Portals Quotes

Even the trip throught the Portal had not disarranged Magnus's hair spikes. He tugged on one proudly. "Check it out", he said to Isabelle. "Magic?" "Hair gel. $3.99 at Ricky's.

A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

Yes, death. Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forget life, to be at peace. You can help me. You can open for me the portals of death's house, for love is always with you, and love is stronger than death is.

As she turned to concentrate on the portal, Eve tugged on Claire's shirt. "What?" "Ask him where he got the boots." "You ask." Personally, Claire wanted the vampire bunny slippers.

He looked back at her, and when she saw the look on his face, she saw his eyes at Renwick’s, when he had watched the Portal that separated him from his home shatter into a thousand irretrievable pieces. He held her gaze for a split second, then looked away from her, the muscles in his throat working.

Disneyland is like Alice stepping through the Looking Glass; to step through the portals of Disneyland will be like entering another world.

Behind all seen things lies something vaster; everything is but a path, a portal or a window opening on something other than iteself.

I fell in love with books. Some people find beauty in music, some in painting, some in landscape, but I find it in words. By beauty, I mean the feeling you have suddenly glimpsed another world, or looked into a portal that reveals a kind of magic or romance out of which the world has been constructed, a feeling there is something more than the mundane, and a reason for our plodding.

Smarmy little prig,” Will snarled, leaning father forward, as if he longed to reach through the magical portal and strangle Gabriel. “When I get him alone…” “I ought to go in with her instead,” Gabriel went on. “I can look out for her a bit more. Instead of simply looking out for myself.” “Hanging’s too good for him,” agreed Jem, who looked as if he were trying not to laugh. “Tessa knows Will,” protested Charlotte. “She trusts Will.” “I wouldn’t go that far,” muttered Tessa.

Buying a book is not about obtaining a possession, but about securing a portal.

We are stood on the spot where a vast army of legionnaires were sent through a time portal with this very device,’ Jack said holding out his arm and displaying the XXL strapped safely to his wrist.

In Britain, a cup of tea is the answer to every problem. Fallen off your bicycle? Nice cup of tea. Your house has been destroyed by a meteorite? Nice cup of tea and a biscuit. Your entire family has been eaten by a Tyrannosaurus Rex that has travelled through a space/time portal? Nice cup of tea and a piece of cake. Possibly a savoury option would be welcome here too, for example a Scotch egg or a sausage roll.

Nïx : Poach her portal. So going on a T-shirt.

The interior of our skulls contains a portal to infinity.

An environment-based education movement--at all levels of education--will help students realize that school isn't supposed to be a polite form of incarceration, but a portal to the wider world.

Claire was struggling through last summer’s diary volume when Myrnin popped in through the portal, wearing a big floppy black hat and a kind of crazy/stylish pimp coat that covered him from neck to ankles, black leather gloves, and a black and silver walking stick with a dragon’s head on it. And, on his lapel was a button that said, If you can read this, thank a teacher.

Because what was a book, if not a portal into another realm, another time, another life even.

Did you know we were leaving for Idris?" "Catarina told me she'd been summoned to make a portal. I guessed," Magnus said wryly. "I was a little surprised you hadn't called or texted to tell me you were going away." "You never answer my calls or texts," said Alec. "That hasn't stopped you before." "Everyone gives up eventually," Alec said. "Besides, Jace broke my phone." Magnus huffed a laughter. "Oh, Alexander." "What?" alec asked, honestly puzzled. "you're just--You're so--I really want to kiss you," Magnus said abruptly, and then shook his head. "See this is why I haven't been willing to see you.

There’s just something magical about a library. It’s like a portal to many different worlds.

Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written.

Grief was a hole. A portal to nothing. Grief was a walk so long Hazel forgot her own legs. It was a shock of blinding sun. A burst of remembering: sandals on pavement, a sleepy back seat, nails painted on the bathroom floor. Greif was a loneliness that felt like a planet.

He had the innate sense that something bad was just around the bend, but a hope that something incredible was waiting in the distance. It had to be. His burning love for her cursed through him until he felt so full he didn’t know whether he would fit through the portal.

If, one day, a milky portal had opened up in your bedroom and an older version of yourself had stepped out and told you what you know now, would you have listened?

No matter. Mr. Dixon will escort you to your Grandfather’s home.

Alick Rae was in the zone.

Claire was just coming down the stairs, humming and thinking about how nice it was to have things getting back to normal, and how she'd tell Shane about the January thing tonight, when Myrnin sent a message through the portal. Well, more of a rock with a note tied to it, which rolled across the floor and scared Eve into a scream before the portal snapped shut. Eve kicked the rock resentfully with her thick black boots and glared at it, then at the wall. Claire gave her a "What the hell?" kind of look. "Your boss," Eve said, and reached down to grab the rock, "needs to figure out texting. Seriously. Who does this? Is he actually from the Stone Age?

We can’t make a portal—” “We’ve got a flying boat,” Carter offered.

It's as if I've stepped through a time portal into a place where acceptance is the norm, so unreal.

Time, as Fel and Hidalgo knew, acted strangely inside the Mists. Each second was the same as the one before, each hour identical to all of the others.


Prayer is the portal that brings the power of heaven down to earth. It is kryptonite to the enemy and to all his ploys against you.

Science is the only news. When you scan a news portal or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he-said-she-said, the politics and economics the same cyclical dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness; even the technology is predictable if you know the science behind it. Human nature doesn't change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly

Come to me said the world. I was standing in my wool coat at a kind of bright portal— I can finally say long ago; it gives me considerable pleasure. Beauty the healer, the teacher— death cannot harm me more than you have harmed me, my beloved life.

I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster." -GLaDOS, Portal 2 trailer

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

Cairo. An inter-services game of cricket was in progress in the lush grounds behind him as Powell made his way through the grand portal of the Gezira Sporting Club. It was a hot and humid day and Powell was dripping with sweat. A fellow officer had given him a lift for part of the way but he had had to walk the last mile. Uniformed Egyptian attendants bowed and guided him through the lobby towards the bar, where he could see his host with a drink already in hand.

I am so ready to fly this nest

The one I felt and still feel most is lack of time. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent. But in college there is no time to commune with one's thoughts. One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think. When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures--solitude, books and imagination--outside with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find some comfort in the thought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment, but I am improvident enough to prefer present joy to hoarding riches against a rainy day.

All right, see you then. Auwaa” — peace, said King Kaskae.

As he was halfway through the portal, pushing forward as though trying to escape a rushing river, he screamed, “Remember, Lindon! Remember to visit a barber! A barber, Lindon! Your hair lacks volume and defin—

Perhaps all women are part faerie, for what woman can deny her faerie blood when the portals to her own land are open; when the full moon sings its insistent song; when sorrow and passion and rage pulse through her body at moon times. This is why women are the chosen ones of Faerie, pat of the vibrant, fluid, emotional soul of the world…

Magnus held up a warning finger. "Don't overstep yourself, biscuit," he said, and moved past them, disappearing into the crowd around the portal. "Biscuit?" said Simon. "Believe it or not, he's called me that before," Clary said.

Books are not really just books at all, but doorways. They are portals into places I've never been and people I'll never be.

All right, I've been thinking, when life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade! Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons! What am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I'm the man whose gonna burn your house down - with the lemons!

Guard the portals of your mind.

Where am I going, sir?” Fear shot through his stomach. He had nowhere else to go.

Here in my heart, my happiness, my house. Here inside the lighted window is my love, my hope, my life. Peace is my companion on the pathway winding to the threshold. Inside this portal dwells new strength in the security, serenity, and radiance of those I love above life itself. Here two will build new dreams--dreams that tomorrow will come true. The world over, these are the thoughts at eventide when footsteps turn ever homeward. In the haven of the hearthside is rest and peace and comfort.

Libraries may embody our notion of permanence, but their patrons are always in flux. In truth, a library is as much a portal as it is a place—it is a transit point, a passage.

That night, cold and alone, Joseph had thought he'd found a portal into the past. But he'd been wrong. It was a vision of the future.

Because what you give your attention to is the person you become. Put another way: the mind is the portal to the soul, and what you fill your mind with will shape the trajectory of your character. In the end, your life is no more than the sum of what you gave your attention to.

The people who lived in the portal were often compared to those legendary experiment rats who kept hitting a button over and over to get a pellet. But at least the rats were getting a pellet, or the hope of a pellet, or the memory of a pellet. When we hit the button, all we were getting was to be more of a rat.

If someone says there's a portal to hell under some rocks, you bet your ass I'm going to move them.

you are a soul. a world. a portal. a spirit. you are never alone. you are organs and blood and flesh and muscle. a colony of miracles weaving into each other.

