Quill Quotes

You know, it's hard work to write a book. I can't tell you how many times I really get going on an idea, then my quill breaks. Or I spill ink all over my writing tunic.

Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.

Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside she is covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary--and terrible elegant.

Relationships with negative people are simply tedious encounters with porcupines. You don’t have the remote knowledge how to be close to them without quills being shot in your direction.

As Harry and Ron rounded the clump of trees behind which Harry had first heard the dragons roar, a witch leapt out from behind them. It was Rita Skeeter. She was wearing acid-green robes today; the Quick-Quotes Quill in her hand blended perfectly against them. "Congratulations, Harry!' she said beaming at him. "I wonder if you could give me a quick word? How you felt facing that dragon? How do you feel now about the fairness of the scoring?" "Yeah, you can have a word," said Harry savagely. "Goodbye!

Some battles are won with swords and spears, others with quills and ravens.

For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.

I don’t understand how I could have believed you were a warm, affectionate, and tenderhearted person! You’re obviously as prickly as a porcupine and any man who comes close to you will end up with a face full of quills!

Words, words, word. Once, I had the gift. I could make love out of words as a potter makes cups of clay. Love that overthrows empire. Love that binds two hearts together, come hellfire & brimstone. For sixpence a line, I could cause a riot in a nunnery. But now -- I have lost my gift. It's as if my quill is broken, as if the organ of my imagination has dried up, as if the proud -illegible word- of my genius has collapsed.

To call that writing, madam, is an insult to quills and ink across the world.

Why is a raven like a writing desk? Because they both have quills dipped in ink.

Mais, vrai, j’ai trop pleuré ! Les Aubes sont navrantes. Toute lune est atroce et tout soliel amer: L’âcre amour m’a gonflé de torpeurs enivrantes. Ô que ma quille éclate ! Ô que j’aille à la mer!

You know, it's hard work to write a book. I can't tell you how many times I really get going on an idea, then my quill breaks. Or I spill ink all over my writing tunic. No wonder I drink so much! Then I get so drunk, I can barely feed the baby. That's what I call myself when I'm drunk, "The Baby.

It was for one minute that I saw him, but the hair stood upon my head like quills. Sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask upon his face?

What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?" At this, Hermione stood up, her hand stretching towards the dungeon ceiling. I don't know," said Harry quietly. "I think Hermione does, though, why don't you try asking her?" A few people laughed; Harry caught sight of Seamus's eye and Seamus winked. Snape, however, was not pleased. Sit down," he snapped at Hermione. "For your information, Potter, asphodel and wormwood make a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of Living Death. A bezoar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat and it will save you from most poisons. As for monkshood and wolfsbane, they are the same plant, which also goes by the name of aconite. Well? Why aren't you all copying that down?" There was a sudden rummaging for quills and parchment. Over the noise, Snape said, "And a point will be taken from Gryffindor house for your cheek, Potter.

Are your convictions so fragile that mine cannot stand in opposition to them? Is your God so illusory that the presence of my Devil reveals his insufficiency?

Write with your eyes like painters, with your ears like musicians, with your feet like dancers. You are the truthsayer with quill and torch. Write with your tongues on fire.

Move or die. (Quills) Never give someone a choice that doesn’t leave them with any way out except to hurt you. (Devyn)

While he writes, I feel as if he is drawing me; or not drawing me, drawing on me - drawing on my skin - not with the pencil he is using, but with an old-fashioned goose pen, and not with the quill end but with the feather end. As if hundreds of butterflies have settled all over my face, and are softly opening and closing their wings.

Harry moved the tip of his eagle-feather quill down the page, frowning as he looked for something that would help him write his essay, “Witch Burning in the Fourteenth Century Was Completely Pointless — discuss.

Mais vrai, j'ai trop pleuré. Les Aubes sont navrantes. Toute lune est atroce et tout soleil amer: L'âcre amour m'a gonflé de torpeurs enivrantes. O que ma quille éclate! O que j'aille à la mer!

I've been to Hell. You've only read about it.

I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end Like quills upon the fretful porpentine. But this eternal blazon must not be To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O list!

While he writes, I feel as if he is drawing me; or not drawing me, drawing on me--drawing on my skin--not with the pencil he is using, but with an old-fashioned goose pen, and not with the quill end but with the feather end. As if hundreds of butterflies have settled all over my face, and are softly opening and closing their wings. But underneath that is another feeling, a feeling of being wide-eyed awake and watchful. It's like being wakened suddenly in the middle of the night, by a hand over your face, and you sit up with your heart going fast, and no one is there. And underneath that is another feeling still, a feeling like being torn open; not like a body of flesh, it is not painful as such, but like a peach; and not even torn open, but ripe and splitting open of its own accord. And inside the peach there's a stone.

Thrones are won with swords, not quills. Spill blood, not ink.

How d’you spell ‘belligerent’?” said Ron, shaking his quill very hard while staring at his parchment. “It can’t be B — U — M —” “No, it isn’t,” said Hermione. “And ‘augury’ doesn’t begin O — R — G either.

a wish is a good place to start but then you have to get off your butt and make it happen. You have to pick up a quill and write your own damn story.

The great William Shakespeare said, "What's in a name?" He also said, "Call me Billy one more time and I will stab you with this ink quill.

The trouble with reading is it goes to your head. Read too many books and you get savvy. You begin to think you know which kind of story you’re in. Then some stupid git with a cosmic quill fucks you over.

Delighted," Jess said. "I think all houses should be stuffed with books. It makes them--" "Homes?" the doctor finished. "You are quite the heretic, for someone in a Library uniform." "Guilty.

