Towers Of Midnight Quotes

Nobody walks a difficult path without stumbling now and again. It didn’t break you when you fell. That’s the important part.

If you wish, you may call me Rand Sedai.

The more one knows, the sooner one grows old,” Midnight returned cheerfully.

Bloody ashes, woman. This isn't a metaphor for anything! It's just boots.

Small things were important. Seconds were small things, and if you heaped enough of those on top of one another, they became a man's life.

So long as we do not depend on the facts entirely, incomplete knowledge is better than complete ignorance. --Egwene al'Vere

When change comes, you can scream and try to force things to stay the same. But you’ll usually end up getting trampled. However, if you can direct the changes, they can serve you.

I reached out my hand, England's rivers turned and flowed the other way... I reached out my hand, my enemies's blood stopt in their veins... I reached out my hand; thought and memory flew out of my enemies' heads like a flock of starlings; My enemies crumpled like empty sacks. I came to them out of mists and rain; I came to them in dreams at midnight; I came to them in a flock of ravens that filled a northern sky at dawn; When they thought themselves safe I came to them in a cry that broke the silence of a winter wood... The rain made a door for me and I went through it; The stones made a throne for me and I sat upon it; Three kingdoms were given to me to be mine forever; England was given to me to be mine forever. The nameless slave wore a silver crown; The nameless slave was a king in a strange country... The weapons that my enemies raised against me are venerated in Hell as holy relics; Plans that my enemies made against me are preserved as holy texts; Blood that I shed upon ancient battlefields is scraped from the stained earth by Hell's sacristans and placed in a vessel of silver and ivory. I gave magic to England, a valuable inheritance But Englishmen have despised my gift Magic shall be written upon the sky by the rain but they shall not be able to read it; Magic shall be written on the faces of the stony hills but their minds shall not be able to contain it; In winter the barren trees shall be a black writing but they shall not understand it... Two magicians shall appear in England... The first shall fear me; the second shall long to behold me; The first shall be governed by thieves and murderers; the second shall conspire at his own destruction; The first shall bury his heart in a dark wood beneath the snow, yet still feel its ache; The second shall see his dearest posession in his enemy's hand... The first shall pass his life alone, he shall be his own gaoler; The second shall tread lonely roads, the storm above his head, seeking a dark tower upon a high hillside... I sit upon a black throne in the shadows but they shall not see me. The rain shall make a door for me and I shall pass through it; The stones shall make a throne for me and I shall sit upon it... The nameless slave shall wear a silver crown The nameless slave shall be a king in a strange country...

The finished clock is resplendent. At first glance it is simply a clock, a rather large black clock with a white face and a silver pendulum. Well crafted, obviously, with intricately carved woodwork edges and a perfectly painted face, but just a clock. But that is before it is wound. Before it begins to tick, the pendulum swinging steadily and evenly. Then, then it becomes something else. The changes are slow. First, the color changes in the face, shifts from white to grey, and then there are clouds that float across it, disappearing when they reach the opposite side. Meanwhile, bits of the body of the clock expand and contract, like pieces of a puzzle. As though the clock is falling apart, slowly and gracefully. All of this takes hours. The face of the clock becomes a darker grey, and then black, with twinkling stars where numbers had been previously. The body of the clock, which has been methodically turning itself inside out and expanding, is now entirely subtle shades of white and grey. And it is not just pieces, it is figures and objects, perfectly carved flowers and planets and tiny books with actual paper pages that turn. There is a silver dragon that curls around part of the now visible clockwork, a tiny princess in a carved tower who paces in distress, awaiting an absent prince. Teapots that pour into teacups and minuscule curls of steam that rise from them as the seconds tick. Wrapped presents open. Small cats chase small dogs. An entire game of chess is played. At the center, where a cuckoo bird would live in a more traditional timepiece, is the juggler. Dress in harlequin style with a grey mask, he juggles shiny silver balls that correspond to each hour. As the clock chimes, another ball joins the rest until at midnight he juggles twelve balls in a complex pattern. After midnight, the clock begins once more to fold in upon itself. The face lightens and the cloud returns. The number of juggled balls decreases until the juggler himself vanishes. By noon it is a clock again, and no longer a dream.

I wonder if,” Nynaeve said, “we sometimes put the White Tower —as an institution— before the people we serve. I wonder if we let it become a goal in itself, instead of a means to help us achieve greater goals.” “Devotion is important, Nynaeve. The White Tower protects and guides the world.” “And yet, so many of us do it without families,” Nynaeve said. “Without love, without passion beyond our own particular interests. So even while we try to guide the world, we separate ourselves from it. We risk arrogance, Egwene. We always assume we know best, but risk making ourselves unable to fathom the people we claim to serve.

The newest pups always blame the elders of the pack.

You never could tell what a man would do when he was drunk, even if that man was your own self.

Prudence is for those who intend to live long lives,

Respect is a thing earned and not demanded, Perrin Aybara.

The trick is not to satisfy everyone, but to leave everyone feeling they reached the best possible result.

Defying the Dark One no matter the length of his shadow. We will live, that defiance said. We will love and we will hope.

When an officer runs by with a look like that on his face, you don’t ask if he needs help. You just follow!

It was hard to explain to students that there was a rule that trumped all of the others: Always trust your instincts.