He takes two steps back. Closer to the portal. I can't stop myself. "Ben," I call. And I'm not even embarrassed about how helpless my voice sounds. Don't go. "I'll come back for you." He takes another step back. "I promise." Stay. "Janelle Tenner," he says. "I will always fucking love you." And then he takes one more step back. Into the portal. And the blackness swallows him whole.

Use your new distance vision; we are very high up, it is difficult for anyone to see us,” said Sirmiq to Alick.

The old man’s eyes sparked. “Elan of Ember, you I know, take me to your King.” He paused. “Now!” The old man spoke like a crack of thunder and red lightning flashed from his open hand. The portal gate beside Elan flashed with fire and disappeared. Without thought, Elan’s sword flew to his hand as he made towards the traveller. But again the red fire flashed. The sword glowed and like the gate, it was consumed by the fire. Elan collapsed, clutching the burnt fragments of his sword in his injured hand. “Take him to the King,” he grunted in pain. The guards did so without delay.

I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, or how lonely the room which it adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with it all the cares of the outer world, plunge back into the soothing company of the great dead, and then you are through the magic portal into that fair land whither worry and vexation can follow you no more. You have left all that is vulgar and all that is sordid behind you. There stand your noble, silent comrades, waiting in their ranks. Pass your eye down their files. Choose your man. And then you have but to hold up your hand to him and away you go together into dreamland

Sadie walked under the gates, one by one by one. At first, she felt nothing, but as she kept moving ahead, she began to feel an opening and a new spaciousness in her chest. She realized what a gate was: it was an indication that you had left one space and were entering another. She walked through another gate. It occurred to Sadie: She had thought after Ichigo that she would never fail again. She had thought she arrived. But life was always arriving. There was always another gate to pass through. (Until, of course, there wasn't.) She walked through another gate. What was a gate, anyway? A doorway, she thought. A portal. The possibility of a different world. The possibility that you might walk through the door and reinvent yourself as something better than you had been before. By the time she reached the end of the torii gate pathway, she felt resolved. Both Sides had failed, but it didn't have to be the end. The game was one in a long line of spaces between gates.

Poetry is not communication with angels or with the "subconscious." It is communication with the guts, genitals, and five portals of sense. Nothing more.

The act of creation is an attempt to enter a mysterious realm. A longing to transcend. What we create allows us to share glimpses of an inner landscape, one that is beyond our understanding. Art is our portal to the unseen world.

Recent studies have shown that approximately 40% of authors are manic depressive. The rest of us just drink.

The night was silent and full of ghostly beauty, so strange since it was as bright as day.

No existen las fronteras para aquellos que se atreven a mirar más allá

To Alick, Shaylee looked like an exotic angel.

the Garden of Death" "Yes, death. Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forget life, to be at peace. You can help me. You can open for me the portals of death's house, for love is always with you, and love is stronger than death is.

Science isn't about WHY, it's about WHY NOT!

And here, over the portals of my fort, I shall cut in the stone the word which is to be my beacon and my banner. The word which will not die should we all perish in battle. The word which can never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory. The sacred word: EGO

What was a gate anyway? A doorway, she thought. A portal. The possibility of a different world. The possibility that you might walk through the door and reinvent yourself as something better than you had been before.

I began my studies with eagerness. Before me I saw a new world opening in beauty and light, and I felt within me the capacity to know all things. In the wonderland of Mind I should be as free as another [with sight and hearing]. Its people, scenery, manners, joys, and tragedies should be living tangible interpreters of the real world. The lecture halls seemed filled with the spirit of the great and wise, and I thought the professors were the embodiment of wisdom... But I soon discovered that college was not quite the romantic lyceum I had imagined. Many of the dreams that had delighted my young inexperience became beautifully less and "faded into the light of common day." Gradually I began to find that there were disadvantages in going to college. The one I felt and still feel most is lack of time. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent. But in college there is no time to commune with one's thoughts. One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think. When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures – solitude, books and imagination – outside with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find some comfort in the thought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment, but I am improvident enough to prefer present joy to hoarding riches against a rainy day.

Welcome back to Faeryland, your Majesty," said the elder man.

We have eyelids but not earlids, for the ears are the portals of learning, and Nature wanted to keep them wide open.

Because what you give your attention to is the person you become. Put another way: the mind is the portal to the soul, and what you fill your mind with will shape the trajectory of your character. In the end, your life is no more than the sum of what you gave your attention to. That bodes well for those apprentices of Jesus who give the bulk of their attention to him and to all that is good, beautiful, and true in his world. But not for those who give their attention to the 24-7 news cycle of outrage and anxiety and emotion-charged drama or the nonstop feed of celebrity gossip, titillation, and cultural drivel. (As if we “give” it in the first place; much of it is stolen by a clever algorithm out to monetize our precious attention.) But again: we become what we give our attention to, for better or worse.

Alec: So you met jace. What did you think? Kit: Of Jace? Alec: Just making small talk. Kit: Jace isn't much like you. Alec: That's an understatement. But it doesn't matter. Parabatai don't need to be like each other. They just need to complement each other. To work well together. Kit: And you and Jace complement each other? Alec: I remember when I met him. He walked out of a Portal from Idiris. He was skinny and he had bruises and he had these big eyes. He was arrogant, too. He and Isabelle used to fight ... But to me everything aobut him said "Love me, because nobody else has". It was all over him, like fingerprints.

Pain is a portal to transformation, It does not knock politely.

Prague. Praha. The name actually meant “threshold”. Pollina had said the city was a portal between the life of the good and … the other. A city of dark magic, Alessandro had called it.

Beauty is momentary in the mind -- The fitful tracing of a portal; But in the flesh it is immortal. The body dies; the body's beauty lives. So evenings die, in their green going, A wave, interminably flowing.

The Lightholders are holy and pure-spirited beings

Sing to your mountains because as you sing, they are being cast into the sea.As you sing, the portals of heaven are opening.

The heights of the spirit can only be climbed by passing through the portals of humility. You can only acquire right knowledge when you have learnt to esteem it. Man has certainly the right to turn his eyes to the light, but he must first acquire this right.

Magnus invented your Portals, not that he receives any credit for it from Shadowhunters. He is one of the most powerful warlocks in the world, and so tenderhearted he rushes to the aid of vicious killers. He is the best the Downworld has to offer.

The portal to pain is caring too deeply about anyone.

A psychic reading is not just about career opportunities, good fortune or meeting tall, dark strangers. It is a sacred portal to manifesting your true destiny.

Books are like Tarot decks. They provide answers and guidance but more importantly, they are doorways and portals to the otherworld and the imagination. They leave their imprint and keep whispering to us long after we close the pages or shuffle the deck.

Softly the breezes from the forest came, Softly they blew aside the taper's flame; Clear was the song from Philomel's far bower; Grateful the incense from the lime-tree flower; Mysterious, wild, the far-heard trumpet's tone; Lovely the moon in ether, all alone: Sweet too, the converse of these happy mortals, As that of busy spirits when the portals Are closing in the west; or that soft humming We hear around when Hesperus is coming. Sweet be their sleep.

Pictures form and dissolve in my head: we are walking in a city you fled, came back to and come back to still which I saw once through winter frost years back, before I knew you, before I knew myself. We are walking streets you have by heart from childhood streets you have graven and erased in dreams: scrolled portals, trees, nineteenth century statues. We are holding hands so I can see everything as you see it I follow you into your dreams your past, the places none of us can explain to anyone.

The music stops as they walk out of the forest toward the smooth extra-terrestrial spacecraft glistening in the sun on the far side of the meadow. To Atom, the ship feels like a time machine. Steven and Sylvia watch them with deadpan stares as the three astronauts walk with the spectacle of eclectic, colorful characters on feathered horseback following. A breeze picks up and Atom glances back to see stoic faces with vibrant robes and dresses flowing in the wind.

The feminine are the portals to forgotten knowledge. To ancient energy, medicine, creation and recalibrating the soul back to it's original source self. Before being human got in the way.

The colors were brighter, the air was fresher, and the flowers more beautiful than any that the teens had ever seen.

Time machines, magic portals, transporters, worm holes, flying carpets, relocation charms—such things do exist. They're called books.

For double are the portals of flickering dreams. One set is made of horn, the other of ivory. And as for those that come through the sawn ivory, They deceive, carrying words that will not be fulfilled; But those that pass on outside through the polished horn Do fulfill the truth whenever any mortal sees them.

Nefret had always had an uncanny ability to read his thoughts. 'Did she cry?' she asked sweetly. 'And then you kissed her? You shouldn't have done that. I'm sure you meant well, but kissing someone out of pity is always a mistake.

-No me importa lo que digan por ahi, Cali -replicó Tabit -. Todos tenemos un pasado; lo que verdaderamente cuenta es lo que somos ahora, y lo que queremos ser en el futuro. Lo que hayas hecho antes... es asunto tuyo; es tu vida y no tengo derecho a entrometerme en ella.

