Zoom Quotes

Amren put a hand above Nesta's heart. "That's the key, isn't it? To know the darkness will always remain, but how you choose to face it, handle it... that's the most important part. To not let it consume. To focus upon the good, the things that fill you with wonder." She gestured to the stars zooming past. "The struggle with that darkness is worth it, just to see such things.

We are no longer the knights who say Ni! We are now the knights who say ekki-ekki-ekki-pitang-zoom-boing!

Shame works like the zoom lens on a camera. When we are feeling shame, the camera is zoomed in tight and all we see is our flawed selves, alone and struggling.(page 68)

A Wrackspurt . . . They’re invisible. They float in through your ears and make your brain go fuzzy,” she said. “I thought I felt one zooming around in here.

Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms round the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage.

Ginny came in to visit while you were unconscious", he said, after a long pause, and Harry's imagination zoomed into overdrive, rapidly constructing a scene in which Ginny, weeking over his lifeless form, confessed her feelings of deep attraction to him while Ron gave them his blessing....

When we zoom freely into the ‘now’ and surrender readily to a liberating emptiness, we can be instantly overwhelmed by creative surging strength and a flash of enlightenment, expelling the cloudy specters blurring our minds. ("Quest for the real moment")

Bean finds the best apple in our tree and hands it up to me. "You know what this tastes like when you first bite into it?" she asks. "No, what?" "Blue sky." "You're zoomed." "You ever eat blue sky?" "No," I admit. "Try it sometime," she says. "It's apple-flavored.

As soon as I look up, his eyes click onto my face. The breath whooshes out of my body and everything freezes for a second, as though I’m looking at him through my camera lens, zoomed in all the way, the world pausing for that tiny span of time between the opening and closing of the shutter.

Whoa," Connor Stoll said. "Back up. Zoom in right there." "What?" Annabeth said nervously. "You see invaders?" "No, right there—Dylan's Candy Bar." Connor grinned at his brother. "Dude, it's open. And everyone is asleep. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" "Connor!" Katie Gardner scolded. She sounded like her mother, Demeter. "This is serious. You are not going to loot a candy store in the middle of a war!" "Sorry," Connor muttered, but he didn't sound very ashamed.

Jane,' she said, climbing down from the chair. 'Remember last year when I built that model wind tower for you and you wrote those poems for me?' And you said you'd never switch homework assignments with me again.' For good reason. My teacher had a hard time believing I wrote Tra-la the joy of tulips blooming, Ha-ha the thrill of bumblebees zooming. I'm alive and I dance, I'm alive though death is always looming. When I finally convinced her that I had, she asked me if I needed to talk to the school counselor.

I became educated to the fact that the greatest pain does not come zooming down from a distant planet, but from the depths of the heart. Of course, both could happen; your wife and child could leave you, and you could be sitting alone in your empty house with nothing to live for, and in addition the Martians could bore through the roof and get you.

Zoom in and obsess. Zoom out and observe. We get to choose.

That's the key isn't it? To know the darkness will always remain, but how you choose to face it, handle it...that's the important part. To not let it consume. To focus upon the good, the things that fill you with wonder." She gestured to the stars zooming past. "The struggle with that darkness is worth it, just to see such things.

Zooming in on it only makes it blurrier.

This is the power of art: The power to transcend our own self-interest, our solipsistic zoom-lens on life, and relate to the world and each other with more integrity, more curiosity, more wholeheartedness.

If you zoom close-if you get really close to someone, if you really get close to yourself-then you lose the other person, you lose yourself entirely. You get so close you can't see anything anymore.

With mental illness the trick is to not take your feelings so seriously; you’re zooming in and zooming away from things that go from being too important to being not important at all.

...You cannot beat time; you can only enjoy it whenever possible, as it zooms by endlessly.

What remains of your past if you didn't allow yourself to feel it when it happened? If you don't have your experiences in the moment, if you gloss them over with jokes or zoom past them, you end up with curiously dispassionate memories.

The demon stopped its frantic attempts to escape. It stared at the glitter and began to pant, fingers twitching in anticipation. More twitching. Faster than she'd expected, it zoomed up to the sparkles, despite the danger. She snagged the fiend right before it picked up the last one, and dropped the Magpie into the cup. Instead of a flood of swear words or the offer of a favor, she heard a long, tortured sigh. Then it sat, sorting the glitter into piles by color. Now she'd seen everything.

Turn left in two hundred feet ” the computerized voice said in a cheery voice. “There is no turn in two hundred feet you bitch ” I yelled toward the screen. “Zoom out.” Nothing happened. “ZOOM. OUT ” I said again louder before the screen responded to the voice-activated command.

AHA!” screamed a voice from overhead . . . Peeves was hanging upside down from a chandelier and grinning maliciously at them. “Potty asked Loony to go to the party! Potty lurves Loony! Potty luuuuurves Looooooony!” And he zoomed away, cackling and shrieking, “Potty loves Loony!

I zoomed in on the shoe department like a blonde homing pigeon. Shoes, shoes everywhere! Ah, sweet shoes. I truly think you can take the measure of a civilization by looking at its footwear.

Hey what's the matter? Are you crying?" I shook my head, slowly opening my eyes and smiling at him again. "No, it's nothing." But it wasn't nothing. I didn't want to ruin the moment by explaining to him, but suddenly it was like I had a zoomed-out view of this moment and I never, ever (ever) wanted it to end. I had Nutella on my face and my first real love sprawled out next to me and any minute the stars were going to sink back into the sky in preparation for a new day, and for the first time in a long time, I couldn't wait for what the day would bring. And that was something.

Someone experiencing the stages of grief is rarely aware of how his behavior might appear to others. Grief often produces a “zoom lens effect,” in which the focus is entirely on oneself, to the exclusion of external considerations.

Could it be that God was an extra-terrestrial? What do we mean when we say that heaven is in the clouds? From Jesus Christ to Elvis Presley, every culture tells us of high-flying bird men who zoom around the world creating magnificent works of art and choosing willing followers to share in the eternal glory from beyond the stars. Can all these related phenomena merely be dismissed as coincidence?

