The Glass Magician Quotes

I'd like to see twenty-one links completed when I return. Threats on your well-being are poor excuses for missing homework!

He drew a happy face after that - two dots and a curving line - and signed his name. ~ Charlie N. Holmberg

Emery was kneeling outside "gardening" when Ceony and Langston stepped through the illusion that masked the paper magician's house. He had positioned himself outside the curving garden of meticulously crafted paper flowers, and seemed to be replacing all the red, tulip-shaped flower heads with blue, lily-shaped ones. Fennel chewed on the discarded spells as Emery worked, crumpling them in his paper mouth and then spitting the balls into an overturned trash receptacle. ~ Charlie N. Holmberg

They say that sometimes a man cannot recognize himself in a looking-glass. It is even harder to recognize oneself in the clouded mirror of the past. ~ Ilya Ehrenburg

you can only know God through an open mind just as you can only see the sky through a clear window. You will not see the sky if you have covered the glass with blue paint. But ~ Alan W. Watts

Cynic: an idealist whose rose-colored glasses have been removed, snapped in two and stomped into the ground, immediately improving his vision ~ Rick Bayan

I don't love her!" he shouted. His voice echoed through his empty apartment. He stood and toppled his coffee table, its glass top shattering as it hit the floor. He kicked the sofa several times then went on a full rampage through his lavish apartment. Every ornament got a taste of his wrath. Curtains were ripped off the railings. Paintings were hit off the wall. Vases were flung across the room. Nothing was exempt from this riotous frenzy. Loud banging. Damaged furniture. Cracked glass. Everything that was whole and complete needed to be destroyed. Everything needed to feel the same way he did.
Broken… Shattered…
"I don't love her." He collapsed hopelessly into the mess he created, not caring about the jagged pieces of glass that pierced his skin. "I don't love her." He shut his eyes but the tears streamed down his cheeks regardless. "Love isn't this painful. ~ Jacqueline Francis - The Journal

A spare.
That's all I ever was, I realize. A spare part kept in captivity. A backup weapon in the case that all else failed.
Shatter me.
Break glass in case of emergency. ~ Tahereh Mafi

I didn't want to go to college - I was bored by junior high. So I was in church one day, staring at the stained glass windows and thinking about things, when suddenly I decided that if I could start selling cartoons to magazines, they'd let me quit high school. ~ Brad Holland

On his departure, he glanced swiftly back as he passed the furtive gaze of the gloved footmen.He was swept away in the momentum of shimmering glass....I had seen how the world turned, and I was beginning to feel my own power ~ Suzy Davies

The Law is hard, but it is the Law. ~ Cassandra Clare

He got into the tub and ran a little cold water. Then he lowered his thin, hairy body into the just-right warmth and stared at the interstices between the tiles. Sadness--he had experienced that emotion ten thousand times. As exhalation is to inhalation, he thought of it as the return from each thrust of happiness.

Lazily soaping himself, he gave examples.

When he was five and Irwin eight, their father had breezed into town with a snowstorm and come to see them where they lived with their grandparents in the small Connecticut city. Their father had been a vagabond salesman and was considered a bum by people who should know. But he had come into the closed, heated house with all the gimcrack and untouchable junk behind glass and he had smelled of cold air and had had snow in his curly black hair. He had raved about the world he lived in, while the old people, his father and mother, had clucked sadly in the shadows. And then he had wakened the boys in the night and forced them out into the yard to worship the swirling wet flakes, to dance around with their hands joined, shrieking at the snow-laden branches. Later, they had gone in to sleep with hearts slowly returning to bearable beatings. Great flowering things had opened and closed in Norman's head, and the resonance of the wild man's voice had squeezed a sweet, tart juice through his heart. But then he had wakened to a gray day with his father gone and the world walking gingerly over the somber crust of ~ Edward Lewis Wallant

People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up. ~ Ernest Cline

Breaking a glass in the northwest is rather like belching in Arabia, for it appears to be done as a mark of appreciation or elation. ~ Jonathan Aitken