As she walked, clock towers across Prague started arguing midnight, and the long, fraught Monday came at last to a close.

In war, as in farming, you sometimes had to step in and get knee-deep in the muck.

The quality it had now, in fresh untempered sunlight, was neither faerie nor austere; the changing shadows of dusk and midnight had vanished with the darkness and the rain, and walls and roof and towers were bathed in the radiance that comes only in the first hours of the day, soft, new-washed, the delicate aftermath of dawn. The people who slept within must surely bear some imprint of this radiance in themselves, must turn instinctively to the light seeping through the shutters, while the ghostly dreams and sorrows of the night slipped away, finding sanctuary in the unwakened forest trees the sun had not yet touched.

My waiter friend, Laurent, working at the Brasserie Champs du Mars near the Eiffel Tower, one night while serving me Une Grande Beer, explained his life. “I work from ten to twelve hours, sometimes fourteen,” he says, “and then at midnight I go dancing, dancing, dancing until four or five in the morning and go to bed and sleep until ten and then up, up and to work by eleven and another ten or twelve or sometimes fifteen hours of work.” “How can you do that?” I ask. “Easily,” he says. “To be asleep is to be dead. It is like death. So we dance, we dance so as not to be dead. We do not want that.” “How old are you?” I ask, at last. “Twenty-three,” he says. “Ah,” I say and take his elbow gently. “Ah. Twenty-three, is it?” “Twenty-three,” he says, smiling. “And you?” “Seventy-six,” I say. “And I do not want to be dead, either. But I am not twenty-three. How can I answer? What do I do?” “Yes,” says Laurent, still smiling and innocent, “what do you do at three in the morning?” “Write,” I say, at last. “Write!” Laurent says, astonished. “Write?” “So as not to be dead,” I say. “Like you.” “Me?” “Yes,” I say, smiling now, myself. “At three in the morning, I write, I write, I write!

That was a thing of wolves; they could know the past and the future, yet keep their attention on the hunt. Could he do the same? Allow himself to be consumed when needed, yet keep balance in other parts of his life?

And so we begin the game that cannot be won,” Thom said, sliding the knife back into its sheath. “Courage to strengthen,” Noal whispered, stepping forward, holding up a lantern with a flickering flame. “Fire to blind. Music to dazzle. Iron to bind.” “And Matrim Cauthon,” Mat added. “To bloody even the odds.” He stepped through the doorway. Light

Rand sent us away to search for an enemy,” he bellowed. “We return to him having found allies. Onward, to the Last Battle!” Only

If you ever meet a Malkieri,” Noal said, “you tell him Jain Farstrider died clean.” “I will, Jain,” Mat said. “May the light hold you.” Noal

What was the good of acting out fake stories? Why not go live a few stories of your own?

Women were always happy for a chance to educate a boy when he was young; Mat thought they assumed they could educate him out of becoming a man if they tried hard enough.

Never choose the card a man wants you to. Mat should have realized that. It was one of the oldest cons in creation.

She grimaced, remembering one incarnation when she and he had been forced to grow old together, peacefully. Most boring life she’d ever known, though at the time—ignorant of her grander part in the Pattern—she’d been happy with it.

He built a tower to try and be closer to her and walled himself inside.” She stared at him for a moment as if waiting for something. “And?” He glanced at her, puzzled. “And, what?” She widened her eyes. “How does the story end? Did the sorcerer win his Moon Maiden?” “Of course not,” he said irritably. “She lived on the moon and was quite unattainable. I suppose he must’ve starved or pined away or fallen off the wall at some point.

Small things were important. Seconds were small things, and if you heaped enough of those on top of one another, they became a man’s life.

And they say she loathed everyone in the whole wide world, except for the boy from the bell tower. —Lady of Dark Days, by Dahntel

Noal nodded to one of the corridors 'These corridors are narrow. Good choke points. A man could stand there and only have to fight one or two at a time. He'd last maybe a few minutes. ... 'Thom, you're in no shape to fight. Mat, you're the one who's luck can find a way out. Neither of you can stay, but I can.

Rules: No strangers are allowed onto the property. Do not enter the tower. Do not leave the groundskeeper’s cottage between midnight and dawn. Draw your curtains. Keep the door locked. If you hear knocking, do not answer it.

He hadn’t asked to become a leader, but did that absolve him of responsibility? People needed him. The world needed him. And, with an understanding that cooled in him like molten rock forming into a shape, he realized that he wanted to lead. If someone had to be lord of these people, he wanted to do it himself. Because doing it yourself was the only way to see that it was done right.

Offended you again,” her godmother said with satisfaction. “Come along, then. We’ll go to my chambers. The butler put me in one of the towers, and it’s utterly heavenly, like being stuck in the clouds except for the pigeons crapping on the windows.