The dangerous men were still asleep, their blades sheathed next to their beds. The really dangerous men had been up for hours, and their quills and ledgers were getting hard use.

The surgeons like to bleed a man, to let ill humours out, so that he may face the world anew. Perhaps they should just hand him a quill and let the poisons spill from him whilst he keeps his blood for its intended purpose.

You mean there’s someone out there better than your father? (Quills) No, idiot. My father trained him. Just FYI, my father is also his godfather. So you want to be real nice to Dev. All of us take it personally when people aren’t. (Adron)

Two dozen--and yet you killed all but one?" The provost arched a brow and set her quill down again as if unwilling to record a falsehood. "Dear lady, I killed them from youngest child to oldest woman, and when I was done I blunted three axes dismembering their corpses. I am Jorg of Ancrath--I burned ten thousand in Gelleth and didn't think it too many.

Bismilahir-rahmanir-rahim! I call to witness the ink, the quill, and the script, which flows from the quill; I call to witness the faltering shadows of the sinking evening, the night and all she enlivens; I call to witness the moon when she waxes, and the sunrise when it dawns. I call to witness the Resurrection Day and the soul that accuses itself; I call to witness time, the beginning and end of all things - to witness that every man always suffers loss.

A fine gentleman like that, they said, had no need of books. Let him leave books, they said, to the palsied or the dying. But worse was to come. For once the disease of reading has laid hold upon the system it weakens it so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.

I'd rather die fighting to keep us free to do as we wish, fighting to be free to come and go as we please, fighting so we no longer need to hide. Fighting the fear that all of you were programmed since birth to have. Fighting against Quill's bigotry, which says brains and brawn are better, or more important, than creativity. Marcus Today

Solar Eclipse Each morning I wake invisible. I make a needle from a porcupine quill, sew feet to legs, lift spine onto my thighs. I put on my rib and collarbone. I pin an ear to my head, hear the waxwing's yellow cry. I open my mouth for purple berries, stick on periwinkle eyes. I almost know what it is to be seen. My throat enlarges from anger. I make a hand to hold my pain. My heart a hole the size of the sun's eclipse. I push through the dark circle's tattered edge of light. All day I struggle with one hair after another until the moon moves from the face of the sun and there is a strange light as though from a kerosene lamp in a cabin. I pun on a dress, a shawl over my shoulders. My threads knotted and scissors gleaming. Now I know I am seen. I have a shadow. I extend my arms, dance and chant in the sun's new light. I put a hat and coat on my shadow, another larger dress. I put on more shawls and blouses and underskirts until even the shadow has substance

Do not shout at me, Mr. Quill," said John [Adams]. "Justice may be blind, but she is not deaf.

Prickly When I'm feeling porcupine-y, I get nasty, I get whiny. Stay away or I might stick you. My sharp words are quills to prick you.

Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt. In other words, a wish is a good place to start but then you have to get off your butt and make it happen. You have to pick up a quill and write your own damn story. (Mimi Wallingford)

I have eavesdropped with impunity on the lives of people who do not exist. I have peeped shamelessly into hearts and bathroom closets. I have leaned over shoulders to follow the movements of quills as they write love letters, wills and confessions. I have watched as lovers love, murderers murder and children play their make-believe. Prisons and brothels have opened their doors to me; galleons and camel trains have transported me across sea and sand; centuries and continents have fallen away at my bidding. I have spied upon the misdeeds of the mighty and witnessed the nobility of the meek. I have bent so low over sleepers in their beds that they might have felt my breath on their faces. I have seen their dreams.

What I feel for you runs deeper than my thoughts, and deeper than my heart. The place where I find the most love for you is in my soul.

I spend the rest of the night doing schoolwork. After striking a match and lighting a candal, I sit down at my desk with my quill pen and parchment to write an essay for my ethics class on the legalities of fan fiction.

Unable and crippled I am As I gaze into the vastness The vastness that harbors your praise And glories of the best of creation... If I tried to spell.. A drop of ink from your love Ma quill would burn in shame for your love match no words...ya rasoolullah!

Many women do not even have the basic teaching about predators that a wolf mother gives her pups, such as: if it's threatening and bigger than you, flee; if it's weaker, see what you want to do; if it's sick, leave it alone; if it has quills, poison, fangs, or razor claws, back up and go in the other direction; it it smells nice but is wrapped around metal jaws, walk on by.

Don't you understand how Cho's feeling at the moment?" [Hermione] asked. "No," said Ron and Harry together. Hermione sighed and laid down her quill. "Well, obviously, she's feeling very sad, because of Cedric dying. Then I expect she's feeling confused because she liked Cedric and now she likes Harry, and she can't work out who she likes best. Then she'll be feeling guilty, thinking it's an insult to Cedric's memory to be kissing Harry at all, and she'll be worrying about what everyone else might say about her if she starts going out with Harry. And she probably can't work out what her feelings toward Harry are anyway, because he was the one who was with Cedric when Cedric died, so that's all very mixed up and painful. Oh, and she's afraid she's going to be thrown off the Ravenclaw Quidditch team because she's been flying so badly." A slightly stunned silence greeted the end of this speech, then Ron said, "One person can't feel all that at once, they'd explode." "Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have," said Hermione nastily, picking up her her quill again.