I had taken the photograph from afar (distance being the basic glitch in our relationship), using my Nikon and zoom lens while hiding behind a fake marble pillar. I was hiding because if he knew I'd been secretly photographing him for all these months he would think I was immature, neurotic and obsessive. I'm not. I'm an artist. Artists are always misunderstood.(Thwonk)

Jack zoomed into the clearing at vampire speed. His eyes widened at the sight of Phineas and Brynley hovering twelve feet in the air. “I heard a gunshot. Are you all right?” “Dagnabbit! Another alien!” Digger bellowed. “Where?” Jack glanced behind him, then gasped when Digger shifted back into a bear and charged. He levitated, too. “Merda! Now I see why you’re floating.

I’d take that gum out of the keyhole if I were you, Peeves,” he said pleasantly. Peeves paid no attention to Professor Lupin’s words, except to blow a loud wet raspberry. Professor Lupin gave a small sigh and took out his wand. “This is a useful little spell,” he told the class over his shoulder. “Please watch closely.” He raised the wand to shoulder height, said, “Waddiwasi!” and pointed it at Peeves. With the force of a bullet, the wad of chewing gum shot out of the keyhole and straight down Peeves’s left nostril; he whirled upright and zoomed away, cursing. “Cool, sir!” said Dean Thomas in amazement. “Thank you, Dean,” said Professor Lupin, putting his wand away again. “Shall we proceed?

To dream" means to focus and zoom the photos of destiny called visions for clearer view, manipulation and exploitation.

Fleetfoot just zoomed on by, a blur of gold. A moment later, when the little librarian came waddling into view and asked if they'd seen a dog, Celaena only shook her head and said that she had heard something--from the opposite direction. And then she told him to keep his voice down, because this was a library. His eyes shooting daggers at her, the man huffed and scuttled away, his shouting a bit softer. When he was gone, Dorian turned to her, brows high on his head.

I'm so jealous. Laughable jealousies, jealousies of everyone who might get a chance to speak from the dead. I've zoomed out my timeline to include the apocalypse, and, religionless, I worship the potential for my own tangible trace. How presumptuous! To assume specialness in the first place. As I age, I can see the possibilities fade from the fourth-grade displays: it's too late to be a doctor, to star in a movie, to run for president. There's a really good chance I'll never do anything. It's selfish and self-centered to consider, but it scares me.

The whole panorama makes me realize how small I am, in the grand scheme of things. How insignificant my problems are when you zoom out and out and out and see the whole of the world.

What started Baby Jesus growing in Mary's tummy was an angel zoomed down, like a ghost but a really cool one with feathers. Mary was all surprised, she said, "How can this be?" and then, "OK let it be." When Baby Jesus popped out of her vagina on Christmas she put him in a manger but not for the cows to chew, only to warm him up with their blowing because he was magic.

the women and men I interviewed who had the strongest sense of true belonging stayed zoomed in. They didn’t ignore what was happening in the world, nor did they stop advocating for their beliefs. They did, however, commit to assessing their lives and forming their opinions of people based on their actual, in-person experiences. They worked against the trap that most of us have fallen into: I can hate large groups of strangers, because the members of those groups who I happen to know and like are the rare exceptions.

He says he had to go help someone in a desperate situation. Who, exactly, he refuses to say. He doesn’t know when he’s going to be back, but suggests we put off the wedding for a few days. The rotter! How dare he just zoom off and not tell me where he’s going, or who he’s going to help, or what exactly he’s up to!” Yeah, how dare he go out and be all heroic and stuff when you want him here slobbering over your big boobs.

Whoosh! went the bluebird of sarcasm, zooming miles above Dale’s head.

It's like a telescope. My dad, no matter what he's doing, zooms right in so he can't see anything except what's right there with him at that minute. My mom, she's always on wide angle.

Jack," I said, "why don't you go check on Sam?" Maybe you can advise her on getting through those doors. OR you could sing to her. I know she'd love that." "Yeah? Cool!" Jack zoomed off to serenade Sam, which meant Sam would want to hit me later, except it was Ramadan so she had to be nice to me. Wow, I was a bad person. At the doors, Jack was trying to help by suggesting songs he could sing to inspire new ideas for getting inside: 'Knockin'on Heaven's Door', 'I Got the Keys' or 'Break on Through (to the Other Side)'. "How about none of the above?" Sam said. "'None of the Above' ..." Jack mused. "Is that by Stevie Wonder?" "How's it going guys?" I asked. I didn't know if it was physically possible to strangle a magic sword, but I didn't want to see Sam try.

He books it into that little playground there. I mean the guy is zooming like the Road Runner, skidding through the gravel and the slush and everything. I’m yelling, “Police, police! Stop, motherfucker!” ‘You do not yell, “Stop, motherfucker.”’ ‘I do. Because you know, Palace, this is it. This is the last chance I get to run after a perp yelling, “Stop, motherfucker.

Perhaps if human desire is said out loud, the urban planes, the prisons, the architectual mirrors will take off, as airplanes do. The black planes will take off into the night air and the night winds, sliding past and behind each other, zooming, turning and turning in the redness of the winds, living, never to return.

but if I know anything about time, it is that it stretches to walk with you when you grieve. The rest of the world may zoom past at breakneck speed, but when you are learning to live with loss, time slows to the pace of your breathing.

(That was a cinematic trick adapted for print. Death wasn’t talking to the princess. He was actually in his study, talking to Mort. But it was quite effective, wasn’t it? It’s probably called a fast dissolve, or a crosscut/zoom. Or something. An industry where a senior technician is called a Best Boy might call it anything.)

Chivalry—Kuroda, you know when women put vegetables on a spoon and zoom it round so their kids think it's a magic butterfly or something? Chivalry is just what your mum called being a decent human being so you'd feel like a really good boy when you were nice to people. Don't say it to grown-ups.

Look at that! Life’s more science-fictiony by the day. It’s not just that you get old and your kids leave; it’s that the world zooms away and leaves you hankering for whatever decade you felt most comfy in.

