Summon Quotes

What sealed the deal for me was that the cloak wouldn't come off without a generous donation of my tears. Those used to be almost impossible for me to summon, I admit, until I watched Field of Dreams. When Kevin Costner asks his dad at the end if he'd like to have a catch, I just completely lose my shit. ~ Kevin Hearne

The combination of bait the GOP used to catch southern whites was tailored to the region, but it is still bait to all who are hungry. So calls for states' rights, law and order, fiscal conservatism, colorblindness, anti-feminism, men's rights, and Christian nationalism can summon a Southern white majority, but other Americans are beckoned too.... That explains why, over time, at the national level, Republican candidates had no choice but to echo all three of those dog whistles in order to win. Those who did not or could not lost. ~ Angie Maxwell

You summon us, we follow. You order us to be free and so we will be. ~ Pliny The Younger

A song of despair


The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the dwarves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
Pablo Neruda

Then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. ~ William Shakespeare

To save myself, I would try to summon up a vision of Mattie, but I could not see her. I could not imagine her. Some nights in the midst of this loneliness I swung among the scattered stars at the end of the thin thread of faith alone.
And then I would wake up and be in awe to see the daylight coming and my old familiar workaday life taking shape again in the dear world. Coherence and clarity returned. I could imagine myself again. I could imagine Mattie Chatham. I could imagine Port William. ~ Wendell Berry

But I must prepare myself, for such stories are dragons drawn from a deep well in a dark place. Does one summon a dragon? No. One may only invite it and hope it emerges. ~ Sabaa Tahir

Your laughter is like cool water to me," I said. I felt my heart sob at these strange words, and it would not have been hard to summon tears: Strange. " "You are so serious all of a sudden," she told me. "I am not any one thing," I said. (137) ~ Patrick DeWitt

The memoir is, at its core, an act of resurrection. Memoirists re-create the past, reconstruct dialogue. They summon meaning from events that have long been dormant. They braid the clays of memory and essay and fact and perception together, smash them into a ball, roll them flat. They manipulate time; resuscitate the dead. They put themselves, and others, into necessary context. ~ Carmen Maria Machado

Gift

Nothing will hurt you that much despite how you feel

the stress on your back shapes your insight

this splendid November rain Toussaint. I find

you by your marks, he says

an imprint

But when I summon you, I talk to - I say -

my memory of your face. It's kind of crazy

to others. They're not very interesting he says.

When I first came to this country, and now

I know the language I say, but I had in a dream

spoken it many years previously. That is,

not the language of the dead the language

of France. I took one year of French in 1964

and then nothing but once, in 1977 I spoke French

in a dream all night: I was in the future I

moved here in 1992. Country of the more

logical than I? though the people of my quartier

know and like me, even as I a foreigner remain strange

You do everything alone a woman said to me.

There are ways to care without interfering

but the French speak of anguish frequently

they are conscious of emotional extremity

a terrible gift. It's all a gift, he says . . .

some haven't been opened. I'm not sure

he said that it's nearly my sixty-seventh birthday

today though it's the day of the dead hello

we love you they say. ~ Alice Notley

Melancholy

(1) An excess of black bile, anatomized by Robert Burton, embraced by the swooning Romantics as evidence of their fine sensibilities, now fallen into disrepair, renamed as depression, wrongly attributed to a deficiency of serotonin and cured by infantilizing, self-indulgent 'therapy' and overpriced, addictive drugs pushed on harassed, gullible doctors by unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies which suppress their terrible side-effects in order to pursue their profits.

(2) A crippling disease of unknown aetiology which throughout human history has devoured hope, destroyed lives and, after a period of living death, sometimes relaxed its grip just long enough for the sufferer to summon the energy for a merciful suicide; now, at last, frequently curable by a combination of therapy and antidepressants. ~ Michael Bywater

He found Podrick Payne asleep in a chair outside the door of the solar, and shook him by the shoulder. "Summon Bronn, and then tun down to the stables and have two horses saddled." (Tyrion).
The squire's eyes were cloudy with sleep. "Horses". (squire)
"Those big brown animals that love apples, I'm sure you've seen them. Four legs and a tail. But Bronn first." (Tyrion) ~ George R R Martin

Alex moved away, clearly crestfallen. Some other day, maybe as soon as tomorrow, she would feel regret, but not tonight. Right now, she couldn't summon the energy to care about the feelings of a wannabe knight in tinfoil armor. ~ Wilette Youkey

As long as you have food, water, and shelter, all that matters is what goes on inside your mind. A happy mind makes for a happy life. Find the little pleasant moments that happen in your day and summon all the happiness you can from each and every one. There may be bad days but if you can find a tiny speck of happiness then it is not all for nothing. Live in the moment. Let go of the bad in your past and enjoy every happy moment to the fullest extent. ~ Avina Celeste

