Nor Cal Quotes

Okay, do you guys feel protected?” “I do,” Archer said. “Also, a little violated, but that’s neither here nor there.” I rolled my eyes. “You two?” “Yeah,” Cal said. “Whatever you did, I think it worked.” “Same,” Jenna added. “Awesome.” I started walking forward, the other following. “Archer, any helpful factoids about demonglass you’d like to offer up?” “Um, okay. Well, after the war in heaven, the angels who fought on the wrong side were stripped down to just their most basic level.” “Right,” I nodded. “Dad told me that. Demons are just pure dark magic, nothing more. Until they’re put in a body, obviously.” “I don’t know, there are times when you seem like you’re just pure dark-ow.” Archer broke off as I poked him in the ribs. “Anyway, the demons were forced into another dimension. What people call hell, or the Underworld, or whatever. Supposedly-and for us, hopefully-that’s where you find demonglass. Which, really, is nothing more than rock that’s been permeated with all that dark magic. Demon Kryptonite, basically.” “So we’re going into another dimension?” Jenna asked, her voice wavering a little. “Like what the Itineris does?” “That’s the idea,” Archer replied. Seeing as how the Itineris almost always left Jenna trying not to cough out her inner organs, I understood why she sounded a little freaked out. “This doesn’t feel like another dimension, though,” I said. “It just feels like-“ “A cave,” Cal said. “Yeah, a cave.” As soon as I said that, my heart started to pound. Ugh, this new claustrophobia thing was highly annoying.

Nu caut scuze. Nici reale, nici inventate, de nici un fel. Ce să fac eu cu scuzele? Şi ce e real? Ce e inventat? Trecutul e ca un nor schimbător, are o mulţime de nuanţe şi contururi, acum seamănă cu un cal alb, în galop, pe urmă ia forma unui bivol cenuşiu, după o vreme alege griurile deschise şi pare o cetate năruită, curînd devine negricios şi apropiat de o locomotivă cu aburi, mai tîrziu se întoarce la culoarea laptelui şi imită profilul unei regine. N-am îndoieli şi, din păcate, n-am nici iluzii. Trecutul e capricios şi alunecos ca un peşte. Şi, din cînd în cînd, are exact dimensiunile unei maşini Pobeda, la milimetru, cu toate detaliile de fabricaţie, de la poziţia oglinzilor laterale şi pînă la grosimea ţevii de eşapament.

Do tell the story,” says Shadow. Cal taps a finger against his cup. “It was almost as if she just appeared in my room one day, out of the blue.” “Oh! Who is she?” cries the duchess. “A lady I met in Renovia,” he answers, as Shadow’s cheeks burn. “In a castle.” “Renovian,” says the duchess with distaste. “What is she like?” “Shadow is about to answer when Cal cuts her off. He looks right at her when he speaks. “She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met. Brave, courageous, loyal. In all the kingdoms of Avantine I have never met her equal.” “And how did you propose, brother? Seeing that you had sworn off marriage and children to look after Mother’s estate,” says Shadow softly. “Ah, but she too had vowed not to marry,” Cal answers. “So we promised to be unmarried to each other, but together forever.” “What an atypical arrangement,” says Shadow, not quite meeting his eye. The duchess was fully agitated by now. “Sworn off marriage and children? How strange! What kind of engagement is this?” She takes an aggressive bite of toast. “A promise between two souls,” he says, but he only has eyes for Shadow. “A promise can be broken,” Shadow replies. “Not mine,” he says, so quietly that he’s not sure she can hear him. “Nor mine,” she says, which means that she did. They catch each other’s eye, and Cal wants nothing more than to reach across the table for her hand and to pull her to him. But they are at the Duke and Duchess of Girt’s table, and must conform to propriety.

sandy-haired, friendly, smiling, small-town attorney of Pennington, had been born in 1950 in a roach-infested Newark slum. His father had been a construction worker fully employed through World War II and Korea creating new factories, dockyards and government offices along the Jersey Shore. But with the ending of the Korean War, work had dried up. Cal was five when his mother walked out of the loveless union and left the boy to be raised by his father. The latter was a hard man, quick with his fists, the only law on many blue-collar jobs. But he was not a bad man and tried to live by the straight and narrow, and to raise his toddler son to love Old Glory, the Constitution and Joe DiMaggio. Within two years, Dexter Senior had acquired a trailer home so that he could move where the work was available. And that was how the boy was raised, moving from construction site to site, attending whichever school would take him, and then moving on. It was the age of Elvis Presley, Del Shannon, Roy Orbison and the Beatles, over from a country Cal had never heard of. It was also the age of Kennedy, the Cold War and Vietnam. His formal education was fractured to the point of near nonexistence, but he became wise in other ways: streetwise, fight-wise. Like his departed mother, he did not grow tall, topping out at five feet eight inches. Nor was he heavy and muscular like his father, but his lean frame packed fearsome stamina and his fists a killer punch. By seventeen, it looked as if his life would follow that of his father, shoveling dirt or driving a dump truck on building sites. Unless . . . In January 1968 he turned eighteen, and the Vietcong launched the Têt Offensive. He was watching TV in a bar in Camden. There was a documentary telling him about recruitment. It mentioned that if you shaped up, the Army would give you an education. The next day, he walked into the U.S. Army office in Camden and signed on. The master sergeant was bored. He spent his life listening to youths doing everything in their power to get out of going to Vietnam. “I want to volunteer,” said the youth in front of him. The master sergeant drew a form toward him, keeping eye contact like a ferret that does not want the rabbit to get away. Trying to be kindly, he suggested

Neither Wozniak nor Jobs left their regular jobs: This was strictly a low-risk venture meant for their free time.

Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a program of complete disorder. But it cannot come as a result of magical practices, nor of a natural shock, nor of a friendly understanding. Decol­ onization, as we know, is a historical process: that is to say that it cannot be understood, it cannot become in­ telligible nor clear to itself except in the exact measure that we can discern the movements which give it histori­ cal form and content

We live in an age when doubt is part of our collective spiritual condition more than in times past. But honest questioning and lack of surety are not the same as active unbelief so often warned against in scripture. As a necessary part of living on this side of the veil, doubt is neither good nor bad necessarily. While it sends some careening, for many others is sparks deeper spiritual yearnings and more mature reflection on the complexities of mortality. Doubt can therefore operate as faith's partner as much as its enemy, depending on our response to it. The quest to eradicate all doubt becomes counterproductive to God's cal for us to live by faith in a mortal existence where uncertainty is so often the norm. Once we recognize with Nephi that it is not wrong to not know all things (1 Nephi 11:17) and we acknowledge that testimonies come in different shapes and sizes, we are prepared to embrace both those within our faith and those beyond with love rather than judgement. Comprehending that faith is a process, a journey, a spectrum–choose your own metaphor–we realize that neither faith nor doubt are all-or-nothing propositions. People can (and most people do) hold both faith and doubt in their minds and hearts simultaneously. The call to belief is not a decree to deny our doubts. It is rather to "give place for a portion" of God's light—whatever portion we have received, in whatever form–to be planted and then grow within us. Desire is enough; "a particle of faith" is sufficient. God's plea is simple and direct: do not cast out the seed of faith, whatever yours looks like, by your unbelief.

Existential frustration is in itself neither pathologi- cal nor pathogenic. A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.

Our hope needs to be anchored in the will of God, because His will is a reality greater than anything it could produce in the natural. Faith in God has no limits—neither in the natural realm nor in the supernatural sphere. When hope, will and faith come together, God’s promise is fulfilled in the believer.