddy pool as mud we waved goodbye to his remnants happy not to have to bury him in the early hours of the day We got drunk in a barroom the small town of Fairfax had just gone to bed cherry trees were bending under the weight of their flowers: they were involved in a ceremonial dance to which no one had ever been invited. * I know flowers to be funeral companions they make poisons and venoms and eat abandoned stone walls I know flowers shine stronger than the sun their eclipse means the end of times but I love flowers for their treachery their fragile bodies grace my imagination’s avenues without their presence my mind would be an unmarked grave. * We met a great storm at sea looked back at the rocking cliffs the sand was going under black birds were leaving the storm ate friends and foes alike water turned into salt for my wounds. * Flowers end in frozen patterns artificial gardens cover the floors we get up close to midnight search with powerful lights the tiniest shrubs on the meadows A stream desperately is running to the ocean The Spring Flowers Own & The Manifestations of the Voyage (The Post-Apollo Press, 1990)

Between the extreme limits of this series would find a place all the forms of prestige resulting from the different elements composing a civilisation -- sciences, arts, literature, &c. -- and it would be seen that prestige constitutes the fundamental element of persuasion. Consciously or not, the being, the idea, or the thing possessing prestige is immediately imitated in consequence of contagion, and forces an entire generation to adopt certain modes of feeling and of giving expression to its thought. This imitation, moreover, is, as a rule, unconscious, which accounts for the fact that it is perfect. The modern painters who copy the pale colouring and the stiff attitudes of some of the Primitives are scarcely alive to the source of their inspiration. They believe in their own sincerity, whereas, if an eminent master had not revived this form of art, people would have continued blind to all but its naïve and inferior sides. Those artists who, after the manner of another illustrious master, inundate their canvasses with violet shades do not see in nature more violet than was detected there fifty years ago; but they are influenced, "suggestioned," by the personal and special impressions of a painter who, in spite of this eccentricity, was successful in acquiring great prestige. Similar examples might be brought forward in connection with all the elements of civilisation. It is seen from what precedes that a number of factors may be concerned in the genesis of prestige; among them success was always one of the most important. Every successful man, every idea that forces itself into recognition, ceases, ipso facto, to be called in question. The proof that success is one of the principal stepping-stones to prestige is that the disappearance of the one is almost always followed by the disappearance of the other. The hero whom the crowd acclaimed yesterday is insulted to-day should he have been overtaken by failure. The re-action, indeed, will be the stronger in proportion as the prestige has been great. The crowd in this case considers the fallen hero as an equal, and takes its revenge for having bowed to a superiority whose existence it no longer admits.