Harry lost any sense of where they were: Streetlights above him, yells around him, he was clinging to the sidecar for dear life. Hedwig’s cage, the Firebolt, and his rucksack slipped from beneath his knees — “No — HEDWIG!” The broomstick spun to earth, but he just managed to seize the strap of his rucksack and the top of the cage as the motorbike swung the right way up again. A second’s relief, and then another burst of green light. The owl screeched and fell to the floor of the cage. “No — NO!” The motorbike zoomed forward; Harry glimpsed hooded Death Eaters scattering as Hagrid blasted through their circle. “Hedwig — Hedwig —” But the owl lay motionless and pathetic as a toy on the floor of her cage.

One rule I’ve found helpful for this is to restrict myself to one question per section of a text, thus forcing myself to acknowledge and rephrase the main point rather than zoom in on a detail that will be largely irrelevant later.

I remember reading article about the woman in that Oakland neighborhood who lost all her children to violence. I wondered why'd she keep living there after the first one was killed. Didn't she care about the others? Today, I zoomed out and wondered why I'm still in America.

The mind is inclined to zoom in on your problem, or few problems, to an extend that you cannot see your many blessings.

In the stress and strain of life today, with space rockets zooming, loudspeakers thundering in our ears, and a lot of other sounds, the voice of your subconscious goes unnoticed.

Viktor Shklovsky’s idea of defamiliarization; of zooming in so close to something, and observing it so slowly, that it begins to warp, and change, and acquire new meaning.

This isn't a question of strength. Not the stoic, get-on-with-stuff-without-thinking-too-much kind of strength, anyway. It's more of a zooming-in. That sharpening. ... You know, before the age of twenty-four I hadn't realised how bad things could feel, but I hadn't realised how good they could feel either. That shell might be protecting you, but it's also stopping you feeling the full force of that good stuff. Depression might be a hell of a price to pay for waking up to life, ... But it is actually quite therapeutic to know that pleasure doesn't just help compensate for pain, it can actually grow out of it.

Would you like me to drive so you can manage your social life?” I asked. It came out much snippier than I'd intended but he was oblivious to my tone, still looking at his newest message. “No, no, I'm fine.” “We'd better not get in an accident because you're busy sexting and driving,” I said. He burst out laughing. “I've got my hearing senses on the car in front of us is two and three-quarter car lengths ahead, and the one behind us is a quarter of a mile back. Next to him a compact car is passing. Engine sounds foreign, probably a Honda. He'll be passing us in about twelve seconds. He's got extra-thick treads, racing-quality tires. Sexting...” He laughed again. Twelve seconds later a Civic zoomed past, low to the ground, with wide tires. Show-off.

MOTHER TIME: Life goes by so very fast, my dears, and taking the time to reflect, even once a year, slows things down. We zoom past so many seconds, minutes, hours, killing them with the frantic way we live that it's important we take at least this one collective sigh and stop, take stock, and acknowledge our place in time before diving back into the melee. Midnight on New Year's Eve is a unique kind of magic where, just for a moment, the past and the future exist at once in the present. Whether we're aware of it or not, as we countdown together to it, we're sharing the burden of our history and committing to the promise of tomorrow.

Jack floated over, his blade shuddering and warbling like a hand saw. "Frigg? Oh, man, I don't like Frigg. She's too quiet. Too devious. Too--" "She's my ma," Mallory grumbled. "Oh, that Frigg!" Jack said. "Yeah, she's great." "I hate her," Mallory said. "Gods, me too!" Jack commiserated. "Jack," I said, "why don't you go check on Sam? Maybe you can advise her on getting through those doors. Or you could sing to her. I know she'd love that." "Yeah? Cool!" Jack zoomed off to serenade Sam, which meant Sam would want to hit me later, except it was Ramadan, so she had to be nice to me. Wow, I was a bad person.

When daybreak came we were zooming through New Jersey with the great cloud of Metropolitan New York rising before us in the snowy distance. Dean had a sweater wrapped around his ears to keep warm. He said we were a band of Arabs coming in to blow up New York.

Nina chuckled, giving Katie her infamous devilish grin. "It means you aren't just a werecougar, lady. You're a cougar-cougar. You took stereotyping to a whole 'nother level. You're like one of those 'doesn't look her age' chicks who hits on young dudes because they got the zoom in their boom still happening. You're a total label. Hot. Niiiice work, Mrs. Robinson.

I missed you, Kitten,” he growled. Then his mouth crushed over mine, his kiss more filled with raw need than romantic welcome. That was fine; I felt the same way. Aside from my compulsive urge to run my hands over him to assure myself that he was really here, relief, happiness, and the most profound feeling of rightness zoomed through me, settling all the way to my core. I hadn’t realized how deeply I’d missed Bones until that very moment, hadn’t let myself acknowledge how everything felt off when I was apart from him. On some levels, it was frightening how much a part of me he’d become. It let me know just how much I’d crumble if anything happened to him. “Why didn’t you answer your mobile earlier?” Bones murmured once he lifted his head. “I tried you several times. Tried Mencheres, too. Even Tepesh. None of you answered. Scared the wits out of me, so I stowed away on a FedEx plane to make sure you were all right.” “You came all the way from Ohio because I didn’t answer the phone?” I was torn between laughter and disbelief. “God, Bones, that’s a little crazy.” And it was, except the part of me that had had images of his tombstone dancing in my head because he hadn’t answered his phone earlier was nodding in complete understanding. Despite all our protestations, we were so alike when it came to fear over the other’s safety, and I doubted we’d ever change. “Crazy,” I repeated, my voice roughening with the surge of emotion in me. “And have I told you lately. that your crazy side . . . is your sexiest side?” He chuckled before his mouth swooped back over mine in another dizzying kiss. Then he picked me up, brushing past Vlad and Mencheres without even a hello, though I doubted either of them was surprised.

My parents taught me to zoom in, ya know? It’s easy to judge others from afar. It’s easy to look at someone from outside your world and make blanket statements and judgments on who those people are. Because when you see others’ flaws, you somewhat justify that your flaws are better than theirs. But when you zoom in, when you truly look at the person beside you, you’ll see many of the same things. Hope. Love. Fear. Anger. Once you zoom in, you realize we are all similar in so many ways. We all bleed red, and even monster’s hearts can break. Just gotta remember to always zoom in.

First love is all sensation and ambient zooms, and letting the world ebb. Like writing, occasionally, it feels combustive. Greedy. It’s unsophisticated and coaxes you into making promises about the far future and imbibing the moment. Into growing gullible fast, frantically so, and forgetting about yourself—about your exception. Writing does the same. It lays siege.