Sir, people never wanted me to make it to squire. They won't like it any better if I become a knight. I doubt I'll ever get to command a force larger than, well, just me.' Raoul shook his head. 'You're wrong.' As she started to protest, he raised a hand. 'Hear me out. I have some idea of what you've had to bear to get this far, and it won't get easier. But there are larger issues than your fitness for knighthood, issues that involve lives and livelihoods. Attend,' he said, so much like Yayin, one of her Mithran teachers, that Kel had to smile. 'At our level, there are four kids of warrior,' he told Kel. He raised a fist and held up one large finger. 'Heroes, like Alanna the Lioness. Warriors who find dark places and fight in them alone. This is wonderful, but we live in the real world. There aren't many places without any hope or light.' He raised a second finger. 'We have knights- plain, everyday knights, like your brothers. They patrol their borders and protect their tenants, or they go into troubled areas at the king's command and sort them out. They fight in battles, usually against other knights. A hero will work like an everyday knight for a time- it's expected. And most knights must be clever enough to manage alone.' Kel nodded. 'We have soldiers,' Raoul continued, raising a third finger. 'Those warriors, including knights, who can manage so long as they're told what to do. These are more common, thank Mithros, and you'll find them in charge of companies in the army, under the eye of a general. Without people who can take orders, we'd be in real trouble. 'Commanders.' He raised his little finger. 'Good ones, people with a knack for it, like, say, the queen, or Buri, or young Dom, they're as rare as heroes. Commanders have an eye not just for what they do, but for what those around them do. Commanders size up people's strengths and weaknesses. They know where someone will shine and where they will collapse. Other warriors will obey a true commander because they can tell that the commander knows what he- or she- is doing.' Raoul picked up a quill and toyed with it. 'You've shown flashes of being a commander. I've seen it. So has Qasim, your friend Neal, even Wyldon, though it would be like pulling teeth to get him to admit it. My job is to see if you will do more than flash, with the right training. The realm needs commanders. Tortall is big. We have too many still-untamed pockets, too curse many hideyholes for rogues, and plenty of hungry enemies to nibble at our borders and our seafaring trade. If you have what it takes, the Crown will use you. We're too desperate for good commanders to let one slip away, even a female one. Now, finish that'- he pointed to the slate- 'and you can stop for tonight.

What are you doing?” Celaena lifted another piece of paper. “If His Pirateness can’t be bothered to clean for us, then I don’t see why I can’t have a look.” “He’ll be here any second,” Sam hissed. She picked up a flattened map, examining the dots and markings along the coastline of their continent. Something small and round gleamed beneath the map, and she slipped it into her pocket before Sam could notice. “Oh, hush,” she said, opening the hutch on the wall adjacent to the desk. “With these creaky floors, we’ll hear him a mile off.” The hutch was crammed with rolled scrolls, quills, the odd coin, and some very old, very expensive-looking brandy. She pulled out a bottle, swirling the amber liquid in the sunlight streaming through the tiny porthole window. “Care for a drink?

Saturated Arrogance ...imprisoned muses cried to be free she took away their quills and said do not bother me...

For once the disease of reading has laid hold upon the system it weakens it so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.

Troy sighed with frustration. "Let me get this straight. We're stuck in the story of Romeo and Juliet and we can't get home without a magic charm from Shakespeare's quill, which doesn't exist in this world. However, we might be able to get home when the story ends, but if Romeo and Juliet don't meet, then we don't have a story. More important, we don't have an ending." Friar Laurence tsk tsked. He placed his speckled hand on Troy's forehead. "Bless you, my son, but a fever has muddled your mind.

Unfortunately, the body within the uniform belonged to Quill Kipps, so the overall effect was like watching a plague rat lick a bowl of caviar. Yes, the classy element was there, but it wasn’t what you focused on.

No one with a book is ever alone, even in the darkest moments.

He got up and walked out to the road. The black shape of it running from dark to dark. Then the distant low rumble. Not thunder. You could feel it under your feet. A sound without cognate and so without description. Something imponderable shifting out there in the dark. The earth itself contracting with the cold. It did not come again. What time of year? What age the child? He walked out into the road and stood. The silence. The salitter drying from the earth. The mudstained shapes of flooded cities burned to the waterline. At a crossroads a ground set with dolmen stones where the spoken bones of oracles lay moldering. No sound but the wind. What will you say? A living man spoke these lines? He sharpened a quill with his small pen knife to scribe these things in sloe or lampblack? At some reckonable and entabled moment? He is coming to steal my eyes. To seal my mouth with dirt.

I feel as if I can think only when I see the words flowing from the nib of my quill, that my thoughts make sense only when they are black ink on cream paper. I love the sensation of a thought in my head and the vision of the word on the page.

I was never young. Whoever I was then is dead. That's more of your quills. I don't want a hide full, thanks. I have always figured that you die each day and and each day is a is a box, you see, all numbered and neat; but never go back and lift the lids, because you have died a couple thousand times in your life, and that's a lot of corpses, each dead a different way, each with a worse expression. Each of those days is a different you, somebody you don't know or understand or want to understand.

You haven’t given me any ink,” he said. “Oh, you won’t need ink,” said Professor Umbridge with the merest suggestion of a laugh in her voice. Harry placed the point of the quill on the paper and wrote: I must not tell lies. He let out a gasp of pain. The words had appeared on the parchment in what appeared to be shining red ink. At the same time, the words had appeared on the back of Harry’s right hand, cut into his skin as though traced there by a scalpel — yet even as he stared at the shining cut, the skin healed over again, leaving the place where it had been slightly redder than before but quite smooth. Harry looked around at Umbridge. She was watching him, her wide, toadlike mouth stretched in a smile. “Yes?” “Nothing,” said Harry quietly.