He was but three-and-twenty, and had only just learned what it is to love—­to love with that adoration which a young man gives to a woman whom he feels to be greater and better than himself. Love of this sort is hardly distinguishable from religious feeling. What deep and worthy love is so, whether of woman or child, or art or music. Our caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic statues, or Beethoven symphonies all bring with them the consciousness that they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love and beauty; our emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression into silence, our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery. And this blessed gift of venerating love has been given to too many humble craftsmen since the world began for us to feel any surprise that it should have existed in the soul of a Methodist carpenter half a century ago, while there was yet a lingering after-glow from the time when Wesley and his fellow-labourer fed on the hips and haws of the Cornwall hedges, after exhausting limbs and lungs in carrying a divine message to the poor. That afterglow has long faded away; and the picture we are apt to make of Methodism in our imagination is not an amphitheatre of green hills, or the deep shade of broad-leaved sycamores, where a crowd of rough men and weary-hearted women drank in a faith which was a rudimentary culture, which linked their thoughts with the past, lifted their imagination above the sordid details of their own narrow lives, and suffused their souls with the sense of a pitying, loving, infinite Presence, sweet as summer to the houseless needy. It is too possible that to some of my readers Methodism may mean nothing more than low-pitched gables up dingy streets, sleek grocers, sponging preachers, and hypocritical jargon—­elements which are regarded as an exhaustive analysis of Methodism in many fashionable quarters. That would be a pity; for I cannot pretend that Seth and Dinah were anything else than Methodists—­not indeed of that modern type which reads quarterly reviews and attends in chapels with pillared porticoes, but of a very old-fashioned kind. They believed in present miracles, in instantaneous conversions, in revelations by dreams and visions; they drew lots, and sought for Divine guidance by opening the Bible at hazard; having a literal way of interpreting the Scriptures, which is not at all sanctioned by approved commentators; and it is impossible for me to represent their diction as correct, or their instruction as liberal. Still—­if I have read religious history aright—­faith, hope, and charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a sensibility to the three concords, and it is possible—­thank Heaven!—­to have very erroneous theories and very sublime feelings. The raw bacon which clumsy Molly spares from her own scanty store that she may carry it to her neighbour’s child to “stop the fits,” may be a piteously inefficacious remedy; but the generous stirring of neighbourly kindness that prompted the deed has a beneficent radiation that is not lost. Considering these things, we can hardly think Dinah and Seth beneath our sympathy, accustomed as we may be to weep over the loftier sorrows of heroines in satin boots and crinoline, and of heroes riding fiery horses, themselves ridden by still more fiery passions.

Have you ever wondered why a woman would violate the sisterhood code by stealing men and destroying families without a trace of guilt or remorse? What is going on in her head to make her act that way? She may be a sociopathic sex addict—a Sexopath. Unfortunately, Sexopaths are very difficult to detect because they look like everyone else and lying comes as easily as breathing to them. The only way to protect ourselves, our relationships, and our families is to recognize these people for who they are. If we can understand how they think, we can beat them at their own game. Enter the mind of the ultimate anti-hero inspired by an actual socipathic sex addict—you are going to love to hate her!

Sleeping was a challenge, awkward because of the wrap I wore around my head. That was why I didn’t appreciate Taro’s startled shout early the next morning. “Who died?” I asked in a thick voice. “Your hair!” he practically shrieked. My hair had died? “What?” “Your hair!” Oh. I guessed it had worked. That gave me a little glow of accomplishment. It didn’t make up for being roused at a ridiculously early hour of the day. “It can’t look that bad.” I snuggled back down in bed. “Oh no? Take a look in the mirror.” “I will. When I get up.” He tapped my forehead, and kept tapping until I opened my eyes. So I could see the strand of hair he’d pulled before them. It was green. Green. Not greenish. Not with a green tinge. Green as grass. My hair was green. With a cry of dismay, I flew from the bed and flung open a window before seeking a mirror. In the bright light of the morning, I looked at my reflection. My hair, every single strand, was the same unrelenting shade of green. My gods, what had I done? Taro started laughing. And he didn’t stop. I could have thrown the mirror at him, only it wasn’t mine. “Will you stop?” “That’s what you get for meddling with what you were born with.” “It wasn’t supposed to do this.” How could I be seen by anyone like this? My eyebrows were practically gleaming in orange contrast. And the color was thorough, every hair, right to the skull. Green. What was I going to do? Taro was still collapsed on the bed laughing. “Keep laughing, my lord,” I said sourly. “You’ll have to go to the market for some hair dye.” “How do you plan to make me?” he snickered. “You’ll make me go out like this?” I asked, surprised. “I think you should have to suffer for doing this without talking to me first.” “Fine. If that’s the way you want to be about it.” It would be humiliating, of course, but there were worse things in life than green—green!—hair. I would go to the market myself, if I couldn’t wash this out or change it back. “What’s that supposed to mean?” “Maybe I’ll start a new fashion.” His laughter stopped abruptly. “You’re going to go walking around with green hair?” He looked appalled. “I have no choice, do I?” His eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t dare.” “We’ll see, won’t we?” Oh my gods. My hair was green.