I pull the veil aside and step through its portals dreams rush to meet me.

Cuando el portal se activa,es que las coordenadas no son incorrectas

People don't believe me when I tell them I'm a magician who makes portals to other worlds. So I tell them I'm a writer instead.

Celaena’s scream was still echoing through the passageway as Chaol leapt off the stairs and hurtled through the misty portal after Fleetfoot.

Productivity should not look like exhaustion. The concept of laziness is a tool of the oppressor. A large part of your unraveling from capitalism will include becoming less attached to the idea of productivity and more committed to the idea of rest as a portal to just be.

Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable, and—as I will show—unsuitable for children and adolescents.

Every day we were seeing new evidence that suggested it was the portal that had allowed the dictator to rise to power. This was humiliating. It would be like discovering that the Vietnam War was secretly caused by ham radios, or that Napoleon was operating exclusively on the advice of a parrot named Brian.

Locked inside the black vault of our skulls, stuck forever in the solitude of our own hallucinated universe, story is a portal, a hallucination within the hallucination, the closest we'll ever really come to escape.

This is your fault. I'm going to kill you. And all the cake is gone. You don't even care, do you?

Did she go postal?” Russell grins at him, “You know, for pullin’ her portal on the island and sendin’ her to your safe house before the fight?” “Define postal?” Zephyr counters, his brows pulling together further. “Insanely angry,” Russell says. “Yes,” Zephyr nods his head adamantly, pointing at him. “She has not called me ‘sweetie’ since.” “Oooo,” Russell says, ducking his head and wrinkling his nose. “Doghouse.

Pause, breathe, and lift, undefined, what is possible. Let the feeling of celebration come upon you, even if you do not comprehend cerebral reasons to justify it. For from that center, it will generate its own, able to carry you, until the original ones manifest, from that very portal you chose to fashion, unrestricted.

You didn't have to tie us up!" Shay shrugged the frayed ropes off. "Yes, we did!" Adne's hands were on her hips. "You would have torn right through that portal to get to her. You were both acting like morons." "She's right," Ren said. "They probably did have to tie us up." Shay grinned.

Some individuals are like portals, the knowing of them makes the world a far vaster place. In Indigo’s presence my world widened. Brightened. There was something about her that made the eye linger. It wasn’t her beauty; it was the way she seemed superimposed on the room. A mirage that might vanish if I looked away.

The world we live in might not be free from pain, but you have the ability to create for yourself a world free from struggle.

Zee replies grimly, 'I understand that problem...Buns is a force of nature.' 'She is,' I say with a reluctant smile, 'you're kind of screwed, dude. She's definitely got her own ideas.' Zee grins too. 'Do not laugh too hard, playa, yours is a Throne..karma...' he says, noddin' his head before grimacin' and addin', 'ouch'. My smile broadens involuntarily. 'Zee, when did you become funny?' I ask. 'It is difficult to be funny in Human,' he says, before lookin' at his watch and than graspin' the cover of the portal computer. 'Learn my language and you will think I am hysterical.

Cali pensaba que las personas eran como los portales: una ventana abierta a lugares lejanos. Por eso, cuanto más se diferenciaban de ella, tanto más le intrigaban e interesaban. Por todo lo que podían contarle. Por lo mucho que podían ampliar su visión del mundo.

Books have given me a magic portal to connect with people of the past and the present. I know I shall never feel lonely or powerless again.

Remember that drumming opens portals to the spirit world, draws spirit in, and opens you up to receive it.

A good book is a portal that will take you anywhere in the world.

Vulnerability is the portal to feeling. Feeling is the portal to strength.

I pull away from her. “I can’t believe you blew up a portal to the Otherworld.” “Bitch, that’s just called making an entrance.

the mind is the portal to the soul, and what you fill your mind with will shape the trajectory of your character.

All libraries contained magic. Even libraries that didn’t specialize in such things. Because what was a book, if not a portal into another realm, another time, another life even.

Here is the door of my mom's house, well-remembered childhood portal. Here is the yard, and a set of wires that runs from the house to a wooden pole, and some fat birds sitting together on the wires, five of them lined up like beads on an abacus.

You could’ve sent a message to a letter station at one of the portal gates.” “What should I have written? Dear Harlot, rumor has it that you are very happy with your new life in Rothkalina with your beloved brother Omort. I hear that you have all the gold you could ever want, and I know how much you always enjoyed a good blood orgy. Well done, Melanthe! By the way, would you like to meet for a rational discussion about our future?” “Well. I did have a lot of gold.” Do not strangle her!

In order to survive as a race, as a planet, you must learn to share light. There is no other way.

A single decision can collide and cascade until an uncontrollable avalanche sweeps over the world in profound ways. A convergence.

Words, I've come to learn, are pulleys through time. Portals into other minds. Without words, what remains? Indecipherable customs. Strange rites. Blighted hearts. Without words, we're history's orphans. Our lives and thoughts erased

When she set the portal down, the Thread tugged her back toward it. She could not help following it. This might be the one that connected everything, that would knit her to an indestructible coherence.

Claire was just coming down the stairs, humming and thinking about how nice it was to have things getting back to normal, and how she'd tell Shane about the January thing tonight, when Myrnin sent a message through the portal--well, more of a rock with a note tied to it, which rolled across the floor and scared Eve into a scream before the portal snapped shut. Eve kicked the rock resentfully with her thick black boots and glared at it, then at the wall. Claire, who was coming down the steps, gave her a "What the hell?" kind of look. "Your boss," Eve said, and reached down the grab the rock, "needs to figure out texting. Seriously. Who does this? Is he actually from the Stone Age? And you need to figure out how to put something here that we can lock. What if this thing opens when I'm naked?" "Why would you be naked down here?" "Well--" Eve didn't have an answer for that one. She handed over the rock. "Okay, bad example. But I don't like it that he can just drop in any damn time he wants. Or throw rocks at us.

Would knowing have made you dumber or smarter? If, one day, a milky portal had opened up in your bedroom and an older version of yourself had stepped out and told you what you know now, would you have listened?

Survival is not a skill as much as an instinct… sometimes a foolish action no one would dare to take.

If no fifth dimension exists, then no deity exists… from a recurring overlap of space-time.

It occurred to me that I’d packed at least nine or ten books, but not a single pair of socks.

Armaeus is presently able to enter Hell bodily, as are you. Any properly equipped mortal may enter a portal at will. Once you’re inside, however, getting out is trickier.” I frowned. “So it’s like an IKEA store?” “In

Well, you're going to have to put your arms around me. Then hold on really tight. You may want to close your eyes too." "All that is for transporting?" "Was there something else you'd prefer to be doing?" Fortunately, Dad intervened before I could respond to his comment. "Really, Chase? Still in the room here. That's my daughter you're flirting with. You really want to go there?

When we hear the ancient bells growling on a Sunday morning we ask ourselves: Is it really possible! This, for a jew, crucified two thousand years ago, who said he was God's son? The proof of such a claim is lacking. Certainly the Christian religion is an antiquity projected into our times from remote prehistory; and the fact that the claim is believed - whereas one is otherwise so strict in examining pretensions - is perhaps the most ancient piece of this heritage. A god who begets children with a mortal woman; a sage who bids men work no more, have no more courts, but look for the signs of the impending end of the world; a justice that accepts the innocent as a vicarious sacrifice; someone who orders his disciples to drink his blood; prayers for miraculous interventions; sins perpetrated against a god, atoned for by a god; fear of a beyond to which death is the portal; the form of the cross as a symbol in a time that no longer knows the function and ignominy of the cross -- how ghoulishly all this touches us, as if from the tomb of a primeval past! Can one believe that such things are still believed?

I could hear Dean, blissful and blabbering and frantically rocking. Only a guy who's spent five years in jail can go to such maniacal helpless extremes; beseeching at the portals of the soft source, mad with a completely phsycial realization of the origins of life-bliss; blindly seeking to return the way he came

You know how your eyes can deceive you at times--how a group of shapes and shadows can take on a certain form and then shift into another? It wasn't really like that; there was no physical change in him, he was exactly the same as he'd always been. I knew every line of his long body and every curl on his disheveled black head. I'd just never seen him before. you know what I'm trying to say, don't you? The change is in the heart.

It was simple as an incision. To sever the link between their minds—and to sever another part of her. To tie off the gift that allowed her to jump between places. To open those portals. World-walker no longer, he said as his raw magic shifted her own. Changed its very essence. I suggest you invest in a good pair of shoes. Then he let go of Maeve’s mind.

When a man destroys a relationship to feed an obsession, he cuts out his own heart to watch it bleed.

Science seeks to know… A man of faith seeks to know the Creator… Both seek the same unknowable dimension.