He felt something on his neck. Warmth. He hesitated, then turned weary eyes toward the sky. Sunlight bathed his face. He gaped; it seemed so long since he’d seen pure sunlight. It shone down through a large break in the clouds, comforting, like the warmth of an oven baking a loaf of Adrinne’s thick sourdough bread. Almen stood, raising a hand to shade his eyes. He took a deep, long breath, and smelled… apple blossoms? He spun with a start. The apple trees were flowering. That was plain ridiculous. He rubbed his eyes, but that didn’t dispel the image. They were blooming, all of them, white flowers breaking out between the leaves. [...] What was happening? Apple trees didn’t blossom twice. Was he going mad? Footsteps sounded softly on the path that ran past the orchard. Almen spun to find a tall young man walking down out of the foothills. He had deep red hair and he wore ragged clothing: a brown cloak with loose sleeves and a simple white linen shirt beneath. The trousers were finer, black with a delicate embroidery of gold at the cuff. “Ho, stranger,” Almen said, raising a hand, not knowing what else to say, not even sure if he’d seen what he thought he’d seen. “Did you… did you get lost up in the foothills?” The man stopped, turning sharply. He seemed surprised to find Almen there. With a start, Almen realized the man’s left arm ended in a stump. The stranger looked about, then breathed in deeply. “No. I’m not lost. Finally. It feels like a great long time since I’ve understood the path before me.

Long after midnight the towers and spires of Princeton were visible, with here and there a late-burning light – and suddenly out of the clear darkness the sound of bells. As an endless dream it went on; the spirit of the past brooding over a new generation, the chosen youth from the muddled, unchastened world, still fed romantically on the mistakes and half-forgotten dreams of dead statesmen and poets. Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a reverie of long days and nights, destined finally to go out into the dirty grey turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all God’s dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken…

Traditions should not be maintained just because they were traditions. Strength was not strength if it had no purpose or direction.

the world was not black and white—it wasn’t even gray. It was full of colors that sometimes didn’t fit into any spectrum of morality.

Vasya saw, with disquiet, that Midnight had a great number of teeth.

Sweetbuns?” “Tradition among us Two Rivers folk.” “Never heard of that tradition.” “It’s very obscure.” “Ah, I see. And what did you do to those buns?” “Sprinklewort,” Mat said. “It’ll turn her mouth blue for a week, maybe two. And she won’t share the sweetbuns with anyone, except maybe her Warders. Joline is addicted to the things. She must have eaten seven or eight bags’ worth since we got to Caemlyn.” “Nice,” Thom said, knuckling his mustache. “Childish, though.” “I’m trying to get back to my basic roots,” Mat said. “You know, recapture some of my lost youth.

Listen, baby, life is a series of things we choose and things we carry. The things we choose, well, those are ours. But we don't get a vote on the things we carry. Some are heavier than others, some we can put down eventually, and some are ours to keep. We don't have a choice in the burdens we're given to bear, but we do have a choice in how we hold them. We can strap them to our backs and walk through the world hunched over under the weight like someone who should spend his or her days in a bell tower. Or we can stand tall and straight like one of those African queens carrying a woven basket on her head.

a victory of diplomacy did not come when everyone got what they wanted—that made everyone assume they’d gotten the better of her, which encouraged more extravagant demands. The trick is not to satisfy everyone, but to leave everyone feeling they reached the best possible result. They must be satisfied enough to do as you wish, yet dissatisfied enough to know that you bested them.

The clocks were striking midnight at different places all over the town as I stepped through the door of my college. The rain had cleared. Moonlight gave the grass and towers an air of unreality, as if all would be removed in the morning to make way for another scene.

There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York--every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb. At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another. By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names. The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light. Suddenly one of the gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the FOLLIES. The party has begun.

An old man emerged from the ditch, a creature Of mud and wild autumn winds capering Like a hare across a bouldered field, across And through the stillness of time unhinged That sprawls patient and unexpected in the Place where battle lies spent, unmoving and Never again moving bodies strewn and Death-twisted like lost languages tracking Contorted glyphs on a barrow door, and he read well the aftermath, the disarticulated script Rent and dissolute the pillars of self toppled Like termite towers all spilled out round his Dancing feet, and he shouted in gleeful Revelation the truth he'd found, in these Red-fleshed pronouncements - “There is peace!” He shrieked. “There is peace!” and it was No difficult thing, where I sat in the saddle Above salt-rimed horseflesh to lift my crossbow Aim and loose the quarrel, skewering the madman To his proclamation. “Now,” said I, in the Silence that followed, “Now, there is peace.

If you ever meet a Malkieri,” Noal said, “you tell him Jain Farstrider died clean.

You’re a good egg, London. A bit hard-boiled and covered in an impenetrable shell, but a good egg all the same.

Sometimes the only way to make it through this life was to pretend I was living a very different one.

there was nothing a woman liked better than finding men who were relaxing, then giving them orders.

By such subtle signs, like an orchestra tuning up, the daily event that is central to life on the Coromandel Coast announces itself: the evening breeze. The Madras evening breeze has a body to it, its atomic constituents knitted together to create a thing of substance that strokes and cools the skin in the manner of a long, icy drink or a plunge into a mountain spring. It pushes through on a broad front, up and down the coast; unhurried, reliable, with no slack until after midnight, by which time it will have lulled them into beautiful sleep. It doesn’t know caste or privilege as it soothes the expatriates in their pocket mansions, the shirtless clerk sitting with his wife on the rooftop of his one-room house, and the pavement dwellers in their roadside squats. Digby has seen the cheery Muthu become distracted, his conversation clipped and morose, as he waits for the relief that comes from the direction of Sumatra and Malaya, gathering itself over the Bay of Bengal, carrying scents of orchids and salt, an airborne opiate that unclenches, unknots, and finally lets one forget the brutal heat of the day. “Yes, yes, you are having your Taj Mahal, your Golden Temple, your Eiffel Tower,” an educated Madrasi will say, “but can anything match our Madras evening breeze?