I see fire, yes,” Iolaus said, shading his eyes. “But battle?” “Trust Lynceus,” Hylas replied. “He sees what he sees. Glaucus, come with me. We’ve got to give back the weapons we’ve been tending, and quickly.” When I questioned him with a look, he added, “I don’t know whose battle that is, but it’s going to be ours. Have you ever known a true hero who’d turn his back on a chance to earn glory?” “Without even knowing who’s fighting or why?” I was astounded. “How will the men know which side to take?” Hylas flashed a quick smile. “The winning side, of course. Herakles is with us.

Writers must be fair and remember even bad guys (most of them, anyway) see themselves as good—they are the heroes of their own lives. Giving them a fair chance as characters can create some interesting shades of gray—and shades of gray are also a part of life.

The ignorant rely on Providence they look to the stars for help instead of relying on themselves. Some artificiality creeps in: the hero is always the hero, the villain almost always acts villainously; there are few intermediate shades.

Inside the bombers tail, O'Hara confided to Monteverde that he thought his feet were frozen solid Spina heard the navigator say, "I don't even know if I have any feet or not." when Monteverde helped to remove O'Hara's shoes, the men saw an awful sight: the skin on his feet had deep, ugly cracks, and they'd turned sickening shades of blue, yellow, and green. Monteverde was stunned to find that O'Hara's feet felt nothing like flesh and bone. An awful comparison rushed to his mind, they felt like the cold, hard metal on the butt ends of the plane's machine guns.

Henry Worrall, at your service,” he said, embarrassed. “Not much to look at here, sir.” “Just a hero,” Jackson said softly, and this time Henry couldn’t argue.

You’re a hero for walking away,” Jackson said soberly. “You’re a hero for pressing charges. You’re a hero for dealing with that for eleven years and still believing in the good in people. You’ll never fool me again, asshole. I know who I’m dealing with now.” Henry’s eyes burned.

The world of a borderline, like that of a child, is split into heroes and villains. A child emotionally, the borderline cannot tolerate human inconsistencies and ambiguities; he cannot reconcile another’s good and bad qualities into a constant, coherent understanding of that person. At any particular moment, one is either “good” or “evil”; there is no in-between, no gray area. Nuances and shadings are grasped with great difficulty, if at all. Lovers

Jo fed me dinner, since I couldn’t feed myself, and then she ate hers. The setting sun cast a dozen shades of orange and pink and purple and yellow on the wall, and the last day of our first adventure drew to a close. Jo’s fears that Dad would not let us return were unfounded. He had hoped to keep us safe so that he wouldn’t lose us the way that he’d lost our mother. He couldn’t keep us away anymore though. We were no longer simply children of Midgard. We were heroes of the High North. Nothing could keep us away.

Every reader I'd ever known had wanted nothing more than to fall into the arms of a book boyfriend, some fictional Darcy, a shade of a Byronic hero, all their own. So I did.

Any historian who sets out to search for a hero will almost inevitably uncover something of the scoundrel. Heroism, it seems, is visible only through a long lens. And so it was with Nikolai Rezanov. I followed the man's shade from the boulevards and palaces of St Petersburg to the squat rain-dripping counting houses of Pskov, where he passed a dreary provincial apprenticeship. Travelling by train, coal truck and bouncing Lada, I tracked him from the Siberian city of Irkutsk, once the capital of Russia's wild east, into the land of the Buryats and to the borders of China. I crunched along the black sand beaches of Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka and the black sand beaches of Kodiak Island, Alaska, at opposite ends of the Pacific. I stood in the remains of the presidio where Rezanov had danced with Conchita and shivered in the rain on the windy outcrop known as Castle Rock in Sitka, once the citadel of New Archangel, where he had spent the cold, hungry winter of 1805–6. And I spent hours – many hours, since Rezanov was a bureaucrat, a courtier and an ambassador who wrote something almost every day of his life – in the company of the reports, diaries and letters in which Rezanov described his ideas and circumstances voluminously, but his feelings only barely. It is only in the last three years of his life, far from home and viciously bullied by the officers of the round-the-world voyage he believed he was commanding, that the man himself begins to emerge from the officialese, indignant and in pain.

