Violin Christmas Quotes

As Magnus turned to walk away from the church, he heard the sound of violin music carried to him on the cloudy London air, and remembered another night, a night of ghosts and snow and Christmas music, and Will standing on the steps of the Institute, watching Magnus as he went.

Are You Ready for New Urban Fragrances? Yeah, I guess I'm ready, but listen: Perfume is a disguise. Since the middle ages, we have worn masks of fruit and flowers in order to conceal from ourselves the meaty essence of our humanity. We appreciate the sexual attractant of the rose, the ripeness of the orange, more than we honor our own ripe carnality. Now today we want to perfume our cities, as well; to replace their stinging fumes of disturbed fossils' sleep with the scent of gardens and orchards. Yet, humans are not bees any more than they are blossoms. If we must pull an olfactory hood over our urban environment, let it be of a different nature. I want to travel on a train that smells like snowflakes. I want to sip in cafes that smell like comets. Under the pressure of my step, I want the streets to emit the precise odor of a diamond necklace. I want the newspapers I read to smell like the violins left in pawnshops by weeping hobos on Christmas Eve. I want to carry luggage that reeks of the neurons in Einstein's brain. I want a city's gases to smell like the golden belly hairs of the gods. And when I gaze at a televised picture of the moon, I want to detect, from a distance of 239,000 miles, the aroma of fresh mozzarella.

Magnus didn’t look at her; he was looking down at the tent, where Clary sat talking with Tessa, where Alec stood side by side with Maia and Bat, laughing, where Isabelle and Simon were dancing to the music Jace was playing on the piano, the haunting sweet notes of Chopin reminding him of another time, and the sound of a violin at Christmas.

Women help women. I will help you quit. I’ll take you to a life coach. We’ll make some lists. I’ll teach you the violin.

Her heart that day was as delicate as the strings of a violin, and vibrated if it were merely touched.

But I did know that nobody ever asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Had any adult with the power to fulfill my desires taken me seriously and asked me what I wanted, they would have known that I did not want to have anything to own, or to possess any object. I wanted rather to feel something on Christmas day. The real question would have been, "Dear Claudia, what experience would you like on Christmas?" I could have spoken up, "I want to sit on the low stool in Big Mama's kitchen with my lap full of lilacs and listen to Big Papa play his violin for me alone." The lowness of the stool made for my body, the security and warmth of Big Mama's kitchen, the smell of the lilacs, the sound of music, and, since it would be good to have all my senses engaged, the taste of peach, perhaps, afterward.

Daniel." He looked up. "El-la.I was wondering if you'd catch me." He offered me a cigarette. I gave him a shame-on-you look;he grinned. "This is your band?" I asked. Visible piercings aside, no one looked like that went by the name Ax. "Nope,but I go to school with the lead's sister. Regular guy got food poisoning at a Christmas party last night.I've played with them before." "Weddings?" It wasn't quite how I'd pictured him performing. "Usually clubs, but the last one was a bar mitzvah. Musicians have to eat, too," he added, a little sharply. "Sorry." I wanted to wave the smoke away, but figured that might be adding insult to inury. "I thought you played the guitar." "Guitar, piano, a little violin, but badly, and I'll have to garrote you ith one of the strings if you tell anyone." That's the thing about Daniel. Obviously-the violin being a case in point-I don't know him very well,but he seems to hold a grudge for even less time than Frankie. "Secret's safe with me." He shrugged, telling me he didn't really care. Then, "Nice dress." "Just when I start liking you a litte.." He made his vampire-boy face. I could see why it usually worked. "You like me,Ella. Wanna do something when this is over?" "Tempting," I said. "No, I mean that. But no,thanks. I'm not at my best these days." "You're good," he said quietly, blowing out a stream of smoke. "You'll be fine." "Yeah." I shivered. It was bitter outside. "I should go in." "You should." The cold didn't seem to be bothering him at all, and he wasn't even wearing a jacket over his white dress shirt. I turned to go. "Oh, I think I figured it out, by the way." "Figured out what?" "The question.The one everyone should ask before getting involved with someone. Not 'Will he-slash-she make me happy?' but 'Does it bring out the best in me,being with him?'" "Him-slash-her," Daniel corrected, clearly amused. Then, "Nope. No way. Wasn't me who posed the question to you, Marino.I would never be so Emo." "Of course not.But it was one smart boy." I waved. "Hug Frankie for me." "Will do. Hey.Any requests for the band?" "'Don't Stop Believin'," I shot back. He rolled his eyes. "I'm curious, in that last song-are the words really 'I cut my chest wide open'?" "Yup.Followed by, "They come and watch us bleed.Is it art like I was hoping now?" Avett Brothers. Too gruesome for you?" "You have no idea," I told him. How much I get it.