Thought I’d send this with Pig anyway. Harry stared at the word “Pig,” then looked up at the tiny owl now zooming around the light fixture on the ceiling. He had never seen anything that looked less like a pig. Maybe he couldn’t read Ron’s writing.

straddled the knot, so that it acted as a seat. Then you got up all your nerve, took a deep breath, and jumped. For a second you seemed to be falling to the barn floor far below, but then suddenly the rope would begin to catch you, and you would sail through the barn door going a mile a minute, with the wind whistling in your eyes and ears and hair. Then you would zoom upward into the sky, and look up at the clouds, and the rope would twist and

At this point in history, our society tends to elevate and reward the specialist...This concentrated focus has brought some benefits...It may also be a modern malady. Specialization, when taken too far and allowed to define who and what we are, becomes limiting. It robs us of our wholeness and our self-sufficiency. It misses the big picture and confines us to a narrow zoom. And it leaves us at the mercy of experts.

The body which will be loved is in advance selected and manipulated by the lens, subjected to a kind of zoom effect which magnifies it, brings it closer, and leads the subject to press his nose to the glass: is it not the scintillating object which a skillful hand causes to shimmer before me and will hypnotize me, capture me? This “affective contagion,” this induction, proceeds from others, from the language, from books, from friends: no love is original. (Mass culture is a machine for showing desire: here is what must interest you, it says, as if it guessed that men are incapable of finding what to desire by themselves.)

Celaena jabbed the cue, and hit the ball with such force that it zoomed toward the back wall of the table, knocking three colored balls out of its way before it collided with the number three ball, sending it shooting straight for a hole. It stopped rolling at the edge of the pocket. A shriek of rage ripped from her throat, and Celaena ran over to the pocket. She first screamed at the ball, then took the cue in her hands and bit down upon the shaft, still screaming through her clamped teeth. Finally the assassin stopped and slapped the three ball into the pocket.

Will let out a long breath. "She leaves me a lot. That's what she does. She leaves, and then she comes back. And then she stays some and then she leaves again." "Where does she go?" "I have no idea." "You've never asked her?" "No." Sara Didn't pretend to understand. "Why not?". He glanced out into the street, watching the traffic zoom by. "It's complicated.

Zoom out and what you see is one species--us--struggling to keep all others in their appropriate places, or at least in the places we've decided they ought to stay. In some areas, we want cows but not bison, or mule deer but not coyotes, or cars but not elk. Or sheep but not elk. Or bighorn sheep but not aoudad sheep. Or else we'd like wolves and cows in the *same* place. Or natural gas tankers swimming harmoniously with whales. We are everywhere in the wilderness with white gloves on, directing traffic.

And again. I kept clicking until the photograph was demolished, until it was no more than a mosaic of gray tiles, adding up to nothing. Nothing. Because wasn’t that how I felt that day? If you zoom close—if you really get close to someone, if you really get close to yourself—then you lose the other person, you lose yourself entirely. You get so close you can’t see anything anymore. Your mind becomes all these abstract fragments. English becomes math.

When you eat a carrot that is nothing but carrot it zooms through your system as a carrot. When you eat a piece of mass-produced carrot cake that contains 32 ingredients, your metabolism screeches to a halt while your body tries to figure out what all those things are that you just swallowed, and what it is supposed to do with them. Therefore, the problem isn’t “fat”, its piles of excess ingredients your body’s stacked on shelves and vowed to sort out later.

Now there was some motivation to get over this problem quickly. Chloe was a notorious betty.On the rare occasion when she graced the slopes with her prescence, boys zoomed toward her because she was so cute in her pink snowsuit,then zoomed away again as she lost control and threatened to crash into them. She'd made the local snowboarding news a few years ago when she lost control at the bottom of the main run, boarded right through the open door of the ski lodge,skidded to a stop at the entrance to the cafe,and asked for a table for one.

I feel like I have been Burr in my life as many times as I have been Hamilton. I think we've all had moments where we've seen friends and colleagues zoom past us, either to success, or to marriage, or to home-ownership, while we lingered where we were—broke, single, jobless. And you tell yourself, 'Wait for it.

This is no longer restlessness--it's recklessness. At first we're walking hand in hand. Then we're running hand in hand. That giddy rush of keeping up with one another, of zooming through the school, reducing everything that's not us into an inconsequential blur. We are laughing, we are playful. We leave her books in her locker and move out of the building, into the air, the real air, the sunshine and the trees and the less burdensome world. I am breaking the rules...

The relationship between the famous and the public who sustain them is governed by a striking paradox. Infinitely remote, the great stars of politics, film and entertainment move across an electric terrain of limousines, bodygurads and private helicopters. At the same time, the zoom lens and the interview camera bring them so near to us that we know their faces and their smallest gestures more intimately than those of our friends. Somewhere in this paradoxical space our imaginations are free to range, and we find ourselves experimenting like impresarios with all the possibilities that these magnified figures seem to offer us.

There was a noise above us like an airplane zoom, but it was getting too dark to see. People started laying on the horn, braying like bad geese in a panic. "I am here," Lila said with a trembly smile. Our driver's ed teacher had told us that's what the horn should mean. Not Move along, buddy or I am displeased but I am here. I am here, I am here, I am here!

History is boring, unless you see it from the right perspective. perspective is important. Corn growing in a field appears orderless, till one turns the corner and sees the rows line up. a pixelized photo is unrecognizable, till one zooms out. All the the numbers are on a combination lock but it will not open till they are in the right sequence. So it is with history - all the names, dates and places are there, but it is not until they are seen from the right perspective that lessons become clear. history is boring, until it comes into focus.

Cocoa-buttered girls were stretched out on the public beach in apparently random alignments, but maybe if a weather satellite zoomed in on one of those bodies and then zoomed back out, the photos would show the curving beach itself was another woman, a fractal image made up of the particulate sunbathers. All the beaches pressed together might form female landmasses, female continents, female planets and galaxies. No wonder men felt tense.