Oh my lord. It can’t be. But it most certainly was. What in the heck is he doing here? Why in the hell was the star wide receiver of the Georgia Bulldogs at his mother’s funeral? The man that made history by coming out and telling the world he was bisexual two years ago. He was a hero, and he looked the part. He stood tall, at least 6’2”, or 6’3”. His wavy, dirty blond hair was longer on top than the cropped hair on the sides. Dark shades covered what he knew were magnetic, emerald-green eyes. His broad shoulders made his suit hang beautifully on his large body. Curtis’ mouth watered at the thought of all those muscles. He’d gotten glimpses of the man’s chest and biceps when the reporters and cameramen of ESPN would go in the locker room to listen to the coach congratulate his team on a win. There he was right there, just twenty feet away from him. 

You don't limp at all. Your recovery is going well." "Yes." Though whether someone ever fully recovered from losing a limb, he didn't know. He sure as hell hadn't. It had been five years, and still there were days when the pain in his nonexistent leg was enough to drive him out of his mind.

Maybe because heroes to her weren’t the guys who flexed their muscles and went to battle. No, for her, the real heroes were the artists, the poets, the men who were brave enough to voice their emotions. It took courage to be honest. It took courage to face your demons head on with words, to go beyond the hunter-gatherer thing. The world needed the action hero, but it also needed the quiet hero, the poet. Rick

We talked about each story for a while, and then Verla talked about heroes and villains. 'Nobody is all good or all bad,' she told us. 'The world is painted in shades of gray.

Eileen?" My voice came out in a squeak. "Yes?" "I'm going to kiss you." "You---yes," I managed, a moment before his hands caught me by the sides of my face, and drew me in for a kiss. And all notion that this was wrong, that he was off-limits, that tomorrow I would leave--- left my mind in an instant. I didn't care. Every reader I'd ever known had wanted nothing more than to fall into the arms of a book boyfriend, some fictional Darcy, a shade of a Byronic hero, all their own. So I did.

Every reader I’d ever known had wanted nothing more than to fall into the arms of a book boyfriend, some fictional Darcy, a shade of a Byronic hero, all their own.

So, men as they were, and human in all their thoughts, on whatever objects they fixed their senses, there they saw themselves met half-way , and taught the truth from every side. 4. For if they looked with awe upon the Creation, yet they saw how she confessed Christ as Lord; or if their mind was swayed toward men, so as to think them gods, yet from the Saviour's works, supposing they compared them, the Saviour alone among men appeared Son of God; for there were no such works done among the rest as have been done by the Word of God. 5. Or if they were biassed toward evil spirits, even, yet seeing them cast out by the Word, they were to know that He alone, the Word of God, was God, and that the spirits were none. 6. Or if their mind had already sunk even to the dead, so as to worship heroes, and the gods spoken of in the poets, yet, seeing the Saviour's resurrection, they were to confess them to be false gods, and that the Lord alone is true, the Word of the Father, that was Lord even of death. 7. For this cause He was both born and appeared as Man, and died, and rose again, dulling and casting into the shade the works of all former men by His own, that in whatever direction the bias of men might be, from thence He might recall them, and teach them of His own true Father, as He Himself says: ​"​ I came to save and to find that which was lost. ​"​

Certain colors were considered magical, such as red and blue. Cloth colored in these shades was often used to strain medicines. A red thread was also tied around herbs to encourage healing through magic.

