Lore Book Quotes

Where are you originally from?” “The planet Lorien, three hundred million miles away.” “Must have been a long trip, John Smith.” “Took almost a year. Next time I’m bringing a book.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door — Only this, and nothing more." Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore — For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore — Nameless here for evermore. And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door — Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; — This it is, and nothing more." Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"— here I opened wide the door; — Darkness there, and nothing more. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?" This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" — Merely this, and nothing more. Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice: Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore — Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; — 'Tis the wind and nothing more." Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore; Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door — Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door — Perched, and sat, and nothing more. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore. Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore — Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning— little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door — Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as "Nevermore.

Can you not see," I said, "that fairy tales in their essence are quite solid and straightforward; but that this everlasting fiction about modern life is in its nature essentially incredible? Folk-lore means that the soul is sane, but that the universe is wild and full of marvels. Realism means that the world is dull and full of routine, but that the soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the fairy tale is—what will a healthy man do with a fantastic world? The problem of the modern novel is—what will a madman do with a dull world? In the fairy tales the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not go mad. In the modern novels the hero is mad before the book begins, and suffers from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos.

This book is dedicated to all the girls who like morally grey fictional men, and who screamed out loud the first time they read “who did this to you?” This ones for you.

We break our huddle and Eight immediately transforms into one of his massive avatars. His handsome features melt away, replaced by the snarling face and golden mane of a lion. He grows to about twelve feet, ten arms sprouting out of his sides, each of them tipped with razor-sharp claws. Nine whistles through his teeth. 'Now we're talking,' Nine says. 'One of your parents must've been a chimæra. Probably your mom.

THE EVENTS IN THIS BOOK ARE REAL. NAMES ANS PLACES HAVE BEEN CHANGED TO PROTECT THE LORIEN, WHO REMAIN IN HIDING. OTHER CIVILIZATIONS DO EXIST. SOME OF THEM SEEK TO DESTROY YOU.

We men of this age are rotten with book-lore and with a yearning for the past.

She was a half-wild thing of ink and grass and sea breezes, raised by books and rabbits and fairy lore, and that was all she cared to be.

He said nothing, but, then, he never needed to. His face was a book that had been written only for her. Its story unfolded while he watched her watch him.

Read obsessively. It will make you a better human and a better writer.

But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean. Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent. All my days have I watched it and listened to it, and I know it well. At first it told to me only the plain little tales of calm beaches and near ports, but with the years it grew more friendly and spoke of other things; of things more strange and more distant in space and in time. Sometimes at twilight the grey vapours of the horizon have parted to grant me glimpses of the ways beyond; and sometimes at night the deep waters of the sea have grown clear and phosphorescent, to grant me glimpses of the ways beneath. And these glimpses have been as often of the ways that were and the ways that might be, as of the ways that are; for ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time.

O take me from the busy crowd, I cannot bear the noise! For Nature's voice is never loud; I seek for quiet joys. The book I love is everywhere, And not in idle words; The book I love is known to all, And better lore affords.

Being a functional adult doesn't mean dealing with everything by yourself. It's okay to get help.

But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean.

Never been around dogs much. My mom had a collie when I was a boy, but she was a gentle animal who stayed around the house, mostly. My father, and the men he knew, all had braces of big surly hunting dogs they used for going after wild hogs. The times he took me with him on those hunts, I was more afraid of those dogs than the feral hogs. Think they could sense it. Always felt like they would’ve taken the least opportunity to sink their teeth into me.

The book and I secret ourselves Behind the paneled door. We merge our thoughts in retrospect Of ancient mystic lore. We spend a pleasant quiet hour, Nor know it passed us by... The easy chair, the shaded lamp, A well-loved book and I.

A DAY LAYE" "Every dawn of our lives a heart is forged and Linked with lore to one so similar Born with blessed life dust Stored beneath its soul To bless and pass onto its children Even though the wind may blow it all away Don't ever worry 'cos I'm your friend.

Daisy, Daisy, the coppers are after you, If they catch you they'll give you a month or two, They'll tie you up with wi-er Behind the Black Mari-er, So ring your bell And pedal like hell On a bicycle made for two.

I was ensorcelled from the moment you spoke with that sharp tongue of yours, my lioness, my princess of ice, my torture, and my salvation.

If you can't go to Hollywood You don't have to cry; Clark Gable is good looking But so am I.