I have come to the conclusion that human beings are born with an innate capacity to triumph over trauma. I believe not only that trauma is curable, but that the healing process can be a catalyst for profound awakening—a portal opening to emotional and genuine spiritual transformation. I have little doubt that as individuals, families, communities, and even nations, we have the capacity to learn how to heal and prevent much of the damage done by trauma. In so doing, we will significantly increase our ability to achieve both our individual and collective dreams.

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal - every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open - this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude. Where is the mother who would willingly forget the infant that perished like a blossom from her arms, though every recollection is a pang? Where is the child that would willingly forget the most tender of parents, though to remember be but to lament? Who, even in the hour of agony, would forget the friend over whom he mourns? Who, even when the tomb is closing upon the remains of her he most loved, when he feels his heart, as it were, crushed in the closing of its portal, would accept of consolation that must be bought by forgetfulness? No, the love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If it has its woes, it has likewise its delights; and when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection, when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved are softened away in pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness - who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud over the bright hour of gaiety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet who would exchange it even for the song of pleasure, or the burst of revelry? No, there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song. There is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living. Oh, the grave! The grave! It buries every error - covers every defect - extinguishes every resentment! From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections.

Those seraphim who escaped into the neighbor world Eretz managed to hold the portal closed, and they held it to this day, pouring their strength into shoring up their sky to keep the darkness at bay. A bold young queen in that distant world was even now training a legion of angels and chimaera to battle the darkness and hopefully destroy it. But that’s another story.

He said that those who have endured some misfortune will always be set apart but that it is just that misfortune which is their gift and which is their strength and that they must make their way back into the common enterprise of man for without they do so it cannot go forward and they themselves will wither in bitterness. He said these things to me with great earnestness and great gentleness and in the light from the portal I could see that he was crying and I knew that it was my soul he wept for. I had never been esteemed in this way. To have a man place himself in such a position. I did not know what to say. That night I thought long and not without despair about what must become of me. I wanted very much to be a person of value and I had to ask myself how this could be possible if there were not something like a soul or like a spirit that is in the life of a person and which could endure any misfortune or disfigurement and yet be no less for it. If one were to be a person of value that value could not be a condition subject to the hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what. Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I’d always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily. I knew that courage came with less struggle for some than for others but I believed that anyone who desired it could have it. That the desire was the thing itself. The thing itself. I could think of nothing else of which that was true.

Your Greatest Power - The things that you keep silently telling yourself are your most important conversations. Whatever you habitually dwell on in your mind, you will become, express, or experience. Your subconscious mind will be your best friend or your worst enemy. Everything depends on the way you train it and the use you make of it. ... your freedom to think, choose, reason, and decide for yourself. It shapes your destiny and determines the attraction and repulsion in your life. Guard its portals well. It is your hope of heaven.

Don't sound so surprised. I have sensible moments, you know.

What a nice neat deep trench,' I said. 'Er - should Nefret be down in it?' 'She thought she saw a skull,' Ramses said. 'You know how she is about bones.

We are simultaneously of this world and of another… a quantum entanglement with a higher dimension

The things she wanted the baby to know seemed small, so small. How it felt to go to a grocery store on vacation; to wake at three a.m. and run your whole life through your fingertips; first library card; new lipstick; a toe going numb for two months because you wore borrowed shoes to a friend’s wedding; Thursday; October; “She’s Like the Wind” in a dentist’s office; driver’s license picture where you look like a killer; getting your bathing suit back on after you go to the bathroom; touching a cymbal for sound and then touching it again for silence; playing house in the refrigerator box; letting a match burn down to the fingerprints; one hand in the Scrabble bag and then I I I O U E A; eyes racing to the end of Villette (skip the parts about the crétin, sweetheart); hamburger wrappers on a road trip; the twist of a heavy red apple in an orchard; word on the tip of the tongue; the portal, but just for a minute.

Geologists on the whole are inconsistent drivers. When a roadcut presents itself, they tend to lurch and weave. To them, the roadcut is a portal, a fragment of a regional story, a proscenium arch that leads their imaginations into the earth and through the surrounding terrane.

Hamlet's Cat's Soliloquy "To go outside, and there perchance to stay Or to remain within: that is the question: Whether 'tis better for a cat to suffer The cuffs and buffets of inclement weather That Nature rains on those who roam abroad, Or take a nap upon a scrap of carpet, And so by dozing melt the solid hours That clog the clock's bright gears with sullen time And stall the dinner bell. To sit, to stare Outdoors, and by a stare to seem to state A wish to venture forth without delay, Then when the portal's opened up, to stand As if transfixed by doubt. To prowl; to sleep; To choose not knowing when we may once more Our readmittance gain: aye, there's the hairball; For if a paw were shaped to turn a knob, Or work a lock or slip a window-catch, And going out and coming in were made As simple as the breaking of a bowl, What cat would bear the houselhold's petty plagues, The cook's well-practiced kicks, the butler's broom, The infant's careless pokes, the tickled ears, The trampled tail, and all the daily shocks That fur is heir to, when, of his own will, He might his exodus or entrance make With a mere mitten? Who would spaniels fear, Or strays trespassing from a neighbor's yard, But that the dread of our unheeded cries And scraches at a barricaded door No claw can open up, dispels our nerve And makes us rather bear our humans' faults Than run away to unguessed miseries? Thus caution doth make house cats of us all; And thus the bristling hair of resolution Is softened up with the pale brush of thought, And since our choices hinge on weighty things, We pause upon the threshold of decision.

Ask yourself if you are in this for the long run--if it's only your weight you want to change or if you are willing to use your eating patterns as a portal to the inner universe. And if the answer is the latter, then there is no end to what you can learn, be, understand, become.

What about the online linked-speech at nine other news portals?” “Cancel all.” “You canceled everything in the morning. You were home all day, doing nothing,” Pico says. “Doing nothing is hard,” Yuan says calmly as if his voice is another part of nature and not noise. “I don’t speak philosophy. I’m not in my full version.

Books are portals for the imagination, whether one is reading or writing, and unless one is keeping a private journal, writing something that no one is likely to read is like trying to have a conversation when you’re all alone. Readers extend and enhance the writer’s created work, and they deepen the colors of it with their own imagination and life experiences. In a sense, there’s a revision every time one's words are read by someone else, just as surely as there is whenever the writer edits. Nothing is finished or completely dead until both sides quit and it’s no longer a part of anyone’s thoughts. So it seems almost natural that a lifelong avid reader occasionally wants to construct a mindscape from scratch after wandering happily in those constructed by others. If writing is a collaborative communication between author and reader, then surely there’s a time and a place other than writing reviews for readers to 'speak' in the human literary conversation.

I was thinking about what a magical portal this lobby was when the heavy glass door opened as if swept by wind and a familiar figure in a black and scarlet cape entered. It was Salvador Dali. He looked around the lobby nervously, and then, seeing my crow, smiled. He placed his elegant, bony hand atop my head and said: "You are like a crow, a gothic crow.

He pulled out a book here and there, but what kept catching his attention were the diagonal tunnels of sunlight rolling in through the dormer windows. All around him dust motes rose and fell, shimmering, quivering in those shafts of roiling light. He found several shelves full of old editions of classical writers and began vaguely browsing, hoping to find a cheap edition of Virgil's Aeneid, which he had only ever read in a borrowed copy. It wasn't really the great poem of antiquity that Dorrigo Evans wanted though, but the aura he felt around such books--an aura that both radiated outwards and took him inwards to another world that said to him that he was not alone. And this sense, this feeling of communion, would at moments overwhelm him. At such times he had the sensation that there was only one book in the universe, and that all books were simply portals into this greater ongoing work--an inexhaustible, beautiful world that was not imaginary but the world as it truly was, a book without beginning or end.

As the Egyptians say, Ramses can hear a whisper across the Nile.

Una de las ventajas de ser un pez pequeño es que nunca se esperan que vayas a devolver el mordisco.

How many toes did I have when we left London, does anyone remember?" Jim asked, examining its feet. "I think one is missing." "Stop fussing about a missing toe. We have more important things to focus on, like finding Drake and saving him from whatever trouble he’s in," I answered, straightening my clothing and zipping up my heavy parka. "Oh, man, I am missing one! I know I had four on this foot! What sort of place was that company you used, demon-haters or something?" "Budget Teleporters is a perfectly good company. Didn’t you listen to their warning about keeping your arms and legs in the portal at all times?

And.. are you willing to go all the way? To understand that food is only a stand-in for love and possibility and spirit? Because if you aren't, you will get caught up in gaining and losing weight for the rest of your life. But if you are willing, then the portal to what you say you want is truly on your plate.