The note in the quill was intended for the girl, and it read, 'Yes and yes and yes.' Yes I love you, yes I miss you, and yes I know and remember that you do, too. For in her last missive she had written 'No and no.' That is to say, No I do not want anyone other than you, and no I do not manage to sleep at night.

Sometimes, the thing you've been looking for your whole life is right there beside you all along.

The best way to know someone was to look at their library.

He walked out into the road and stood. The silence. The salitter drying from the earth. The mudstained shapes of flooded cities burned to th waterline. At a crossroads a ground set with dolmen stones where the spoken bones of oracles lay moldering. No sound but the wind. What will you say? A living man spoke these lines? He sharpened a quill with his small pen knife to scribe these things in sloe or lampblack? At some reckonable and entabled moment? He is coming to steal my eyes. To seal my mouth with dirt.

A number of porcupines huddled together for warmth on a cold day in winter; but, as they began to prick one another with their quills, they were obliged to disperse. However the cold drove them together again, when just the same thing happened. At last, after many turns of huddling and dispersing, they discovered that they would be best off by remaining at a little distance from one another. In the same way the need of society drives the human porcupines together, only to be mutually repelled by the many prickly and disagreeable qualities of their nature. The moderate distance which they at last discover to be the only tolerable condition of intercourse, is the code of politeness and fine manners; and those who transgress it are roughly told—in the English phrase—to keep their distance. By this arrangement the mutual need of warmth is only very moderately satisfied; but then people do not get pricked. A man who has some heat in himself prefers to remain outside, where he will neither prick other people nor get pricked himself.

Were you acquainted with me, you would know that my failings are equal to my victories. On my own, I am no more than a pauper. It is the Prince for whom I live and for whom I fight. He raised me from the mire and made me a son. I will aspire to serve Him to the utmost, and perhaps my duty to Him will be fulfilled more as a herald than as a warrior, for if my quill and ink capture your attention and cause you to ponder the chronicles of this great kingdom and the story of the Prince, then I am content.

O thrice-romantic Master, would you not rather take long walks in a blooming cherry tree alley with your friend and listen to Schubert in the evenings? Would you not rather write by candlelight with a quill pen? Like Faust, would you not rather sit over a retort in the hopes of crafting a new homunculus? That is your desination, there. A house awaits you, with an aging servant; the candles are already lit and will soon extinguish as dawn inevitably arrives. Take this path, Master, and farewell! I must go.

I have decided, before the embers of my life dwindle anymore, to embark on a grand tour. With rumblings of revolution and troubled times to come, the old ways are passing on. I have had enough of sitting here twiddling with a quill writing my wretched memoirs. Twelve volumes. Mostly lies but amusing, nevertheless. It is time to return to life.

If I wasn't such a bad woman on the page, I couldn't be such a good woman in life.

A slightly stunned silence greeted the end of this speech, then Ron said, 'One person can't feel all that at once, they'd explode.' 'Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have,' said Hermione nastily, picking up her quill again.

Until writing was invented, man lived in an acoustic space: boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion, by primordial intuition, by terror. Speech is a social chart of this bog. The goose quill put an end to talk. It abolished mystery; it gave architecture and towns; it brought roads and armies, bureaucracy. It was the basic metaphor with which the cycle of civilization began, the step from the dark into the light of the mind. The hand that filled the parchment page built a city. Whence did the wond'rous mystic art arise, Of painting SPEECH, and speaking to the eyes? That we by tracing magic lines are taught, How to embody, and to colour THOUGHT?

Okay," said Harry, staring at it, "Pear Drop. Er – Licorice Wand. Fizzing Whizbee. Drooble's Best Blowing Gum. Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans… oh no, he doesn't like them, does he?… oh just open, can't you?" He said angrily. "I really need to see him, it's urgent!" The gargoyle remained immovable. Harry kicked it, achieving nothing but an excruciating pain in his big toe. "Chocolate frog!" he yelled angrily, standing on one leg. "Sugar Quill! Cockroach Cluster! The gargoyle sprang to life and jumped aside. Harry blinked.

I would believe again if I could. In goodness. In magnificence. In simple benevolence. Yet even in these far and icy valleys, mankind is no different, just more poorly armed. Strip away psychrometer and sextant, carbines and glass plates, skin shifts and quills and painted faces, and we are the same. Quivering maws. Gluttonous. Covetous. Fearful. We say we worship. A word. A man-god. A fiery mountain. But we worship only ourselves. And we are jealous gods.

She’ll need a code name of her own.” Quinn tapped his quill on the table as he read over Mouse’s notes for the tenth time. They were like a flock of gabbling birds, these ladies, following the lead of the one in front. “Starling.” Cass nodded as he opened the door. “Starlings are smart birds.” “I know. Annoying as hell, too.

To all those who face change without fear. Go forward. To the ever-transforming glory of the public library, without which we would all be diminished. No one with a book is ever alone, even in the darkest moments. We are all book lovers. And we all chase the Great Library of Alexandria, one book at a time.

Is there any way to check and see if Nick and Daisy were ever at Hecate? They must have had different names or you'd remember them." I don't know why I was holding out hope that Dad would be all, "Why, yes, let me check the Hecate Enrollment Roster 9000 computer database." Those lists were probably written on pieces of parchment with quill feathers.

Then he realized that Salander was in costume. Usually her style was sloppy and rather tasteless. Blomkvist had assumed that she was not really interested in fashion, but that she tried instead to accentuate her own individuality. Salander always seemed to mark her private space as hostile territory, and he had thought of the rivets in her leather jacket as a defense mechanism, like the quills of a hedgehog. To everyone around her it was as good a signal as any: Don't try to touch me—it will hurt.