He halted the horse and simply listened. This was the sound that had drawn his path to Sophie’s, a purely unhappy, discontent sound, but unmistakably human. Kit, and he wasn’t hungry. He wasn’t tired, either; this was his lonely cry, the lament he sent out when he needed to be held and cuddled and reassured. This was the simplest and most sincere form of a human being demanding to be loved. The boy wanted Sophie, and he didn’t second-guess his entitlement to her, didn’t stop to fret about long-ago insults and innuendos and violins, didn’t worry about titles or any other damned thing that stood between him and what he needed to be happy. Mercifully,

Sophie thinks you were offering her a less than honorable proposition before we came to collect her, and modified your proposal only when her station became apparent.” Windham took a casual sip of his drink while Vim’s brain fumbled for a coherent thought. “She thinks what ?” “She thinks you offered to set her up as your mistress and changed your tune, so to speak, when it became apparent you were both titled. I know she is in error in this regard.” Vim cocked his head. “How could you know such a thing?” “Because if you propositioned my sister with such an arrangement, it’s your skull I’d be using that splitting ax on.” “If Sophie thinks this, then she is mistaken.” Windham remained silent, reinforcing Vim’s sense the man was shrewd in the extreme. “You will please disabuse her of her error.” Windham shook his head slowly, right to left, left to right. “It isn’t my error, and it isn’t Sophie’s error. She’s nothing if not bright, and you were probably nothing if not cautious in offering your suit. The situation calls for derring-do, old sport. Bended knee, flowers, tremolo in the strings, that sort of thing.” He gestured as if stroking a bow over a violin, a lyrical, dramatic rendering that ought to have looked foolish but was instead casually beautiful. “Tremolo in the strings?” “To match the trembling of her heart. A fellow learns to listen for these things.” Windham set his mug down with a thump and speared Vim with a look. “I’m off to do battle with the treble register. Wish me luck, because failure on my part will be apparent every Sunday between now and Judgment Day.” “Windham, for God’s sake, you don’t just accuse a man of such a miscalculation and then saunter off to twist piano wires.” Much less make references to failure being eternally apparent. “Rather thought I was twisting your heart strings. Must be losing my touch.” Vim

Until this night, this awful night, he’d had a little joke about himself. He didn’t know who he was, or where he’d come from, but he knew what he liked. And what he liked was all around him-the flower stands on the corners, the big steel and glass buildings filled with milky evening light, the trees, of course, the grass beneath his feet. And the telephones-it didn’t matter. He liked to figure them out, master them, then crush them into tiny hard multicolored balls which he could then juggle or toss through plate glass windows when nobody was about. He liked piano music, the motion pictures, and the poems he found in books. He also liked the automobiles that burnt oil from the earth like lamps. And the great jet planes that flew on the same scientific principles, above the clouds. He always stopped and listened to the people laughing and talking up there when one of the people laughing and talking up there when one of the planes flew overhead. Driving was an extraordinary pleasure. In a silver Mercedes-Benz, he had sped on smooth empty roads from Rome to Florence to Venice in one night. He also liked television-the entire electric process of it, with tiny bits of lights. How soothing it was to have the company of the television, the intimacy with so many artfully painted faces speaking to you in friendship from the glowing screen. The rock and roll, he liked that too. He liked the music. He liked the Vampire Lestat singing “Requiem for the Marquise”. He didn’t pay attention to the words much. It was the melancholy and the dark undertone of drums and cymbals. Made him want to dance. He liked the giant yellow machines that dug into the earth late at night in the big cities with men in uniforms, crawling all over them; he liked the double-decker buses of London, and the people-the clever mortals everywhere-he liked, too, of course. He liked walking in Damascus during the evening, and seeing in sudden flashes of disconnected memory the city of the ancients. Romans, Greeks, Persians, Egyptians in these streets. He liked the libraries where he could find photographs of ancient monuments in big smooth good-smelling books. He took his own photographs of the new cities around him and sometimes he could put images on those pictures which came from his thoughts. For example, in his photograph of Rome there were Roman people in tunics and sandals superimposed upon the modern versions in their thick ungraceful clothes. Oh, yes, much to like around him always-the violin music of Bartók, little girls in snow white dresses coming out of the church at midnight having sung at the Christmas mass. He liked the blood of his victims too, of course. That went without saying. It was no part of his little joke. Death was not funny to him. He stalked his prey in silence; he didn’t want to know his victims. All a mortal had to do was speak to him and he was turned away. Not proper, as he saw it, to talk to these sweet, soft-eyed things and then gobble their blood, break their bones and lick the marrow, squeeze their limbs to dripping pulp. And that was the way he feasted now, so violently. He felt no great need for blood anymore; but he wanted it. And the desire overpowered him in all its ravening purity, quite apart from the thirst. He could have feasted upon three or four mortals a night.