Apply thy minde to be a vertuous man Auoyd ill company (the spoyle of youth;) To follow Vertues Lore doo what thou can, (Whereby great profit vnto thee ensuth;) Reade Bookes, hate Ignorance; (the Foe to Art, The Damme of Errour, Enuy of the hart).

The Dire Wolf killed the Jakes,” he said. “Who’s this Dire Wolf?” I asked. Figured he was talking about someone he knew. He spoke in a whisper, almost reverently. “The Dire Wolf is the curse of the Downstream People, the Arkansa. He is an evil spirit of the Quapaw.” I sighed and shook my head, knowing how these old Indians liked to throw in a bunch of mythical tribal mumbo-jumbo and superstition to deflect blame from someone they knew. “Well, you know where I can find this Dire Wolf fella?” I asked. “He cannot be found,” the old man said. “Really. You have reason to believe he’s taken off to other parts?” He said nothing for a full quarter minute, his black eyes intently on mine, searching. I could see contempt in them and a sadness. Made me nervous. “No,” old Long Walker answered at last. “He has not departed. Now that he has awakened, he will kill again.

It’s time to shake off the old and start anew . This is one of the reasons spring cleaning is so popular. Cleaning out the old and making way for the new always helps to give us a renewed sense of purpose.

In the evening they went to say good-bye to Bilbo. 'Well, if you must go, you must,' he said. 'I am sorry. I shall miss you. It is nice just to know that you are about the place. But I am getting very sleepy.' Then he gave Frodo his mithril-coat and Sting, forgetting that he had already done so; and he gave him also three books of lore that he had made at various times, written in his spidery hand, and labelled on their red backs: Translations from the Elvish, by B. B.

The faithfull knight now grew in litle space, By hearing her, and by her sisters lore, To such perfection of all heavenly grace, That wretched world he gan for to abhore,

Masters are great but books are better. He who has a library has a thousand teachers. Your Prophet said, “Seek lore, even if it be in China.” Mine said, “God created us because He wanted to be known.” Ignorant men think we are here to fight and make wars and to couple and have children. Nay, our job is to expand our knowledge.

Graham was not only the original quantitative analyst, to whom today's whole school of such thinking owes its heritage, but he was also a source of much of the fundamental analysis and lore that Wall Streeters follow today.

There are a number of good books that draw upon fox legends -- foremost among them, Kij Johnson's exquisite novel The Fox Woman. I also recommend Neil Gaiman's The Dream Hunters (with the Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano);  Larissa Lai's unusual novel, When Fox Is a Thousand; Helen Oyeyemi's recent novel, Mr. Fox; and Ellen Steiber's gorgeous urban fantasy novel, A Rumor of Gems, as well as her heart-breaking novella "The Fox Wife" (published in Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears). For younger readers, try the "Legend of Little Fur" series by Isobelle Carmody.  You can also support a fine mythic writer by subscribing to Sylvia Linsteadt's The Gray Fox Epistles: Wild Tales By Mail.  For the fox in myth, legend, and lore, try: Fox by Martin Wallen; Reynard the Fox, edited by Kenneth Varty; Kitsune: Japan's Fox of Mystery, Romance, and Humour by Kiyoshi Nozaki;Alien Kind: Foxes and Late Imperial Chinese Narrative by Raina Huntington; The Discourse on Foxes and Ghosts: Ji Yun and Eighteenth-Century Literati Storytelling by Leo Tak-hung Chan; and The Fox and the Jewel: Shared and Private Meanings in Contemporary Japanese Inari Worship, by Karen Smythers.

Sexual intercourse was taboo on the Lord’s Day. The Puritans believed that children were born on the same day of the week as when they had been conceived. Unlucky infants who entered the world on the Sabbath were sometimes denied baptism because of their parents’ presumed sin in copulating on a Sunday. For many years Sudbury’s minister Israel Loring sternly refused to baptize children born on Sunday, until one terrible Sabbath when his own wife gave birth to twins!18 Altogether, the Puritans created a sabbatical rhythm of unique intensity in the time ways of their culture.19

Years ago, when I was about to go on a book tour for Someplace to Be Flying, my editor at the time Terri Windling and I sat down to figure out what to call what I was writing for the interviews that were to come. Terri came up with the term mythic fiction and I think that sums it up perfectly. There are almost invariably mythic elements in my fiction (as well as bits of folk and faerie lore) and the term doesn’t lock me into writing only in an urban setting since many of my stories take place in rural areas. It never caught on, but when I don’t describe what I do as simply fiction, I’ll go with mythic fiction.