Redd laughed. "The lovely thing about being here," she said, gesturing at the maze, "is that I'm able to immagine your imagination powerless. Ah, if only that were the case on the outside. But enough chitchat. If you're going to die
which you are
I'm sure you'd like to get it over with."
The Looking Glass Wars ~ Frank Beddor

I sometimes subscribe to the belief that all historical events occur simultaneously, like a dream in the mind of God. Perhaps it is only man who views time sequentially and tries to impose a solar calendar upon it. What if other people, both dead and unborn, are living out their lives in the same space we occupy, without our knowledge or consent?
The Glass Rainbow, p. 138 ~ James Lee Burke

Little men," he once said, "spend their days in pursuit of such things. I know from experience that at the moment of their deaths they see their lives shattered before them like glass. I've seen them die. They fall away as if they have been pushed, and the expressions on their faces are those of the most unbelieving surprise. Not so, the man who knows the virtues and lives by them. The world goes this way and that. Ideas are in fashion or not, and those who should prevail are often defeated. But it doesn't matter. The virtues remain uncorrupted and uncorruptible. They are rewards in themselves, the bulwarks with which we can protect our vision of beauty, and the strengths by which we may stand, unperturbed, in the storm that comes when seeking God. ~ Mark Helprin

You know, this iPhone, as a matter of fact, the engine in here is made in America. And not only are the engines in here made in America, but engines are made in America and are exported. The glass on this phone is made in Kentucky. And so we've been working for years on doing more and more in the United States. ~ Tim Cook

Age-old question: Is the glass half empty or half full? Answer: Who cares? Does it really matter whether the glass is half full or half empty? The issue is whether it quenches your thirst. ~ Larry Winget

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

We'll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds. ~ Wislawa Symborsky

With nothing more than thin spandex covering my chest, even the blind would notice that my nipples were so hard, they could cut glass ~ Jeaniene Frost

Every apartment devoted to the circulation of the glass, may be regarded as a temple set apart for the performance of human sacrifices. And they ought to be fitted up like the ancient temples in Egypt, in a manner to show the real atrocity of the superstition that is carried on within their walls. ~ Thomas Lovell Beddoes

You go from the north of Laos and then you go across the Mekong, and when the Pathet Lao soldiers fire, you do not think about your family, just yourself only. When you are on the other side, you will not be like what you were before ou get through the Mekong. On the other side you cannot say to your wife, I love you more than my life. She saw! You cannot say that anymore! And when you try to restick this thing together is is like putting glue on a broken glass. ~ Anne Fadiman

Warm, Considering likes to think it is very protective of me." QiRia drank from his glass. "It is very protective of me. But certain sorts of protection, even care, can shade into a sort of desire for ownership. Certainly into a feeling that what is being protected is an earned exclusivity of access for the protector, not the privacy of the protected." He looked across at her. His eyes were the colour of the sea, she remembered. Dark now. "Do you understand? ~ Iain M. Banks

We were fascinated by the little glass spheres, by those dark waves of color, some narrow and drawn out into several swirls, and others that widened out in the center of the marble into a single bundle and thinned out smoothly at the ends. There were reddish streaks in Añuco's new marbles, but in the cloudy, chipped ones the bands of color also appeared, strangely and inexplicably. ~ José María Arguedas

Rainy Nights

I like the town on rainy nights
When everything is wet -
When all the town has magic lights
And streets of shining jet!

When all the rain about the town
Is like a looking-glass,
And all the lights are upside down
Below me as I pass.