I have no aspiration here to reclaim mystery and paradox from whatever territory they might inhabit, for there is, indeed, often a killing in a kiss, a mercy in the slap that heats your face . . . There is, nevertheless, a particular poverty in those alloplasts who, addressing tragedy, seek to subdistinguish motives beyond those we have best, because nearest, at hand, and so it is with love and hate--emotions upon whose necks, whether wrung or wreathed, may be found the oldest fingerprints of man. A simple truth intrudes: the basic instincts of every man to every man are known. But who knows when or where or how? For the answers to such questions, summon Augurello, your personal jurisconsult and theological wiseacre, to teach you about primal reality and then to dispel those complexities and cabals you crouch behind in this sad, psychiatric century you call your own. It is the anti-labyrinths of the world that scare. Here is a story for you. Your chair. ~ Alexander Theroux

Your mother can't produce food out of thin air," said Hermione. "No one can. Food is the first of the five Principal Exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfigur--"
"Oh, speak English, can't you?" Ron said, prising a fish bone out from between his teeth.
"It's impossible to make good food out of nothing! You can Summon it if you know where it is, you can transform it, you can increase the quantity if you've already got some--"
"Well, don't bother increasing this, it's disgusting," said Ron.
"Harry caught the fish and I did my best with it! I notice I'm always the one who ends up sorting out the food, because I'm a girl, I suppose!"
"No, it's because you're supposed to be the best at magic!" shot back Ron.
Hermione jumped up and bits of roast pike slid off her tin plate onto the floor.
"You can do the cooking tomorrow, Ron, you can find the ingredients and try and charm them into something worth eating, and I'll sit here and pull faces and moan and you can see how you--"
"Shut up!" said Harry, leaping to his feet and holding up both hands. "Shut up now!"
Hermione looked outraged.
"How can you side with him, he hardly ever does the cook--"
"Hermione, be quiet, I can hear someone! ~ J.K. Rowling

If you are going to become limitless, you must summon the explorer within you. ~ Lorii Myers

Mountains are both journey and destination. They summon us to climb their slopes, explore their canyons, and attempt their summits. The summit, despite months of preparation and toil, is never guaranteed though tastes of sweet nectar when reached. If my only goal as a teacher and mountaineer is the summit, I risk cruel failure if I do not reach the highest apex. Instead, if I accept the mountain's invitation to journey and create meaning in each step, success is manifest in every moment. ~ T.A. Loeffler

But we would not be human if we did not summon monsters into our midst ... . ~ Chandler Klang Smith

He stood there unsteady in the cold, mumbling syllables which almost resolved into her name, as though he could recall, and summon back, a time before death entered the world, before accident, before magic, and before magic despaired, to become religion. ~ William Gaddis

Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come. ~ Franz Kafka

I don't know anyone who has described that terrible yearning for ecstasy and immolation through music as lucidly as Sean Madigan Hoen in Songs Only You Know. Only a thorough initiate of the scene who also had some genius with language could summon the demotic yet electric voice for the job. If there is ruefulness, now, for the way he treated his body, his girlfriends, and his family, he wisely reprises in his book, in neon detail, the fever that once placed him in the same drunken boat with Iggy Pop, Rimbaud and Artaud. ~ Jaimy Gordon

The earliest storytellers were magi, seers, bards, griots, shamans. They were, it would seem, as old as time, and as terrifying to gaze upon as the mysteries with which they wrestled. They wrestled with mysteries and transformed them into myths which coded the world and helped the community to live through one more darkness, with eyes wide open and hearts set alight.

"I can see them now, the old masters. I can see them standing on the other side of the flames, speaking in the voices of lions, or thunder, or monsters, or heroes, heroines, or the earth, or fire itself -- for they had to contain all voices within them, had to be all things and nothing. They had to have the ability to become lightning, to become a future homeland, to be the dreaded guide to the fabled land where the community will settle and fructify. They had to be able to fight in advance all the demons they would encounter, and summon up all the courage needed on the way, to prophesy about all the requisite qualities that would ensure their arrival at the dreamt-of land.

"The old masters had to be able to tell stories that would make sleep possible on those inhuman nights, stories that would counter terror with enchantment, or with a greater terror. I can see them, beyond the flames, telling of a hero's battle with a fabulous beast -- the beast that is in the hero."