It was Stevenson, I think, who most notably that there are some places that simply demand a story should be told of them. ... After all, perhaps Stevenson had only half of the matter. It is true there are places which stir the mind to think that a story must be told about them. But there are also, I believe, places which have their story stored already, and want to tell this to us, through whatever powers they can; through our legends and lore, through our rumors, and our rites. By its whispering fields and its murmuring waters, by the wailing of its winds and the groaning of its stones, by what it chants in darkness and the songs it sings in light, each place must reach out to us, to tell us, tell us what it holds. ("The Axholme Toll")

The more I learn, the more I am convinced that there are no original stories. On several occasions I have “invented” an incident, and then come across it in an obscure fragment of Hebridean lore, orally collected, and privately printed, a hundred years ago.

A clover that sprouts four leaves, rather than three, is a mutation and is considered 'lucky' according to Irish mythology. Why? According to Celtic lore, each leaf of clover represents something special. One leaf represents faith, one hope, one love and, and , if a fourth leaf is present, that's luck.

I'm getting very sorry for the Devil and his disciples such as the good LeChiffre. The Devil has a rotten time and I always like to be on the side of the underdog. We don't give the poor chap a chance. There's a Good Book about goodness and how to be good and so forth, but there's no Evil Book about evil and how to be bad. The Devil has no prophets to write his Ten Commandments and no team of authors to write his biography. His case has gone completely by default. We know nothing about him but a lot of fairy stories from our parents and schoolmasters. He has no book from which we can learn the nature of evil in all its forms, with parables about evil people, proverbs about evil people, folk-lore about evil people. All we have is the living example of the people who are least good, or our own intuition.

I know it may seem overwhelming right now. If I were lucky enough to have somebody love me, I would try everything to make it work. You're lucky to have that even if it hurts.

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live. —NORMAN COUSINS

He could have said Let’s go to hell—it’s warm there, right? And I would have just stared at his butt and said, Yeah. Let’s do that.

I’m still here for you. You are not forgotten. We’re gonna be okay. I will see you again.

Baby, I would rather let you break my heart every day of my life than live without you.

She’s your daughter?” “She is the light of my life, yes. And you are the murderer of her dreams.

This woman will be the end of me, but she should be the beginning.

He knew practically nothing save book-lore, possessing neither an eye for paintings nor an ear for music.

Tremble in fear as Pasphrfep the Pillager comes to feast on your souls.

Maireann dóchas is gliodar. Translated into English it meant hope & happiness never die.

Sunrise Chant Hail sun, light and arc, fight again against the dark!

Rereading a favorite book was like coming home after a long time away.

Things started to fly around the room. I don’t mean little things like books and lamps. I’m talking the refrigerator, the stove, and the couch. It was like a deadly game of dodge ball. I

When you are having difficulties, a single attack of “Yeahbut maybe I should compromise a little for the sake of practicality” can bring an inglorious end to the fulfillment of your dream.

Golbuchiks? Golbuchiks are ashes, entrails, dung, stove smoke, clay, and they’ll all return to clay. They’re full of dirt, candle oil, droppings, dust. You, O Book, my pure, shining precious, my golden singing promise, my dream, a distant call— O tender specter, happy chance, Again I heed the ancient lore, Again with beauty rare in stance, You beckon from the distant shore!

O full and splendid Moon, whom I Have, from this desk, seen climb the sky So many a midnight,—would thy glow For the last time beheld my woe! Ever thine eye, most mournful friend, O'er books and papers saw me bend; But would that I, on mountains grand, Amid thy blessed light could stand, With spirits through mountain-caverns hover, Float in thy twilight the meadows over, And, freed from the fumes of lore that swathe me, To health in thy dewy fountains bathe me! Ah, me! this dungeon still I see. This drear, accursed masonry, Where even the welcome daylight strains But duskly through the painted panes.

The Devil never shows up on time for his own staff meetings, preferring instead to make everyone else stew and wait. Sometimes it’s a few minutes, sometimes a few weeks. It can get pretty ugly. Considering

My favorite stories are the ones I can escape into. The ones where I can leave be-hind this bleak existence and be somebody else, even if just for a little while. Someone braver than me. Someone with the power to change their circumstances.

