The Boy And Saw A Comet Quotes

It was a comet. The boy saw the comet and he felt as though his life had meaning. And when it went away, he waited his entire life for it to come back to him. It was more than just a comet because of what it brought to his life: direction, beauty, meaning. There are many who couldn't understand, and sometimes he walked among them. But even in his darkest hours, he knew in his heart that someday it would return to him, and his world would be whole again ... And his belief in God and love and art would be re-awakened in his heart. The boy saw the comet and suddenly his life had meaning. ~ Lucas Scott

He was looking at Mr. Nancy, an old black man with a pencil moustache, in his check sports jacket and his lemon yellow gloves, riding a carousel lion as it rose and lowered, high in the air; and, at the same time, in the same place, he saw a jeweled spider as high as a horse, its eyes an emerald nebula, strutting, staring down at him; and simultaneously he was looking at an extraordinarily tall man with teak colored skin and three sets of arms, wearing a flowing ostrich-feather headdress, his face painted with red stripes, riding an irritated golden lion, two of his six hands holding on tightly to the beast's mane; and he was also seeing a young black boy, dressed in rags, his left foot all swollen and crawling with black flies; and last of all, and behind all these things, Shadow was looking at a tiny brown spider, hiding under a withered ochre leaf. Shadow saw all these things, and he knew they were the same thing. ~ Neil Gaiman

Mrs. Faulkner had sidled up to me and said Good day, Mrs. Elliot?
I just looked at her, and I saw in her eyes that she was wanting some kind of approval for her boy because of his career ahead, and she suddenly just looked like an old lady, not fancy and rich and frightening. An old lady whose son admired my husband, and who herself would be as helpless in the Territories as a newborn calf and not nearly as useful. Good day, I said back. It is a funny thing how much more proud people can be of themselves if they never step back and take a good look in a glass. ~ Nancy E. Turner

I saw a boy of the crew purchasing javelins of them with bits of platters and broken glass. ~ Christopher Columbus

I tried to warn you,

But girls never listen.

Got your innocence insured?

'Cause it's 'bout to be stolen

Right out from under your nose.

Prepare to curl your toes.

I've got a one-track mind.

You've got a nice behind.

Chorus:

I had a good thing goin'

All numb in my shell,

Then you took me by surprise

And now I'm scared as hell.

I don't wanna feel for you,

I don't wanna feel.

If feeling means hurting,

Then I don't wanna be real.

You crank up my lust, girl,

You tame down my rage.

You let your inner vixen

Roam out of her cage.

The moment our lips met

I saw it in your eyes,

But you were seeing me,

too, I now realize.

Chorus

What do I want from you?

I want everything.

And I'm not gonna share -

This ain't a casual fling.

You can be my bad girl,

I'll even be your good boy.

How'd the tables get turned?

F*** it, I'll be your love toy. ~ Wendy Higgins

All I had to see was his face. Unaware of an audience, lost in the repeated rhythm of the piano riff, lit by the evening, it was like all of Cole's armor had fallen off. This was not the aggressively handsome, cocky guy that I had met a few days ago. This was just a boy getting to know a tune. He looked young and uncertain and endearing, and I felt betrayed that he was somehow getting himself together when I couldn't.
Somehow, he was yet again being honest, sharing another secret, when I didn't have anything I was willing to give in return. For once, I saw something in his eyes. I saw that he was feeling again, and that whatever he was feeling was hurting him.
I wasn't ready to hurt. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Ella isn't like other little girls. She's inquisitive and curious, with a heart that senses others' emotions with the precision of Doppler radar. She drops coins from her piggy bank into the outstretched hands of the homeless in Times Square, frets over the plight of hurt animals on the roadside, and two Christmases ago, organized a coat drive at her school when she saw a little boy shivering on the playground. ~ Sarah Jio

we saw a man walking in our midst who would have made James Bond feel insecure. Indiana Jones would have looked like a momma's boy compared to the man in the leather jacket with two days' growth of beard who walked to where my mother stood and then - horror of horrors - winked at her. ~ Ally Carter

Longstreet took a deep breath. In the winter the fever had come to Richmond. In a week they were dead. All within a week, all three. He saw the sweet faces: moment of enormous pain. The thing had pushed him out of his mind, insane, but no one knew it. He had not thought God would do a thing like that ... she kept standing in the door: the boy is dead. And he could not even help her, could say nothing, could not move, could not even take her into his arms. Nothing to give. One strength he did not have. Oh God: my boy is dead. ~ Michael Shaara