"The storyteller's art changed through the ages. From battling dread in word and incantations before their people ~ Ben Okri

All lovers live by longing, and endure:
Summon a vision and declare it pure. ~ Theodore Roethke

When the windows like the jackal's eye and desire pierce the dawn, silken windlasses lift me up to suburban footbridges. I summon a girl who is dreaming in the little gilded house; she meets me on the piles of black moss and offers me her lips which are stones in the rapid river depths. Veiled forebodings descend the buildings' steps. The best thing is to flee from the great feather cylinders when the hunters limp into the sodden lands. If you take a bath in the watery patterns of the streets, childhood returns to the country like a greyhound. Man seeks his prey in the breezes and the fruits are drying on the screens of pink paper, in the shadow of the names overgrown by forgetfulness. Joys and sorrows spread in the town. Gold and eucalyptus, similarly scented, attack dreams. Among the bridles and the dark edelweiss subterranean forms are resting like perfumers' corks. ~ Andre Breton

Such audacity could never be faked - Locke had to feel it, summon it from somewhere inside, cloak himself in arrogance as though it were an old familiar garment. Locke Lamora became a shadow in his own mind... Locke's complicated lies were this new man's simple truth. ~ Scott Lynch

Why can't you summon a command line and search your real-world home for 'Honda car keys,' and specify rooms in your house to search instead of folders or paths in your computer's home directory? It's a crippling design flaw in the real-world interface. ~ Richard Dooling

What in the Haven's name just happened?"
Dazed and still trembling from the overload to her senses, Ellysetta floated in Rain's arms, her limp body draped across his, incapable of autonomous movement. She could barely think straight, let alone summon the strength to actually move.
Rain's chest rippled as he dragged in a shuddering breath. "I don't know." His voice came out hoarse, raspy. He swallowed, then tilted his chin against his chest to glance at her. A grin twitched at the corners of his mouth. "But I hope it happens again. ~ C.L. Wilson

Their home was nice, the food was nice, the girls were nice – nice, nice, nice.

I disappointed myself by finding our perfectly pleasant lunch with perfectly pleasant people inadequate. […] These were good people and they had been good to us and we had therefore had a good time. To conclude otherwise was frightening, raising the specter of some unnameable quantity without which we could not abide, but which we could not summon on demand, least of all by proceeding in virtuous accordance with an established formula.

You regarded redemption as an act of will. You disparaged people (people like me) for their cussedly nonspecific dissatisfactions, because to fail to embrace the simple fineness of being alive betrayed a weakness of character. You always hated finicky eaters, hypochondriacs, and snobs who turned their noses up at Terms of Endearment just because it was popular. Nice eats, nice place, nice folks- what more could I possibly want? Besides, the good life doesn't knock on the door. Joy is a job. So if you believed with sufficient industry that we had had a good time with Brian and Louise in theory, then we would have had a good time in fact. The only hint that in truth you'd found our afternoon laborious was that your enthusiasm was excessive. ~ Lionel Shriver

What untold hosts of voices there are which call upon one and summon him to reawakening. He remembers, and is himself once again, moving cleanly on his way. Some measure of simplicity again informs the steps he takes; he becomes content to be himself and finds fragrance in the air. He may eat his food in peace. He does not wish to obviate tomorrow's work. He is willing to consider: not to suppose a case, but to take the case that is. He becomes patient. Things invite him to adequate himself to their infinity. The passage of time is now not robbery or show; it is the meaning of the present ever completing itself. ~ Henry Bugbee

But the only rhyme he could summon for 'out' was 'sauerkraut,' which lacked poetic glory. He let it go. The right line would come in time. That was the thing about poetry. It crept up through the draws and coulees of the brain. ~ Annie Proulx

Mad, in exasperation, cried out to the unseen force, "Why did you summon us? There must be a reason. Tell us." She heard a dreamlike voice.
"You are Stargirls." The voice paused, letting the fog and confusion of their nightmare to lift.
Lyn found her voice, "But why us?"
"You are the chosen ones by prophecy; you have proven your worthiness. A time warp brought you here. The one you opened was no accident. It was left a hundred thousand years ago just for you. Your Star training as children has prepared you well. You are ready for the next stage in your evolution. ~ Linden Morningstar

At school, Max searched the archives alone-Edmund had stopped appearing, and I didn't have the heart to summon him. Kylee was still acting timid and injured, and the ghost jocks were even more outrageously annoying-trying to cover their underlying nervousness, I thought.

Harry and Sara couldn't feel anything wrong, but they took their cues from us, and searched the student lounges with a wariness that I'd never seen from either of them. Britta was as sneering and mean as ever, completely unchanged, and I wanted to kiss her.

I managed to restrain myself. ~ Lee Nichols

An unbalanced soul seeks equilibrium. I seek a constitutional form to gather my thoughts. I wish to form a flexible personality. I desire to be gentle and fluid of mind. I wish to summon hidden personal powers, but I lack the knowledge and wisdom to do so. I lack a cohesive unifying spirit. I have yet to claim the authenticity of my life. I failed to accept that what anyone else thinks of me would not stave off an inevitable death. I have not claimed a purpose for living. I have not found a basic truth that I can live and die supporting. I failed to exert the resolute will to become who I aspire to be. I rejected abstract concepts and failed to endorse the systematic reasoning of philosophical studies. I indulged in the type of obsessive excessive self-analysis, which leads to the brink of personal destruction through self-objectification and artificial triumphs. Echoing the words of Romanian philosopher and writer E.M. Cioran (1911-1995), 'I've invented nothing; I've simply been the secretary of my sensations. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