The Anglo-American can indeed cut down and grub up all this waving forest, and make a stump speech on its ruins, but he cannot converse with the spirit of the tree he fells, he cannot read the poetry and mythology which retire as he advances. He ignorantly erases mythological tablets in order to print his handbills and town-meeting warrants on them. Before he has learned his a b c in the beautiful but mystic lore of the wilderness he cuts it down, puts up a "deestrict" schoolhouse, and introduces Webster's spelling-book.

Folk-lore means that the soul is sane, but that the universe is wild and full of marvels. Realism means that the world is dull and full of routine, but that the soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the fairy tale is—what will a healthy man do with a fantastic world? The problem of the modern novel is—what will a madman do with a dull world? In the fairy tales the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not go mad. In the modern novels the hero is mad before the book begins, and suffers from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos.

Are you okay?” So quiet and earnest. She’s adjusting the board instead of looking at me, so I’m not even sure if she’s talking to me. Then she turns to face me. “Are you?” “Yeah. Why?” “You just seem sad.” Who is this person? I’m not acting sad. I’m acting like a witty stud.

Thankfully the song that’s now playing is some cheesy Beyoncé ballad that we don’t have to dance to—and you could not pay me enough to dance to this song. Ever. “Oh, I love this song!” she exclaims, turning to me. Her eyes are all lit up. “Can we slow-dance to this?!” “Okay!” Fuck.

Gro Rollag was no beauty, but she was a strong capable young woman with a long face, prominent cheekbones, high forehead, and a kindly intelligent look in her rather narrow eyes. According to family lore, she was not the most conscientious housekeeper because she preferred reading to housework. A love of books and reading ran in the family. Of all the possessions they were forced to sell or leave behind in Norway, what the Rollags remembered with deepest regret was the library they inherited from an eighteenth-century ancestor - lovely old books sold to pay for their passage to America.

Ged fished from his jetty, and tended his garden-patch. He spent whole days pondering a page or a line or a word in the Lore-Books he had brought from Roke, sitting out in the summer air under the pendicktrees, while the otak slept beside him or went hunting mice in the forests of grass and daisies.

Almost everything is tuned to keeping the status quo shuffling along. When your life really takes off, some of your friends are very likely to perceive this as a threat because you, not they, are stepping out into a new future. They will cajole you to keep within conventional bounds, to be reasonable, to do the “right” thing.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,  Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—  While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,  As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visiter," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door— Only this and nothing more.

It takes courage to tell the truth about what you are committed to. Most of us are not completely, unshakably committed to having a truly marvelous career or marriage or anything else. For the most part, we are committed to comfort, low risk, and equilibrium. Remember, wanting/wishing and commitment are two completely different domains.

According to lore, one of Mother Barnes early customers was a young attorney who introduced himself merely as John. He asked Mother Barnes where the capital of the soon-to-be province of Canada would be located. Gazing through time, she told the young attorney that the capital would be Bytown, and then surprised him by saying he would one day become the leader of this new province. The man, of course, was John A. Macdonald, who did indeed become prime minister of Canada, and went on to live in the new capital, the name of which would change from Bytown to Ottawa shortly after his visit to the witch. Macdonald told the story of his visit to the "Witch of Plum Hollow" many times, the story becoming more entertaining as the years passed.

It opens the mind toward an understanding of human nature and destiny. It increases wisdom. It is the very essence of that much misinterpreted concept, a liberal education. It is the foremost approach to humanism, the lore of the specifically human concerns that distinguish man from other living beings. . . . Personal culture is more than mere familiarity with the present state of science, technology, and civic affairs. It is more than acquaintance with books and paintings and the experience of travel and of visits to museums. It is the assimilation of the ideas that roused mankind from the inert routine of a merely animal existence to a life of reasoning and speculating. It is the individual’s effort to humanize himself by partaking in the tradition of all the best that earlier generations have bequeathed.

In the distance, the mist parted and a woman slowly rose from the ground. She had creamy white skin and her hair was black as night. Her sheer gown was covered with leaves and ivy. Twigs shimmered and twisted into a high collar which looked as if they had sprouted from her shoulders. With magical grace, as if the woman floated, she made her way forward. “The winter fae queen,” Leana whispered. “What brings such tender creatures to my woods?” the queen asked.