I did not know why I destroyed those dolls. But I did know that nobody ever asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Had any adult with the power to fulfill my desires taken me seriously and asked me what I wanted, they would have known that I did not want to have anything to own, or to possess any object. I wanted rather to feel something on Christmas day. The real question would have been, “Dear Claudia, what experience would you like on Christmas?” I could have spoken up, “I want to sit on the low stool in Big Mama’s kitchen with my lap full of lilacs and listen to Big Papa play his violin for me alone.” The lowness of the stool made for my body, the security and warmth of Big Mama’s kitchen, the smell of the lilacs, the sound of the music, and, since it would be good to have all of my senses engaged, the taste of a peach, perhaps, afterward.

As Magnus turned to walk away from the church, he heard the sound of violin music carried to him on the cloudy London air, and remembered another night, a night of ghosts and snow and Christmas music, and Will standing on the steps of the Institute, watching Magnus as he went. Now it was Tessa who stood at the door with her hand lifted in farewell until Magnus was at the gate with its ominous lettered message: WE ARE DUST AND SHADOWS. He looked back and saw her slight pale figure at the Institute threshold and thought again, Yes, perhaps I was wrong to leave London.

In my head, I’m composing a new piece of music.” Vim turned to see Lord Val riding along beside him. “It will be called, ‘Lament for a Promising Young Composer Who Died of a Frozen Bum-Fiddle.’ I’ll do something creative with the violins and double basses—a bit of humor for my final work. It will be published posthumously, of course, and bring me rave reviews from all my critics. ‘A tragic loss,’ they’ll all say. It could bring frozen bum-fiddles into fashion.” “You haven’t any critics.” St. Just spoke over his shoulder, having abdicated the lead position to his sister. “Ellen won’t allow it, more’s the pity.” “My wife is ever wise—” “Oh, famous.” Westhaven’s muttered imprecation interrupted his idiot younger brother. Lord Val leaned over toward Vim. “There’s another word, a word that alliterates with famous, that his-lordship-my-brother-the-heir has eschewed since becoming a father. Famous is his attempt at compromise.” “I’ll say it, then.” St. Just sighed as another flurry drifted down from the sky. “Fuck. It’s going to snow again. Beg sincere pardon for my language, Sophie.” She

Might as well rest the horses,” St. Just said, nudging his beast out of the middle of the beaten path. “Westhaven, can you dismount?” “I cannot. My backside is permanently frozen to the saddle; my ability to reproduce is seriously jeopardized.” “Anna will be desolated.” St. Just waited while Westhaven swung down, then whistled at an urchin shivering in the door to a nearby church. “We’ll just get the feeling back into our feet, and the saddles will be chilled sufficiently to threaten even your lusty inclination.” Westhaven led his horse to the side of the street, such as it was. “Cold weather makes Emmie frisky.” St. Just assayed his signature grin. “We have a deal of cold weather up in the West Riding, so I’ve learned to appreciate it. Let’s at least find a tot of grog while Baby Brother sees to his precious violin.” “The

The real question would have been, “Dear Claudia, what experience would you like on Christmas?” I could have spoken up, “I want to sit on the low stool in Big Mama’s kitchen with my lap full of lilacs and listen to Big Papa play his violin for me alone.” The lowness of the stool made for my body, the security and warmth of Big Mama’s kitchen, the smell of the lilacs, the sound of the music, and, since it would be good to have all of my senses engaged, the taste of a peach, perhaps, afterward.