His [Luke]letter went something like this: "Dear Mr President, Thank you for introducing me to the Hall of Famers and for showing me the Oval Office. I think if I work really hard I will have a chance for both."
The next time I saw the president I told him about my son's ambitious plans. His response was beautiful: "Never get between a boy and his dreams ~ Tim Russert

You'll be found, your nickels, dimes and Indian-heads fused by electroplating. Abe Lincolns melted into Miss Columbias, eagles plucked raw on the backs of quarters, all run to quicksilver in your jeans. More! Any boy hit by lightning, lift his lid and there on his eyeball, pretty as the Lord's Prayer on a pin, find the last scene the boy ever saw! A box-Brownie photo, by God, of that fire climbing down the sky to blow you like a penny whistle, suck your soul back up along the bright stair! ~ Ray Bradbury

Don't defend him! This is bullshit!" he said as he turned for the door, and then turned back to face me. "I've been sitting at work this whole time, staring at those fucking things. I wanted to calm down before I got here, but this is just . . . it's fucking disrespectful, is what it is! I bust my ass trying to prove to you that I'm better for you than he ever was. But he keeps pulling this shit, and showing up, and . . . I can't compete with some rich college boy from California. I'm barely getting by, with no degree, and up until a few days ago I still lived with my dad. But I am so fucking in love you, Cami," he said, reaching for me. "I have been since we were kids. The first time I saw you on the playground, I knew what beauty was. The first time you ignored me was my first broken heart. I thought I was playing this right, from the moment I sat down at your table at the Red. No one has ever wanted someone as much as I want you. For years I . . ." He was breathing hard, and he clenched his jaw. "When I heard about your dad, I wanted to rescue you," he said, chuckling, but not out of humor. "And that night at your apartment, I thought I'd finally gotten something right." He pointed to the ground. "That my purpose in life was to love you and keep you safe . . . but I didn't prepare for having to share you. ~ Jamie McGuire

The death of her father and mother and the rich acres of and that had come down to her had set a train of suitors on her heels. For two years she saw suitors almost every evening. Except two they were all alike. They talked to her of passion and there was a strained eager quality in their voices and in their eyes when they looked at her. The two who were different were much unlike each other. One of them, a slender young man with white hands, the son of a jeweler in Winesburg, talked continually of virginity. When he was with her he was never off the subject. The other, a black-haired boy with large ears, said nothing at all but always managed to get her into the darkness, where he began to kiss her.

For a time the tall dark girl thought she would marry the jeweler's son. For hours she sat in silence listening as he talked to her and then she began to be afraid of something. Beneath his talk of virginity she began to think there was a lust greater than in all the others. At times it seemed to her that as he talked he was holding her body in his hands. She imagined him turning it slowly about in the white hands and staring at it. At night she dreamed that he had bitten into her body and that his jaws were dripping. She had the dream three times, then she became in the family way to the one who said nothing at all but who in the moment of his passion actually did bite her shoulder so that for days the marks of his teeth showed. ~ Sherwood Anderson

Men. I saw in Rome a statue of a boy extracting a thorn from his foot; I went my way, and returned in a year's time, and ;here sat the selfsame boy, extracting the intruder still, Is this to be our model? ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

...I couldn't help wondering what would happen if the little pea-eating angel ever saw that scrapbook...can you imagine what the boy would think if he found out how exceptional and momentous his every move was in the life of his parents? Do you think he might develop a little bit of an overblown ego? I would be worried about that if I were the mom. ~ Muffy Mead-Ferro

Loren looked at Christ on the cross behind the Mother Superior's head. She remembered an old joke, one she heard when she first got here. A boy is getting all Ds and Fs in math so his parents send him to Catholic school. On his first report card, his parents are shocked to see their son getting straight As. When his parents ask him why, he says, "Well, when I went into the chapel and saw that guy nailed to a plus sign, I knew they were serious." Mother ~ Harlan Coben