Long after midnight when you park, and stand Just for a moment in the chromium wash, Sometimes it seems that, some way off, Between the river and the tower belt, say, The roofs show black on pomegranate red As if, below that line, they stood on fire.

Polunochnitsa,” she said, drinking. Vasya jerked back in alarm. Solovey, watching, pinned his ears. Vasya’s nurse, Dunya, had told tales of two demon-sisters, Midnight and Midday, and none of those stories ended well for lonely travelers. “Why are you here?” Vasya asked, breathing fast.

It soon became obvious, even with9in the stedding, that the Pattern was grwoing frail. The sky darkened. Our dead appeared, standing in rings outside the broders of the stedding, looking in. Most troubingly, trees fell ill, and no song would heal them. It was in this time of sorrows that I stepped up to the Great Stump. At first, I was forbidden, but my mother, covril, demanded I have my chance. I do not know wht sparked her change of heart, as she herself had argued quite decisvely for the opposing side. My hands shook. I would be the last speaker, and most seemed to have already made up their minds to open the Book of Translation. They considered me an afterthought. And I knew that unless I spoke true, humanity would be left along to face the Shadow. In that moment, my nervousness fled. I felt only a stilness, a calm sense of purpose. I opened my mouth, and I began to speak. -from The Dragon Reborn, by Loial, son of Arent son of Halan, of Stedding Shangtai

She was leaving? I couldn’t believe it. But then I never can. I suddenly thought of Sam clicking the Lego tower into every corner. My old feeling of stunned abandonment (or perhaps at this point it was a monument to abandonment, a tower) fit any loss, regardless of size. Kris didn’t want to talk about it, but other people did; Arkanda did. I could have this conversation again and again if I wanted, for the rest of my life. I get it, Sam. There are corners everywhere. “I guess it’s late, isn’t it?” I said, looking at my phone. Almost midnight. “Nah, not for me. I’m headed to the studio!” She clapped her hands together. “I don’t use clocks or calendars. Every time is now; every day is Tuesday.

Now directly above her, transiting the meridian, was the new crescent moon. No longer a chalky white, it was as silver as a piece of polished jewelry, somehow shining and sparkling despite the fact that it should have been nearly invisible that close to the sun, traveling through his bright day. "Oh, how pret---" Rapunzel started to say, but then she was distracted because her hair began to glow. Just like when she killed the chickens-- but more. Brilliantly, with the white light of the diamonds of her (Flynn's) crown, with the whiteness she imagined the foam of a midnight sea would look like. She picked up a hank of hair and let it hang from her hands; it was like holding molten silver chains or all the distant rivers seen from her tower, gathered up together by some unimaginable fairy-tale giant.

I looked up at the ivory towers above us all. Nowhere else equals the feral design of this city. Tall skyscrapers that act as gorges hollowing out between flat cement dancing into narrow alleyways like bottomless pits. Building walls rusted the color of blood. Sometimes when you look down the horizon from afar the city looks wider than it is, like a thin field of magical lights gleaming with the hopes of children and idealists; a light on at midnight in one of the penthouses or the changing hues of the Empire State Building. Most of the time though, the city is covered with a layer of honking cars and greed, sirens and the war cry of solicitors, all full of brambles and impenetrable conscience; garbage, steaming manholes, and heat waves twirling smog and pollution through your lungs like mirages as you walk breathlessly through a boiling desert.

The Scholomance was a piece of Shadowhunter history come to life. A cold castle of towers and corridors carved into the side of a mountain in the Carpathians, it had existed for centuries as a place where the most elite of Shadowhunters were trained to deal with the double menaces of demons and Downworlders. It had been closed when the first Accords were signed: a show of faith that Downworlders and Shadowhunters were no longer at war.

Chapter 1 In the bitter cold of a late December night, the gargoyle’s sharp gaze scanned restlessly over the deserted streets of Dublin. Not far below, the clock in the tower of St. Patrick’s Cathedral began to strike midnight. The sound of the bell reverberated on a breeze brittle with the promise of snow, skittering among the city’s chimneys and across frost-kissed slate roofs. Very soon, the rhythm was picked up by other clocks elsewhere in the sleeping city.

You think your life is unfurling in a certain way, and you let yourself grow happy about it, a smile rising at the slightest thing. A boy in short pants eating a pastelito makes you grin like a lunatic at the vision of your own hoped‐for children, their dark shiny heads rising, year by year, from the Cuban earth, your wife towering behind them, kind and wise. Then you find yourself in a midnight cemetery guarding your mustache from the covetous ghost of an American woman you once loved. Who wouldn’t laugh?

Victoria sighed deeply as the clock tower bell chimed midnight. Light snowflakes, almost weightless, began drifting down from the sky. Tiny, white butterflies danced in the wind among the bare trees. The two young people turned their eyes up towards the dark sky. "The fairies are weeping," she whispered. "What?" asked Ted, looking back at her. Victoria turned her grey eyes back at him and smiled. "In the lands of the north they say that when snowflakes fall at midnight, they are the tears of fairies falling on the ground. The fairies are weeping.

LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year. He said to his friend, “If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch Of the North Church tower as a signal light, — One, if by land, and two, if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the country folk to be up and to arm.

The finished clock is resplendent. At first glance it is simply a clock, a rather large black clock with a white face and a silver pendulum. Well crafted, obviously, with intricately carved woodwork edges and a perfectly painted face, but just a clock. But that is before it is wound. Before it begins to tick, the pendulum swinging steadily and evenly. Then, then it becomes something else. The changes are slow. First, the color changes in the face, shifts from white to grey, and then there are clouds that float across it, disappearing when they reach the opposite side. Meanwhile, bits of the body of the clock expand and contract, like pieces of a puzzle. As though the clock is falling apart, slowly and gracefully. All of this takes hours. The face of the clock becomes a darker grey, and then black, with twinkling stars where the numbers had been previously. The body of the clock, which has been methodically turning itself inside out and expanding, is now entirely subtle shades of white and grey. And it is not just pieces, it is figures and objects, perfectly carved flowers and planets and tiny books with actual paper pages that turn. There is a silver dragon that curls around part of the now visible clockwork, a tiny princess in a carved tower who paces in distress, awaiting an absent prince. Teapots that pour into teacups and minuscule curls of steam that rise from them as the seconds tick. Wrapped presents open. Small cats chase small dogs. An entire game of chess is played. At the center, where a cuckoo bird would live in a more traditional timepiece, is the juggler. Dressed in harlequin style with a grey mask, he juggles shiny silver balls that correspond to each hour. As the clock chimes, another ball joins the rest until at midnight he juggles twelve balls in a complex pattern. After midnight the clock begins once more to fold in upon itself. The face lightens and the clouds return. The number of juggled balls decreases until the juggler himself vanishes. By noon it is a clock again, and no longer a dream. A

Ernst of Edelsheim I'll tell the story, kissing   This white hand for my pains: No sweeter heart, nor falser   E'er filled such fine, blue veins. I'll sing a song of true love,   My Lilith dear! to you; Contraria contrariis—   The rule is old and true. The happiest of all lovers   Was Ernst of Edelsheim; And why he was the happiest,   I'll tell you in my rhyme. One summer night he wandered   Within a lonely glade, And, couched in moss and moonlight,   He found a sleeping maid. The stars of midnight sifted   Above her sands of gold; She seemed a slumbering statue,   So fair and white and cold. Fair and white and cold she lay   Beneath the starry skies; Rosy was her waking   Beneath the Ritter's eyes. He won her drowsy fancy,   He bore her to his towers, And swift with love and laughter   Flew morning's purpled hours. But when the thickening sunbeams   Had drunk the gleaming dew, A misty cloud of sorrow   Swept o'er her eyes' deep blue. She hung upon the Ritter's neck, S he wept with love and pain, She showered her sweet, warm kisses   Like fragrant summer rain. "I am no Christian soul," she sobbed,   As in his arms she lay; "I'm half the day a woman,   A serpent half the day. "And when from yonder bell-tower   Rings out the noonday chime, Farewell! farewell forever,   Sir Ernst of Edelsheim!" "Ah! not farewell forever!"   The Ritter wildly cried, "I will be saved or lost with thee,   My lovely Wili-Bride!" Loud from the lordly bell-tower   Rang out the noon of day, And from the bower of roses   A serpent slid away. But when the mid-watch moonlight   Was shimmering through the grove, He clasped his bride thrice dowered   With beauty and with love. The happiest of all lovers   Was Ernst of Edelsheim— His true love was a serpent   Only half the time!

Their reflections merged together, rippling on the dark surface of the mirror that recorded only the intermittent pale blurs of their faces and the gracious, rocking-chair, three-hour rhythm of their bodies, spinning between the waltzing walls. Laughing, breathless, they whirled to the invisible rhetoric of a hundred violins. The patches of candlelight illuminated only their feet for odd moments, and then they were back, dancing in darkness again. They neared the extravagant climax of the dance. ‘Da – dee dee da – dee da! dum, dum!’ But when the time came for parting and bowing and curtseying to one another, Honeybuzzard instead convulsively crushed his partner in a fierce embrace, pressing his sweating face deeply into the other’s shoulder, straining bruising fingers into neck and back, wet mouth fastened on his throat, clinging as if he would never let go until the round world toppled into the sun and the last bell-tower rang midnight and everything was extinguished.