I start with the title first. From this title I work out the psychology of the tune. Next I write the lyric backward, and in this way build it up to a climax. In the lyric I work first for the climax, and if I can’t find a good climactic line I throw out the tune . . . I consult rhyme dictionaries. I swear by them. For long, easy rhymes I use Andrew Loring’s Lexicon. Other books I have in constant use are Roget’s ‘Thesaurus,’ and atlas, Fowler’s ‘Modern English Usage’ and a dictionary

Like Lord Nugent, George Papadimitriou had experienced the sense of strangeness and unreality that the flood produced. The gyptian owner of the boat he was traveling on told him that in gyptian lore, extreme weather had its own states of mind, just as calm weather did. “How can the weather have a state of mind?” said Papadimitriou. The gyptian said, “You think the weather is only out there? It’s in here too,” and tapped his head. “So do you mean that the weather’s state of mind is just our state of mind?” “Nothing is just anything,” the gyptian replied, and would say no more.

Just as an individual can invent purposes, so can groups of people. A marriage can be dedicated to a shared ideal, to making some sort of contribution or anything else that extends the intentions of the relationship beyond the usual boundaries. A group of friends can create a purpose so that their interactions are more than just hanging out together. Some examples: Marriage: to be a model for other people, including our children, of just how great a relationship can be; to contribute to the world around us. A group of friends: to be family to one another; to support one another to have all of our lives be happy and successful.

Two hours later, Revere trotted into Lexington, his mount thoroughly lathered after outgalloping a pair of Gage’s equestrian sentinels near Charlestown. Veering north toward the Mystic River to avoid further trouble, Revere had alerted almost every farmstead and minute captain within shouting distance. Popular lore later credited him with a stirring battle cry—“The British are coming!”—but a witness quoted him as warning, more prosaically, “The regulars are coming out.” Now he carried the alarm to the Reverend Jonas Clarke’s parsonage, just up the road from Lexington Common. Here Clarke had written three thousand sermons in twenty years; here he called up the stairs each morning to rouse his ten children—“Polly, Betsey, Lucy, Liddy, Patty, Sally, Thomas, Jonas, William, Peter, get up!” And here he had given sanctuary, in a bedroom to the left of the front door, to the renegades Hancock and Samuel Adams. A squad of militiamen stood guard at the house as Revere dismounted, spurs clanking. Two warnings had already come from the east: as many as nine mounted British officers had been seen patrolling the Middlesex roads, perhaps “upon some evil design.” At the door, a suspicious orderly sergeant challenged Revere, and Clarke blocked his path until Hancock reportedly called out, “Come in, Revere, we’re not afraid of you.” The herald delivered his message: British regulars by the hundreds were coming out, first by boat, then on foot. There was not a moment to lose.

As a child, she was curious about the world beyond the sea, but in a vague, half-sketched way, as she was curious about a lot of things she read in books. London and Treasure Island and horses and dragons were all equally imagined to her. She thought she would probably see them one day, when she was old. In the meantime, the island was hers to explore, and it took up more time than she could ever imagine having. There were books to read, thousands of them in the castle library, and Rowan brought back more all the time. There were trees to climb, caves along the beach to get lost in, traces of the fair folk who had once lived on the island to find and bring home. There was work to be done: Food needed to be grown and harvested; the livable parts of the castle, the parts that weren't a crumbling ruin, needed to be combed for useful things when the tide went out. She was a half-wild thing of ink and grass and sea breezes, raised by books and rabbits and fairy lore, and that was all she cared to be.

Ink runs in their veins, immortal ink, the ink of song and story.” It was the voice of Andreus. “Ink can be destroyed,” cried Black, “and men who are made of ink. Name me their names!” They came so swiftly from the skies Andreus couldn’t name them all, streaming out of lore and legend, streaming out of song and story, each phantom flaunting like a flag his own especial glory: Lancelot and Ivanhoe, Athos, Porthos, Cyrano, Roland, Rob Roy, Romeo; Donalbane of Birnam Wood, Robinson Crusoe and Robin Hood; the moody Doones of Lorna Doone, Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone; out of near and ancient tomes, Banquo’s ghost and Sherlock Holmes; Lochinvar, Lothario, Horatius, and Horatio; and there were other figures, too, darker, coming from the blue, Shakespeare’s Shylock, Billy Bones, Quasimodo, Conrad’s Jones, Ichabod and Captain Hook—names enough to fill a book. “These wearers of the O, methinks, are indestructible,” wailed Littlejack. “Books can be burned,” croaked Black. “They have a way of rising out of ashes,” said Andreus.