But wait, stop, it's not supposed to end this way! You're the fantasy, you're what I'm leaving behind. I can't pack you up and take you with me."
"That was the most self-centered thing I've ever heard you say."
Jane blinked. "It was?"
"Miss Hayes, have you stopped to consider that you might have this all backward? That in fact you are my fantasy?"
The jet engines began to whir, the pressure of the cabin stuck invisible fingers into her ears. Henry gripped his armrest and stared ahead as though trying to steady the machine by force of will. Jane laughed at him and settled into her seat. It was a long flight. There would be time to get more answers, and she thought she could wait. Then in that moment when the plane rushed forward as though for its life, and gravity pushed down, and the plane lifted up, and Jane was breathless inside those two forces, she needed to know now.
"Henry, tell me which parts were true."
"All of it. Especially this part where I'm going to die…" His knuckles were literally turning white as he held tighter to the armrests, his eyes staring straight ahead.
The light gushing through the window was just right, afternoon coming at them with the perfect slant, the sun grazing the horizon of her window, yellow light spilling in. She saw Henry clearly, noticed a chicken pox scar on his forehead, read in the turn down of his upper lip how he must have looked as a pouty little boy and in the faint lines tracing away from the cor ~ Shannon Hale

Kylee laughed. "Nothing with you is normal. But speaking of abnormal, I saw this movie where these two girls liked the same boy, and one girl was a werewolf, and the other was a dragon, although she didn't know it yet, and it turned out the boy was a killer of, like, magical creatures, so both girls died and he took the head cheerleader to prom."
"That sounds like a stupid movie," I said.
"It actually was. But the boy had this shirt off a lot. I guess hunting magical creatures is great for stomach muscles. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

Before I joined The Beach Boys, I was working at Columbia Records as a producer, and saw The Byrds come in and do their first overdub before Terry even met them. ~ Bruce Johnston

We know the Lord makes His servants bold. The young boy Joseph who saw God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, in a grove of trees was transformed into a spiritual giant. ~ Henry B. Eyring

Even the humble Wabash has its terror, for at Huntington, Indiana, three truthful damsels of the town saw its waters churned by a tail that splashed from side to side, while far ahead was the prow of the animal - a leonine skull, with whiskers, and as large as the head of a boy of a dozen years. As if realizing what kind of a report was going to be made about him, the monster was overcome with bashfulness at the sight of the maidens and sank from view. In ~ Charles Montgomery Skinner

Spring came early that year and the sweet warm nights made her restless. She walked up and down the streets and through the park. And wherever she went, she saw a boy and a girl together; walking arm-in-arm, sitting on a park bench with their arms around each other, standing closely and in silence in a vestibule. Everyone in the world but Francie had a sweetheart or a friend. She seemed to be the only lonely one in Brooklyn. ~ Betty Smith

So what happened?"
"I don't know." Another glance to ensure his continued state of Not Looking, and then I rip off my clothes in one fast swoop. I am now officially stark naked in the room with the most beautiful boy I know. Funny,but this isn't how I imagined this moment.
No.Not funny.One hundred percent the exact opposite of funny.
"I think I maybe,possibly, vaguely remember hitting the snooze button." I jabber to cover my mortification. "Only I guess it was the off button.But I had the alarm on my phone set,too, so I don't know what happened."
Underwear,on.
"Did you turn the ringer back on last night?"
"What?" I hop into my jeans, a noise he seems to determinedly ignore.His ears are apple red.
"You went to see a film,right? Don't you set your mobile to silent at the theater?"
He's right.I'm so stupid. If I hadn't taken Meredith to A Hard Day's Night, a Beatles movie I know she loves, I would have never turned it off. We'd already be in a taxi to the airport. "The taxi!" I tug my sweater over my head and look up to find myself standing across from a mirror.
A mirror St. Clair is facing.
"It's all right," he says. "I told the driver to wait when I came up here. We'll just have to tip him a little extra." His head is still down. I don't think he saw anything.I clear my throat, and he glances up. Our eyes meet in the mirror,and he jumps. "God! I didn't...I mean,not until just now..."
"Cool.Yeah,fine." I try to shake it off ~ Stephanie Perkins

Boy is getting all Ds and Fs in math so his parents send him to Catholic school. On his first report card, his parents are shocked to see their son getting straight As. When his parents ask him why, he says, Well, when I went into the chapel and saw that guy nailed to a plus sign, I knew they were serious. ~ Harlan Coben

My narrative style centers around intimate, highly subjective depictions of personal experience and internal landscapes. In 'March,' everything fell into place as soon as I began identifying strongly with John Lewis as a young boy and saw how we shared the same kind of gravity and intensity as youngsters. ~ Nate Powell

