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H Quotes

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All H Quotes

“He had become aware of the eyes of the Daylight Folk on him. Hopeful, expectant, suspicious or dazed, they watched him from the parapet and from the crenellations of the Natural History Museum, their wings spread like banners against the sky. And now he could see the Midnight Folk, too, drawn by whatever mystery had been at work on these rooftops: Atlas, and Luna, and Diamondback, and Cinnabar. For a moment, Cinnabar stood aloof on the parapet. Then Brimstone held out his hand to her, and she went to join him. My people, Tom thought to himself, and put up his hand to cover a smile. It was ridiculous, of course, and yet it felt so natural. As natural as being in love. As natural as flying. Spider pulled at the silver thread again. Between his fingers, Tom now saw an intricate cat's cradle of light that seemed to extend in multiple directions. 'With this, you can go anywhere,' said Spider, lifting the cradle of light. 'You could stay here, in London Before. You could go back to the London you know. Or you could reclaim your Kingdom, and lead your people home. Your choice.' He passed the cat's cradle over Tom's head. As it touched him, the net of light settled over Tom's shoulders, becoming a kind of mantle: golden, soft as spider silk, light as woven thistledown. He made the same gesture over Charissa, and she too was draped in gossamer. And with the mantle came a scent of green woods and of summertime; of distant spices, unnamed blooms, and blackberries, and honeycomb.”

“He had been a reader of imperturbable voracity during the respites after battles and the rests after love, but a reader without order or method. He read at any hour, in whatever light was available, sometimes strolling under the trees, sometimes on horseback under the equatorial sun, sometimes in dim coaches rattling over cobbled pavements, sometimes swaying in the hammock as he dictated a letter. A bookseller in Lima had been surprised at the abundance and variety of works he selected from a general catalogue that listed everything from Greek philosophers to a treatise on chiromancy. In his youth he read the Romantics under the influence of his tutor, Simón Rodríguez, and he continued to devour them as if he were reading himself and his own idealistic, intense temperament. They were impassioned readings that marked him for the rest of his life. In the end he read everything that came his way, and he did not have a favorite author but rather many who had been favorites at different times. The bookcases in the various houses he lived in were always crammed full, and the bedrooms and hallways were turned into narrow passes between steep cliffs of books and mountains of errant documents that proliferated as he passed and pursued him without mercy in their quest for archival peace. He never was able to read all the books he owned. When he moved to another city he left them in the care of his most trustworthy friends, although he never heard anything about them again, and his life of fighting obliged him to leave behind a trail of books and papers stretching over four hundred leagues from Bolivia to Venezuela.”

“He had been content with daily labour and rough animal enjoyments, 'till Catherine crossed his path. Shame at her scorn, and hope of her approval, were his first prompts to higher pursuits; and, instead of guarding him from one and winning him to the other, his endeavors to raise himself had produced just the contrary result.”

“He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an overwound clock.”

“He had been haunted his whole life by a mild case of claustrophobia—the vestige of a childhood incident he had never quite overcome. Langdon’s aversion to closed spaces was by no means debilitating, but it had always frustrated him. It manifested itself in subtle ways. He avoided enclosed sports like racquetball or squash, and he had gladly paid a small fortune for his airy, high-ceilinged Victorian home even though economical faculty housing was readily available. Langdon had often suspected his attraction to the art world as a young boy sprang from his love of museums’ wide open spaces.”

“He had been hurt doing everything he had ever done. He expected it, even wanted it. Nothing centered a man like pain. Nothing drove the irrelevant bullshit our of your mind like the taste of your own blood. Duffy always wanted to tell people who were worried about the future of their children, or about God and the order of the universe, to go out and break a rib or two. A few broken ribs threw all thoughts of children, God and the order of the universe right out the window. Nobody with broken ribs ever had free-floating anxiety, or so Duffy was convinced. It was cheaper that a psychiatrist and never so humiliating.”

“He had been in New York the whole year managing his father's winery and office in lower Manhattan, but now he'd come home by train for Christmas--and the world was wonderful. Three thousand miles was nothing, you got on a train, you had your own private little room, you changed at Chicago, you ate great meals in the diner, you read mystery stories and newspapers in the club car, and then all of a sudden there you were back in Fresno, and there everybody was, standing on the station platform waiting for you. Who could ask for anything more?”

“He had been searching for it his entire life. He had devoted himself to poetry to find it. Now, in the middle of his life, he found it. It was in the face of the love of his life, his daughter. She who had never blushed before, now blushed. And in that blushing, he knew, was the existence of God. That was the day her father learned what God was. God was pure beauty, God was his daughter’s face when she blushed.”

“He had been someone before. That person had been the result of a lifetime of choices, good and bad. And like it or not, he was drawing closer to that identity now. Not the freedom of infinite variety, but the tyranny of a decision made, a path walked, a life lived. What if he didn't like the view”

“He had been sure Sammael would stay safe in Illian behind defenses woven of the Power if he thought he had to face Rand; too many of the Forsaken had tried, and most were dead now. In spite of himself, Rand laughed—and had to hug his side; laughing hurt. All that elaborate deception to convince Sammael he would be anywhere but with the invading army, to bring the man out of Illian, and all made unnecessary by a knife in Padan Fain’s hand. Two days. By this time, everybody who had eyes-and-ears in Cairhien—which certainly included the Forsaken—knew that the Dragon Reborn lay on the edge of death. As well toss wet wood on the fire as think otherwise. A Crown of Swords, The Wheel of Time, book 7, Robert Jordan”

“He had been the recipient, he now gratefully acknowledged, of a rare and precious gift. In demanding the hand of a woman he neither understood nor was capable of knowing, he had instead received from her the chance to see himself and the opportunity to become a better man. And he had changed. He knew he had. He knew that he was not that man stalking angrily back to his chambers in Rosings Hall. What had happened to him in those intervening months? He was not sure; he could offer no complete explanation, but the man who had opened Rosings's doors, already prepared to write an angry letter, was a stranger, a man who had been walking through his entire life asleep. But now, he had awoken.”