Suddenly, a car zoomed out of a side street to their right, slamming into the side of the car with a loud metallic crash. Tires screeched. The passenger window shattered, showering glass over Pam as the other car’s momentum pushed them towards the opposite side of the road. Pam shrieked as the car tumbled over the edge of the road into the embankment. The car rolled until it came to a rest in the bottom of the ditch with creaks and groans. Neither Pam nor her mother stirred.

Everything is energy. All energy has a frequency, a vibration. White light is made up of the rainbow of colors, red with the lowest frequency and violet with the highest. Humans are made of matter, which is made of energy. If we take the most powerful microscopes and zoom in on any cell in the body, we go past the cells, DNA, base molecules, atoms, and electrons all the way down to quanta of energy and a lot of space. What is mind-blowing at this quantum level is that the act of observing these subatomic particles changes how they behave! It is as though they are aware of us and make decisions.

Percy's enjoying work, then? said Harry, sitting down on one of the beds and watching the Chudley Cannons zooming in and out of the posters on the ceiling. 'Enjoying it?' said Ron darkly. 'I don't reckon he'd come home if Dad didn't make him. He's obsessed. Just don't get him onto the subject of his boss. "According to Mr Crouch" ... "as I was saying to Mr Crouch" ... "Mr Crouch is of the opinion" ... "Mr Crouch was telling" ... They'll announcing their engagement any day now.

Curiosity broke her earlier resolve. "Have you ever been tested?" "No." He stood behind Sara, holding the camera in front so she could see. "Zoom here," he said, flicking the toggle. "You could probably-" "This is macro." "Will-" "Super macro." He kept talking over her until she gave up. "Here's where you adjust for color. This is light. Anti-shake. Red-eye." He clicked through the features like a photography instructor. Sara Finally relented. "Why don't I point and you shoot?" "All right." His back was stiff, and she could tell that he was irritated. "I'm sorry I-" "Please don't apologize." Sara held his gaze for a few moments longer, wishing she could fix this. There was nothing to say if he wouldn't even let her apologize.

I have always been paranoid about waking people up. When I was younger and would come home late, I would take about twenty minutes to get from the driveway into my bed. I tiptoed up the walk, slid my house key in the door very slowly, took my shoes off outside, and crept upstairs to the bathroom like a burglar. Often I wouldn’t even flush until morning, preferring to let my business simmer overnight rather than wake somebody up with the sound of it zooming through walls on its way out of the house.

The craft passed directly below Scathach and she released her grip and dropped onto the top of the vimana alongside Joan with enough force to send the larger craft plunging down. The French immortal laughed. "So nice of you-" "Don't you dare crack any dropping-in jokes," Scathach warned before her friend could finish. The vimana dipped and spun, but the two women had firm grips on the transparent dome and held on while the pilot tilted the craft,attempting to shake them off. "So long as he doesn't get too close to the lava," Scatty said, "we should be okay." At that moment the vimana dropped straight down, zooming dangerously close to the lava's sluggish bubbling surface. "I think he heard you," Joan said, coughing as the air became almost unbreathable.

I started to fire back, but Tink suddenly appeared in the open doorway, and what the? He had one of those skillets just large enough to cook an egg in, and he was holding it over his head like a battle-axe. I was kind of surprised that he could carry the pan, but Tink was buff for a little guy. He had a six-pack—a brownie six-pack. His face was contorted in a silent battle cry as he started into the room. Wide-eyed, I shook my head. As much as I appreciated the effort, his interference would not end well. That small as hell frying panwas not going to do any damage. Thankfully, Tink froze and lowered the pan. A second passed then he zoomed out of the doorway.

When you travel you become invisible if you want. I do want. I like to be the observer. What makes these people who they are Could I feel at home here No one expects you to have the stack of papers back by Tuesday or to check messages or to fertilize the geraniums or to sit full of dread in the waiting room at the protologist’s office. When travelling you have the delectable possibility of not understanding a word of what is said to you. Language becomes simply a musical background for watching bicycles zoom along a canal calling for nothing from you. Even better if you speak the language you catch nuances and make more contact with people. Travel releases spontaneity. You become a godlike creature full of choice free to visit the stately pleasure domes make love in the morning sketch a bell tower read a history of Byzantium stare for one hour at the face of Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna dei fusi. You open as in childhood and – for a time – receive this world. There’s the visceral aspect too – the huntress who is free. Free to go Free to return home bringing memories to lay on the hearth.

I haven't been on a first date over five years. Five. Years. Which means, I haven't been on one since 2006. Let me take you back to that time: 2006. Tom Cruise and Kathie Holmes celebrated the birth of their little "TomKitten." The Wii came out - and YouTube was flooded with videos of people throwing those little white remotes into their TVs. Britney and Kevin call it quits, shocking America to its very core. Facebook was still just a college campus thing - if you wanted to stalk someone, you had to buy a zoom lens and some night vision goggles. It was a simpler time.

Moreover, some of the images covered by the definition go far beyond what can reasonably be considered pornographic. For example, "women's body parts . . . are exhibited such that women are reduced to those parts." This description would include everything from blue jean commercials which zoom in on women's asses to cream ads which show perfectly manicured hands applying the lotion-the sort of advertisements that have appeared in Ms. magazine. Although it is commonplace to criticize such ads for using sex to sell products, it is a real stretch to call them pornographic.

turn to my left and see a young couple walking along the sidewalk.  Seattle’s Alki Beach is pretty much deserted, aside from a few die-hards, or early morning insomniacs, like me.  The young couple are walking away from me, hand in hand, smiling at each other, and I point my lens at them and click.  I zoom in on their sneaker-clad feet and locked hands and shoot some more, my photographer’s eye appreciating their intimate moment on the beach. I inhale the salty air and stare out at the sound once again as a red-sailed boat gently glides out on the water. The early morning sunshine is

It was cold, but we weren't about to make Max leave because we didn't know if he or any of us would ever make it back to Canada's capital city, let alone this very spot, and even if we did, somehow we knew it would never be the same as right then. There would be different variables, if we came back, a totally different equation made up of wildly different circumstances; it just couldn't be helped, because life was always evolving and changing, and therefore, no matter how much we'd like to, we would never, ever have that moment again--even if we tried with all our might to re-create it, going so far as wearing the exact clothes even, we would fail, because you cannot beat time; you can only enjoy it whenever possible, as it zooms by endlessly.