26 In which we say goodbye to Ophelia Jane Worthington-Whittard After the hospital, where Mr. Whittard had his arm bandaged, they went in a taxi to the hotel. They drove through the streets of the city, where it no longer snowed. Alice folded all the clothes the museum curator had given her and left them neatly on her bed. She re-dressed herself, the way she had always dressed, in jeans and a T-shirt. She applied blood-red lipstick, which was way too grown-up for her. The sun was just up. It shone everywhere on the snow and on the glistening white trees and on all the windows. Behind each window there were people waking up to Christmas Day. They would no doubt open their presents, eat, and ice-skate. They would not set a time limit; they would skate into the night, and their cheeks would burn bright, and they would smile. Somewhere a man would take a violin out and begin to play. At the airport the family’s three suitcases were checked and the large, unusually shaped package was checked as well. The unusually shaped package went through the X-ray machine, and security looked very surprised until Ophelia’s father produced his card, which read: MALCOLM WHITTARD LEADING INTERNATIONAL EXPERT ON SWORDS They took their seats and rested, waiting for takeoff. Ophelia felt for Alice’s hand, and Alice squeezed in return until they were high in the air. Ophelia looked at her watch. They would be home within a few hours. She went to calculate … and stopped. Be brave, her mother whispered in her ear, and then was gone. From the airplane window Ophelia could see the city below. All the small and winding gray cobblestone streets, all the shining silver buildings and bridges, the museum, getting smaller and smaller until it was lost. She caught just a glimpse of the vast and fabled sea before the clouds covered this world. In that tiny moment she fancied she saw blue water, perfect blue water, the whitecaps breaking. Then that view was gone, swallowed up by the whitest clouds she’d ever seen. Ophelia Jane Worthington-Whittard, brave, curious girl, closed her eyes and smiled. THE END.

But I did know that nobody ever asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Had any adult with the power to fulfill my desires taken me seriously and asked me what I wanted, they would have known that I did not want to have anything to own, or to possess any object. I wanted rather to feel something on Christmas day. The real question would have been, "Dear Claudia, what experience would you like on Christmas?" I could have spoken up, "I want to sit on the low stool in Big Mama's kitchen with my lap full of lilacs and listen to Big Papa play his violin for me alone." The lowness of the stool made for my body, the security and warmth of Big Mama's kitchen, the smell of the lilacs, the sound of the music, and, since it would be good to have all of my senses engaged, the taste of a peach, perhaps, afterward.

Not the perfect place for a studio,” he told Thomas, noting that it was under the flight path to Machrihanish airport. “But that’s what you’re going to do.” “What, a studio here?” “Yeah,” Paul responded, “this is the studio. I want a mezzanine with a solid wall in front of the mezzanine so that if you’re down here, you can just see the tips of the violin bows when they play a top C.” “How high is that?” Thomas asked. “I don’t know, work it out,” Paul told Thomas, and then led him to the next room—the milking area—and said, “This is going to be the control room. You don’t have to worry about [the equipment], because that’s all going to be coming up from London in a lorry. But the windows have to be double or triple glazed, and each glass panel has to be at a different angle so that the sound doesn’t go through, and I want soundproofed double doors. And the farmhouse has to be completely redone for human habitation, because that’s where the band is going to stay, and the technicians.” Thomas looked over at the farmhouse and began organizing his thoughts about what would be necessary, and how to approach it, when Paul added one more requirement. “Oh, by the way,” he said, “you’ve got a month.” “What?” Thomas and Whitmore asked in unison. “Yeah, yeah, you’re fine,” Paul said. “People are very willing to work quite hard up here. Use everybody local you can, because there’s so much unemployment up in Campbeltown.” But why, Thomas wondered, must the studio be ready in a month? “Because this record I’ve got in mind is going to be the biggest seller of all time, and we all know that’s down to Christmas,” Paul told him. He then explained the timeline, working backward from the release. “EMI need a month to press and distribute it, and I need a week to record it, so therefore you’ve got this bit, which is a month.”34