So, if you don't summon a book and a light before dawn,
If you don't set your mind on honest aims and pursuits,
On waking, you'll be tortured by envy or lust.
Why so quick to remove a speck from your eye, when
If it's your mind, you put off the cure till next year?
Who's started has half finished: dare to be wise: begin! ~ Horace

In our resolve to build a better world ... we seek to summon what Abraham Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. ~ James Earl Jones

If I have to do battle with you a thousand times to prove my point, I'll do it.'
The queen unwisely asked, 'But to prove what point, my dear Hamlet?'
'That I loved Ophelia! Fifty thousand brothers, with all the love they can summon, would not equal my love for here. Ophelia, Ophelia. ~ John Marsden

Impatiently I waited for evening, when I might summon you to my presence. An unusual– to me– a perfectly new character, I suspected was yours; I desired to search it deeper, and know it better. You entered the room with a look and air at once shy and independent; you were quaintly dress– much as you are now. I made you talk; ere long I found you full of strange contrasts. Your garb and manner were restricted by rule; your air was often diffident, and altogether that of one refined by nature, but absolutely unused to society, and a good deal afraid of making herself disadvantageously conspicuous by some solecism or blunder; yet, when addressed, you lifted a keen, a daring, and a glowing eye to your interlocutor's face; there was penetration and power in each glance you gave; when plied by close questions, you found ready and round answers. Very soon you seemed to get used to me – I believe you felt the existence of sympathy between you and your grim and cross master, Jane; for it was astonishing to see how quickly a certain pleasant ease tranquilized your manner; snarl as I would, you showed no surprise, fear, annoyance, or displeasure, at my moroseness; you watched me, and now and then smiled at me with a simple yet sagacious grace I cannot describe. I was at once content and stimulated with what I saw; I liked what I had seen, and wished to see more. Yet, for a long time, I treated you distantly, and sought your company rarely, I was an intellectual epicure, and wished to pr ~ Charlotte Bronte

The King did not summon the Estates because he needed them, but out of his own pleasure. ~ Jacques Necker

I was a shadow among shadows brooding over the fate of other shadows that I alone strove to summon up out of the all-pervading dusk. ~ Loren Eiseley

Now I was just a transient in the valley, a one-eyed passerby too fat for his years, and life there had the power to summon up neither the memory nor the illusion of any other, truer self. As a passerby I had a right to insist on my identity. ~ Kenzaburo Oe

If we close our eyes and take a deep breath, and summon meaningful memories, we quickly notice that they are tied to a specific place. The place evokes a network of sensations, the warmth of sunlight on your skin, the smell of your love, the sound of her voice. Architecture, through its unique means, creates a harbor for these ephemeral, tangible things. ~ Sarah Robinson

No great spiritual event befalls those who do not summon it. ~ Elbert Hubbard

It seemed that hell could appear day or night, at any time, at any place, simply in response to one's thoughts or wishes. It seemed that we could summon it at our pleasure and that instantly it would appear. ~ Yukio Mishima

The truth is, in order to heal we need to tell our stories and have them witnessed ... The story itself becomes a vessel that holds us up, that sustains, that allows us to order our jumbled experiences into meaning.
As I told my stories of fear, awakening, struggle, and transformation and had them received, heard, and validated by other women, I found healing.
I also needed to hear other women's stories in order to see and embrace my own. Sometimes another woman's story becomes a mirror that shows me a self I haven't seen before. When I listen to her tell it, her experience quickens and clarifies my own. Her questions rouse mine. Her conflicts illumine my conflicts. Her resolutions call forth my hope. Her strengths summon my strengths. All of this can happen even when our stories and our lives are very different. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

None of us mentioned An Evening of Long Goodbyes, whose race had been so catastrophic that, by the end, neither Frank nor I could summon the will to gloat. He had begun badly, getting his head stuck in the gate and having to be extricated by the stewards, and continued with a series of humiliating and distinctly uncanine trips and stumbles, disgracing himself beyond redemption in the third lap, when his muzzle came off and, to the boos of the crowd, he abandoned the race to leap over the hoardings and snatch a hot dog from the hand of a small boy. ~ Paul Murray

It's a long way back to sunset, a far way on to dawn, so you summon all the fool things of your life, the stupid lovely things done with people known so very well who are now so very dead... ~ Ray Bradbury

So, let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look over not only ourselves, but each other. ~ Barack Obama

Whenever faced with a challenge, I dig deep within myself and summon my spiritual and physical forces. This gives me the focus, determination, perseverance, and support I need to succeed. ~ Gail Devers

A supernatural instrument before whose miracle we used to stand amazed, and which we now employ without giving it a thought, to summon our tailor or to order an ice cream ~ Alain De Botton