When the great ship containing the hopes and aspirations of the world, when the great ship freighted with mankind goes down in the night of death, chaos and disaster, I am willing to go down with the ship. I will not be guilty of the ineffable meanness of paddling away in some orthodox canoe. I will go down with the ship, with those who love me, and with those whom I have loved. If there is a God who will damn his children forever, I would rather go to hell than to go to heaven and keep the society of such an infamous tyrant. I make my choice now. I despise that doctrine. It has covered the cheeks of this world with tears. It has polluted the hearts of children, and poisoned the imaginations of men. It has been a constant pain, a perpetual terror to every good man and woman and child. It has filled the good with horror and with fear; but it has had no effect upon the infamous and base. It has wrung the hearts of the tender; it has furrowed the cheeks of the good. This doctrine never should be preached again. What right have you, sir, Mr. clergyman, you, minister of the gospel, to stand at the portals of the tomb, at the vestibule of eternity, and fill the future with horror and with fear? I do not believe this doctrine: neither do you. If you did, you could not sleep one moment. Any man who believes it, and has within his breast a decent, throbbing heart, will go insane. A man who believes that doctrine and does not go insane has the heart of a snake and the conscience of a hyena.

Baclli swarm within my portals Such as ne'r conceived by mortals, But, bred by scientists, Wise and hoary in some Olympian laboratory. Bacteria as large as mice With feet of fire and heads of ice, Who never interrupt for slumber Their stomping, elephantine rumba. ( From the poem--- " The Common Cold " )

Finding it so directly on the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers and present it to the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom, that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.

Things changed when my phone outsmarted me. Once Facebook had a permanent place in my pocket, it became a permanent portal—able to transport me away from my family. Even if we were physically in the same room, I wasn’t necessarily there with them. Facebook was no longer simply a naptime vacation but an all-day form of escapism.

Perhaps all women are part faerie, for what woman can deny her faerie blood when the portals to her own land are open; when the full moon sings its insistent song; when sorrow and passion and rage pulse through her body at moon times. This is why women are the chosen ones of Faerie, part of the vibrant, fluid, emotional soul of the world…

What do we do with those that can be accessed and dismissed by a channel changer, that we love no less than a nineteenth-century poet or an admired stranger or a character from the pen of Emily Brontë? What do we do when one of them commingles with our own sense of self, only to be transferred into a finite space within an on-demand portal?

While some dismiss the Bible as a dusty old book, I view its pages as portals to adventure. Not only is the book chock-full of clever plots and compelling stories, but it’s laced with historical insights and literary beauty. When I open the Scripture, I imagine myself exploring an ancient kingdom . . . With every encounter, I learn something new about their life journeys and am reminded that the Bible is more than a record of the human quest for God: it’s the revelation of God’s quest for us.” - Scouting the Divine

Thou, -- dost thou pray?” cried Giovanni, still with the same fiendish scorn. “Thy very prayers, as they come from thy lips, taint the atmosphere with death. Yes, yes; let us pray! Let us to church and dip our fingers in the holy water at the portal! They that come after us will perish as by a pestilence! Let us sign crosses in the air! It will be scattering curses abroad in the likeness of holy symbols!

They wept for humanity, those two, not for themselves. They could not bear that this should be the end. Ere silence was completed their hearts were opened, and they knew what had been important on the earth. Man, the flower of all flesh, the noblest of all creatures visible, man who had once made god in his image, and had mirrored his strength on the constellations, beautiful naked man was dying, strangled in the garments that he had woven. Century after century had he toiled, and here was his reward. Truly the garment had seemed heavenly at first, shot with colours of culture, sewn with the threads of self-denial. And heavenly it had been so long as man could shed it at will and live by the essence that is his soul, and the essence, equally divine, that is his body. The sin against the body - it was for that they wept in chief; the centuries of wrong against the muscles and the nerves, and those five portals by which we can alone apprehend - glozing it over with talk of evolution, until the body was white pap, the home of ideas as colourless, last sloshy stirrings of a spirit that had grasped the stars.

If she hasn't learned to appreciate my sterling character and spectacular good looks by this time, it's not likely she will.

Gentlemen, the world rapidly approaches a convergence point… the very future of civilization hangs in the balance.

I'd ask you to think outside the box on this, but it's obvious your box is broken. And has schizophrenia.

When something of hers sparked and spread in the portal, it blazed away the morning and afternoon, it blazed like the new California, which we had come to accept as being always on fire. She ran back and forth in the flames, not eating or drinking, emitting a high-pitched sound most humans couldn’t hear. After a while her husband might burst through that wall of swimming red to rescue her, but she would twist away and kick him in the nuts, screaming, “My whole life is in there!” as the day she was standing on broke away and fell into the sea.

They are watching for magic, so avoid traveling by Portal whenever possible,” Tessa said. “You’re using a Portal right now,” said Magnus, amused. “Always ‘do as I say and not as I do,’ I see. Will you be safe?” Tessa was more than a century old, but she was so much younger than Magnus, and he had known her almost her whole life. He had never stopped feeling protective of her.

Nosotros somos los culpables de esta destrucción, los que no hablamos su lengua ni sabemos estar en silencio. Los que no llegamos en barco, Los que ensuciamos de polvo sus portales, los que rompemos sus alambradas. Los que venimos a quitarles el trabajo, los que aspiramos a limpiar su mierda, los que anhelamos trabajar a deshoras. los que llenamos de olor a comida sus calles tan limpias, los que les trajimos violencia que no conocían, los que transportamos sus remedios, los que merecemos ser amarrados del cuello y los pies; nosotros, a los que no nos importa morir por ustedes, ¿cómo podía ser de otro modo? Los que quién sabe qué aguardamos. Nosotros los oscuros, los chaparros, los grasientos, los mustios, los obesos, los anémicos. Nosotros, los bárbaros.

Alright, I've been thinking. When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade - make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons, what am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager. Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons. Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons. I'm going to to get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!

She knew that this silent, motionless portal opened into the street; if the sidelights had not been filled with green paper, she might have looked out on the little brown stoop and the well-worn brick pavement. But she had no wish to look out, for this would have interfered with her theory that there was a strange, unseen place on the other side--a place which became, to the child’s imagination, according to its different moods, a region of delight or terror.

Y para eso había escogido a Mónica entre todas las mujeres, para morir amando, y por eso era incapaz de verla, de entrar en su portal, de besarla, de acostarse con ella, de llevarla a una fiesta cogida de la mano, porque lo contrario no es morir amando, lo contrario es amar como ama todo el mundo, entrar, besar, follar, mentir. ¡Ni siquiera lo llaman amor!, pensó en voz alta. ¡Lo llaman relaciones! ¡Pues bien, que se relacionen entre ellos y me dejen a mí en paz!

They banged doors, they shouted Trick or Treat and their brown paper bags began to fill with incredible sweets. They galloped with their teeth glued shut with pink gum. They ran with red wax lips bedazzling their faces. But all the people who met them at doors looked like candy factory duplicates of their own mothers and fathers. It was like never leaving home. Too much kindness flashed from every window and every portal. What they wanted was to hear dragons belch in basements and banged castle doors.

Death is like giving birth. Birth can be painful. Sometimes women die from giving birth. However, when the baby is born, all that pain (that was endured) vanishes in an instant. Love for that tiny baby makes one forget the pain, the fear. And as I’ve said before, love between mother and child is the highest experience, the closest to divine love. You might wonder about the parallel I’m making between birth and death. But I say to you, the fear and pain accompanying an awful death is over quickly. Beyond that portal one is suddenly in the light, in oneness and bliss…Just as a woman heals rapidly after childbirth and then is able to fall in love with her baby, those who pass over also are able to fall in love with a new life."-Kuan Yin (From "Oracle of Compassion: the Living Word of Kuan Yin

If you can try to nap where someone's sitting, Although there is another empty chair, Then rub against his ankle without quitting Until he rises from your favorite lair; If you can whine and whimper by a portal Until the bolted door is opened wide, Then howl as if you've got a wound that's mortal Until he comes and lets you back inside; If you can give a guest a nasty spiking, But purr when you are petted by a thief; If you can find the food not to your liking Because they put some cheese in with the beef; If you can leave no proffered hand unbitten, And pay no heed to any rule or ban, then all will say you are a Cat, my kitten. And -- which is more -- you'll make a fool of Man!

Ash!” I called, squinting through the rain and darkness, through the glow of the streetlamps that made it impossible to see more than a few feet. “Ash, I’m here! Where are you?” “You’ll wake everyone up if you keep shouting like that.” I whirled around. He stood where the portal had been, hands in his pockets, the rain drumming his shoulders and making his hair run into his eyes. Lamplight fell around him, shining off his slick coat, surrounding him with a faint nimbus of light. But to me, he’d never looked so real. “You came after me,” he murmured, sounding awed, incredulous, and relieved at the same time. I walked up to him, smiling through my tears. “You didn’t think I’d let you go off alone, did you?” “I was hoping.” Ash stepped forward and hugged me, pulling me close with desperate relief. I slid my arms beneath his coat and held him tight, closing my eyes. The rain pounded us, and a lone car passed us on the road, spraying us with gutter water, but I felt no urge to move. As long as Ash held me, I could stay here forever.