In all the pools are velvet skies,
And down the dazzling street
A fairy city gleams and lies
In beauty at my feet. ~ Irene Thompson

The Awakening

You live this sheltered life
glass walls around you
in a fragile world
of other people's imagination
and one day
something comes and shake you -
a book, an idea
a person, a song,
or an incident -
and it awakens you to life
and what it means to live really
and so
you know
how
to save
the only life
you are capable of saving -
your own ~ Neena H Brar

There was real plasure to be had eating ice cream out of container and pickles out of a glass jar, standing up at the counter. I wondered whether the cravings associated with pregnancy were really only a matter of women feeling empowered to admit their odd longings to their husbands, to ask another person to bring them the eccentric combinations they'd long enjoyed in private. ~ Jenni Ferrari-Adler

I thought that as I had failed in the contemplation of true existence, I ought to be careful that I did not lose the eye of my soul; as people may injure their bodily eye by observing and gazing on the sun during an eclipse, unless they take the precaution of looking at the image reflected in the water, or in some similar medium ... I was afraid that my soul might be blinded altogether if I looked at things with my eyes or tried by the help of my senses to apprehend them. And I thought that I had better had recourse to ideas, and seek in them truth in existence. I dare to say that the simile is not perfect
for I am far from admitting that he who contemplates existence through the medium of ideas, sees them only "through a glass darkly," any more than he who sees them in their working and effects. ~ Socrates

March 6, 1961

I remembered a party in a house outside of Ann Arbor. There was a jazz band -- piano, bass, drums, and sax -- playing in one of the large rooms. A heavy odor of marijuana hung in the air. The host appeared now and then looking pleased, as if he liked seeing strangers in every room, the party out of his control. It wasn't wild, but with a constant flow of people, who knows what they're doing. It became late and I was a little drunk, wandering from one part of the house to another. I entered a long hall and was surprised by the silence, as if I had entered another house. A girl at the other end of the hall was walking toward me. I saw large blue eyes and very black hair. She was about average height, doll-like features delicate as cut glass, extremely pretty, maybe the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. When she came up to me I took her in my arms and kissed her. She let it happen. We were like creatures in a dream. Holding her hand, I drew her with me and we passed through rooms where people stood about, and then left the house. As we drove away, she said her name was Margo. She was a freshman at the university, from a town in northern Michigan. I took her home. It was obvious she'd never gone home with a man. She didn't seem fearful, only uncertain, the question in her eyes: "What happens next?" What happened next was nothing much. We fell asleep in our clothes. I wasn't the one to make her no different from everyone. ~ Leonard Michaels

And the red sun of desire and decision (the two things that create a live world) rose higher and higher, while upon a succession of balconies a succession of libertines, sparkling glass in hand, toasted the bliss of past and future nights. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

A man's mind must be continually expanding and shrinking between the whole human horizon and the horizon of an object-glass. ~ George Eliot

If we talk about the glass being half empty or half full, I want to know what does the glass look like from underneath the table? ~ Brad Thor

From the women in this book, I realized that I had been broken open by becoming a mother, and it was time to build myself back up, and discover the new version of who I was becoming. I think I may be recognizing myself again, if only in short glimpses from a reflection in the glass window. By researching this book, I was inspired by the theory of metta, which is described in some Buddhist circles as mother love. Similar notions of mother love may be found in Christianity, as seen through the stories and sculptures of Mary embracing Jesus. Metta is unlike any other type of love. Because it is metta, it brings out the very best and the very worst in us. Metta is forever - there is no "happily ever after," and there is no finish line. ~ Christine Woodcock

Imagine if you will - and you will - a mushroom cloud bigger than anything that you currently see out that window. Imagine jet planes and bombers the size of apartment complexes dropping technological marvels of deconstruction upon this city, this world, all around the epicenter of a blooming death cloud. Imagine that mushroom coming to a head, knowing that it is filled with unimaginable heat and concrete, dust, papers - human faces, eyes, and brains. Gray matter filling the radioactive cloud with electricity as all that is inside us leaves us and becomes one with the mushroom. Glass will melt and connect with steel, and we will melt and connect with each other as everything that made us whole is criminally dissected and rearranged. Everything below us, from the sewer tunnels to the subway line, will be consumed into the cloud and jettisoned into the stratosphere, where it will become nothing but silken ash, hardened to a black substance, and turned back to a black dust, transfixed into a black nothing. A stinking, glowing crater all that remains of where you had your first kiss and told someone that you loved them. A mess of a world where everything you've ever done quickly becomes all that you'll ever do. ~ Michael A. Ferro