He could feel himself gliding down like the sail of a weightless craft, forever plunging into the great beyond below where mermaids sing and summon their lovers home, further down into the depths of some complacent serenity, further down where thoughts float away and never return and the lightness is so grand that there is no other worldly place imaginable, for there is no world left to be
considered. There is only the soul, free from the prison of the body, and it is released to travel
another millennium through time, carrying with it the progress and industry gathered from the
mind previously occupied. ~ Matthew Chase Stroud

Throwing down your staff may sound like a sign of surrender, but in Egyptian magic, it's bad news. It usually means, 'Hey, I'm going to summon a big nasty thing to kill you while I stand safely inside my circle and laugh'. ~ Rick Riordan

It has a supernatural grandeur which expands the soul and unites it with God. I say an Our Father or a Hail Mary when I feel so spiritually barren that I cannot summon up a single worth while thought. These two prayers fill me with rapture and feed and satisfy my soul. ~ Therese Of Lisieux

Look, the world's comforter, with weary gait,
His day's hot task hath ended in the west:
The owl, night's herald, shrieks-'tis very late;
The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest;
And coal-black clouds, that shadow heaven's light,
Do summon us to part, and bid good night. ~ William Shakespeare

A Pakistani exchange student's maternal American host "managed to summon the transforming question of her culture, built on the revolutionary idea that people are the sovereign, the boss, captains of their own fate.
She said, simply, "But what do YOU think? ~ Ron Suskind

ATHENA: There are two sides to this dispute. I've heard only one half the argument. ( ... ) So you two parties, summon your witnesses, set out your proofs, with sworn evidence to back your stories. Once I've picked the finest men in Athens, I'll return. They'll rule fairly in this case, bound by a sworn oath to act with justice. ~ Aeschylus

On our first date, he bought me a taco, talked at length about the ancients' theories of light, how it streams at angles to align events in space and time, that it is the source of all information, determines every outcome, how we can reflect it to summon aliens using mirrored bowls of water. I asked what the point of it all was, but he didn't seem to hear me. Lying on the grass outside a tennis arena, he held my face toward the sun, stared sideways at my eyeballs, and began to cry. He told me I was the sign he'd been waiting for and, like looking into a crystal ball, he'd just read a private message from God in the silvery vortex of my left pupil. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

When a third wave of poverty overwhelmed me, I knew with even greater certitude than when I had lived in Clerkenwell that the only complete solution to my problem was suicide. I never brought it off. I was afraid. A lifetime of never making positive decisions, accepting instead the lesser of the evils presented to me, had atrophied my will. It was not so much that I longed for death as that I didn't long for life. Emptiness, though, was not a sufficiently definite feeling to lead to a violent act. Instead of sitting in my room and balancing the relative convenience of various ways of ending it all, I ought to have been busy trying to summon up a reasonable amount of despair. Hopelessness was thinly spread like drizzle over my whole outlook. But, in an emergency, I could not find a puddle of despondency deep enough to drown in. ~ Quentin Crisp

The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always- greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon. ~ Dana Gioia

Any serious pondering of all of life through the Golden Rule is dangerous for our moral health because it will summon us - I know I feel this way just writing the above paragraphs - to live under the King and as one of his kingdom citizens. ~ Scot McKnight

The symbolic personage who focuses upon himself a social drama and the martyr may well be born during these days preceding the new moon. They are the incorporation of the need of their collectivity for a new birth of spirit. They call down the creative spirit; they summon forth the future-even if it be through their own death ~ Dane Rudhyar

Nothing can come into your experience unless you summon it through persistent thoughts. ~ Rhonda Byrne

We practice conscious forgetting by refusing to summon up the fiery material, we refuse to recollect. To forget is an active, not a passive endeavor. It means to not haul up certain materials, or turn them over and over, to not work oneself up by repetitive thought, picture, or emotion. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

With a century and change between the 1880 convention and now, I'll admit I rolled my eyes at the ideological hairsplitting, wondering how a group of people who more or less agreed with one another about most issues could summon forth such stark animosity. Thankfully, we Americans have evolved, our hearts made larger, our minds more open, welcoming the negligible differences among our fellows with compassion and respect. As a Democrat who voted for Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election, an election suspiciously tipped to tragic Republican victory because of a handful of contested ballots in the state of Florida, I, for one, would never dream of complaining about the votes siphoned in that state by my fellow liberal Ralph Nader, who convinced citizens whose hopes for the country differ little from my own to vote for him, even though had those votes gone to Gore, perhaps those citizens might have spent their free time in the years to come more pleasurably pursuing leisure activities, such as researching the sacrifice of Family Garfield, instead of attending rallies and protests against wars they find objectionable, not to mention the money saved on aspirin alone considering they'll have to pop a couple every time they read the newspaper, wondering if the tap water with which they wash down the pills is safe enough to drink considering the corporate polluter lobbyists now employed at the EPA. ~ Sarah Vowell

I think pain is a very - it's an extremely hard thing to empathize moment to moment. And you often don't remember your own pain, you know, that moment that you broke a limb or you burned yourself or, I think, this is a common thing that women talk about with childbirth, that the memory of the pain is hard to summon up and relive, thankfully. ~ Hugh Laurie