In the secret places of her thymus gland Louise is making too much of herself. Her faithful biology depends on regulation but the white T-cells have turned bandit. They don't obey the rules. They are swarming into the bloodstream, overturning the quiet order of spleen and intestine. In the lymph nodes they are swelling with pride. It used to be their job to keep her body safe from enemies on the outside. They were her immunity, her certainty against infection. Now they are the enemies on the inside. The security forces have rebelled. Louise is the victim of a coup. Will you let me crawl inside you, stand guard over you, trap them as they come at you? Why can't I dam their blind tide that filthies your blood? Why are there no lock gates on the portal vein? The inside of your body is innocent, nothing has taught it fear. Your artery canals trust their cargo, they don't check the shipments in the blood. You are full to overflowing but the keeper is asleep and there's murder going on inside. Who comes here? Let me hold up my lantern. It's only the blood; red cells carrying oxygen to the heart, thrombocytes making sure of proper clotting. The white cells, B and T types, just a few of them as always whistling as they go. The faithful body has made a mistake. This is no time to stamp the passports and look at the sky. Coming up behind are hundreds of them. Hundreds too many, armed to the teeth for a job that doesn't need doing. Not needed? With all that weaponry? Here they come, hurtling through the bloodstream trying to pick a fight. There's no-one to fight but you Louise. You're the foreign body now.

When in Rome, Alexander," said Magnus, "one drives a Maserati." They had to get to Rome as fast as possible, and they couldn't use a Portal, so Magnus said he was selecting the next best option. Shinyun was reading the Red Scrolls of Magic and ignoring them both, which was fine with Alec. "An excellent choice," said the attendant at teh luxury car rental lot. "Gotta love a classic 3500 GT Spyder." Alec leaned into Magnus. "The car is also a spider?" Magnus shrugged, flashing Alec an irresistibly bright smile. "No idea. I just picked it because it was Italian and red.

Surrender — the letting go of mental-emotional resistance to what is — also becomes a portal into the Unmanifested. The reason for this is simple: inner resistance cuts you off from other people, from yourself, from the world around you. It strengthens the feeling of separateness on which the ego depends for its survival. The stronger the feeling of separateness, the more you are bound to the manifested, to the world of separate forms. The more you are bound to the world of form, the harder and more impenetrable your form identity becomes. The portal is closed, and you are cut off from the inner dimension, the dimension of depth. In the state of surrender, your form identity softens and becomes somewhat “transparent,” as it were, so the Unmanifested can shine through you.

You know, I always think about this in relationship to the thief on the cross when he arrives at the portals of heaven. You imagine that interview process? “What are you doing here?” “I don’t know.” “Well, who sent you here?” “What? No one sent me here. I . . . I . . . I’m here!” “Well, are you . . . Have you been justified by faith? Do you have peace with God?” “I don’t know.” “Well, do you know anything?” “Yeah.” “What do you know?” “The man on the middle cross said I could come here.

He smiled affably at the burglar, a burly fellow whom he continued to hold with one hand, as easily as if he had been a child. The entire household had been aroused, and a good number of them had joined in, shouting questions and brandishing various deadly instruments. The burglar glared wildly at Emerson, bare to the waist and bulging with muscle - at Gargery and his cudgel - at Selim, fingering a knife even longer than Nefret's - at assorted footmen armed with pokers, spits, and cleavers - and at the giant form of Daoud advancing purposefully toward him. 'It's a bleedin' army!' he gurgled. 'The lyin' barstard said you was some kind of professor!

Now, I believe the best way for you to learn is immersion and since we can't teleport you all to France," he grinned at me, and there were once again sighs from the girls. "I'll be speaking only in French and will expect you to do the same. Is anyone here already proficient in the language?" I narrowed my eyes at him. He knew darn well I was fluent in French and several other languages. "Eveline, I believe your dad mentioned at dinner the other night that you are?" What was he doing? "Umm. Yes-" He shook his head at me. "En français s'il vous plait." More sighs from the class. I clenched my jaw and spoke rapidly. "Oui, Monsieur Smith. Je parle français. Qu'est-ce que tu veux?" Yes, Mr.Smith. I speak French. What do you want? His eyes smoldered and caressed my face as he delivered his swift reply, "Je veux plus de toi que vous imaginez, ma petit lueur.

On Editors: "... The chief qualification of ninety-nine per cent of all editors is failure. They have failed as writers. Don't think they prefer the drudgery of the desk and the slavery to their circulation and to the business manager to the joy of writing. They have tried to write, and they have failed. And right there is the cursed paradox of it. Every portal to success in literature is guarded by those watch-dogs, the failures of literature. The editors, the sub-editors, associate editors, most of them, and the manuscript readers for the magazines and book-publishers, most of them, nearly all of them, are men who wanted to write and failed. And yet they, of all creatures under the sun the most unfit, are the very creatures who decide what shall and what shall not find its way into print–they, who have proved themselves not original, who have demonstrated that they lack the divine fire, sit in judgment upon originality and genius. And after them comes the reviewers, just so many more failures. Don't tell me that they have not dreamed the dream and attempted to write poetry and fiction; for they have, and they have failed. Why, the average review is more nauseating than cod-liver oil....

The world is one unending chess match, my dear, and I am the one playing it how I please. I poke and prod to move my pieces to places I find desirable. And the defiant ones who resist me I simply remove from the board." He pulled up his right sleeve, showing Laura a sheathed dagger strapped to his arm. "But you, Laura, are not of this chess match at all. You walked unexpectedly onto my board, scattering my pieces out of the way, the ones that I had worked on so tirelessly to arrange to perfection.

All the madnesses, each and every blinding one, they can all be traced back to the gates. Those carved monstrosities, those clay and chalk portals, existing everywhere and nowhere and all at once. They open, things are born, they close. The opening is easy, a pushing out, an expansion, an inhalation: the dust of divinity is released into the world. It has to be a temporary channel, though, a thing that is sealed afterward, because the gates stink of knowledge, they cannot be left swinging wide like a slack mouth, leaking mindlessly. That would contaminate the human world--bodies are not meant to remember things from the other side. But these are gods and they move like heated water, so the rules are softened and stretched. The gods do not care. It is not them, after all, that will pay the cost.

There came a time, however, when death ceased to be the enforcer of finitude and began to look, instead, like the last opportunity for radical transformation, the only plausible portal to the infinite. But to be seen as the finite carcass in a sea of blood and bone chips and gray matter-- to inflict that version of himself on other people-- was a violation of privacy so profound it seemed it would outlive him. He was also afraid that it might hurt. And there was a very important question that he still wanted answered. His children were coming, Gary and Denise and maybe even Chip, his intellectual son. It was possible that Chip, if he came, could answer the very important question. And the question was: The question was:

to allow our hearts to break, to soften them, to sink deeply into the knowing that everything will fall, everything will pass, everything will crumble, can be the great portal to awakening. We simply stop taking everything for granted. We stop living in “tomorrow” and turn toward the living day. We stop seeking our happiness in the future, clinging to the promises of others, and begin to break open into a bigger happiness that is rooted in presence, and truth, that allows for the coming but also the going of things, that accepts the little deaths as they happen each day, the disappointments, the losses, the shattered expectations, the good-byes. The Unexpected becomes our friend, a constant companion. We break open into bitter-sweetness, into fragility and utter vulnerability, into the gift of every moment, of every encounter with a friend, a lover, a stranger.

Many people in this room have an Etsy store where they create unique, unreplicable artifacts or useful items to be sold on a small scale, in a common marketplace where their friends meet and barter. I and many of my friends own more than one spinning wheel. We grow our food again. We make pickles and jams on private, individual scales, when many of our mothers forgot those skills if they ever knew them. We come to conventions, we create small communities of support and distributed skills--when one of us needs help, our village steps in. It’s only that our village is no longer physical, but connected by DSL instead of roads. But look at how we organize our tribes--bloggers preside over large estates, kings and queens whose spouses’ virtues are oft-lauded but whose faces are rarely seen. They have moderators to protect them, to be their knights, a nobility of active commenters and big name fans, a peasantry of regular readers, and vandals starting the occasional flame war just to watch the fields burn. Other villages are more commune-like, sharing out resources on forums or aggregate sites, providing wise women to be consulted, rabbis or priests to explain the world, makers and smiths to fashion magical objects. Groups of performers, acrobats and actors and singers of songs are traveling the roads once more, entertaining for a brief evening in a living room or a wheatfield, known by word of mouth and secret signal. Separate from official government, we create our own hierarchies, laws, and mores, as well as our own folklore and secret history. Even my own guilt about having failed as an academic is quite the crisis of filial piety--you see, my mother is a professor. I have not carried on the family trade. We dwell within a system so large and widespread, so disorganized and unconcerned for anyone but its most privileged and luxurious members, that our powerlessness, when we can summon up the courage to actually face it, is staggering. So we do not face it. We tell ourselves we are Achilles when we have much more in common with the cathedral-worker, laboring anonymously so that the next generation can see some incremental progress. We lack, of course, a Great Work to point to and say: my grandmother made that window; I worked upon the door. Though, I would submit that perhaps the Internet, as an object, as an aggregate entity, is the cathedral we build word by word and image by image, window by window and portal by portal, to stand taller for our children, if only by a little, than it does for us. For most of us are Lancelots, not Galahads. We may see the Grail of a good Classical life, but never touch it. That is for our sons, or their daughters, or further off. And if our villages are online, the real world becomes that dark wood on the edge of civilization, a place of danger and experience, of magic and blood, a place to make one’s name or find death by bear. And here, there be monsters.