The first home I remember in Copper Cliff was 11 Evans Road, a tiny place: kitchen, bathroom off of that, a “front room” or parlor with two bedrooms squeezed onto the side. It was here, at the kitchen table, that I had my first lessons on the bagpipe. My dad was teaching my brother Ranald, who, at the time was eleven, and I was four. The two of them would sit at the kitchen table, music book opened, sounding away on the practice chanters. Family lore has it that I was a most annoying kid at these times, wanting to get in on the strange but enticing action. Apparently as a result of being repeatedly rebuffed or ignored, I would crawl under the table and from this ideally placed launching pad, would deliver a “lower punch,” as it came to be known, to the delicate regions of dad and brother. This finally led to their capitulation and I was allowed to join them at the table. I was ultimately outfitted with a very small child’s practice chanter, a family heirloom passed down through dad’s sister Betty, a piper herself who had died many years before in childbirth.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door — Only this, and nothing more." Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore — For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore — Nameless here for evermore. And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door — Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; — This it is, and nothing more." Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"— here I opened wide the door; — Darkness there, and nothing more. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?" This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" — Merely this, and nothing more. Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice: Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore — Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; — 'Tis the wind and nothing more." Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore; Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door — Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door — Perched, and sat, and nothing more. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore. Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore — Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning— little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door — Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as "Nevermore.

Or, in your case, as wide. Wait. Did you just say Gandalf?” “He is the founder of our order, and the first of the Five Warlocks. He comes from afar across the Western Ocean, from Easter Island, or perhaps from Japan.” “No, I think he comes from the mind of a story writer. An old-fashioned Roman Catholic from the days just before First Space Age. Unless I am confusing him with the guy who wrote about Talking Animal Land? With the Cowardly Lion who gets killed by a Wicked White Witch? I never read the text, I watched the comic.” “Oh, you err so! The Witches, we have preserved this lore since the time of the Fall of the Giants, whom we overthrew and destroyed. The tale is this: C. S. Lewis and Arthur C. Clarke were led by the Indian Maiden Sacagawea to the Pacific Ocean and back, stealing the land from the Red Man and selling them blankets impregnated with smallpox. It was called the Lewis and Clarke Expedition. When they reached the Pacific, they set out in the Dawn Treader to find the sea route to India, where the sacred river Alph runs through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea. They came to the Last Island, called Ramandu or Selidor, where the World Serpent guards the gateway to the Land of the Dead, and there they found Gandalf, returned alive from the underworld, and stripped of all his powers. He came again to mortal lands in North America to teach the Simon Families. The Chronicle is a symbolic retelling of their journey. It is one of our Holy Books.” “Your Holy Books were written for children by Englishmen.” “The gods wear many masks! If the Continuum chooses the lips of a White Man to be the lips through which the Continuum speaks, who are we to question? Tolkien was not Roman. He was of a race called the hobbits, Homo floresiensis, discovered on an isle in Indonesia, and he would have lived in happiness, had not the White Man killed him with DDT. So there were no Roman Catholics involved. May the Earth curse their memory forever! May they be forgotten forever!” “Hm. Earth is big. Maybe it can do both. You know about Rome? It perished in the Ecpyrosis, somewhat before your time.” “How could we not? The Pope in Rome created the Giants, whom the Witches rose up against and overthrew. Theirs was the masculine religion, aggressive, intolerant, and forbidding abortion. Ours is the feminine religion, peaceful and life-affirming and all-loving, and we offer the firstborn child to perish on our sacred fires. The First Coven was organized to destroy them like rats! When Rome was burned, we danced, and their one god was cast down and fled weeping on his pierced feet, and our many gods rose up. My ancestors hunted the Christians like stoats, and when we caught them, we burned them slowly, as they once did of us in Salem. What ill you do is returned to you tenfold!” “Hm. Are you willing to work with a Giant? I saw one in the pit, and saw the jumbo-sized coffin they pried him out from. What if he is a baptized Christian? Most of them were, since they were created by my pet pope and raised by nuns.” “All Christians must perish! Such is our code.” “Your code is miscoded.” “What of the Unforgettable Hate?” “Forget about it.