He cocked his head and sent her a dimpled smile. "Where are you going in such a hurry?"
Where am I going? "I don't know. Probably the library."
"On a Friday night?" He made a show of horror. "What the heck are you going to do there?"
"Oh, what most people do at their local library - three way orgy, summon up the dead, if there's time, jam up the copy machine with Canadian quarters. Same old same old. ~ Jennifer Shirk

Good. So you may be dense, but you're not an idiot.'
'How can you even talk to me like that? Don't you know I can summon zombies and skeletons and –'
'Right now you couldn't summon a wishbone without melting into a puddle of darkness, di Angelo,' Will said. 'I told you, no more Underworldy stuff, doctor's orders. You owe me at least three days of rest in the infirmary. Starting now.'
Nico felt like a hundred skeletal butterflies were resurrecting in his stomach. 'Three days? I – I suppose that would be okay. ~ Rick Riordan

When he arrived at the town of Bethel, he was teased by a group of boys who called him "baldy." Elisha responded to their taunts by summoning a team of wild she-bears. The bears mauled the boys to death, leaving the bloody remains of forty-two children littered on the ground. Nobody knows why Elisha didn't just summon a full head of hair. ~ Mark Russell

Tell me, did you summon me just so you could beat the crap out of me? Or is there a more productive reason for why I'm here? (Eros) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

The Supreme Being I would sign up for would not prove his omnipotence by saving one life while ending dozens, or hundreds, or thousands. Nor would he summon an angel to heaven by ending a first grader's life at the hands of a gunman or sadist. ~ Jeff Greenfield

Either the material order is the whole of being, wherein all transcendence is an illusion, or it is the phenomenal surface - mysterious, beautiful, terrible, harsh, and haunting - of a world of living spirits ... One should ... be able to recognize that it is only the latter view that has ever had the power - over centuries and in every realm of human accomplishment - to summon desire beyond the boring limits marked by mortality, to endow the will with constancy and purpose, and to shape imagination towards ends that should not be possible within the narrow economies of the flesh. ~ David Bentley Hart

From that point on, I guess I sort of realized that my imagination, which made life tolerable, needed to be kept a secret from the rest of the world. But if you keep something hidden away, all tied up, it's hard to summon it when you really need it. ~ Kevin Wilson

The thread has snapped. No sound even to mark the breaking let alone the fall. That long anticipated disintegration, when the darkest angel of all, the horror beyond all horrors, sits at last upon my chest, permanently enfolding me in its great covering wings, black as ink, veined in Bees' purple. A creature without a voice. A voice without a name. As immortal as my life. Come here at long last to summon the wind. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

In some animal part of my brain, I guess I thought looking her up might somehow summon her. So I never did. And she came anyway. ~ Megan Abbott

The Weirdos

On our first date, he bought me a taco, talked at length about the ancients' theories of light, how it streams at all angles to align events in space and time, that it is the source of all information, determines every outcome, how we can reflect it to summon aliens using mirrored bowls of water. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

The more one suffered and lived, the more one had known of joy and grief, the deeper the response must be if an artist were great enough to summon it. ~ Rachel Field

Writing and creating, those things come to me on their own. I feel like ... you sort of summon them and it's like allowing the universe to enter your heart in an entirely different way to what it normally does. It's like inviting that energy of the universe to enter into your craft in a way where it has a meaning. ~ Ryan Adams

My conception of genius. - Great men, like great ages, are explosives in which a tremendous force is stored up; their precondition is always, historically and physiologically, that for a long time much has been gathered, stored up, saved up, and conserved for them - that there has been no explosion for a long time. Once the tension in the mass has become too great, then the most accidental stimulus suffices to summon into the world the "genius," the "deed," the great destiny. What does the environment matter then, or the age, or the "spirit of the age," or "public opinion"!
Take the case of Napoleon. Revolutionary France, and even more, prerevolutionary France, would have brought forth the opposite type; in fact, it did. Because Napoleon was different, the heir of a stronger, older, more ancient civilization than the one which was then perishing in France, he became the master there, he was the only master. Great men are necessary, the age in which they appear
is accidental; that they almost always become masters over their age is only because they are stronger, because they are older, because for a longer time much was gathered for them. The relationship between a genius and his age is like that between strong and weak, or between old and young: the age is relatively always much younger, thinner, more immature, less assured, more childish. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

In Calumet a thousand ornate streetlamps stood in a swamp, where they did nothing but ignite the fog and summon auras of mosquitoes. ~ Erik Larson

I write very, very slowly, and for me, I have to summon all sorts of resources to make one of these pieces work. ~ Junot Diaz