You stole my heart before I could give it to you.

You call us book lovers, and it's true. We are. And so are you, at heart. You believe in the power of them to change the world.

When I started writing I wanted the best tools. I skipped right over chisels on rocks, stylus on wet clay plates, quills and fountain pens, even mechanical pencils, and went straight to one of the first popular spin-offs of the aerospace program: the ballpoint pen. They were developed for comber navigators in the war because fountain pens would squirt all over your leather bomber jacket at altitude. (I have a cherished example of the next generation ballpoint, a pressurized Space Pen cleverly designed to work in weightlessness, given to me by Spider Robinson. At least, I cherish it when I can find it. It is also cleverly designed to seek out the lowest point of your desk, roll off, then find the lowest point on the floor, under a heavy piece of furniture. That's because it is cylindrical and lacks a pocket clip to keep it from rolling. In space, I presume it would float out of your pocket and find a forgotten corner of your spacecraft to hide in. NASA spent $3 million developing it. Good job, guys. I'm sure it's around here somewhere.)

The tropical sun flickered between the swaying fronds of palm trees overhead. Ray and Ilsa rubbed their necks and blinked as they came out of their stupor. Their hair stood on end in frazzled locks, like quills upon the fretful porcupine. Their clothes were scorched, but they were alive. Or were they? Speechless, they gazed at their surroundings. Above them was an azure sky with fluffy clouds shaped like Spanish galleons sailing across a celestial sea. Birds chattered and sang in the foliage, which was fragrant and brilliant with blue, and pink and yellow flowers. Had they died? Was this heaven? Or, perish the thought, since obviously they were in the tropics, the other place?

The door is cracked We used to meet like water does land no not that more like when skin touches skin kissing fingertips or when air escapes a lung and is felt across the world I've leapt over cracks in sidewalks and swallowed away troublesome back pains that could only be fixed with someone else's pills We met by your house one stray day and you drove me to the bay where we sat and kissed like it was yesterday And here you told me that you loved me and that you always loved me and that you would always love me the wind blew and I held you You rested your head on my shoulder and the wind blew warm Later, in your big red truck, we smoked some green and I kissed you harder and held your breasts, and felt between your legs and with a gasp you told me you were in love with me And then you drove me back and we promised it wouldn't be the end not this time The quill and inkwell on your foot I'm a writer and you are my greatest art I returned to my hell and dreamt of you once more

One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard capitals. Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their out-reaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.

Yet she is happy -- is it happiness she feels? -- as she places her things in the cupboards and drawers. Her quills, stockings, shoes. The room is dotted by porcelain figures. Punctuated, she thinks. She picks one up, puts it down. The former wife's collection? Then opens a window to London bells and that green-silk scent of spring. And she sees now, here in this room, how badly she'd needed to leave.

It is a terrible arrogance to think that there are any of humankind who are better or worse, or worthy or not. It comes of a pitiful need to believe in one’s own worth when one is hollow within. We are all worthy. And none of us are, all at once. Once that is acknowledged, that hollow, howling space may be filled with understanding.

There is a beautiful consistency about Buzzard; he is a porcupine among men, with his quills always flared. If he won a new car with a raffle ticket bought in his name by some momentary girlfriend, he would recognize it at once as a trick to con him out of a license fee. He would denounce the girl as a hired slut, beat up the raffle sponsor, and trade off the car for five hundred Seconals and a gold-handled cattle prod.

At this point, a faerie woman came twirling through. She had leaves in her updo and was swathed in ribbons and ivy and not much else. She tripped on a trailing line of ivy and Alec caught her. “Good reflexes!” she said brightly. “Also great arms. Would you be interested in a night of tumultuous forbidden passion, with an option to extend to seven years?” “Um, I am gay,” Alec said. He was not used to saying that casually, to any random person. It was strange to say it, and feel both relief and a shadow of his old fear, twined together. Of course, the declaration might not mean much to faeries. The faerie woman accepted it with a shrug, then looked over at Raphael and lit up. Something about the leather jacket or the scowl seemed to appeal to her strongly. “How about you, Vampire Without a Cause?” “I’m not gay,” said Raphael. “I’m not straight. I’m not interested.” “Your sexuality is ‘not interested’?” Alec asked curiously. Raphael said, “That’s right.” The faerie thought for a moment, then ventured, “I can also assume the appearance of a tree!” “I didn’t say, ‘not interested unless you’re a tree.’ ” “Wait,” said the faerie suddenly. “I recognize you. You’re Raphael Santiago! I’ve heard of you.” Raphael made a gesture of dismissal. “Have you heard I like it when people go away?” “You were one of the heroes in the Downworlder victory over Valentine.” “He was one of the heroes of the Downworlder and Shadowhunter alliance, which led to the victory,” Alec said. Raphael stopped looking annoyed and began to look nastily amused. “Oh, did the Shadowhunters help a little?” he asked. “You were there!” said Alec. “Can I have your autograph, Raphael?” asked the faerie lady. She produced a large, shiny green leaf and a quill. Raphael wrote LEAVE ME ALONE on the leaf. “I’ll cherish it,” said the faerie. She ran away, clutching the leaf to her bosom. “Don’t,” Raphael yelled after her.