Evangeline spun to the side and slapped him hard across the face. The sound of her hand hitting his cheek echoed through the inn, loud, cracking and satisfying. You loathsome, conceited, cowardly worm of a prince, she thought as she watched his skin turn an inflamed shade of red. She didn't tell him that she knew what he really was and that she would never be his. She wanted to. But she wasn't that foolish. Not when Apollo was surrounded by guards and heroes who could effortlessly subdue her if she picked a proper fight with the prince. 'Oh, Apollo!' she exclaimed instead. 'You startled me.

Being scared but doing it anyway, that's brave." -Shade Silverwing my childhood hero <3

Being scared but doing it anyway, that's brave.

The dark object stepped out of the bushes’ shades to reveal a young rabbit-like creature. He was light brown, with long and wide large ears, skinny long legs, an agile body, large yellow eyes, and a fuzzy small tail. “You are a cute bunny!!” said Nader. “I’m not a bunny! I am he, the most fearless, the bravest, and most courageous, Shuja’ , the Arabian hare,

Being scared but doing it anyway, that's brave. -Shade Silverwing

And from the souls of clay I turn away, and they are blest, but not by me.  They fatten at ease, like sheep in the pasture, and eat what they did not sow, like oxen in the stall.  They grow and spread, like the gourd along the ground; but, like the gourd, they give no shade to the traveller, and when they are ripe death gathers them, and they go down unloved into hell, and their name vanishes out of the land.

I’m fine!” Percy yelled as he ran by, followed by a giant screaming bloody murder. He jumped over a burning scorpion and ducked as Hannibal threw a Cyclops across his path. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tyson pounding the Earthborn into the ground like a game of whack-a-mole. Ella was fluttering above him, dodging missiles and calling out advice: “The groin. The Earthborn’s groin is sensitive.” SMASH! “Good. Yes. Tyson found its groin.” “Percy needs help?” Tyson called. “I’m good!” “Die!” Polybotes yelled, closing fast. Percy kept running. In the distance, he saw Hazel and Arion galloping across the battlefield, cutting down centaurs and karpoi. One grain spirit yelled, “Wheat! I’ll give you wheat!” but Arion stomped him into a pile of breakfast cereal. Queen Hylla and Reyna joined forces, forklift and pegasus riding together, scattering the dark shades of fallen warriors. Frank turned himself into an elephant and stomped through some Cyclopes, and Dakota held the golden eagle high, blasting lightning

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. His people, the Archipelagans, are various shades of copper and brown, shading into black in the South and East Reaches. The light-skinned people among them have far-northern or Kargish ancestors. The Kargish raiders in the first chapter are white. Serret, who both as girl and woman betrays Ged, is white. Ged is copper-brown and his friend Vetch is black. I was bucking the racist tradition, “making a statement”—but I made it quietly, and it went almost unnoticed. Alas, I had no power, at that time, to combat the flat refusal of many cover departments to put people of color on a book jacket. So, through many later, lily-white Geds, Ruth Robbins’s painting for the first edition—the fine, strong profile of a young man with copper-brown skin—was, to me, the book’s one true cover.

Nick,” I whispered, pressing my hands into his chest, not to get away but in a gesture I hoped was soothing. He stilled and the tumult of his eyes calmed. God, just that, his name and a simple touch from me and he calmed. Was he that attuned to me? “Who burned you?” he whispered back. Oh no. I closed my eyes. “Livvie.” My throat clogged. No one called me Livvie. No one. Livvie didn’t exist. Not for anyone. But me. “Baby, who burned you?” Nick pushed gently. I opened my eyes. “Who burned you?” he pressed. I stared into blue. “Who burned you, baby?” “I can’t be with you,” I told him. “Who burned you, Livvie?” “I can’t be with you, Nick.” “Who burned you?” “I can’t be with you because my father is a piece of shit and I care about you too much to have his stink settle on you.” Nick went silent. But the room went wired. He heard me and he got me. Every word. He got me. He knew who burned me. He knew, my father burning me, there was no me. There was just Vincent Shade’s daughter, and me not even having me, I couldn’t give myself to someone else.