It takes the better part of those months for Herr Thiessen to complete the clock. He works on little else, though the sum of money involved makes the arrangement more than manageable. Weeks are spent on the design and the mechanics. He hires an assistant to complete some of the basic woodwork, but he takes care of all the details himself. Herr Thiessen loves details and he loves a challenge. He balances the entire design on that one specific word Mr. Barris used. Dreamlike. The finished clock is resplendent. At first glance it is simply a clock, a rather large black clock with a white face and a silver pendulum. Well crafted, obviously, with intricately carved woodwork edges and a perfectly painted face, but just a clock. But that is before it is wound. Before it begins to tick, the pendulum swinging steadily and evenly. Then, then it becomes something else. The changes are slow. First, the color changes in the face, shifts from white to grey, and then there are clouds that float across it, disappearing when they reach the opposite side. Meanwhile, bits of the body of the clock expand and contract, like pieces of a puzzle. As thought clock is falling apart, slowly and gracefully. All of this takes hours. The face of the clock becomes a darker grey, and then black, with twinkling stars where the numbers had been previously. The body of the clock, which has been methodically turning itself inside out and expanding, is now entirely subtle shades of white and grey. And it is not just pieces, it is figures and objects, perfectly carved flowers and planets and tiny books with actually paper pages that turn. There is a silver dragon curls around part of the now visible clockwork, a tiny princess in a carved tower who paces in distress awaiting an absent prince. Teapots that our into teacups and minuscule curls of steam that rise from them as the seconds tick. Wrapped presents open. Small cats chase small dogs. An entire game of chess is played. At the center, where a cuckoo bird would live in a more traditional timepiece, is the juggler. Dressed in harlequin style with a grey mask, he juggles shiny silver balls that correspond to each hour. As the hour chimes, another ball joins the rest until at midnight he juggles twelve balls in a complex pattern. After midnight the clock begins once more to fold in upon itself. The face lightens and the colds return. The number of juggled balls decreases until the juggler himself vanishes. By noon it is a clock again, and no longer a dream.

From the cobbled Close, we all admired the Minster's great towers of fretted stone soaring to the clouds, every inch carved as fine as lacework. Once we had passed into the nave, I surrendered my scruples to that glorious hush that tells of a higher presence than ourselves. It was a bright winter's day, and the vaulted windows tinted the air with dappled rainbows. Sitting quietly in my pew, I recognized a change in myself; that every morning I woke quite glad to be alive. Instead of fitful notions of footsteps at midnight, each new day was heralded by cheery sounds outside my window: the post-horn's trumpeting and the cries and songs of busy, prosperous people. I was still young and vital, with no need for bed rest or sleeping draughts. I was ready to face whatever the future held. However troubled my marriage was, it was better by far than my former life with my father. Dropping my face into my clasped hands, I glimpsed in reverie a sort of labyrinth, a mysterious path I must traverse in the months to come. I could not say what trials lay ahead of me- but I knew that I must be strong, and win whatever happiness I might glean on this earth. It was easy to make such a resolution when, as yet, I faced no actual difficulties. Each morning, Anne and I returned from our various errands to take breakfast at our lodgings. Awaiting us stood a steaming pot of chocolate and a plate of Mrs. Palmer's toast and excellent buns. Anne and I both heartily agreed that if time might halt we should have liked every day to be that same day, the gilt clock chiming ten o'clock, warming our stockinged feet on the fire fender, splitting a plate of Fat Rascals with butter and preserves, with all the delightful day stretching before us.

The presence of this extraordinary being caused, as it were, a breath of life to circulate throughout the entire cathedral. It seemed as though there escaped from him, at least according to the growing superstitions of the crowd, a mysterious emanation which animated all the stones of Notre-Dame, and made the deep bowels of the ancient church to palpitate. It sufficed for people to know that he was there, to make them believe that they beheld the thousand statues of the galleries and the fronts in motion. And the cathedral did indeed seem a docile and obedient creature beneath his hand; it waited on his will to raise its great voice; it was possessed and filled with Quasimodo, as with a familiar spirit. One would have said that he made the immense edifice breathe. He was everywhere about it; in fact, he multiplied himself on all points of the structure. Now one perceived with affright at the very top of one of the towers, a fantastic dwarf climbing, writhing, crawling on all fours, descending outside above the abyss, leaping from projection to projection, and going to ransack the belly of some sculptured gorgon; it was Quasimodo dislodging the crows. Again, in some obscure corner of the church one came in contact with a sort of living chimera, crouching and scowling; it was Quasimodo engaged in thought. Sometimes one caught sight, upon a bell tower, of an enormous head and a bundle of disordered limbs swinging furiously at the end of a rope; it was Quasimodo ringing vespers or the Angelus. Often at night a hideous form was seen wandering along the frail balustrade of carved lacework, which crowns the towers and borders the circumference of the apse; again it was the hunchback of Notre-Dame. Then, said the women of the neighborhood, the whole church took on something fantastic, supernatural, horrible; eyes and mouths were opened, here and there; one heard the dogs, the monsters, and the gargoyles of stone, which keep watch night and day, with outstretched neck and open jaws, around the monstrous cathedral, barking. And, if it was a Christmas Eve, while the great bell, which seemed to emit the death rattle, summoned the faithful to the midnight mass, such an air was spread over the sombre façade that one would have declared that the grand portal was devouring the throng, and that the rose window was watching it. And all this came from Quasimodo. Egypt would have taken him for the god of this temple; the Middle Ages believed him to be its demon: he was in fact its soul.