You were just a boy on a bed in a room, like a kaleidoscope is a tube full of bits of broken glass. But the way I saw you was pieces refracting the light, shifting into an infinite universe of flowers and rainbows and insects and planets, magical dividing cells, pictures no one else knew ... ~ Francesca Lia Block

Do you mean to tell me', he growled a the Dursleys, 'that this boy- this boy! - knows nothin' abou' - about ANYTHING?'
Harry thought this was going a bit far. He had been to school, after all, and his marks were'nt bad.
'I know some things,' he said. ' I can, you know, do maths and stuff.'
But Hagrid simply waved his hand and said, 'About our world, I mean. Your world. My world. Yer' parents world.'
'What world?'
Hagrid looked at though he was about to explode.
'DURSLEY!' he boomed.
Uncle Vernon, who had gone very pale, whispered something that sounded like 'Mimblewimble'.
Hagrid stared wildly at Harry.
'But yeh must know about yer mum and dad', he said. 'I mean, they're famous. You're famous.
'What? My - my mum and dad weren't famous, were they?'
'Yeh don' know... yeh don' know...' Hagrid ran his fingers through his hair, fixing Harry with a bewildered stare.
'Yeh don' know what yeh are?' he said finally.
Uncle Vernon suddenly found his voice.
'Stop!' he commanded, 'stop right there, sir! I forbid you to tell the boy anything!'
A braver man than Vernon dudley would have quailed under the furious look Hagrid now gave him; when Hagrid spoke, his every syllable trembled with rage.
'You never told him? Never told him what was in the latter Dumbledore left fer him? I was there! I saw Dumbledore leave it, Dursley! An' you kept it from him all these years?'
'Kept what from me?' said Harry eagerl ~ J.K. Rowling

To be honest, I don't know what qualities you ever saw in him. I can tell why he chose you, but-"
"Oh yeah?" Cara's spirits lifted as she sensed a compliment coming on. "Why do you think he chose me?"
"It's obvious." He swept a hand to indicate her loose curls. "Your long, shiny hair, healthy skin, and bright eyes show that you're well-nourished."
"Uh, thank you?"
"I'm not finished."
"Go on then."
"You're clearly intelligent." Then he felt the need to add, "For a human."
"Gee. That's so sweet."
"But Eric was probably most attracted to your wait-to-hip ratio." For a split second, Aelyx resembled a human boy as he leaned back and peered at her caboose. "Hips of that width are likely to pass life offspring without complication."
Cara nearly swallowed her own tongue. She didn't have big hips did she? ~ Melissa Landers

Arthur Less is the first homosexual ever to grow old. That is, at least, how he feels at times like these. Here, in this tub, he should be twenty-five or thirty, a beautiful young man naked in a bathtub. Enjoying the pleasures of life. How dreadful if someone came upon naked Less today: pink to his middle, gray to his scalp, like those old double erasers for pencil and ink. He has never seen another gay man age past fifty, none except Robert. He met them all at forty or so but never saw them make it much beyond; they died of AIDS, that generation. Less's generation often feels like the first to explore the land beyond fifty. How are they meant to do it? Do you stay a boy forever, and dye your hair and diet to stay lean and wear tight shirts and jeans and go out dancing until you drop dead at eighty? Or do you do the opposite - do you forswear all that, and let your hair go gray, and wear elegant sweaters that cover your belly, and smile on past pleasures that will never come again? Do you marry and adopt a child? In a couple, do you each take a lover, like matching nightstands by the bed, so that sex will not vanish entirely? Or do you let sex vanish entirely, as heterosexuals do? Do you experience the relief of letting go of all that vanity, anxiety, desire, and pain? ~ Andrew Sean Greer

Would you have this?" the Protectorat hissed at his son.
Rafael's gaze narrowed in a slow inspection while she stared defiantly back. Rafael's gaze faltered, shot briefly toward Leon, and then down. His answer was obvious: no.
And in spite of everything, in the face of all the other more important dangers that threatened her, it still stung that someone, some boy, found her ugly. Gaia burned with sudden hate for all of them.
The Protectorat saw. He smiled slightly.
"I thought not," said the Protectorat, releasing her with a flick. He turned back toward his family. "I can't thrust her on any family I know, no matter what her genes are. She's a freak, not a hero. I'd rather make a hero out of Myrna Silk."
Leon had been standing tensely throughout this exchange. "I'd take Gaia," Leon said, his low voice resonating in the space. ~ Caragh M. O'Brien

