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Quote by Trenton Lee Stewart

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The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Riddle of Ages

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Author

Trenton Lee Stewart
Trenton Lee Stewart

Trenton Lee Stewart is an American author known for his children's literature. His most famous work is the 'Mysterious Benedict Society' series, which has won the hearts of young readers worldwide. more

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“I may grow tender, walking alone in the blue cool of evening, through some garden fresh with flowers after the benediction of the rain; My poor big devil of a nose inhales April and so I follow with my eyes where some boy, with a girl upon his arm, passes a patch of silver. And...I wish I had a woman too, walking with little stops under the moon, and holding my arm so, and smiling. Then I dream - and I forget… And then I see the shadow of my profile on the wall!”

“Perhaps this is where he belonged, with the lonely old banderbear in the endless Deepwoods, wandering from meal to meal, sleeping in the soft, safe, secret places that only banderbears know. Always on the move, never staying in one place for long, and never following a path. Sometimes, when the moon rose above the ironwood pines, the banderbear would stop and sniff the air, its small ears fluttering and its eyes half closed. Then it would take a deep breath and let out a forlorn yodelling call into the night air. From far, far away, there would come a reply: another solitary banderbear calling back across the vastness of the Deepwoods. Perhaps one day they would stumble across each other. Perhaps not. That was the sorrow in their song. It was a sorrow Twig understood.”

“The wind blew steadily in from the desert seeping the sand in low, thin sheets. Afternoon waned, the sun sank, twilight crept over the barren waste. There were no sounds but the seep of sand, the moan of wind, the mourn of wolf. Loneliness came with the night that mantled Beauty Stanton’s grave. Shadows trooped in from the desert and the darkness grew black. On that slope the wind always blew, and always the sand seeped, dusting over everything, imperceptibly changing the surface of the earth. The desert was still at work. Nature was no respecter of graves. Life was nothing. Radiant, cold stars blinked pitilessly out of the vast blue-black vault of heaven. But there hovered a spirit beside this woman’s last resting-place — a spirit like the night, sad, lonely, silent, mystical, immense. And as it hovered over hers so it hovered over other nameless graves. In the eternal workshop of nature, the tenants of these unnamed and forgotten graves would mingle dust of good with dust of evil, and by the divinity of death resolve equally into the elements again.”

“Though it’s reasons to burn may vary... you are always the fuel of my fire.”

“Do you know that you have reconciled me to myself for a long time to come now? Do you know that I shall no longer think so ill of myself as I am sometimes apt to do? Do you know that I may not despair any longer that I have committed a crime and a sin in my life, for a life like mine is a crime and a sin? And pray do not think I have exaggerated anything to you, for heaven’s sake do not think that, Nastenka, because at times I am possessed by melancholy, such utter melancholy . . . . Because when these spells come over me, I begin to think that I am incapable of ever starting to live a new, a real life, because it seems to me that I have already lost all touch, all sense of the real and the actual, because I had been selling my soul, because my nights of fantasy are now followed by moments of soberness, and they are frightening! And meanwhile, you can hear life clamouring and eddying about you in a human whirlpool, you can hear, you can see that their world has not been made to order, that it will not be shattered like a dream or a vision, that their life is ever youthful, ever rejuvenescent, and that every hour in it differs from the last, whereas timorous fancy is bleak and monotonous to the point of boredom, a slave to every shadow and notion, a slave to the first cloud that blots out the sun and wrings with distress the heart of every true man.”