It took Pueblo a few seconds to take in his surroundings. The first thing he realised was that he felt bruised all over; the second was that his clothes were waterlogged, even more than before, from the quicksand; and the third, was that he had landed on his front and was lying on a large, uncomfortable stone. No, wait… In his disoriented state, he shifted his weight. The stone didn't move. He was lying on his own fucking erection.

Driven by that extraordinary oppression which falls on every human being when, childhood over, he begins to divine that he is fated to go on in isolation and unaided towards his own death; driven by this extraordinary oppression, which may with justice be called a fear of God, man looks round him for a companion hand in hand with whom he may tread the road to the dark portal, and if he has learned by experience how pleasurable it undoubtedly is to lie with another fellow-creature in bed, then he is ready to believe that this extremely intimate association of two bodies may last until these bodies are coffined: and even if at the same time it has its disgusting aspects, because it takes place under coarse and badly aired sheets, or because he is convinced that all a girl cares for is to get a husband who will support her in later life, yet it must not be forgotten that every fellow-creature, even if she has a sallow complexion, sharp, thin features and an obviously missing tooth in her left upper jaw, yearns, in spite of her missing tooth, for that love which she thinks will for ever shield her from death, from that fear of death which sinks with the falling of every night upon the human being who sleeps alone, a fear that already licks her as with a tongue of flame when she begins to take off her clothes, as Fraulein Erna was doing now; she laid aside her faded red-velvet blouse and took off her dark-green shirt and her petticoat.

The ship's surgeon was a spotty unshaven little man whose clothes, arrayed with smudges, drippings, and cigarette burns, were held about him by an extensive network of knotted string, The buttons down the front of those duck trousers had originally been made, with all of false economy's ingenious drear deception, of coated cardboard. After many launderings they persisted as a row of gray stumps posted along the gaping portals of his fly. Though a boutoniere sometimes appeared through some vacancy in his shirt-front, its petals, too, proved to be of paper, and he looked like the kind of man who scrapes foam from the top of a glass of beer with the spine of a dirty pocket comb, and cleans his nails at table with the tines of his salad fork, which things, indeed, he did. He diagnosed Camilla's difficulty as indigestion, and locked himself in his cabin. that was the morning.

I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, nor how lowly the room which it adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with it all the cares of the outer world, plunge back into the soothing company of the great dead, and then you are through the magic portal into that fair land whither worry and vexation can follow you no more. You have left all that is vulgar and all that is sordid behind you. There stand your noble, silent comrades, waiting in their ranks. Pass your eye down their files. Choose your man. And then you have but to hold up your hand to him and away you go together into dreamland. Surely there would be something eerie about a line of books were it not that familiarity has deadened our sense of it. Each is a mummified soul embalmed in cere-cloth and natron of leather and printer's ink. Each cover of a true book enfolds the concentrated essence of a man. The personalities of the writers have faded into the thinnest shadows, as their bodies into impalpable dust, yet here are their very spirits at your command.

The Idea of Order at Key West She sang beyond the genius of the sea. The water never formed to mind or voice, Like a body wholly body, fluttering Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry, That was not ours although we understood, Inhuman, of the veritable ocean. The sea was not a mask. No more was she. The song and water were not medleyed sound Even if what she sang was what she heard, Since what she sang was uttered word by word. It may be that in all her phrases stirred The grinding water and the gasping wind; But it was she and not the sea we heard. For she was the maker of the song she sang. The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea Was merely a place by which she walked to sing. Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew It was the spirit that we sought and knew That we should ask this often as she sang. If it was only the dark voice of the sea That rose, or even colored by many waves; If it was only the outer voice of sky And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled, However clear, it would have been deep air, The heaving speech of air, a summer sound Repeated in a summer without end And sound alone. But it was more than that, More even than her voice, and ours, among The meaningless plungings of water and the wind, Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres Of sky and sea. It was her voice that made The sky acutest at its vanishing. She measured to the hour its solitude. She was the single artificer of the world In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea, Whatever self it had, became the self That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we, As we beheld her striding there alone, Knew that there never was a world for her Except the one she sang and, singing, made. Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know, Why, when the singing ended and we turned Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights, The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there, As the night descended, tilting in the air, Mastered the night and portioned out the sea, Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles, Arranging, deepening, enchanting night. Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon, The maker's rage to order words of the sea, Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred, And of ourselves and of our origins, In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds

Se ora penso agli anni di allora, mi colpisce quanto poco ci fosse in realtà da vedere, quante poche immagini illustrassero la vita e la morte nei Lager. Conoscevamo di Auschwitz il portale con la sua scritta, i pancacci di legno a più piani, i mucchi di capelli, occhiali e valigie; di Birkenau l'entrata con la torre, i corpi laterali e il passaggio per i treni; e da Bergen-Belsen ci venivano le montagne di cadaveri trovate e fotografate dagli alleati al momento della liberazione. Conoscevamo alcune testimonianze di detenuti, ma molti libri apparvero subito dopo la guerra e vennero ristampati solo negli anni Ottanta, visto che nel frattempo non rientrarono nei programmi delle case editrici. Ora ci sono così tanti libri e film che il mondo dei Lager è ormai parte dell'immaginario collettivo che completa il mondo reale. La fantasia lo conosce ormai bene, e a partire dalla serie televisiva Olocausto e da film come La scelta di Sophie e soprattutto Schindler's list si muove anche in quel mondo. E non ne prende solo atto, ma integra e abbellisce. Allora la fantasia stentava a muoversi; riteneva che allo sgomento di cui era debitrice al mondo dei Lager non si confacessero le movenze della fantasia. Quelle poche immagini che doveva alle foto degli alleati e alle testimonianze dei detenuti, le ha poi guardate riguardate, fino a farne dei cliché.

so evenly was strained their war and battle, till the moment when Zeus gave the greater renown to Hector, son of Priam, who was the first to leap within the wall of the Achaians. In a piercing voice he cried aloud to the Trojans: "Rise, ye horse-taming Trojans, break the wall of the Argives, and cast among the ships fierce blazing fire." So spake he, spurring them on, and they all heard him with their ears, and in one mass rushed straight against the wall, and with sharp spears in their hands climbed upon the machicolations of the towers. And Hector seized and carried a stone that lay in front of the gates, thick in the hinder part, but sharp at point: a stone that not the two best men of the people, such as mortals now are, could lightly lift from the ground on to a wain, but easily he wielded it alone, for the son of crooked-counselling Kronos made it light for him. And as when a shepherd lightly beareth the fleece of a ram, taking it in one hand, and little doth it burden him, so Hector lifted the stone, and bare it straight against the doors that closely guarded the stubborn-set portals, double gates and tall, and two cross bars held them within, and one bolt fastened them. And he came, and stood hard by, and firmly planted himself, and smote them in the midst, setting his legs well apart, that his cast might lack no strength. And he brake both the hinges, and the stone fell within by reason of its weight, and the gates rang loud around, and the bars held not, and the doors burst this way and that beneath the rush of the stone. Then glorious Hector leaped in, with face like the sudden night, shining in wondrous mail that was clad about his body, and with two spears in his hands. No man that met him could have held him back when once he leaped within the gates: none but the gods, and his eyes shone with fire. Turning towards the throng he cried to the Trojans to overleap the wall, and they obeyed his summons, and speedily some overleaped the wall, and some poured into the fair-wrought gateways, and the Danaans fled in fear among the hollow ships, and a ceaseless clamour arose.