I saw a moving sight the other morning before breakfast in a little hotel where I slept in the dusty fields. The young man of the house shot a little wolf called coyote in the early morning. The little heroic animal lay on the ground, with his big furry ears, and his clean white teeth, and his little cheerful body, but his little brave life was gone. It made me think how brave all living things are. Here little coyote was, without any clothes or house or books or anything, with nothing to pay his way with, and risking his life so cheerfully - and losing it - just to see if he could pick up a meal near the hotel. He was doing his coyote-business like a hero, and you must do your boy-business, and I my man-business bravely, too, or else we won't be worth as much as a little coyote. ~ William James

Joan and the Judge had gone to a Sunday brunch with friends. They would be home shortly, in good spirits probably, unless of course they saw their boy frozen to the mailbox.
So Claire and Maggie had no choice. They each grabbed a shoulder and hooked under an elbow and yanked suddenly without warning. Scotty brought his hands quickly to his mouth. All three stood quietly staring at the miniature pink circle of flesh still stuck on the mailbox.
"It looks like a little pizza," said Maggie without thinking. ~ Peter Hedges

Isaac could see the pale gleam of a face, dark eyes and a thatch of untidy dark hair. A boy, he thought, and then suddenly it seemed to him that it was not a boy but a sprite beyond the window, light and eager like flame in the wind. But sprites were children's tales. He was a convinced but hard-worked rationalist, always hard at it reconvincing himself of his convictions. During his bad times this was not difficult, but during his good times the bright shards on the floor of the world had a trick of turning into shining pools that reflected something, and he was distinctly startled until he saw a ragged sleeve come up and wipe the misted glass clear. Only a boy. ~ Elizabeth Goudge

Supposing an emperor was persuaded to wear a new suit of clothes whose material was so fine that, to the common eye, the clothes weren't there. And suppose a little boy pointed out this fact in a loud, clear voice ...
Then you have The Story of the Emperor Who Had No Clothes.
But if you knew a bit more, it would be The Story of the Boy Who Got a Well-Deserved Thrashing from His Dad for Being Rude to Royalty, and Was Locked Up.
Or The Story of the Whole Crowd Who Were Rounded Up by the Guards and Told 'This Didn't Happen, OK? Does Anyone Want to Argue?'
Or it could be a story of how a whole kingdom suddenly saw the benefit of the 'new clothes', and developed an enthusiasm for healthy sports in a lively and refreshing atmosphere which got many new adherents every year, and led to a recession caused by the collapse of the conventional clothing industry.
It could even be a story about The Great Pneumonia Epidemic of '09.
It all depends on how much you know. ~ Terry Pratchett

In the silence, the boy understood that the desert, the wind, and the sun were also trying to understand the signs written by the hand, and were seeking to follow their paths, and to understand what had been written on a single emerald. He saw that omens were scattered throughout the earth and in space, and that there was no reason or significance attached to their appearance; he could see that not the deserts, nor the winds, nor the sun, nor people knew why they had been created. But that the hand had a reason for all of this, and that only the hand could perform miracles, or transform the sea into a desert . . . or a man into the wind. ~ Paulo Coelho

When I turned to leave the groom to his work, I saw that D's ranch manager had been watching us. His name was Boy Long, and he was exotic-looking for these parts, with jet-black hair and a single gold hoop in one ear. His particular flair made me think of a pirate. "What's in the tincture?" he wanted to know. "Nothing unusual." He looked me up and down. "I don't believe you, but you can keep your secret." A ~ Paula McLain

When I saw them on the beach, perfectly tanned, or when I watched them twirling in the waves, I grasped the transcendental element in surf music. It was all about freedom from the rules of life, the whole of your being concentrated in the act of shooting the tube. For several years after that trip to L.A. I subscribed to Surfer magazine, and I practiced the Atlantic Ocean version of the sport, though only with my body and on rather tame waves. With my voice muffled by the water I would shout a line from "Surf City." To me, this was the ultimate fantasy of plenty: "two girls for every boy," except I sang it as "Two girls for every goy." Fortunately, Brian has survived the schizoid tendencies that seemed close to the surface when I met him. He's still performing and writing songs. But it was his emotional battle and the intersection of that struggle with the acid-dosed aesthetic of the sixties that produced his most astonishing music. ~ Richard Goldstein