I start with the title first. From this title I work out the psychology of the tune. Next I write the lyric backward, and in this way build it up to a climax. In the lyric I work first for the climax, and if I can’t find a good climactic line I throw out the tune . . . I consult rhyme dictionaries. I swear by them. For long, easy rhymes I use Andrew Loring’s Lexicon. Other books I have in constant use are Roget’s ‘Thesaurus,’ and atlas, Fowler’s ‘Modern English Usage’ and a dictionary.

For humility and poverty, in themselves, the world has little liking and less respect. In the folk-lore of all races, despite the sentimentalization of abasement for dramatic effect, it is always power and grandeur that count in the end.

Daisy looks up at me, whines, and shakes her head, as if to say: “You fucking pussy. Not to be a drama queen, but you’re letting your one chance at real love slip away because you’re afraid she doesn’t want you as much as you want her. If you weren’t the guy who feeds me, I’d just pee on you.

When he shuts the door behind us, I unzip his jeans and reach for his beautiful hard cock like a hysterical starving woman unwrapping a Dove ice cream bar.

I’m taking all of you,” he growls. “I’m going to find every place you try to hide in and stay with you there until you aren’t afraid of anything anymore.

She is the worst fake girlfriend ever, and I just want to stick my head under her shirt for five minutes and then I’m done.

She’s the fucking devil. And I want to stick my head under that tank top for twenty minutes and then I’m done.

When you don’t even realize what time it is because you’re so happy to be relaxing and figuring out the meaning of life with the people who matter the most to you. And getting really drunk, usually.

I need to get out of here before I start singing “Your Body is a Wonderland” and weeping.

Vorfreude. The joyful anticipation of imagining something pleasurable or desired in the future.

wages and rewards of going with the flow of your programming. The willingness to feel fear and keep going forward distinguishes the living from the merely breathing.

Taking Zen's lessons seriously need not entail taking Zen's lore literally. After all, the texts of the Zen tradition were not written as academic history books. John Maraldo's judicious and insightful The Saga of Zen History and the Power of Legend makes a compelling case for treating the traditional chronicles and lore of Zen as I do in this book—namely, as soteriological or liberating "legends" rather than as literal accounts of "history" in the modern academic sense uncritically assumed by many modern scholars "who seek only the facts behind the texts and devious motives behind the facts.

His face was a book that had been written only for her.

He turns his head to look down at Haruka sitting on the ornate rug in the middle of the floor. A disarray of books and notes spirals outward from his position—he is the eye of an academic hurricane. Haruka holds a black mug of steaming coffee in one hand while with the other he casually flips through a reference book on qualitative data analysis.

The Prime halted her with a dry, leathery hand on her own. Squeezed. “You did not ask why we have forgotten their names.” Bryce started. “You know?” A shallow nod. “It is one scrap of lore most of my people were careful to ensure never made it into the history books. But word of mouth kept it alive.” Brush crackled. Shit. She had to go. The Prime said, “We did unspeakable things during the First Wars. We yielded our true nature. Lost sight of it, then lost it forever. Became what we are now. We say we are free wolves, yet we have the collar of the Asteri around our necks. Their leashes are long, and we let them tame us. Now we do not know how to get back to what we were, what we might have been. That was what my grandfather told me. What I told Sabine, though she did not care to listen. What I told Danika, who …” His hand shook. “I think she might have led us back, you know. To what we were before we arrived here and became the Asteri’s creatures inside and out.

A man-made satellite slowly pencils a line through one long passage in the lore of stars, but for those who know the constellation’s stories, nothing can alter them.

We’ve come so far it feels like,” I said. “And while this isn’t the quest we set out to accomplish, I’m so glad to have you two with me. Even when I was with Boney Pete, I don’t know if I was happier than I am today.” Lucius and Alex both blushed this time. They knew how much it meant for me to say that. Alex was the first to recover. She punched me softly on the shoulder. “Hey, we’ll get your skeleton friend back. Don’t worry. I do have to admit that I kinda like this place. I wanted to leave as soon as I got here, but the longer I stay… I mean, there are times I… I wonder if I could…” “Could what?” “Could forget. Could leave my quest behind and stay here. It might be nice, except for the people always disappearing.” Lucius got a starry look in his eye. “And think of the lore, the rich history this world has. There are books to be written about it all. I have a mind to say a while as well—or at least, to return once we rescue Boney Pete.” Alex put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Yeah, I wouldn’t stay until we saved your friend.” I gave them the smile they wanted, even it was weak. The talk of Boney Pete reminded me of seeing him with Herobrine. There was that moment… but no. That was just Herobrine’s trick. Boney Pete loved me and needed me. Of course, the part of me that Arthur had trained said I should get a second opinion. I decided to ask Lucius once this was all over, and then was reminded of our bigger problem.

