Horace Slughorn: [talking to Harry about his fish] It was a student who gave me Francis. One Spring afternoon I discovered a bowl on my desk, just a few inches of clear water in it. Floating on the surface was a flower petal. As I washed, it sank. Ju...
Triton: Do you think I was too hard on her? Sebastian: Definitely not! Why, if Ariel was my daughter, I'd show her who was boss. None of this flitting to the surface and other such nonsense. No, sir! I'd keep her under tight control. Triton: You're a...
We can learn a lot about a person in the very moment that language fails them. In the very moment that they have to be more creative than they would have imagined in order to communicate. It’s the very moment that they have to dig deeper than the s...
It was the kind of pure, undiffused light that can only come from a really hot blue sky, the kind that makes even a concrete highway painful to behold and turns every distant reflective surface into a little glint of flame. Do you know how sometimes ...
This time he was underwater, running, feet sinking deeper and deeper into the seabed. The surface was within reach if he raised his arms, but he couldn’t get his head out of the water. He had to breathe. The compulsion to inhale was huge. But he co...
At the funeral everyone was in shambles, a sob fest of tears. It was the first time I saw my dad crying, he tried to contain himself throughout the service but came the part of the ritual when the bishop went ashes to ashes and dust to dust my father...
She had learned how to talk some and leave some. She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels. Sometimes she stuck out into the future, imagining her life different from what it was. But most...
My power grew angry that it was confined to my petite frame and pulled against my taut skin. Growing bolder, it tore through my skin to lay flat against my outer edge. The glowing energy began to solidify against my flesh; it lengthened to mold itsel...
Getting hold of the difficulty deep down is what is hard. Because if it is grasped near the surface it simply remains the difficulty it was. It has to be pulled out by the roots; and that involves our beginning to think about these things in a new wa...
I don’t think I like that boy.” He growled, glaring for effect, just in case I hadn’t figured out his oh-so-subtle interpersonal cues. “He’s a sweet kid,” I insisted, folding the gray blazer over my arm. “He’s a teenage boy,” Cal sa...
Trevor cupped his hands around it, felt Zach's heartbeat throbbing between his palms. The skin of the shaft was textured, slightly rippled beneath the surface. The head was as smooth as satin, as rose petals. Trevor rubbed his thumb across it, squeez...
Never forget that all these people are primarily a visual people. They are designers, window dressers, models, photographers, graphic artists. They design the windows at Saks. Do you understand? They are a visual people, and they value the eye, and t...
Mountains could be what happens when Father Earth eats something that doesn’t agree with him. When he burps, mountains pop up." "That’s absurd," Keselo said, trying not to laugh. "If you’ve got a better theory, I’d be happy to hear it," Red-B...
With my naked eye, on nights the moon climbs slowly, sometimes so dusted with rust and rose, brown, and gold tones that it nearly drips earth colors and seems intimately braided with Earth, it feels close, part of this world, a friend. But through th...
Why don’t they complain?" "They do sometimes. But usually there's nothing in particular to complain about. Take the case of Hardy's appointment: Who was to blame? Hardy himself? The men? It certainly wasn't the CO. But that's how it always is. When...
The symbol of the Lotus flower gives a precious teaching that can inspire us to deal with life in the best possible way. Its roots take nourishment from muddy waters and yet bloom in full delicacy and beauty on the surface. Similarly, to have a posit...
What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach. Many of the ancient cultures practiced careful rituals of approach. An encounter of depth and spirit was preceded by careful preparation. When we app...
The third oddity was the surface on which Lawrence was doing his own succussion. It was a huge, black leather-bound King James Bible. Having done three raps on the Bible, his fist clenched around a vial containing a homeopathic remedy made from ameth...
I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want th...
The audience-- the book's actual cast-- quickly realized what had happened. The reason the movie dropped everything that made the novel real was because there was no way the parents who ran the studio would ever expose their children in the same blac...
Oh r-really? Do t-tell?” I quirked an eyebrow back at him. “Well, usually it’s best to take your shoes and socks off before you step in the stream, better balance on an uneven surface. Also, you avoid that unpleasant squelchy feeling when you w...