In this entre-nous spirit, then, old confidant before we join the others, the grounded everywhere, including, I’m sure, the middle-aged hot-rodders who insist on zooming us to the moon, the Dharma Bums, the makers of cigarette filters for thinking men, the Beat and the Sloppy and the Petulant, the chosen cultists, all the lofty experts who know so well what we should or shouldn’t do with our poor little sex organs, all the bearded, proud, unlettered young men and unskilled guitarists and Zen-killers and incorporated aesthetic Teddy boys who look down their thoroughly unenlightened noses at this splendid planet where (please don’t shut me up) Kilroy, Christ, and Shakespeare all stopped – before we join these others, I privately say to you, old friend (unto you, really, I’m afraid), please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of very early-blooming parentheses: (((()))).

To defend my fear of sudden change, I chose to believe that life was incremental, that the tiny decisions you make every day determine your fate, that your job is to captain an enormous ship subtly into ever-clearer waters. But that’s not how it works at all. Life occurs in moments. You get into college. You propose. You get the job. You get cancer. You get fired. She leaves you...Because I was born in a stable country at a stable time, I falsely extrapolated that change is incremental. But if you zoom out just a little bit, you see that life is soccer, not basketball. It’s revolution, invention, war. It’s big bangs, exploding stars, asteroids killing the dinosaurs. Which means that all the action is in the risk taking, whether I want it to be or not.

Men are destroyed, and destroy each other, over basic things – money or hatred. On the other hand a really complicated riddle never pushed anyone to violence; either you found the answer or gave up looking. Clouds were riddles too, but dangerously simple ones. If you zoomed in on one part of a cloud and took a photograph, then enlarged the image, you would find that a cloud’s edges seemed like another cloud, and those edges yet another, and so on. Every part of a cloud, in other words, reiterates the whole. Therefore each cloud might be called infinite, because its very surface is composed of other clouds, and those clouds of still other clouds, and so forth. Some learn to lean over the abyss of these brainteasers; others lose their balance and tumble into its eternal blackness.

There is nothing more nerve-racking than waiting as someone reads your writing. The reader becomes the videographer, zooming far, far into your heart and soul, unveiling every inch and corner. The writer remains a wary observer at the mercy of the reader, clueless as to how he might react. The writer is exposed, laid bare; her innermost thoughts and feelings are revealed in a potentially scathing moment of vulnerability. I trusted Peter so fully…in a way that I could not explain. For that very reason, it mattered so immensely. To actually tell him what I knew he had already often seen in my eyes was to allow him to enter a new dimension in that world. And it mattered. It really, truly mattered.

Awareness In most of our daily activities we choose the agenda and develop a strategy to achieve the goal at hand. We create the program. Awareness moves differently. The program is happening around us. The world is the doer and we are the witness. We have little or no control over the content. The gift of awareness allows us to notice what’s going on around and inside ourselves in the present moment. And to do so without attachment or involvement. We may observe bodily sensations, passing thoughts and feelings, sounds or visual cues, smells and tastes. Through detached noticing, awareness allows an observed flower to reveal more of itself without our intervention. This is true of all things. Awareness is not a state you force. There is little effort involved, though persistence is key. It’s something you actively allow to happen. It is a presence with, and acceptance of, what is happening in the eternal now. As soon as you label an aspect of Source, you’re no longer noticing, you’re studying. This holds true of any thought that takes you out of presence with the object of your awareness, whether analysis or simply becoming aware that you’re aware. Analysis is a secondary function. The awareness happens first as a pure connection with the object of your attention. If something strikes me as interesting or beautiful, first I live that experience. Only afterward might I attempt to understand it. Though we can’t change what it is that we are noticing, we can change our ability to notice. We can expand our awareness and narrow it, experience it with our eyes open or closed. We can quiet our inside so we can perceive more on the outside, or quiet the outside so we can notice more of what’s happening inside. We can zoom in on something so closely it loses the features that make it what it appears to be, or zoom so far out it seems like something entirely new. The universe is only as large as our perception of it. When we cultivate our awareness, we are expanding the universe. This expands the scope, not just of the material at our disposal to create from, but of the life we get to live.

Ma raised her eyes to the girl’s face. Ma’s eyes were patient, but the lines of strain were on her forehead…. “When you’re young, Rosasharn, ever’thing that happens is a thing all by itself. It’s a lonely thing. I know, I ‘member, Rosasharn.” Her mouth loved the name of her daughter. “You’re gonna have a baby, Rosasharn, and that’s somepin to you lonely and away. That’s gonna hurt you, an’the hurt’ll be lonely hurt, an’ this here tent is alone in the worl’, Rosasharn.” She whipped the air for a moment to drive a buzzing blow fly on, and the big shining fly circled the tent twice and zoomed out into the blinding sunlight. And Ma went on, “They’s a time of change, and when that comes, dyin’ is a piece of all dyin’, and bearin’ is a piece of all bearin’, an bearin’ an’ dyin’ is two pieces of the same thing. An’ then things ain’t lonely any more. An’ then a hurt don’t hurt so bad, ’cause it ain’t a lonely hurt no more, Rosasharn. I wisht I could tell you so you’d know, but I can’t.” And her voice was so soft, so full of love, that tears crowded into Rose of Sharon’s eyes, and flowed over eyes and blinded her.