Right there, at that precise moment, I felt as if I would be able to meet whatever challenges came my way, as if there were no limits to what I could do. This wasn't about writing, this was something else, a boundlessness, as if I could get up and go now, this very minute, and then just walk and walk to the end of the earth.
This feeling lasted for thirty seconds perhaps. Then it was gone, and even though I tried to summon it back it refused to return, a bit like a dream that goes, slips from your grasp as you struggle to recall it after waking. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

He blinked a few times, each motion so slow that he was never quite sure if he'd get his eyes open again. He wasn't wearing a shirt. Funny how he was only just realizing it. Funnier still that he couldn't seem to summon any concern for her maidenly sensibilities.
She might be blushing. He couldn't tell. It was too dark to see. But it didn't matter. This was Honoria. She was a good egg. A sensible egg. She wouldn't be scarred forever by the sight of his chest. ~ Julia Quinn

As you can imagine when you have to summon a force like that together, the opposing elements are pretty freaking gnarly. I would think of those pioneer movies where they've got the cook and the ladies loading the guns and firing at the surrounded wagons. I don't put Coulson in that category, I think he is on the upper tier of people who come to scrap at situations like that but everybody's involved. ~ Clark Gregg

In Spain, however, people have found a way of cheating death. They summon it to appear in the afternoon in the bull ring, and they make it face a man. Death - a fighting bull with horns as weapons - is killed by a bullfighter. And the people are there watching death being cheated of its right. ~ Maia Wojciechowska

The devil is a wicked and angry spirit. He will not and cannot stand seeing a man enter the kingdom of God. And if the man undertakes to do so, he blocks the way himself, arousing and attempting every kind of opposition he can summon. If you want to be God's child, therefore, prepare yourself for persecution, as the wise man says. Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:12, 'All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.' And Christ Himself says (John 15:20): 'The disciple should not be better off than his master. If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.' There is no way out, and therefore the statement is: 'Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of the kingdom of heaven,' to let us know how to console ourselves. ~ Martin Luther

To make matters worse, some of the books had actually become migratory. In the nineteenth century Brakebills had appointed a librarian with a highly Romantic imagination who had envisioned a mobile library in which books fluttered from shelf to shelf like birds, reorganizing themselves spontaneously under their own pwer in response to searches. For the first few months the effect was sadi to have been quite dramatic. A painteding the scned survived as a mural behind the circulation desk, with enormaous atlases soaring around the place like condors.
But the system turned out to be totally impractical. The wear and tear o the spines alone was too costly, and the books were horribly disobedient. The librarian had imagined he could summon a given book to perch on his hand just by shouting out its call number, but in actuality they were just too willful, and some were actively predatory. The librarian was swiftly dposed, and his successor set about domesticating the books again, but even now there were stragglers, notably in Swiss History and Architecture 300-1399, that stubbornly flapped around near the ceiling. Once in a while an entire sub - sub-category that had long been thought safely dormant would take wing with an indescribably papery susurrus. ~ Lev Grossman

Even when our heart aches, we summon the strength that maybe we didn't even know we had, and we carry on; we finish the race. ~ Barack Obama

He watched her watch him, a little surprised that she didn't seem distracted by the noisy procession.
She held her hands clasped at her waist, her expression so serene that he felt his own tension begin to slip away. As they drew closer to the chapel, her features became clearer. He was still too far away to tell the color of her eyes, yet they looked hauntingly familiar. Where had he seen those eyes before?
They were her only remarkable feature. Her hair was a plain, dark chestnut color, the slope of her nose not as dainty as he preferred, and her cheekbones too high and sharp to flatter the roundness of her chin. He stared openly, trying to summon a word to describe her. Few would call her pleasing or even pretty. Those terms were too earthy to describe a face such as hers. He stared harder.
Exquisite.
That word came very close. "Breathtaking" was a more apt description. He wondered that all in the bailey didn't gape at her, dumbfounded by such perfection. Not that he would know if others stared or not. He couldn't take his eyes from her. No matter how common or mismatched her features, they somehow combined to create the face of an angel. ~ Elizabeth Elliott

I cannot summon up inspiration; I myself am summoned. ~ P.L. Travers

She exhaled, and then looked back to Nigel, who was still lying on the floor, moaning incoherently.
Simon looked down, too, and for several seconds they just stood there, staring at the unconscious man, until the girl said, "I really didn't hit him very hard."
"Maybe he's drunk."
She looked dubious. "Do you think? I smelled spirits on his breath, but I've never seen him drunk before."
Simon had nothing to add to that line of thought, so he just asked, "Well, what do you want to do?"
"I suppose we could just leave him here," she said, the expression in her dark eyes hesitant.
Simon thought that was an excellent idea, but it was obvious she wanted the idiot cared for in a more tender manner. And heaven help him, but he felt the strangest compulsion to make her happy.
"Here is what we're going to do," he said crisply, glad that his tone belied any of the odd tenderness he was feeling. "I am going to summon my carriage - "
"Oh, good," she interrupted. "I really didn't want to leave him here. It seemed rather cruel."
Simon thought it seemed rather generous considering the big oaf had nearly attacked her, but he kept that opinion to himself and instead continued on with his plan. "You will wait in the library while I'm gone."
"In the library? But - "
"In the library," he repeated firmly. "With the door shut. Do you really want to be discovered with Nigel's body should anyone happen to wander down this hallway?"
Julia Quinn

It is easy enough to call men
from the edges of the earth.
It is easy enough to summon them to my feet
with a thought–
it is beautiful to see the tall panther
and the sleek deer-hounds
circle in the dark.
It is easy enough
to make cedar and white ash fumes
into palaces
and to cover the sea-caves
with ivory and onyx.