Standing, balanced precariously on the narrow top of a drainpipe, you had to give a good leap up to grab hold of the narrow ledge, and then swing your whole body up and over. It took some guts, and a cool head for heights. Get it wrong and the fall was a long one, onto concrete. In an attempt to make it harder, the school security officers had put barbed wire all around the lip of the roof to ensure such climbs were “impossible.” (This was probably installed after Ran Fiennes’s escapades onto the dome all those years earlier.) But in actual fact the barbed wire served to help me as a climber. It gave me something else to hold on to. Once on the roof, then came the crux of the climb. Locating the base of the lightning conductor was the easy bit, the tough bit was then committing to it. It held my weight; and it was a great sense of achievement clambering into the lead-lined small bell tower, silhouetted under the moonlight, and carving the initials BG alongside the RF of Ran Fiennes. Small moments like that gave me an identity. I wasn’t just yet another schoolboy, I was fully alive, fully me, using my skills to the max. And in those moments I realized I simply loved adventure. I guess I was discovering that what I was good at was a little off-the-wall, but at the same time recognizing a feeling in the pit of my stomach that said: Way to go, Bear, way to go. My accomplice never made it past the barbed wire, but waited patiently for me at the bottom. He said it had been a thoroughly sickening experience to watch, which in my mind made it even more fun. On the return journey, we safely crossed one college house garden and had silently traversed half of the next one. We were squatting behind a bush in the middle of this housemaster’s lawn, waiting to do the final leg across. The tutor’s light was on, with him burning the midnight oil marking papers probably, when he decided it was time to let his dog out for a pee. The dog smelled us instantly, went bananas, and the tutor started running toward the commotion. Decision time. “Run,” I whispered, and we broke cover together and legged it toward the far side of the garden. Unfortunately, the tutor in question also happened to be the school cross-country instructor, so he was no slouch. He gave chase at once, sprinting after us across the fifty-meter dash. A ten-foot wall was the final obstacle and both of us, powered by adrenaline, leapt up it in one bound. The tutor was a runner but not a climber, and we narrowly avoided his grip and sprinted off into the night. Up a final drainpipe, back into my open bedroom window, and it was mission accomplished. I couldn’t stop smiling all through the next day.

Small things were important. Seconds were small things, and if you heaped enough of those on top of one another, they became a man’s

Work in the palace wasn't half as strenuous as it had been at home with her stepmother and stepsisters, yet Cinderella hadn't been sleeping well. There was so much she'd missed during her unhappy years with Lady Tremaine; now that she was free, there was so much she wanted to do. There was so much she could do. She wanted to see the world and to help others who might have felt as lonely and trapped as she had. She didn't want to have to force herself to smile anymore just to bear each day; she wanted to find out what truly made her laugh, what truly made her happy. She wanted to get to the heart of things- to find the truth, instead of turning a blind eye. She drew a deep breath then, wiping the tears from her cheeks, and got up from her bed. Duchess Genevieve must be wondering what had happened to her. Cinderella faced her reflection in the mirror. "I'm not alone anymore. I have Louisa, the girls from the palace, even Duchess Genevieve..." Then why am I still crying? Because every time she dared hope for something, for some glimmer of happiness, it slipped from her grasp, almost like stardust. Whenever she reveled in something of her father and mother's, Lady Tremaine sold it- or destroyed it. When the Grand Duke was searching for her to bring her to the palace, Lady Tremaine locked her in the tower. When she had finally dared hope someone might care for her, it turned out to be part of a larger ploy. Could any happiness she found actually last beyond midnight?

Courage to strengthen,” Noal whispered, stepping forward, holding up a lantern with a flickering flame. “Fire to blind. Music to dazzle. Iron to bind.” “And Matrim Cauthon,” Mat added. “To bloody even the odds.” He stepped through the doorway.

Nothing was more dangerous for the sanity of men than a woman with too much time on her hands.

It’s all right, son. It’s all right.” “I’ve done so much that is terrible.” “Nobody walks a difficult path without stumbling now and again. It didn’t break you when you fell. That’s the important part.

Great. Wonderful.” Mat let out a relieved sigh. Women were always happy for a chance to educate a boy when he was young; Mat thought they assumed they could educate him out of becoming a man if they tried hard enough.

A statue of a lone Confederate general towers over the Clarksville town center. To hear my grandpa tell it the general was built looking sternly over the Black side of town as a warning regarding where the town's heart lies. As if there were any question.

Why should a person have meat at midday, but refuse it for breakfast? It didn’t make sense.

To have a duty was to have pride—just as to bear a burden was to gain strength.

Why do you draw your sword?” Malenarin asked, voice loud so that every man atop the tower would hear. “In defense of my honor, my family, or my homeland,” Keemlin replied. “How long do you fight?” “Until my last breath joins the northern winds.

-The Last Hunt begins, Young Bull! Hopper screamed. We live. We live! Perrin turned back to the place where Rand had stood. If that dark had taken Rand … But it hadn’t. He smiled broadly. -The Last Hunt has come’” he screamed to the wolves. Let it begin!

The hammer could be either a weapon or a tool. Perrin had a choice, just as everyone who followed him had a choice. Hopper had a choice. The wolf had made that choice, risking more in defense of the Light than any human-save Perrin—would ever understand.

With a roar, he raised his old hammer one last time over his head and beat it down on the new one, imprinting the ornamentation upon the side of the hammer. A leaping wolf. (...) Perrin looked at the wolf imprinted on the side. “Does anyone know how you say ‘He who soars’?” “I … I don’t …” “Mah’alleinir” Berelain said, stepping up from where she’d been watching.

And Hopper lives, Perrin thought. He does! I can smell his coat, hear him loping in the grass.