I look at these people and can't quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention? To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. "Can I interest you in the chicken?" she asks. "Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it? To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked. ~ David Sedaris

...I continued to sit there hour after hour watching the unrelenting rain slosh against the glass, thinking of our life together, Lotte's and mine, how everything in it was designed to give a sense of permanence, the chair against the wall that was there when we went to sleep and there again when we awoke, the little habits that quoted from the day before and predicted the day to come, though in truth it was all just an illusion, just as solid matter is an illusion, just as our bodies are an illusion, pretending to be one thing when really they are millions upon millions of atoms coming and going, some arriving while others are leaving us forever, as if each of us were only a great train station, only not even that since at least in a train station the stones and the tracks and the glass roof stay still while everything else rushes through it, no, it was worse than that, more like a giant empty field where every day a circus erected and dismantled itself, the whole thing from top to bottom, but never the same circus, so what hope did we really have of ever making sense of ourselves, let alone one another? ~ Nicole Krauss

When the query was finished getting results, we ended ~ Michael K. Glass

Glass nodded, worried that if she spoke, the tears would come again. The pain was so new, so raw, she hardly knew what shape it would take, what sort of scars it would leave. If her chest was going to burn like this for the rest of her life. ~ Kass Morgan

Then Viol Chrime-Forgot and Sir Duno Chrime held each other tightly and wept sweet tears and Sir Duno Chrime swore that he did not care if his squire was a little strange and that he would never abandon him again so long as he lived and Viol Chrime-Forgot said he did not care if Duno Chrime was old, or mad or thought that he was made of glass, for he would never be apart from him again no matter what adventure fell, and though neither could hear each other over the roaring of the endless falls, or see each others tears for the misty dripping of the cave each knew what the other said and meant, and so they were friends again and remained so for as long as they both lived. ~ Patrick Stuart

The hardest thing about traveling is that mostly you get to a point - and it always happens on every tour - where you can choose between eating and sleeping, but you can't do both. ~ Philip Glass

There's your problem," Leo announced.
Jason scratched his head. "Uh.... what are we looking at?"
Leo thought it was pretty obvious, but Piper looked confused too.
"Okay," Leo sighed, " you want the full explanation or the short explanation?"
"Short," Piper and Jason said in unison.
Leo gestured to the empty core. "The syncopator goes here. It's a multi-access gyro-valve to regulate flow. The doxen glass tubes on the outside? Those are filled with powerful,dangerous stuff. That glowing red one is Lemnos fire from my dad's forges. This murky stuff here? That's water from the River Styx. The stuff in the tubes is going to power the ship, right? Like radioactive rods in a nuclear reactor. But the mix ratio has to be controlled, and the timer is already operational.... That means without the syncopator, this stuff is all going to vent into the chamber at the same time, in sixty-five minutes. At that point, we'll get a very nasty reaction."
Jason and Piper stared at him. Leo wondered if he'd been speaking English. Sometimes when he was agitated he slipped into Spanish, like his mom used to do in her workshop. But he was pretty sure he'd used English.
"Um..." Piper cleared her throat." Could you make the short explanation shorter?"
Leo palm-smacked his forehead. "Fine. One hour. Fluids mix. Bunker goes ka-boom. One square mile of forest tuns into a smoking crater."
"Oh," Piper said in a small voice. "Can't you just..... turn it off?"< ~ Rick Riordan

My first jailbreak began when a coarse-toothed mechanic's file crashed through the window of the Deeper Harbour Police
Station at two in the morning. The file bounced three or four times before clattering to a halt among a scatter of shattered glass. The file spun a little and came to rest, like a compass needle pointing somewhere far off the edge of the map. Looking back from right here and right now I believe I would like to start this story right then - three days after I had just turned fourteen - spending my birthday in jail. - SINKING DEEPER ~ Steve Vernon