I have closed my study door on the world and shut myself away with people of my imagination. For nearly sixty years I have eavesdropped with impunity on the lives of people who do not exist. I have peeped shamelessly into hearts and bathroom closets. I have leaned over shoulders to follow the movements of quills as they write love letters, wills and confessions. I have watched as lovers love, murderers murder and childern play their make-believe. Prisons and brothels have opened their doors to me; galleons and camel trains have transported me across sea and sand; centuries and continents have fallen away at my bidding. I have spied upon the misdeeds of the mighty and witnessed the nobility of the meek. I have bent so low over sleepers in their beds that they might have felt my breath on their faces. I have seen their dreams.

It is not written that great men shall be happy men. It is nowhere recorded that the rewards of public office include a quiet mind. He sits in Whitehall, the year folding around him, aware of the shadow of his hand as it moves across the paper, his own inconcealable fist; and in the quiet of the house, he can hear the soft whispering of his quill, as if his writing is talking back to him. Can you make a new England? You can write a new story. You can write new texts and destroy the old ones, set the torn leaves of Duns Scotus sailing about the quadrangles, and place the gospels in every church. You can write on England, but what was written before keeps showing through, inscribed on the rocks and carried on floodwater, surfacing from deep cold wells. It’s not just the saints and martyrs who claim the country, it’s those who came before them: the dwarves dug into ditches, the sprites who sing in the breeze, the demons bricked into culverts and buried under bridges; the bones under your floor. You cannot tax them or count them. They have lasted ten thousand years and ten thousand before that. They are not easily dispossessed by farmers with fresh leases and law clerks who adduce proof of title. They bubble out of the ground, wear away the shoreline, sow weeds among the crops and erode the workings of mines.

I'm all right, Nic," Wolfe said, and finally looked at him. "We walked through the dungeons under Rome, survived Philadelphia, and this perfumed cage won't bring us to our knees. We're all stronger than that." "All right," Santi said. "But don't ask me to stop standing next to you. Because you know I will, however much you shout about it.

He was rowed down from the north in a leather skiff manned by a crew of trolls. His fur cape was caked with candle wax, his brow stained blue by wine - though the latter was seldom noticed due to the fox mask he wore at-all times. A quill in his teeth, a solitary teardrop a-squirm in his palm, he was the young poet prince of Montreal, handsome, immaculate, searching for sturdier doors to nail his poignant verses on. In Manhattan, grit drifted into his ink bottle. In Vienna, his spice box exploded. On the Greek island of Hydra, Orpheus came to him at dawn astride a transparent donkey and restrung his cheap guitar. From that moment on, he shamelessly and willingly exposed himself to the contagion of music. To the secretly religious curiosity of the traveler was added the openly foolhardy dignity of the troubadour. By the time he returned to America, songs were working in him like bees in an attic. Connoisseurs developed cravings for his nocturnal honey, despite the fact that hearts were occasionally stung. Now, thirty years later, as society staggers towards the millennium - nailing and screeching at the while, like an orangutan with a steak knife in its side - Leonard Cohen, his vision, his gift, his perseverance, are finally getting their due. It may be because he speaks to this wounded zeitgeist with particular eloquence and accuracy, it may be merely cultural time-lag, another example of the slow-to-catch-on many opening their ears belatedly to what the few have been hearing all along. In any case, the sparkle curtain has shredded, the boogie-woogie gate has rocked loose from its hinges, and here sits L. Cohen at an altar in the garden, solemnly enjoying new-found popularity and expanded respect. From the beginning, his musical peers have recognized Cohen´s ability to establish succinct analogies among life´s realities, his talent for creating intimate relationships between the interior world of longing and language and the exterior world of trains and violins. Even those performers who have neither "covered" his compositions nor been overtly influenced by them have professed to admire their artfulness: the darkly delicious melodies - aural bouquets of gardenia and thistle - that bring to mind an electrified, de-Germanized Kurt Weill; the playfully (and therefore dangerously) mournful lyrics that can peel the apple of love and the peach of lust with a knife that cuts all the way to the mystery, a layer Cole Porter just could`t expose. It is their desire to honor L. Cohen, songwriter, that has prompted a delegation of our brightest artists to climb, one by one, joss sticks smoldering, the steep and salty staircase in the Tower of Song.

A man is lying under machine-gun fire on a street in an embattled city. He looks at the pavement and sees a very amusing sight: the cobblestones are standing upright like the quills of a porcupine. The bullets hitting against their edges displace and tilt them. Such moments in the consciousness of a man judge all poets and philosophers. Let us suppose, too, that a certain poet was the hero of the literary cafes, and wherever he went was regarded with curiosity and awe. Yet his poems, recalled in such a moment, suddenly seem diseased and highbrow. The vision of the cobblestones is unquestionably real, and poetry based on an equally naked experience could survive triumphantly that judgment day of man’s illusions.

Once she had thrown a square of birch bark into the fire when her father came in the door. He might then have asked her why her quill pen had shaped a row of straight and crooked question marks and after each one an exclamation point--in rows of ten, perhaps forty running along--?! ?! ?! ?!--arranged in pairs or couples. If he had asked her what is this folderol and what can this nonsense mean she would have said the same she said when shaping them with her pen, one pair, one couple after another. "Each question mark stands for my ignorance and asks if I may learn and know the answer. And each exclamation point stands for my surprise at how little I know, my amazement at my vast ignorance, my utter astonishment at how much there is for me to learn.

There were shelves upon shelves of the most succulent-looking sweets imaginable. Creamy chunks of nougat, shimmering pink squares of coconut ice, fat, honey-colored toffees; hundreds of different kinds of chocolate in neat rows; there was a large barrel of Every Flavor Beans, and another of Fizzing Whizbees, the levitating sherbert balls that Ron had mentioned; along yet another wall were "Special Effects" sweets: Droobles Best Blowing Gum (which filled a room with bluebell-colored bubbles that refused to pop for days), the strange, splinter Toothflossing Stringmints, tiny black Pepper Imps ("breathe fire for your friends!"), Ice Mice ("hear your teeth chatter and squeak!"), peppermint creams shaped like toads ("hop realistically in the stomach!"), fragile sugar-spun quills, and exploding bonbons.

He got up and walked out to the road. The black shape of it running from dark to dark. Then a distant low rumble. Not thunder. You could feel it under your feet. A sound without cognate and so without description. Something imponderable shifting out there in the dark. The earth itself contracting with the cold. It did not come again. What time of year? What age the child? He walked out into the road and stood. The silence. The salitter drying from the earth. The mudstained shapes of flooded cities burned to the waterline. At a crossroads a ground set with dolmen stones where the spoken bones of oracles lay moldering. No sound but the wind. What will you say? A living man spoke these lines? He sharpened a quill with his small pen knife to scribe these things in sloe or lampblack? At some reckonable and entabled moment? He is coming to steal my eyes. To seal my mouth with dirt.

Song for the Last Act Now that I have your face by heart, I look Less at its features than its darkening frame Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame, Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd's crook. Beyond, a garden. There, in insolent ease The lead and marble figures watch the show Of yet another summer loath to go Although the scythes hang in the apple trees. Now that I have your face by heart, I look. Now that I have your voice by heart, I read In the black chords upon a dulling page Music that is not meant for music's cage, Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed. The staves are shuttled over with a stark Unprinted silence. In a double dream I must spell out the storm, the running stream. The beat's too swift. The notes shift in the dark. Now that I have your voice by heart, I read. Now that I have your heart by heart, I see The wharves with their great ships and architraves; The rigging and the cargo and the slaves On a strange beach under a broken sky. O not departure, but a voyage done! The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun. Now that I have your heart by heart, I see.

The old woman sits on a bench before the door and quarrels With her meagre pale demoralized daughter. Once when I passed I found her alone, laughing in the sun And saying that when she was first married She lived in the old farmhouse up Garapatas Canyon. (It is empty now, the roof has fallen But the log walls hang on the stone foundation; the redwoods Have all been cut down, the oaks are standing; The place is now more solitary than ever before.) "When I was nursing my second baby My husband found a day-old fawn hid in a fern-brake And brought it; I put its mouth to the breast Rather than let it starve, I had milk enough for three babies. Hey how it sucked, the little nuzzler, Digging its little hoofs like quills into my stomach. I had more joy from that than from the others." Her face is deformed with age, furrowed like a bad road With market-wagons, mean cares and decay. She is thrown up to the surface of things, a cell of dry skin Soon to be shed from the earth's old eye-brows, I see that once in her spring she lived in the streaming arteries, The stir of the world, the music of the mountain.

Ren followed along behind me somewhere quietly. I couldn’t hear him, but I knew he was there. I was acutely aware of his presence. I had an intangible connection with him, the man. It was almost as if he were walking next to me. Almost as if he were touching me. I must have started walking down the wrong path because he trotted ahead, pointedly moving in a different direction. I muttered, “Show-off. I’ll walk the wrong way if I want to.” But, I still followed after him. After a while, I made out the Jeep parked on the hill and saw Mr. Kadam waving at us. I walked up to his camp, and he grabbed me in a brief hug. “Miss Kelsey! You’re back. Tell me what happened.” I sighed, set down my backpack, and sat on the back bumper of the Keep. “Well, I have to tell you, these past few days have been some of the worst of my life. There were monkeys, and Kappa, and rotted kissing corpses, and snakebites, and trees covered with needles, and-“ He held up a hand. “What do you mean a few days? You just left last night.” Confused, I said, “No. We’ve been gone at least,” I counted on my fingers, “at least four or five days.” “I’m sorry, Miss Kelsey, but you and Ren left me last night. In fact, I was going to say you should get some rest and then try again tomorrow night. You were really gone almost a week?” “Well, I was asleep for two of the days. At least that’s what tiger boy over there told me.” I glared at Ren who stared back at me with an innocuous tiger expression while listening to our conversation. Ren appeared to be sweet and attentive, as harmless as a little kitten. He was about as harmless as a Kappa. I, on the other hand, was like a porcupine. I was bristling. All of my quills were standing on end so I could defend my soft belly from being devoured by the predator who had taken an interest. “Two days? My, my. Why don’t we return to the hotel and rest? We can try to get the fruit again tomorrow night.” “But, Mr. Kadam,” I said an unzipped the backpack, “we don’t have to come back. We got Durga’s first gift, the Golden Fruit.” I pulled out my quilt and unfolded it, revealing the Golden Fruit nestled within. He gently picked it up out of its cocoon. “Amazing!” he exclaimed. “It’s a mango.” With a smirk, I added, “It only makes sense. After all, mangoes are very important to Indian culture and trade.” Ren huffed at me and rolled onto his side in the grass.

It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence; that appears to result, in some way, from the consideration before mentioned: i.e. that a man should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea, and eat it too by its own light. But no doubt the first man that ever murdered an ox was regarded as murderer; perhaps he was hung; and if he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would have been; and he certainly deserved it if any murderer does. Go to the meat-market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal’s jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and featest on their bloated livers in they pate-de-fois-gras. But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my civilized and enlightened gourmand dining off that roast beef, what is that handle made of?—what but the bones of the brother of the very ox you are eating? And what do you pick your teeth with, after devouring that fat goose? With a feather of the same fowl. And with what quill did the Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Ganders formerly indite his circulars? It is only within the last month or two that that society passed a resolution to patronize nothing but steel pens.

The sparkling smile became enormous. ‘Do you think she has a dagger there? Do you? Ask her, M. Francis? For,’ said the most noble and most powerful Princess Mary Stewart, Queen of Scotland, delving furiously under all the stiff red velvet, showing shift, hose and garters, shoes, knees and a long ribboned end of something recently torn loose, and emerging therefrom with a fist closed tight on an object short and hard and glittering, ‘for I have!’ And breathlessly, flinging back her head, with the little knife offered like a quill, ‘Try to stab me!’ she encouraged her visitor. There was a queer silence, during which the eyes of Oonagh O’Dwyer and her love of one night met and locked like magnet and iron. The child, waiting a moment, offered again, the ringing, joyful defiance still in her voice. ‘Try to stab me! … Go on, and I’ll kill you all dead!’ Her throat dry, Oonagh spoke. ‘Save your steel for those you trust. They are the ones who will carry your bier; the men who cannot hate, nor can they know love. Send away the cold servants.’ The red mouth had opened a little; the knife hung forgotten in her hand. ‘I would,’ said Mary, surprised. ‘But I do not know any.’ And, anxiously demonstrating her point, she caught Lymond by the hand.

Gabe watched her move to the center of the green. In one gloved hand, she clutched a leash. The other end of the leash was attached to... something furry and brown that rolled. "What is that?" "That would be mongrel with two lamed hind legs. Apparently, Her Ladyship's friend devised a little chariot for his rear half, and the dog careens around the neighborhood like a yapping billiard ball. If you think that's strange, wait until you see the goat." "Hold a moment. There's a goat?" "Oh, yes. She grazes it on the square every afternoon. Doesn't precisely elevate the atmosphere of Bloom Square, now does it?" "I see the problem." "I'm only getting started. Her Ladyship has single-handedly set us back a month on the improvements." Hammond pulled a collection of letters from a folio. He held one aloft and read from it. "'Dear Mr. Hammond, I must request that you delay completion of the parquet flooring. The fumes from the lacquer are dizzying the hens. Sincerely yours, Lady Penelope Campion.'" He withdrew another. "'Dear Mr. Hammond, I'm afraid your improvements to the mews must be temporarily halted. I've located a litter of newborn kittens in the hayloft. Their mother is looking after them, but as their eyes are not yet open, they should not be displaced for another week. Thank you for your cooperation. Gratefully yours, Lady Penelope Campion.'" Gabe sensed a theme. "Oh, and here's my favorite." Hammond shook open a letter and cleared his throat for dramatic effect. "'Dear Mr. Hammond, if it is not too great an imposition, might I ask that your workers refrain from performing heavy labor between nine o'clock in the morning and half-three in the afternoon? Hedgehogs are nocturnal animals, and sensitive to loud noises. My dear Freya is losing quills. I feel certain this will concern you as much as it does me. Neighborly yours, Lady Penelope Campion.'" He tossed the folio of letters onto the table, where they landed with a smack. "Her hedgehog. Really.

In the living room Derek sprawled on the floor on a blanket, his eyes closed, his body human, corded with hard muscle, and covered only with a strategically placed towel. Julie knelt by him, long tweezers in her hand. “What’s going on?” “Quills,” she said. “Very thin quills. There was a magic plant and he decided it would be a good idea to give it a hug. Because he is smart that way.” So they had taken Julie with them. Considering where I’d gone and what I did while there, I didn’t have room to talk. Derek didn’t bother opening his eyes. “I wasn’t giving it a hug. I was shielding Ella.” “Mm-hm.” Julie plucked a thin needle from his stomach. “You shielded her really well. Because it’s not like we didn’t have Carlos with us.” Carlos was a firebug. The plant must’ve gotten torched. “We’ll need to work on mixed-unit tactics,” Curran said. He looked tired. It must’ve been hell. “So what did you do in Mishmar?” Umm. Ehh. In my head I had somehow expected Erra to stay in Mishmar. “I saw my father,” I said. Start small. “How was that?” Curran asked. “He’s a little upset with me.” “Aha.” “I broke Mishmar a little bit.” The three of them looked at me. “But it was mostly my grandmother who did it.” “How much is a little bit?” Derek asked. “There might be a crack. About maybe seven feet at the widest point.” Derek laughed. “And what else?” Curran asked. Perceptive bastard. “And this.” I pulled out the dagger and showed it to him. “You made a magic knife?” he asked. “Yes. In a manner of speaking.” “But you still have to get close enough to stab Roland with it,” Derek said. “That’s not how it works.” Help me, somebody. Curran was looking right at me. “Kate?” “It’s more of an advising kind of knife.” “You should come clean,” he said. “Whatever it is, it’s done and we can handle it.” My aunt tore into existence in the center of the room. “Hello, half-breed.” Curran exploded into a leap. Unfortunately, Derek also exploded at exactly the same time but from the opposite direction. They collided in Erra’s translucent body with a loud thud. Derek fell back and Curran stumbled a few steps. Erra pointed at Curran with her thumb. “You want to marry this? Is there a shortage of men?” Curran leapt forward and swiped at her head. His hand passed through my aunt’s face. Derek jumped to his feet and circled Erra, his eyes glowing. “I fear for my grandnephew,” Erra said. “He will be an idiot.