I want you to understand. Sometimes a good man can do wrong. At times, it is appropriate to punish him. At other times, punishment serves nobody, and the best thing to do is to let him continue and learn.

Women would be still, but of course the men would gossip; they always did.

Clouds had moved over the moon. Not even the bright sword in his hand could be seen as he moved it out into what had been moonlight. And then it came. A light more brilliant than the sun’s – a light like razors. It not only showed to the least minutiae the anatomy of masonry, pillars and towers, trees, grass-blades and pebbles, it conjured these things, it constructed them from nothing. They were not there before – only the void, the abactinal absences of all things – and then a creation reigned in a blinding and ghastly glory as a torrent of electric fire coursed across heaven. To Flay it seemed an eternity of nakedness; but the hot black eyelid of the entire sky closed down again and the stifling atmosphere rocked uncontrollably to such a yell of thunder as lifted the hairs on his neck. From the belly of a mammoth it broke and regurgitated, dying finally with a long-drawn growl of spleen. And then the enormous midnight gave up all control, opening out her cumulous body from horizon to horizon, so that the air became solid with so great a weight of falling water that Flay could hear the limbs of trees breaking through a roar of foam.

It was midnight and, framed by the cemetery gates, the figure stood tall and sinister. He was silhouetted by the weak light from a gibbous moon that made his muscular build and towering height seem much, much more than imposing. In one hand he held a heavy canvas sports bag. The other clutched a shovel that rested casually over one broad shoulder. If an errant driver or a late-night dog walker had glimpsed him, they would have thought he looked like a man with a strong sense of purpose. But the roads were as silent as a held breath.

BOOKS BY SARAH J. MAAS THE COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES SERIES A Court of Thorns and Roses A Court of Mist and Fury A Court of Wings and Ruin A Court of Frost and Starlight A Court of Silver Flames A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book THE CRESCENT CITY SERIES House of Earth and Blood House of Sky and Breath House of Flame and Shadow THE THRONE OF GLASS SERIES The Assassin’s Blade Throne of Glass Crown of Midnight Heir of Fire Queen of Shadows Empire of Storms Tower of Dawn Kingdom of Ash The Throne of Glass Coloring Book

All his life, he has been as strong and tall as an oak tree, towering over the world. She sees through the canopy of leaves and the protective layer of bark that surrounds him. She sees the new green shoots of growth curling towards the light, and the way his roots reach towards stability. All his life, he has needed to be strong, but with her, he can be vulnerable. Underneath the soil, their roots tangle together, like two hands reaching out.

You look like shit," Lysandra said to Aelin. Then she remembe Evangeline, who stared at her wide-eyed, and winced. "Sorry." Evangeline refolded her napkin in her lap, every inch the dainty land of her ove queen. "You said I'm not to use such language-and yet you do." "I can curse," Lysandra said as Aelin suppressed a smile, "because I'm older, and I know when it's most effective. And right now our friend looks like absolute shit.

So it is you,” Rand said. Min could feel his disappointment. Rand looked to the side, to where Anaiyella stood last in line. The pretty woman had pulled away from Rand, her head turned. “Both of you.

There, holding to his father, the Dragon Reborn began to weep. The gathered Aes Sedai, Tairens and Aiel watched solemnly. None shuffled or turned away. Rand squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m sorry, Father,” he whispered. Min could barely hear. “I’m so sorry.” “It’s all right, son. It’s all right.

She waited up for me, night after night, like a princess in a tower. And unlike the fairytale princes, I never rode to her rescue. (p. 6)

The mural that adorned the back wall was so intimately familiar, and yet so different from the version of it that I knew. The massive painting of Araich and Rosira Shelaene was the same image as the ink drawing in my well-worn book — the two of them framed by the sun and the moon, their palms touching. And right there in the center, where their hands met, the building itself changed, accents turning from Rosira’s silver to Araich’s gold. The Tower of Midnight and the Tower of Daybreak shared the same ground floor, and this was where they converged.

I have waited eight years to come here. I am recovered. And I want to begin.” “But—” “We can’t fault her impatience.” A tiny smile curled the edges of Nura’s mouth. “She likes to get things done. I can respect that.” Respect wasn’t quite what I saw in the amused gleam of Nura’s pale eyes. But that was fine. I’d been given my chance to earn it, and a chance was all I needed. “Let’s go, then.” Nura looked down at the paper Willa gave her, then flipped it over. She took a pen from the desk. “Hold onto my arm.” I obeyed as I watched her draw a circle. Then add lines and shapes winding through its center— And then, suddenly, I was no longer standing in the Tower of Midnight, but blinking into a blinding midday sun. “Nura.” A strained male voice. “What, exactly, do you want?

You know, I normally hate sardines,’ said Ivy. ‘But for some reason I can eat no end of them at a midnight feast.’ ‘Well, save some for the rest of us!’ laughed Ivy.

Elena had said that she was a warrior, too. But her armor was nowhere to be seen. Where had it gone? It was probably lying forgotten in a castle somewhere in the kingdoms. Forgotten. The same way legend had reduced the fierce warrior-princess to nothing more than a damsel in a tower, whom Gavin had rescued.

The world just changed, Elayne,” Birgitte said, shaking her head, long braid swinging slightly. “It just changed in a very large way. I have a terrible feeling that it’s only the beginning.