Edward Lasco was on the screened porch of his rented house in a comfortable but not elegant older section of the town where he'd lived for the past fifteen years when his wife, Elise, who six months before had left him and moved to a nearby city to work in a psychiatric hospital, came around the side of the house and stood beside the screen looking in. She had on a business outfit - natural linen suit, knee-high boots, dark glasses with at least three distinguishable colors tiered top to bottom in the lenses - and she carried a slick briefcase, thin and shiny. Her hair was shorter than he'd seen it, styled in a peculiar way so that it seemed it spots to jerk away from her head, to say, "I'm hair, boy, and you'd better believe it." Edward had come outside with a one-pint carton of skim milk and a ninety-nine-cookie package of Oreos and a just-received issue of InfoWorld, and he was entirely content with the prospect of eating his cookies and drinking his milk and reading his magazine, but when he saw Elise he was filled with a sudden, very unpleasant sense that he didn't want to see her. It'd been a good two and a half months since he'd talked to her, and there she was looking like an earnest TV art director's version of the modern businesswoman; it made him feel that his life was fucked, and this was before she'd said a word. ~ Frederick Barthelme

She saw clearly a boy and a man fighting for control of the same face. ~ Stephen King

Harry Potter," he said very softly. His voice might have been part of the spitting fire. "The Boy Who Lived."
None of the Death Eaters moved. They were waiting. Everything was waiting. Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thought inexplicably of Ginny, and her blazing look, and the feel of her lips on his
Voldemort had raised his wand. His head was still tilted to one side, like a curious child, wondering what would happen if he proceeded. Harry looked back into the red eyes, and wanted it to happen now, quickly, while he could still stand, before he lost control, before he betrayed fear
He saw the mouth move and a flash of green light, and everything was gone. ~ J.K. Rowling

This garden was peaceful and calm. Pink cherry blossoms and violet plum blossoms graced the sweeping trees. The petals fell like snowflakes, dancing and swirling until they touched the soft, verdant grass.
There was something familiar about this place.
Her eyes traveled down the flat stone steps. She knew this path, knew those stones. The third one from the bottom had a crack in the middle- from when she was five and the neighbor's boy convinced her there were worms on the other side of the stones. She'd hammered the stone in half, eager to catch a few worms to play with.
There weren't any, of course, but her mother had helped her find some dragonflies by the pond instead, and they'd spent an afternoon counting them in the garden.
Mulan smiled wistfully at the memory. This can't be the same garden. I'm in Diyu.
Yet no painter could have re-created what she saw more convincingly. Every detail was as she remembered. At the bottom of the stone-cobbled path was a pond with rose-flushed lilies, and a marble bench under the cherry tree. She used to play by the pond when she was a little girl, catching frogs and fireflies in wine jugs and feeding the fish leftover rice husks and sesame seeds until her mother scolded her.
And beyond the moon gate was-
Mulan's hand jumped to her mouth.
Home.
That smell of home- of Baba's incense from the family temple, sharp with amber and cedar; of noodles in Grandmother Fa's special pork broth; of jasmine ~ Elizabeth Lim

At thirty-three the Whammer still enjoyed exceptional eyesight. He saw the ball spin off Roy's fingertips and it reminded him of a white pigeon he had kept as a boy, that he would send into flight by flipping it into the air. The ball flew at him and he was conscious of its bird-form and white flapping wings, until it suddenly disappeared from view. He heard a noise like the bang of a firecracker at his feet and Sam had the ball in his mitt. Unable to believe his ears he heard Mercy intone a reluctant strike. ~ Bernard Malamud

You are the son of the Lord God! She said. That's why you can kill and bring back to life, that's why you can heal a blind man as Joseph saw you do, that's why you can pray for snow and there will be snow, that's why you can dispute with your uncle Cleopas when he forgets you're a boy, that's why you make sparrows from clay and bring them to life. Keep your power inside you. Guard it until your Father in Heaven shows you the time to use it. If he's made you a child, then he's made you a child to grow in wisdom as well as in everything else. ~ Anne Rice

I just want to matter,' he said unsmiling.