Putting It into Practice: Neutralizing Negativity Use the techniques below anytime you’d like to lessen the effects of persistent negative thoughts. As you try each technique, pay attention to which ones work best for you and keep practicing them until they become instinctive. You may also discover some of your own that work just as well. ♦ Don’t assume your thoughts are accurate. Just because your mind comes up with something doesn’t necessarily mean it has any validity. Assume you’re missing a lot of elements, many of which could be positive. ♦ See your thoughts as graffiti on a wall or as little electrical impulses flickering around your brain. ♦ Assign a label to your negative experience: self-criticism, anger, anxiety, etc. Just naming what you are thinking and feeling can help you neutralize it. ♦ Depersonalize the experience. Rather than saying “I’m feeling ashamed,” try “There is shame being felt.” Imagine that you’re a scientist observing a phenomenon: “How interesting, there are self-critical thoughts arising.” ♦ Imagine seeing yourself from afar. Zoom out so far, you can see planet Earth hanging in space. Then zoom in to see your continent, then your country, your city, and finally the room you’re in. See your little self, electrical impulses whizzing across your brain. One little being having a particular experience at this particular moment. ♦ Imagine your mental chatter as coming from a radio; see if you can turn down the volume, or even just put the radio to the side and let it chatter away. ♦ Consider the worst-case outcome for your situation. Realize that whatever it is, you’ll survive. ♦ Think of all the previous times when you felt just like this—that you wouldn’t make it through—and yet clearly you did. We’re learning here to neutralize unhelpful thoughts. We want to avoid falling into the trap of arguing with them or trying to suppress them. This would only make matters worse. Consider this: if I ask you not to think of a white elephant—don’t picture a white elephant at all, please!—what’s the first thing your brain serves up? Right. Saying “No white elephants” leads to troops of white pachyderms marching through your mind. Steven Hayes and his colleagues studied our tendency to dwell on the forbidden by asking participants in controlled research studies to spend just a few minutes not thinking of a yellow jeep. For many people, the forbidden thought arose immediately, and with increasing frequency. For others, even if they were able to suppress the thought for a short period of time, at some point they broke down and yellow-jeep thoughts rose dramatically. Participants reported thinking about yellow jeeps with some frequency for days and sometimes weeks afterward. Because trying to suppress a self-critical thought only makes it more central to your thinking, it’s a far better strategy to simply aim to neutralize it. You’ve taken the first two steps in handling internal negativity: destigmatizing discomfort and neutralizing negativity. The third and final step will help you not just to lessen internal negativity but to actually replace it with a different internal reality.

Some gifted people have all five and some less. Every gifted person tends to lead with one. As I read this list for the first time I was struck by the similarities between Dabrowski’s overexcitabilities and the traits of Sensitive Intuitives. Read the list for yourself and see what you identify with: Psychomotor This manifests as a strong pull toward movement. People with this overexcitability tend to talk rapidly and/or move nervously when they become interested or passionate about something. They have a lot of physical energy and may run their hands through their hair, snap their fingers, pace back and forth, or display other signs of physical agitation when concentrating or thinking something out. They come across as physically intense and can move in an impatient, jerky manner when excited. Other people might find them overwhelming and they’re routinely diagnosed as ADHD. Sensual This overexcitability comes in the form of an extreme sensitivity to sounds, smells, bright lights, textures and temperature. Perfume and scented soaps and lotions are bothersome to people with this overexcitability, and they might also have aversive reactions to strong food smells and cleaning products. For me personally, if I’m watching a movie in which a strobe light effect is used, I’m done. I have to shut my eyes or I’ll come down with a headache after only a few seconds. Loud, jarring or intrusive sounds also short circuit my wiring. Intellectual This is an incessant thirst for knowledge. People with this overexcitability can’t ever learn enough. They zoom in on a few topics of interest and drink up every bit of information on those topics they can find. Their only real goal is learning for learning’s sake. They’re not trying to learn something to make money or get any other external reward. They just happened to have discovered the history of the Ming Dynasty or Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and now it’s all they can think about. People with this overexcitability have intellectual interests that are passionate and wide-ranging and they study many areas simultaneously. Imaginative INFJ and INFP writers, this is you. This is ALL you. Making up stories, creating imaginary friends, believing in Santa Claus way past the ordinary age, becoming attached to fairies, elves, monsters and unicorns, these are the trademarks of the gifted child with imaginative overexcitability. These individuals appear dreamy, scattered, lost in their own worlds, and constantly have their heads in the clouds. They also routinely blend fiction with reality. They are practically the definition of the Sensitive Intuitive writer at work. Emotional Gifted individuals with emotional overexcitability are highly empathetic (and empathic, I might add), compassionate, and can become deeply attached to people, animals, and even inanimate objects, in a short period of time. They also have intense emotional reactions to things and might not be able to stomach horror movies or violence on the evening news. They have most likely been told throughout their life that they’re “too sensitive” or that they’re “overreacting” when in truth, they are expressing exactly how they feel to the most accurate degree.

Lake Natron resided in northern Tanzania near an active volcano known as Ol Doinyo Lengai. It was part of the reason the lake had such unique characteristics. The mud had a curious dark grey color over where Jack had been set up for observation, and he noted that there was now an odd-looking mound of it to the right of one of the flamingo’s nests. He zoomed in further and further, peering at it, and then realized what he was actually seeing. The dragon had crouched down beside the nests and blended into the mud. From snout to tail, Jack calculated it had to be twelve to fourteen feet long. Its wings were folded against its back, which had small spines running down the length to a spiky tail. It had a fin with three prongs along the base of the skull and webbed feet tipped with sharp black talons. He estimated the dragon was about the size of a large hyena. It peered up at its prey with beady red eyes, its black forked tongue darting out every few seconds. Its shoulder muscles bunched and its hind legs tensed. Then it pounced. The dark grey dragon leapt onto one of flamingoes atop its nest and seized it by the throat. The bird squawked in distress and immediately beat its wings, trying to free itself. The others around them took to the skies in panic. The dragon slammed it into the mud and closed its jaws around the animal’s throat, blood spilling everywhere. The flamingo yelped out its last breaths and then finally stilled. The dragon dropped the limp carcass and sniffed the eggs before beginning to swallow them whole one at a time. “Holy shit,” Jack muttered. “Have we got a visual?” “Oh, yeah. Based on the size, the natives and the conservationists were right to be concerned. It can probably wipe out a serious number of wildlife in a short amount of time based on what I’m seeing. There’s only a handful of fauna that can survive in these conditions and it could make mincemeat out of them.” “Alright, so what’s the plan?” “They told me it’s very agile, which is why their attempts to capture it haven’t worked. I’m going to see if it responds to any of the usual stimuli. So far, they said it doesn’t appear to be aggressive.” “Copy that. Be careful, cowboy.” “Ten-four.” Jack glanced down at his utility belt and opened the pocket on his left side, withdrawing a thin silver whistle. He put it to his lips and blew for several seconds. Much like a dog whistle, Jack couldn’t hear anything. But the dragon’s head creaked around and those beady red eyes locked onto him. Jack lowered the whistle and licked his dry lips. “If I were in a movie, this would be the part where I said, ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’” The dragon roared, its grey wings extending out from its body, and then flew straight at him.

