Toby Determined Quotes

But you didn't get this far by giving up, did you? That's right. You have something called 'determination'. So as long as you hold on, so as long as you do what's in your heart, I believe you can do the right thing.

Your breakfast is ready,” Toby said to Call, leaning through the open office door. “I made waffles--your favorite. And I’ve got some of that Saskatoon syrup you like.” “Someday, you’ll make someone a great wife, Toby,” Call grumbled, forcing himself to his feet though he wasn’t really hungry. Toby just grinned. Call walked past him into the kitchen and sat down at the breakfast table. Toby was babying him again. For nearly a week he’d been foul-tempered and edgy, and he hadn’t been sleeping well. Apparently Toby had noticed the shadows under his eyes and his surly disposition. Call raked a hand through his hair as the boy set a steaming plate of crisp golden waffles in front of him, then sat down in the chair across the table. “So…what’s going on with our gorgeous next-door neighbor?” Call nearly choked on the bite of bacon he’d just taken. “Nothing’s going on. She lives there. I live here. That’s all there is to it.” And Call was determined to keep it that way. To ensure that it did, he hadn’t seen Charity since last week, hadn’t even picked up the binoculars to see what she was up to. Since then, he had been able to block thoughts of her for, oh, maybe an hour or two at a time. Christ, the woman drove him crazy and she wasn’t even near. “Man, she is really something,” Toby went on between bites of waffle. “I wonder how old she is.” Call glanced up, caught the interest in Toby’s eyes. “Too old for you, so forget it.” “Hey--I like older women. And that one is definitely hot.” Too damned hot, Call thought, trying not to remember what it felt like to kiss her. “If you’re really not interested, maybe I could--” “I told you to forget it,” Call snapped, then looked over just in time to see Toby grin. “That’s what I thought.” Call just grunted.

But this story isn’t about Toby’s twelfth birthday, or the car wreck at Jonas’s party—not really. There is a type of problem in organic chemistry called a retrosynthesis. You are presented with a compound that does not occur in nature, and your job is to work backward, step by step, and ascertain how it came to exist—what sort of conditions led to its eventual creation. When you are finished, if done correctly, the equation can be read normally, making it impossible to distinguish the question from the answer. I still think that everyone’s life, no matter how unremarkable, has a singular tragic encounter after which everything that really matters will happen. That moment is the catalyst—the first step in the equation. But knowing the first step will get you nowhere—it’s what comes after that determines the result.

When I was giving birth to my son, I had a veritable entourage of attendees, including, but not limited to, my mother and sister. I brought two art cards of my mother’s work with me to give myself something to focus on during labour. I expected to use “Sister Moon” more than “Winter’s Cup” because to me it is my mother as a young woman. It is probably my favourite piece of hers and I wanted her with me on many levels for the grand event. However, to my surprise, it was the image of myself that I clung to. The one of me conveying utter determination and strength, clothed in old finery, raising a chalice above my head while I literally manifested and birthed good things from within. It became, in those trying hours, a vital source of power for me. I see the picture differently now. “Winter's Cup” as my mother created it has found a life of its own, far from the one she ever imagined. In the end, this is perhaps the greatest achievement of an artist, of a mother, that their work moves beyond them, becoming for the viewer a source of truth and beauty with new stories to tell….

Sacrifice points to the way God is determined to receive us by His grace as we are but also how He refuses to leave us the way we are.

Stone retains vestigia longer than anything except certain types of plastic, but I’d wanted to check first thing and not waste any time. Magic powerful enough to damage a phone would have left a trace on the monument had it happened here. I know this because I’ve done experiments in a controlled setting to determine accurately the persistence of vestigia following a magical event. Or at least as accurately as you can using your own perception and that of a short-haired terrier called Toby.

You can generally tell when and by who a spell was perfected by the name it’s given. Old Newton himself was crap at names, or more precisely didn’t really give a shit. Thus we get telescopium for the telescope spell and kisef for a spell that is supposed to determine the purity of gold but really doesn’t. In the period between Newton’s publication of the second Principia and the founding of the Society of the Wise, the diverse bunch of quacks, ambitious apothecaries, and dangerously independently minded women who were his immediate heirs named their spells however they liked. Dancing Dog does what it says on the tin, although you can use it on most mammals, not just dogs. Not that I’ve seen it in action on account of ethical considerations, and Toby would probably bite me if I tried. I think the posh women that went on to become the Society of the Rose used ancient Greek for some reason, and then there are spells named things like Shazorami!, with an exclamation mark, which comes straight from the music hall.