It was like pulling a curtain back, peering behind a mask made of smiles and quips. This was the real James, this young, bright, desperate thing. There was a burning intensity to his eyes, and she saw for the first time a boy who would sell his heart--not for some hobby, but because he thought it was the only way to life the life he wanted.

They had that in common. ~ Emily Lloyd-Jones

He had lived his life as a good father but now Oscar Mendoza saw again his life as a boy. A daughter was a battle between fathers and boys in which the fathers fought valiantly and always lost. He knew that one by one each of his daughter would be lost, either honorably in the ceremony of marriage or, realistically, in a car pointed out towards the ocean well after dark. In his day, Oscar himself had made too many girls forget their better instincts and fine training by biting them with tender persistence at the base of their skull, just where the hairline grew in downy wisps. Girls were like kittens in this way, if you got them right at the nape of their neck, they went easily limp. Then he would whisper his suggestions, all the things they might do together, the wonderful dark explorations for which he was to be their guide. His voice traveled like a drug dripped down the spiraling canals of their ears until they had forgotten everything, until they had forgotten their own names, until they turned and offered themselves up to him, their bodies sweet and soft as marzipan. ~ Ann Patchett

Romans 8:16 tells us that the Spirit bears witness to our hearts that we are children of God. Part of the mission of the Spirit is to tell you about God's love for you, his delight in you, and the fact that you are his child. These things you may know in your head, but the Holy Spirit makes them a fiery reality in your life. Thomas Goodwin, a seventeenth-century Puritan pastor, wrote that one day he saw a father and son walking along the street. Suddenly the father swept the son up into his arms and hugged him and kissed him and told the boy he loved him - and then after a minute he put the boy back down. Was the little boy more a son in the father's arms than he was down on the street? Objectively and legally, there was no difference, but subjectively and experientially, there was all the difference in the world. In his father's arms, the boy was experiencing his sonship. ~ Timothy Keller

I came to view the world as a word puzzle and, with no special aptitude I can name, fixed on the whys and wherefores of language from my earliest days. Song lyrics. Signs. The stories read in first and second grades. My parents almost always read to us at bedtime. Poems by Whittier. Scenes from Oliver Twist. Kidnapped. Treasure Island. The names alone intrigued me. Dr. Livesey, Squire Trelawney. The name Balfour sounded the knell of the romantic. Robinson Crusoe. I loved to hear read the exploits of Natty Bumppo. Authors had an aura of the godlike to me. The Latin prayers fascinated me as an altar boy. I can still recall carved names on buildings I saw from the MTA train when I was a youngster. Who can explain why? Words were magic to me. I once inadvisably glued my finger and thumb together at the Magoun Library in fourth grade trying to amuse a pretty little girl on whom I had a crush, and when the librarian came over angrily to inquire what the problem was and I pointed with a shrug and replied, "Mucilage" - a word that always made me laugh - she very coldly stated, "You are more to be pitied than censured. ~ Alexander Theroux

His education had had the curious effect of making things that he read and wrote more real to him than things he saw. Statistics about agricultural laborers were the substance; any real ditcher, plowman or farmer's boy, was the shadow. Though he had never noticed it himself, he had a great reluctance, in his work, ever to use words as 'man' or 'woman.' He preferred to write about 'vocational groups,' 'elements,' 'classes' and 'populations:' for, in his own way, he believed as firmly as any mystic in the superior reality of the things that are not seen. ~ C.S. Lewis

The Fever Bird

The fever bird sand out last night.
I could not sleep, try as I might.

My brain was split, my spirit raw.
I looked into the garden, saw

The shadow of the amaltas
Shake slightly on the moonlit grass

Unseen, the bird cried out its grief,
Its lunacy, without relief:

Three notes repeated closer, higher,
Soaring, then sinking down like fire

Only to breathe the night and soar,
As crazed, as desperate, as before.

I shivered in the midnight heat
And smelt the sweat that soaked my sheet.

And now tonight I hear again
The call that skewers though my brain,

The call, the brain-sick triple note--
A cone of pain stuck inits throat.

I am so tired I could weep.
Mad bird, for God's sake let me sleep

Why do you cry like one possessed?
When will you rest? When will you rest?

Why wait each night till all but I
Lie sleeping in the house, then cry?

Why do you scream into my ear
What no one else but I can hear? ~ Vikram Seth