Why did we come back this way instead of popping up somewhere less…cramped?” I asked, substituting the word cramped for creepy. I was trying not to feel weirded out that I was in my boyfriend’s crypt. It was only a building, after all. A very unpleasant one. “This is a portal,” he said, as if that explained everything. “A what?” “A portal,” John whispered. “A direct link from here to the Underworld. That’s why you don’t feel dizzy this time.” I hadn’t even noticed, but he was right. I didn’t feel sick, for once, though we’d just jumped between astral planes. “This is a doorway through which the souls of the departed enter the world of the dead after they pass,” John explained softly. “The doorway closes behind the dead once they enter. They can never leave again-“ “Unless they escape,” I interrupted. Because this was what had happened to me. He glanced down at me with a teasing smile. “Unless I choose to let them escape,” he said, “because they seem to want their mothers so badly.” “That was two years ago,” I reminded him. I shouldn’t have mentioned the thing that morning about being inexperienced with men, even if it was technically true. He was never going to let me help him if he always thought of me as someone he had to protect. “And do I have to remind you that you didn’t let me escape, I-“ “Shhh.” He held up a hand. “Someone’s coming.

The creative life! Ascension. Passing beyond oneself. Rocketing out into the blue, grasping at flying ladders, mounting, soaring, lifting the world up by the scalp, rousing the angels from their ethereal lairs, drowning in stellar depths, clinging to the tails of comets. Nietzsche had written of it ecstatically —and then swooned forward into the mirror to die in root and flower. «Stairs and contradictory stairs,» he wrote, and then suddenly there was no longer any bottom; the mind, like a splintered diamond, was pulverized by the hammer−blows of truth. There was a time when I acted as my father's keeper. I was left alone for long hours, cooped up in the little booth which we used as an office. While he was drinking with his cronies I was feeding from the bottle of creative life. My companions were the free spirits, the overlords of the soul. The young man sitting there in the mingy yellow light became completely unhinged; he lived in the crevices of great thoughts, crouched like a hermit in the barren folds of a lofty mountain range. From truth he passed to imagination and from imagination to invention. At this last portal, through which there is no return, fear beset him. To venture farther was to wander alone, to rely wholly upon oneself. The purpose of discipline is to promote freedom. But freedom leads to infinity and infinity is terrifying. Then arose the comforting thought of stopping at the brink, of setting down in words the mysteries of impulsion, compulsion, propulsion, of bathing the senses in human odors. To become utterly human, the compassionate fiend incarnate, the locksmith of the great door leading beyond and away and forever isolate. Men founder like ships. Children also. There are children who settle to the bottom at the age of nine, carrying with them the secret of their betrayal. There are perfidious monsters who look at you with the bland, innocent eyes of youth; their crimes are unregistered, because we have no names for them.

When an animal dies, another of the same species may cling to the body, eat the body, or look bored. Bees expel dead bodies from the hive or, if that is impossible, embalm them in honey. Elephants "say" a ritualistic good-bye, and touch their dead before slowly walking away. Corvids often accept the death of a companion without much fuss, but they at times have “funerals,” where scores of birds lament over the corpse of a deceased crow. But it is a bit odd that people should investigate whether animals “comprehend death,” as if human beings understood what it means to die. Is death a prelude to reincarnation? A portal to Heaven or Hell? Complete extinction? Union with all life? Or something else? All of these views can at times be comforting, yet people usually fear death, quite regardless of what they claim to believe. In the natural world, killing seems a casual affair. Human beings, of course, kill on a massive scale, but most of us can only kill, if at all, by softening the impact of the deed through rituals such as drink or prayer. The strike of a spider, a heron, or a cat is swift and, seemingly, without inhibition or remorse. They pounce with a confidence that could indicate ignorance, indifference, or else profound knowledge. Could this be, perhaps, because animals cannot conceive of killing, since they are not aware of death? Could it be because they understand death well, far better than do human beings? If animals envision the world not in terms of abstract concepts but sensuous images, the soul might appear as a unique scent, a rhythmic motion, or a tone of voice. Death would be the absence of these, though without that absolute finality that we find so severe. Perhaps the heron that snaps a fish thinks his meal lives on, as he one day will, in the form of currents in the pond.

We are all, of course, wayfaring strangers on this earth. But coming out of the rainbow tunnel, the liminal portal between Marin and San Francisco, myth and reality, I catch sight of a beautiful, sparkling city that might as well be on the moon. I can name the sights, the streets, the eateries, but in my heart it feels as unfamiliar as Cape Town or Cuzco. I've lived here for fourteen years. This is the arena of my adult life, with its large defeats and small victories. Maybe, like all transplants (converts?), I've asked too much of the city. I would never have moved to Pittsburh or Houston or L.A. expecting it to save my soul. Only here in the great temple by the bay. It's a mistake we've been making for decades, and probably a necessary one. The city's flaws, of course, are numerous. Our politics can suffer from humourless stridency, and life here is menacingly expensive. But if you're insulated from these concerns, sufficiently employed and housed, if you are -in other words- like most people, you are in view of the unbridgeable ideal. Here, with our plentiful harvest, our natural beauty, our bars, our bookstores, our cliffs and ocean, out free to be you and me; here, where pure mountain water flows right out of the tap. It's here that the real questions become inescapable. In fact the proximity of the ideal makes us more acutely aware of the real questions. Not the run-of-the-mill insolubles-Why am I here? Who am I?- but the pressing questions of adult life: Really? and Are you sure? And Now what?

There is strange, and yet not strange, is the kiss. It is strange because it mixes silliness with tragedy, and yet not strange because there is good reason for it. There is shaking by the hand. That should be enough. Yet a shaking of hands is not enough to give a vent to all kinds of feeling. The hand is too hard and too used to doing all things, with too little feeling and too far from the organs of taste and smell, and far from the brain, and the length of an arm from the heart. To rub a nose like the blacks, that we think is so silly, is better, but there is nothing good to the taste about the nose, only a piece of old bone pushing out of the face, and a nuisance in winter, but a friend before meals and in a garden, indeed. With the eyes we can do nothing, for if we come too near, they go crossed and everything comes twice to the sight without good from one or other. There is nothing to be done with the ear, so back we come to the mouth, and we kiss with the mouth because it is part of the head and of the organs of taste and smell. It is temple of the voice, keeper of breath and its giving out, treasurer of tastes and succulences, and home of the noble tongue. And its portals are firm, yet soft, with a warmth, of a ripeness, unlike the rest of the face, rosy, and in women with a crinkling of red tenderness, to the taste not in compare with the wild strawberry, yet if the taste of kisses went , and strawberries came the year round, half of joy would be gone from the world. There is no wonder to me that we kiss, for when mouth comes to mouth, in all its stillness, breath joins breath, and taste joins taste, warmth is enwarmed, and tongues commune in a soundless language, and those things are said that cannot find a shape, have a name, or know a life in the pitiful faults of speech.

The Garden of Proserpine" Here, where the world is quiet; Here, where all trouble seems Dead winds' and spent waves' riot In doubtful dreams of dreams; I watch the green field growing For reaping folk and sowing, For harvest-time and mowing, A sleepy world of streams. I am tired of tears and laughter, And men that laugh and weep; Of what may come hereafter For men that sow to reap: I am weary of days and hours, Blown buds of barren flowers, Desires and dreams and powers And everything but sleep. Here life has death for neighbour, And far from eye or ear Wan waves and wet winds labour, Weak ships and spirits steer; They drive adrift, and whither They wot not who make thither; But no such winds blow hither, And no such things grow here. No growth of moor or coppice, No heather-flower or vine, But bloomless buds of poppies, Green grapes of Proserpine, Pale beds of blowing rushes Where no leaf blooms or blushes Save this whereout she crushes For dead men deadly wine. Pale, without name or number, In fruitless fields of corn, They bow themselves and slumber All night till light is born; And like a soul belated, In hell and heaven unmated, By cloud and mist abated Comes out of darkness morn. Though one were strong as seven, He too with death shall dwell, Nor wake with wings in heaven, Nor weep for pains in hell; Though one were fair as roses, His beauty clouds and closes; And well though love reposes, In the end it is not well. Pale, beyond porch and portal, Crowned with calm leaves, she stands Who gathers all things mortal With cold immortal hands; Her languid lips are sweeter Than love's who fears to greet her To men that mix and meet her From many times and lands. She waits for each and other, She waits for all men born; Forgets the earth her mother, The life of fruits and corn; And spring and seed and swallow Take wing for her and follow Where summer song rings hollow And flowers are put to scorn. There go the loves that wither, The old loves with wearier wings; And all dead years draw thither, And all disastrous things; Dead dreams of days forsaken, Blind buds that snows have shaken, Wild leaves that winds have taken, Red strays of ruined springs. We are not sure of sorrow, And joy was never sure; To-day will die to-morrow; Time stoops to no man's lure; And love, grown faint and fretful, With lips but half regretful Sighs, and with eyes forgetful Weeps that no loves endure. From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea. Then star nor sun shall waken, Nor any change of light: Nor sound of waters shaken, Nor any sound or sight: Nor wintry leaves nor vernal, Nor days nor things diurnal; Only the sleep eternal In an eternal night.