But I would give up
rock-fringes of coral
and the inmost chamber
of my island palace
and my own gifts
and the whole region
of my power and magic
for your glance. ~ H.D.

It seemed to Alabama that, reaching her goal, she would drive the devils that had driven her - that, in proving herself, she would achieve that peace which she imagined went only in surety of one's self - that she would be able, through the medium of the dance, to command her emotions, to summon love or pity or happiness at will, having provided a channel through which they might flow. She drove herself mercilessly, and the summer dragged on. ~ Zelda Fitzgerald

He could not bear the thought of training, not only because of the effort he could never summon from himself now, but also because the idea of fighting was disorienting in its repugnance. He felt that everyone at the Lido Gym was insane. One ~ Leonard Gardner

He extends a hand, larger than a dinner plate, and I have no choice but to shake it. I think I can feel my metacarpals shattering. Julian jumps to summon our waitress again, mostly to avoid shaking hands with this Goliath. "And a pitcher of mimosas, as soon as humanly possible. ~ Kristopher Jansma

Food of Love
Eating is touch carried to the bitter end. -Samuel Butler II

I'm going to murder you with love;
I'm going to suffocate you with embraces;
I'm going to hug you, bone by bone,
Till you're dead all over.
Then I will dine on your delectable marrow.

You will become my personal Sahara;
I'll sun myself in you, then with one swallow
Drain you remaining brackish well.
With my female blade I'll carve my name
In your most aspiring palm
Before I chop it down.
Then I'll inhale your last oasis whole.

But in the total desert you become
You'll see me stretch, horizon to horizon,
Opulent mirage!
Wisteria balconies dripping cyclamen.
Vistas ablaze with crystal, laced in gold.

So you will summon each dry grain of sand
And move towards me in undulating dunes
Till you arrive at sudden ultramarine:
A Mediterranean to stroke your dusty shores;
Obstinate verdue, creeping inland, fast renudes
Your barrens; succulents spring up everywhere,
Surprising life! And I will be that green.

When you are fed and watered, flourishing
With shoots entwining trellis, dome and spire,
Till you are resurrected field in bloom,
I will devour you, my natural food,
My host, my final supper on the earth,
And you'll begin to die again. ~ Carolyn Kizer

Violet
232 books | 49 friends
see comment history Black for hunting through the night

For death and mourning the color's white

Gold for a bride in her wedding gown

And red to call enchantment down.

White silk when our bodies burn,

Blue banners when the lost return.

Flame for the birth of a Nephilim,

And to wash away our sins.

Gray for knowledge best untold,

Bone for those who don't grow old.

Saffron lights the victory march,

Green will mend our broken hearts.

Silver for the demon towers,

And bronze to summon wicked powers. ~ Cassandra Clare

On Rossini's 'The Barber of Seville' - "Much has been written about the fiasco of the opera's first night on 20 February 1816, most of it true: the mockery of Rossini's Spanish-style hazel jacket, the rowdy animosity of the Paisiello lobby, the jeering and the catcalls, as one mishap succeeded another. Basilio sang his 'Calumny' aria with a bloodied nose after tripping over a trap door; then during the act 1 finale, a cat wandered onstage, declined to leave, and was forcibly flung into the wings. According to the Rosina, Gertrude Righetti Giorgi, Rossini left the theatre 'as though he had been an indifferent onlooker'... The second performance was a triumph, though Rossini was not there to witness it. He spent the evening pacing his room, imagining the opera's progress scene by scene. He retired early, only to be roused by a glow of torches and uproar in the street. Fearing that a mob was about to set fire to the building, he took refuge in a stable block. Garcia tried to summon him to acknowledge the adulation. 'F***' their bravos!' was Rossini's blunt rejoinder. 'I'm not coming out'. ~ Richard Osborne

The very shape of our dreams defines us. We learn about the world and try out our thoughts and visions in them. Our dreams goad us and drive us and summon and sustain us and when we are old they comfort us. Magic is a kind of dream, and love is a dream, and hope is a dream. Without our dreams, there is no sweetness, no purpose to life. ~ Isobelle Carmody

What amulet is there against this disaster? What face can I summon to lay cool upon this heat? ~ Virginia Woolf

No great inner event befalls those who summon it not. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck