Monument 14 Quotes

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Night came and fell hard. Not like God drawing a blanket over our land But like someone snuffing a candle. Sudden and total. Out—just like that. Now we are waiting. Waiting in the dark To see if someone Will switch on the light. We can cower, We can fear, We can get lost together or Get lost alone. But the truth is: I am the light. You are the light. We are lit up together. We are silhouettes of sunlight cast against the night. Shining now, let us Shining, hold the light, Shining, so that our families Can find us. Shining.
Emmy Laybourne (Monument 14 (Monument 14, #1))
Sometimes, when you'd least expect it, the grief would chop your legs out from under you.
Emmy Laybourne (Monument 14 (Monument 14, #1))
Your mother hollers that you’re going to miss the bus. She can see it coming down the street. You don’t stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You don’t thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course not -- you vault down down the stairs and make a run for the corner. Only if it’s the last time you’ll ever see your mother, you sort of start to wish you’d stopped and did those things. Maybe even missed the bus. But the bus was barreling down our street so I ran.
Emmy Laybourne
And then I saw Niko. He had sunk down to his knees and had his face in his hands. I went over to him. "You did it," I said. "You saved us." "Yeah," he moaned, "but I lost her.
Emmy Laybourne (Sky on Fire (Monument 14, #2))
Your mother hollers that you're going to miss the bus. She can see it coming down the street. You don't stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You don't thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course not- you launch yourself down the stairs and make a run for the corner. Only, if it's the last you'll ever see your mother, you sort of start to wish you'd stopped and did those things. Maybe even missed the bus. But the bus was barreling down our street so i ran.
Emmy Laybourne (Monument 14 (Monument 14, #1))
I tell you, just when you think you know someone, she shows up looking pretty and carrying a guitar.
Emmy Laybourne (Monument 14 (Monument 14, #1))
We were a good team. I was glad we had decided to work on being friends. She was holding up her end of the bargain and I was trying my best not to worship her.
Emmy Laybourne (Sky on Fire (Monument 14, #2))
I like a kid who holds nothing back.
Emmy Laybourne
Honey, I don't understand that story. What does it mean?" "It means stick with the dog you know, Auntie Jean", Max told her. "Stick with the dog you know.
Emmy Laybourne (Sky on Fire (Monument 14, #2))
We ate it like it was medicine. Like it was magic candy that could somehow restore us to a normal life again. We ate ourselves numb and got in our bags and went to sleep. There was a lot of crying from the little kids and occasionally one of us would yell, "Shut up!" That's how we got by, that first night.
Emmy Laybourne (Monument 14 (Monument 14, #1))
I guess I could go and get a bunch of knives from the Kitchen aisles and throw them at the intruders. So lame. I wanted to wring my own neck for being so lame.
Emmy Laybourne (Sky on Fire (Monument 14, #2))
Monopoly belonged to me and Alex. It was our game and they would never understand. There were strategies and traditions and they would never get all its complexities. I didn't want them to play it. I strode to the Toy Department for another divider, thinking that I would never play Monopoly with anyone besides Alex, ever. Ever, ever, ever, ever. It was possible I was behaving somewhat like a child.
Emmy Laybourne (Sky on Fire (Monument 14, #2))
My mom believed that you make your own luck. Over the stove she had hung these old, maroon painted letters that spell out, “MANIFEST.” The idea being if you thought and dreamed about the way you wanted your life to be -- if you just envisioned it long enough, it would come into being. But as hard as I had manifested Astrid Heyman with her hand in mine, her blue eyes gazing into mine, her lips whispering something wild and funny and outrageous in my ear, she had remained totally unaware of my existence. Truly, to even dream of dreaming about Astrid, for a guy like me, in my relatively low position on the social ladder of Cheyenne Mountain High, was idiotic. And with her a senior and me a junior? Forget it. Astrid was just lit up with beauty: shining blonde ringlets, June sky blue eyes, slightly furrowed brow, always biting back a smile, champion diver on the swim team. Olympic level. Hell, Astrid was Olympic level in every possible way.
Emmy Laybourne
Chicago is what a polite person would call a colorful place. It’s a den of crime and corruption. And it’s a monument to architecture and enterprise. It’s violent and dangerous, and an epicenter of music and the arts. The good, the bad, the ugly, the sublime, monsters and angels—they’re all here. The
Jim Butcher (Cold Days (The Dresden Files, #14))
All right," Jake said, clapping his hands. "Which one of you little punks is gonna teach me how to play Chutes and Ladders?
Emmy Laybourne (Monument 14 (Monument 14, #1))
Niko started sobbing. There is no other word for it. He just crumpled down over the legs of the dead soldier and sobbed. I didn't know what to do. I sat down. Sahalia went over and kind of rubbed Niko's back. Batiste kept screaming for Josie. Max was whimpering. He was in pain. Ulysses climbed down from the tree and went and got Max's boot from where it got stuck under the root, and for a long while, that's all the movement there was. Just fat Ulysses, trying to help his friend get his boot on.
Emmy Laybourne (Sky on Fire (Monument 14, #2))
Late that afternoon they rolled into Larchmont, an old town built around a main square containing the courthouse and a Civil War monument. Stores lined the edges of the square, and the boys soon spotted the building which housed the Record’s offices, which were on the second floor.
Franklin W. Dixon (The Hidden Harbor Mystery (Hardy Boys, #14))
Nuestro padre le había enseñado a analizar las cosas que temía. Así que ir de trato o truco con él, cuando era pequeño, era como escuchar una reunión de información técnica: —Eso no es una bruja de verdad, es una figura de plástico con luces LED para los ojos y una pista pregrabada de chirridos. Esas no son tumbas reales, sino que son de PVC moldeadas en forma de lápidas, con frases espeluznantes escritas por un escritor de bromas. Esos no son verdaderos demonios que vienen por la calle, esos son los chicos de laescuela secundaria vestidos con trajes que consiguieron en Walgreens o tal vez por medio de un pedido en línea... Y todo el tiempo Alex había apretado mi mano, como si le ofreciera el último vínculo con la cordura. Me había gustado ser su protector, el que le hiciera sentirse seguro. Razón por la cual me sentía aún peor por haberlo atacado.
Emmy Laybourne (Monument 14 (Monument 14, #1))
Our Father, who art in Heaven, Halloween Thy Name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive the breast passers, and forgive the breast passes against us and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.
Emmy Laybourne (Monument 14 (Monument 14, #1))
Now, anyway, we knew who was which blood type. In addition to the beating he'd received from Chloe, Max was also starting to blister up (type A). The McKinley twins were hiding from us - they clearly had the paranoia (type AB). Ulysses was chattering to himself in Spanish, a rapid-fire monologue that made me pretty sure he had the paranoia type - type AB - as well as the twins. Batiste had type B, the blood type that exhibited no symptoms, as did Alex, Jake, and Sahalia (sterility and reproductive failure - hooray!). "We have to get them clean," Brayden said. "You think?" I sort of shouted at him (type O).
Emmy Laybourne (Monument 14 (Monument 14, #1))
Love is how you feel about the other person. Everything else is just details,’ he
Emmy Laybourne (Savage Drift (Monument 14 Book 3))
He swaggered over to Jake himself.
Emmy Laybourne (Sky on Fire (Monument 14, #2))
The city which lay below was a charnel house built on multi-layered bones centuries older than those which lay beneath the cities of Hamburg or Dresden. Was this knowledge part of the mystery it held for her, a mystery felt most strongly on a bell-chimed Sunday on her solitary exploration of its hidden alleys and squares? Time had fascinated her from childhood, its apparent power to move at different speeds, the dissolution it wrought on minds and bodies, her sense that each moment, all moments past and those to come, were fused into an illusory present which with every breath became the unalterable, indestructible past. In the City of London these moments were caught and solidified in stone and brick, in churches and monuments and in bridges which spanned the grey-brown ever-flowing Thames. She would walk out in spring or summer as early as six o'clock, double-locking the front door behind her, stepping into a silence more profound and mysterious than the absence of noise. Sometimes in this solitary perambulation it seenmed that her own footsteps were muted, as if some part of her were afraid to waken the dead who had walked thse streets and had known the same silence.
P.D. James (The Private Patient (Adam Dalgliesh, #14))
The same double-headed eagle, supporting the figure of a man or a god, is met with at Boghaz Keui, and must be regarded as one of the peculiarities of Hittite symbolism and art. The symbol was adopted in later days by the Turkoman princes, who had perhaps first seen it on the Hittite monuments of Kappodokia; and the Crusaders brought it to Europe with them in the 14th century. Here it became the emblem of the German Emperors, who have passed it on to the modern kingdoms of Russia and Austria. It is not the only heirloom of Hittite art which has descended to us of to-day.
A.H. Sayce (The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire (Original Illustrations))
H-22: Father Corby Monument 39º48.205’N, 77º14.063’W This monument honors the hundreds of chaplains present on the field in 1863. As chaplain of the Eighty-eighth New York Infantry of the famed Irish Brigade, Father William Corby, twenty-nine years old, has become as famous as many of those who actually bore arms those three fateful days. As the Irish Brigade formed up to enter the fight, Father Corby stepped onto a boulder—some historians believe the very boulder on which the monument stands—and raised his hand. Three hundred soldiers drew silent, many of them dropping to their knees, as the battle raged around them. The priest blessed them, prayed for their safety, and granted a general absolution, after which the troops marched into the fight. Corby’s admonition that the church would refuse a Christian burial for any man who failed to do his duty that day rang in their ears as they headed off. Following the war, Father Corby became president of the University of Notre Dame. A replica of this monument stands on the university’s campus, marking his grave. Years after the war, veterans of the Irish Brigade petitioned to have the Medal of Honor awarded to Corby, a request that was ultimately denied.
James Gindlesperger (So You Think You Know Gettysburg?: The Stories behind the Monuments and the Men Who Fought One of America's Most Epic Battles)
The sheer size of some of the limestome foundation blocks [at Baalbek] are the largest ever quarried on the planet, conservatively estimated at 800 to 1200 tons, and the common belief that the Romans chose to do this work on such a massive scale to 'impress the locals' is absolutely ludicrous. Nowhere else in the Roman world is there any evidence of the quarrying of blocks of this size, so we can clearly presume that they were there when the Romans first appeared, and were used as foundational material. A group of three horizontally lying giant stones which form part of the podium of the Roman Jupiter Temple of Baalbek, Lebanon, go by the name 'trilithon.' Each one of these stones is 70 feet long, 14 feet high, 10 feet thick, and weighs around 800 tons. These three stone blocks are the largest building blocks ever used by any human beings anywhere in the world. The supporting stone layer beneath features a number of stones that are still in the order of 350 tons and 35 feet wide. No one knows how these blocks were moved, cut, placed, and fit perfectly together.
Brien Foerster (Aftershock: The Ancient Cataclysm That Erased Human History)
I started to sing. Yes, sing. "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy. Yankee Doodle Do or die." I let go of Henry and Caroline and started marching, like I was the leader of a parade. "An old old something something la la la, born on the Fourth of July." So maybe I didn't know the words, exactly. Alex joined in. Astrid, too. All three of us marching like idiots. "You're my Yankee Doodle sweetheart, Yankee Doodle do or die." I led the three of us, making up the words somewhat and we walked in front of the gate, getting between the eyes of the little kids and the plywood, just trying to break the terror spell of the monster outside. Who now stared to yell, "YOU SINKING 'YANKEE DOODLE'? 'YANKEE DOODLE DANDY'? I'LL F--- KILL YOU!" Niko joined in and that guy, I am here to tell you, is entirely tone deaf. But the little kids kind of snapped to. We caught their attention. "Yankee Doodle went to town a riding on a pony. I am a Yankee Doodle guy." And the kids started marching and I led the parade, the saddest parade in the history of the world, away from the front of the store, away from the monster outside, and right to the stupid cookie and cracker aisle. We ate fudge-covered graham crackers for a good long while.
Emmy Laybourne (Monument 14 (Monument 14, #1))
Sedgwick’s death came in dramatic fashion in May 1864 near Spotsylvania. As he positioned his troops, Confederate sharpshooters began finding their range. When his men dodged the bullets, Sedgwick chided them, saying, “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.” Shortly afterward, a sharpshooter proved Sedgwick wrong as his bullet found its mark, striking the general just under his left eye and killing him instantly. H-21: George Weikert Farm 39º48.127’N, 77º14.072’W On July 2, Brigadier General John C.
James Gindlesperger (So You Think You Know Gettysburg?: The Stories behind the Monuments and the Men Who Fought One of America's Most Epic Battles)
Teddy Roosevelt or Theodore Roosevelt Jr. captured my imagination. As a child he had debilitating asthma, which he overcame by leading an active outdoor lifestyle. As a young man he attended Harvard College, the undergraduate institution, which is served by the faculty of Arts and Sciences and wrote books relating to history. In 1882 he wrote The Naval War of 1812, establishing himself as a serious historian. He was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President William McKinley and later served with the Rough Riders, during the Spanish American War. In 1898 Roosevelt was elected Governor of New York, and then in 1900 he ran for the office of Vice President with William McKinley. Less than a year later, he became the youngest President, following the death of President McKinley on September 14, 1901 As President of the United States, he became the leader of the “Progressive Movement.” Among his accomplishments was the establishment many national monuments, forests and parks. He was responsible for the building of the Panama Canal and sent the U.S. Navy around the world establishing the United States as a world power, setting the stage for the United States to become the leading country of the free world. Unfortunately, this blog only scratches the surface of his accomplishments but you can see his influence in my award winning book “The Exciting Story of Cuba.” Theodore Roosevelt is ranked 4th of our 25 Presidents.
Hank Bracker
[On kneeling down at the Warsaw Ghetto Monument during his 1970 state visit to Poland:] "Es war eine ungewöhnliche Last, die ich auf meinem Weg nach Warschau mitnahm. Nirgends hatte das Volk, hatten die Menschen so gelitten wie in Polen. Die maschinelle Vernichtung der polnischen Judenheit stellte eine Steigerung der Mordlust dar, die niemand für möglich gehalten hatte. [...] Ich hatte nichts geplant, aber Schloß Wilanow, wo ich untergebracht war, in dem Gefühl verlassen, die Besonderheit des Gedenkens am Ghetto-Monument zum Ausdruck bringen zu müssen. Am Abgrund der deutschen Geschichte und unter der Last der Millionen Ermordeten tat ich, was Menschen tun, wenn die Sprache versagt. Ich weiß es auch nach zwanzig Jahren nicht besser als jener Berichterstatter, der festhielt: 'Dann kniet er, der das nicht nötig hat, für alle, die es nötig haben, aber nicht knien – weil sie es nicht wagen oder nicht können oder nicht wagen können.'" ("I took an extraordinary burden to Warsaw. Nowhere else had a people suffered as much as in Poland. The robotic mass annihilation of the Polish Jews had brought human blood lust to a climax which nobody had considered possible. [...] Although I had made no plans, I left my accommodations at Wilanow Castle feeling that I was called upon to mark in some way the special moment of commemoration at the Ghetto Monument. At the abyss of German history and burdened by millions of murdered humans, I acted in the way of those whom language fails. Even twenty years later, I wouldn't know better than the journalist who recorded the moment by saying, 'Then he, who would not need to do this, kneels down in lieu of all those who should, but who do not kneel down – because they do not dare, cannot kneel, or cannot dare to kneel.'") [Note: The quotation used by Brandt is from the article Ein Stück Heimkehr [A Partial Homecoming] (Hermann Schreiber/ Der Spiegel No. 51/1970, Dec. 14, 1970]
Willy Brandt (Erinnerungen (Spiegel-Edition, #15))
There I saw Chloe, freshly bathed, wrapped in a towel, eating fun-size butterfingers one after another like a chain smoker and watching me like I was her soap opera.
Emmy Laybourne (Monument 14 (Monument 14, #1))
But also in particular, by and attour the Confession of Faith, do abolish and condemn the Pope's authority and jurisdiction out of this land, and ordains the maintainers thereof to be punished, Act 2, Parl. 1; Act 51, Parl. 3; Act 106, Parl. 7; Act 114, Parl. 12, King James VI.: do condemn the Pope's erroneous doctrine, or any other erroneous doctrine repugnant to any of the articles of the true and Christian religion, publicly preached, and by law established in this realm; and ordains the spreaders and makers of books or libels, or letters or writs of that nature to be punished, Act 46, Parl. 3; Act 106, Parl. 7; Act 24, Parl. 11 King James VI.: do condemn all baptism conform to the Pope's kirk, and the idolatry of the mass; and ordains all sayers, willful hearers and concealers of the mass, the maintainers and resetters of the priests, Jesuits, trafficking Papists, to be punished without any exception or restriction, Act 5, Parl. 1; Act 120, Parl. 12; Act 164, Parl. 13; Act 193, Parl. 14; Act 1, Parl. 19; Act 5, Parl. 20, King James VI.: do condemn all erroneous books and writs containing erroneous doctrine against the religion presently professed, or containing superstitious rites and ceremonies Papistical, whereby the people are greatly abused, and ordains the home-bringers of them to be punished, Act 25, Parl. 11, King James VI.: do condemn the monuments and dregs of bygone idolatry, as going to crosses, observing the festival days of saints, and such other superstitious and Papistical rites, to the dishonor of God, contempt of true religion, and fostering of great error among the people; and ordains the users of them to be punished for the second fault, as idolaters, Act 104, Parl. 7, King James VI.
James Kerr (The Covenanted Reformation)
By the 18th century, the Mound Builder hypothesis had become firmly entrenched in public opinion as the leading explanation of North American prehistory (13). Scholars and antiquarians continued to debate the identity of the Mound Builders into the 19th century, with the majority agreeing that they were not the ancestors of Native Americans. President Andrew Jackson explicitly cited this hypothesis as partial justification for the Indian Removal Act of 1830, barely 40 years after Jefferson published his book. In the monuments and fortresses of an unknown people, spread over the extensive regions of the west, we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which was exterminated, or has disappeared, to make room for the existing savage tribes (14). Thus did the idea of Manifest Destiny become inexorably linked with concepts of racial categories. When someone asks me why I get so incensed about the concepts of “lost civilizations” and “Mound Builders” that are promoted by cable “history” shows, I simply remind them of this: In the years that followed Jackson’s signing of the Indian Removal Act, over 60,000 Native Americans were expelled from their lands and forcibly relocated west of the Mississippi River. Thousands of people—including children and elders—died at the hands of the US government, which explicitly cited this mythology as one of its justifications.
Jennifer Raff (Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas)
I added “Hide the bodies” to my mental list of things to do.
Emmy Laybourne (Sky on Fire (Monument 14, #2))
Andy noticed my disposition, rushed over and wrapped his arms round me. This provided Mario the perfect opportunity to use my Valet and me as an example for his monumental demonstration, “While relationships in ancient Greece involved boys from 12 to about 17 or 18, in Renaissance Italy, boys were typically between 14 and 19.” He presented us to the cheering crowd as if we were in a forum.
Young (Unbridled (A Harem Boy's Saga, #2))
The Danube was flowing past him on its calm, even course from north to south, not especially blue, but wide and majestic and indubitably very beautiful. On the other side of the river rose two softly curved hills crowned by a monument and a walled fortress. Houses clambered only hesitantly along the sides of the hills, but farther away were other hills strewn with villas. That was the famous Buda side, then, and there you were very close to the heart of central European culture. Martin Beck let his glance roam over the panoramic view, absently listening to the wingbeats of history. There the Romans had founded their mighty settlement Aquincum, from there the Hapsburg artillery had shot Pest into ruins during the War of Liberation of 1849, and there Szalasis’ fascists and Lieutenant General Pfeffer-Wildenbruch’s SS troops had stayed for a whole month during the spring of 1945, with a meaningless heroism that invited annihilation (old fascists he had met in Sweden still spoke of it with pride). Immediately
Maj Sjöwall (The Martin Beck Series: Books 1–4)
CONCLUSION TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES The church at Ephesus represents the danger of losing our first love (2:4), that fresh devotion to Christ that characterized the early church. The church at Smyrna represents the danger of fear of suffering and was exhorted, “Do not fear what you are about to suffer” (2:10). With persecution against believers worldwide so strong today, the church can take heart that Christ is aware of her suffering. The church at Pergamum illustrates the constant danger of doctrinal compromise (2:14–15), often the first step toward complete defection. The modern church that has forsaken so many fundamentals of biblical faith needs to heed this warning! The church at Thyatira is a monument to the danger of moral compromise (2:20). The church today may well take heed to the departure from moral standards that has invaded the church itself. The church at Sardis is a warning against the danger of spiritual deadness (3:1–2), of orthodoxy without life, of mere outward appearance. The church at Philadelphia commended by our Lord is nevertheless warned against the danger of not holding fast (3:11), and exhorted to keep “my word about patient endurance,” to maintain the “little power” that they did have and to wait for their coming Lord. The final message to the church at Laodicea is a telling indictment, a warning against the danger of lukewarmness (3:15–16), of self-sufficiency, of being unconscious of desperate spiritual need. Each of these messages is amazingly relevant and pointed in its analysis of what our Lord sees as He stands in the midst of His church. The
Mark Hitchcock (Revelation (The John Walvoord Prophecy Commentaries))
The cries of the other kids got louder: “The bus is on fire!” “It’s going to explode!” and “We’re going to die!” And I thought, They’re right. Yes, we’ll die. But it’s okay. It’s fine. It is as it should be. We are going to die
Emmy Laybourne (Monument 14 (Monument 14, #1))
There have been three major slave revolts in human history. The first, led by the Thracian gladiator Spartacus against the Romans, occurred in 73 BC. The third was in the 1790s when the great black revolutionary Touissant L'Ouverture and his slave army wrested control of Santo Domingo from the French, only to be defeated by Napoleon in 1802. But the second fell halfway between these two, in the middle of the 9th century AD, and is less documented than either. We do know that the insurgents were black; that the Muslim 'Abbasid caliphs of Iraq had brought them from East Africa to work, in the thousands, in the salt marshes of the delta of the Tigris. These black rebels beat back the Arabs for nearly ten years. Like the escaped maroons in Brazil centuries later, they set up their own strongholds in the marshland. They seemed unconquerable and they were not, in fact, crushed by the Muslims until 883. They were known as the Zanj, and they bequeathed their name to the island of Zanzibar in the East Africa - which, by no coincidence, would become and remain the market center for slaves in the Arab world until the last quarter of the 19th century. The revolt of the Zanj eleven hundred years ago should remind us of the utter falsity of the now fashionable line of argument which tries to suggest that the enslavement of African blacks was the invention of European whites. It is true that slavery had been written into the basis of the classical world; Periclean Athens was a slave state, and so was Augustan Rome. Most of their slaves were Caucasian whites, and "In antiquity, bondage had nothing to do with physiognomy or skin color". The word "slave" meant a person of Slavic origin. By the 13th century it spread to other Caucasian peoples subjugated by armies from central Asia: Russians, Georgians, Circassians, Albanians, Armenians, all of whom found ready buyers from Venice to Sicily to Barcelona, and throughout the Muslim world. But the African slave trade as such, the black traffic, was a Muslim invention, developed by Arab traders with the enthusiastic collaboration of black African ones, institutionalized with the most unrelenting brutality centuries before the white man appeared on the African continent, and continuing long after the slave market in North America was finally crushed. Historically, this traffic between the Mediterranean and sub-Saharan Africa begins with the very civilization that Afrocentrists are so anxious to claim as black - ancient Egypt. African slavery was well in force long before that: but by the first millennium BC Pharaoh Rameses II boasts of providing the temples with more than 100,000 slaves, and indeed it is inconceivable that the monumental culture of Egypt could have been raised outside a slave economy. For the next two thousand years the basic economies of sub-Saharan Africa would be tied into the catching, use and sale of slaves. The sculptures of medieval life show slaves bound and gagged for sacrifice, and the first Portuguese explorers of Africa around 1480 found a large slave trade set up from the Congo to Benin. There were large slave plantations in the Mali empire in the 13th-14th centuries and every abuse and cruelty visited on slaves in the antebellum South, including the practice of breeding children for sale like cattle, was practised by the black rulers of those towns which the Afrocentrists now hold up as sanitized examples of high civilization, such as Timbuktu and Songhay.
Robert Hughes (Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America (American Lectures))
Mom!” I shout. “Mom! Dad!” I reach my mother and come to a stop, my feet sliding in the gravel. Gently, gently, I hug her. She’s thin and I see, no, I feel, against my cheek, that she’s suffered some terrible burn down the side of her face and over her neck. The skin is bandaged in places and shiny in others and she’s in my arms. She’s thin and fragile and she’s in my arms. My mother. My dad puts his arms around the two of us and Alex wriggles into the middle and we’re all laughing and crying. We’re in a big knot. A knot of Grieders. A cluster. A group. A family. My dad kisses the back of my head and Alex’s grin is a mile wide. I’ve never seen Alex so happy and I know I never will see him happier. He did it. He reunited us. * * * In a moment, Astrid will make her way down the drive and I will introduce my parents to my son and my (someday soon) wife. But right now I just let my mom cling to me. “My sweet boy,” she says. “I thought I lost you forever.” I hold my mother, taking care to be gentle, and I tell her I love her.
Emmy Laybourne (The Monument 14 Trilogy: Monument 14, Sky on Fire, and Savage Drift (Monument 14 Series))
Growth in moral virtue is a project of monumental proportions. “Disciplining and reforming desires” sounds so simple. But how many really succeed? The words of Our Lord come to mind here: “Narrow the way and few there are who find it” (see Mt 7:14). What we are suggesting here is that friendship is one of the most critical natural helps to walking the straight and narrow path.
John Cuddeback (True Friendship: Where Virtue Becomes Happiness)
monument. And then some dignitary or other makes a speech thanking all and sundry for a successful event
David Pearson (Murder at the Arts Festival (Galway Homicide #14))
Sarnia, completed after Ireland had spent a year living on Guernsey,14 is closely connected to the pagan origins of Guernsey’s store of prehistoric burial chambers and rock monuments, imagining the kind of rites and jamborees that might have occurred round the tumbled stones such as Le Trépied. The score for the first part, ‘Le Catioroc’, contains a passage from De Situ Orbis, a text by Roman writer Pomponius Mela dating from 50 BCE: ‘All day long, heavy silence broods, and a certain hidden terror lurks there. But at nightfall gleams the light of fires; the chorus of Ægipans [fauns] resounds on every side: the shrilling of flutes and the clash of cymbals re-echo the waste shores of the sea.’ That mini-narrative encapsulates the motion of many of Ireland’s pieces, as a calm surface is overrun by more mysterious elemental forces, beings or visions.
Rob Young (Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music)