I convinced myself that you were all wrong for me, and maybe you are. I convinced myself that I’d meet someone I like more than you, and maybe I still will. But I can’t seem to fall out of love with what could have been.

When do you have time to read lore books?” Mike scoffed, but Joe only shrugged. “I don't sleep all that much.” Joe summoned Mate, as well as two coffee cups from his ring. “Want a cup of me?” “What?” “Want a cup of Joe?” Joe chuckled at the pun as he downed his fifth cup of the day.

Awaken, O Tara, from this world where nothing is as it seems and where the truth is hidden in plain sight.

In life, we did not know each other But in Death, we are finally One. For death does not discriminate In his eyes, we are all equals.

The ancient Slavs called water spirits vily, meaning “fairies,” and a document of the Bulgarian emperor Constantine Asen (1258–1277) speaks of a “well of the fairies.” Pierre Gallais has just recently shown us in a new book that the fountain (or spring) is almost inseparable from the figure of the fairy.

If one refers to the texts, it is undeniably clear that the dead individual becomes a tutelary spirit of a specific location. In the Celtic sphere, the Triads in the medieval Welsh manuscript Llyfr Coch Hergest (Red Book of Hergest) say that the head of Llyr’s son, Bran the Blessed, was hidden in the White Hill of London with its head turned facing France. As long as it remained in that position, the Saxons could not oppress the island. The remains of Gwerthefyr (Guorthemir) the Blessed were hidden in the principal ports of this island and so long as they remained concealed there was no fear the Saxons would invade the country.11 Pomponius Mela tells how the Philaeni brothers had themselves buried beneath a dune to ensure Carthage took possession of a contested territory and, certainly, in order to become tutelary spirits. The place took the name of Arae Philaenorum.

Many questions have been raised about the Chapalu and three theories have resulted. This monster is the fruit of Celtic traditions and would be identical to the Cath Paluc of the medieval Welsh Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin (Black Book of Carmarthen), which exists in a manuscript copied between 1154 and 1189.10 Here, too, the monster comes from the waters, this time those of the sea, and lays waste to the land, but he is slain by Arthur’s seneschal, Kay. Another interpretation sees palu as a form of Latin palus, meaning “swamp.” The cat would thereby be a marsh spirit or swamp demon.

Corn dollies are used to represent the Crone aspect of Brigid when made during harvest (most traditionally at Lugnasadh) but the same type of corn dolly made at Imbolc represent Brigid’s Maiden form. Sometimes corn dollies made at Lugnasadh are stored through the winter and brought out again at Imbolc as a symbol of the transformation from Crone to Maiden.5 At Imbolc the corn dolly (called “the biddy”) was placed in a specially made small-scale bed (“Brid’s bed”) along with a symbol of male fertility such as a wand or stick. The bed was placed in the ashes of the home’s hearth fire, sometimes accompanied by burning candles. If the ashes were disturbed in the morning, it was seen as a very positive omen for the coming year.

In the Book of Taliesin we are offered the following verse, which sings the praise of the bodily senses: I give praise to my sustainer, Who added through my head A spirit into my design. Happily it is made for me, My seven consistencies Of fire and earth And water and air And mist and flowers And sweet southerly winds. My senses were designed One with which I exhale, And two with which I breathe, And three by which I have voice, And four with which I taste, And five with which I see, And six with which I hear, And seven by which I smell.

Traditionally,” Sir Bedivere continues, “we would be secure inside our castle stronghold, thoroughly protected from the enemy by high, thick walls. Our opponent would then attempt his siege in four distinct stages. First, the commander of the opposing army would call for our surrender, which we would immediately decline, resulting in a spirited exchange of well-crafted insults. Then, the enemy would attempt to scale our walls using waves of expendable foot soldiers. Of course, here we would simply deploy the usual means of repellent, such as flaming arrows, large stones, and boiling oil. Next, they would attempt to breach our defenses by hurling large objects at our walls, including rocks, boulders, and unfortunate prisoners of war. Finally, if they are successful in driving a breach, they would then dispatch their knights for hand-to-hand combat.