She laughed, a sound of pure joy, and she cried more, because that joy was a miracle. 'That's a sound I never thought to hear from you, girl,' Amren said beside her. The delicate female was regal in a gown of light grey, diamonds at her throat and wrists, her usual black bob silvered with the starlight. Nesta wiped away her tears, smearing the stardust upon her cheeks and not caring. For a long moment, her throat worked, trying to sort through all that sought to rise from her chest. Amren just held her stare, waiting. Nesta fell to one knee and bowed her head. 'I am sorry.' Amren made a sound of surprise, and Nesta knew others were watching, but she didn't care. She kept her head lowered and let the words flow from her heart. 'You gave me kindness, and respect, and your time, and I treated them like garbage. You told me the truth, and I did not want to hear it. I was jealous, and scared, and too proud to admit it. But losing your friendship is a loss I can't endure.' Amren said nothing, and Nesta lifted her head to find the female smiling, something like wonder on her face. Amren's eyes became lined with silver, a hint of how they had once been. 'I went poking about the House when we arrived an hour ago. I saw what you did to the place.' Nesta's brow furrowed. She hadn't changed anything. Amren grabbed Nesta under the shoulder, hauling her up. 'The House sings. I can hear it in the stone. And when I spoke to it, it answered. Granted, it gave me a pile of romance novels by the end of it, but... you caused this House to come alive, girl.' 'I didn't do anything.' 'You Made the House,' Amren said, smiling again, a slash of red and white in the glowing dark. 'When you arrived here, what did you wish for most?' Nesta considered, watching a few stars whiz past. 'A friend. Deep down, I wanted a friend.' 'So you Made one. Your power brought the House to life with a silent wish born from loneliness and desperate need.' 'But my power only creates terrible things. The House is good,' Nesta breathed. 'Is it?' Nesta considered. 'The darkness in the pit of the library- it's the heart of the House.' Amren nodded. 'And where is it now?' 'It hasn't made an appearance in weeks. But it's still there. I think it's just... being managed. Maybe it's the House's knowledge that I'm aware of it, and didn't judge it, makes it easier to keep in check.' Amren put a hand above Nesta's heart. 'That's the key, isn't it? To know the darkness will always remain, but how you choose to face it, handle it... that's the important part. To not let it consume. To focus upon the good, the things that fill you with wonder.' She gestured to the stars zooming past. 'The struggle with that darkness is worth it, just to see such things.' But Nesta's gaze had slid from the stars- finding a familiar face in the crowd, dancing with Mor. Laughing, his head thrown back. So beautiful she had no words for it. Amren chuckled gently. 'And worth it for that, too.' Nesta looked back at her friend. Amren smiled, and her face became as lovely as Cassian's, as the stars arching past. 'Welcome back to the Night Court, Nesta Archeron.

Maybe that’s his game, though,” I said. “The hunt for one soul, again and again.” “Then why are you still here?” “The other women lived with him for a long time too. Maybe he wants to wait until my defenses are down, and then-“ “Wow, Clea, you are so jaded. You found your soulmate. People wait their whole lives for this. It’s the most amazing thing in the world, and it’s happened to you. Can’t you just accept it and be happy?” What she said made sense, but… I flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Without looking at Rayna, I said, “He doesn’t act like he’s my soulmate. Sometimes I think maybe he liked the other women more. I think maybe he wishes I was one of them.” Rayna was silent. This was something I’d never heard. “This is seriously, deep,” she finally said. “You’re feeling insecure because you’re jealous…of yourself.” “I didn’t say I was jealous…” “You’d rather think he’s a serial killer than risk being with him and finding out he doesn’t like you as much as he liked…you?” She scrunched her brow and thought, then tried again. “Yous? Anyway, you know what I mean-the other yous.” “Forget the jealousy thing, okay? There are other reasons to doubt him too. Ben doesn’t trust him at all. He thinks Sage is some kind of demon. He said there’s a spirit called an incubus that comes to women in their sleep, and-“ “Of course Ben said that.” Rayna shrugged. “He’s jealous.” “Of what?” “Ben’s crazy in love with you, Clea. I’ve been saying that forever!” “And I’ve been ignoring you forever, because it’s not true. You just want it to be true because it’s romantic.” “Did you not see the pictures of you from Rio?” I narrowed my eyes. “What are you talking about?” Rayna pulled out her phone. “Honestly, I don’t know how you survive without Google Alerts on yourself. The paparazzi were out in full force for Carnival.” She played with the phone for a minute, then handed it to me. It showed a close-up of Ben and me at the Sambadrome that could only have been taken with a serious zoom. I felt violated. “I hate this,” I muttered. “Why? You look cute!” “I hate that people are sneaking around taking pictures of me!” “I know you do. Ignore that for the moment. Just scroll through.” There were five pictures of Ben and me. Four of them were moments I vividly remembered, pictures of the two of us facing each other, laughing as we did our best to imitate the dancers shimmying and strutting down the parade route. The fifth one I didn’t remember. I wouldn’t have; in it I had my camera up to my face and was concentrating on lining up the perfect shot. Ben stood behind me, but he wasn’t wearing the goofy smile he’d had in the other pictures. He was staring right at me with those big puppydog eyes, and his smile wasn’t goofy at all, but… “Uh-huh,” Rayna said triumphantly. She had climbed into my bed was looking at the picture over my shoulder. “Knew that one would stop you. There is only one word for the look on that boy’s face, Clea: love-struck. Which is probably why a bunch of websites are reporting he’s about to propose.” “What?” “Messenger. Don’t kill the messenger.” I looked back at the picture. Ben did look love-struck. Very love-struck. “It could just be the picture,” I said. “They caught him at a weird moment.” “Yeah, a weird moment when he thought no one was looking so he showed how he really felt.” I gave Rayna back the phone and shook my head. “Ben and I are like brother and sister. That’s gross.” “Hey, I read Flowers in the Attic. It was kind of hot.” “Shut up!” I laughed. “I’m just saying, think about it. Really think about it. Is it that hard to believe that Ben’s in love with you?