Cecily Leebrick > Cecily's Quotes

“Succeeding in life is about having that onetime urgency to go for it.”
― Vernon Davis

“He desperately tried to think of a story to explain his involvement in her sudden appearance, without mentioning the book of magic in his possession.
 ”
― Max Nowaz, The Three Witches and the Master

“Meanwhile, the British had announced that they would leave all British bases east of Suez. That cause great concern to the Prime Minister of Australia, Robert Menzies, who immediately went into discussion about this with cabinet ministers.”
― Michael G. Kramer, A Gracious Enemy

“Snake Street is an area I should avoid. Yet that night I was drawn there as surely as if I had an appointment. 
The Snake House is shabby on the outside to hide the wealth within. Everyone knows of the wealth, but facades, like the park’s wall, must be maintained. A lantern hung from the porch eaves. A sign, written in Utte, read ‘Kinship of the Serpent’. I stared at that sign, at that porch, at the door with its twisted handle, and wondered what the people inside would do if I entered. Would they remember me? Greet me as Kin? Or drive me out and curse me for faking my death?  Worse, would they expect me to redon the life I’ve shed? Staring at that sign, I pissed in the street like the Mearan savage I’ve become.
As I started to leave, I saw a woman sitting in the gutter. Her lamp attracted me. A memsa’s lamp, three tiny flames to signify the Holy Trinity of Faith, Purity, and Knowledge.  The woman wasn’t a memsa. Her young face was bruised and a gash on her throat had bloodied her clothing. Had she not been calmly assessing me, I would have believed the wound to be mortal. I offered her a copper. 
She refused, “I take naught for naught,” and began to remove trinkets from a cloth bag, displaying them for sale.
Her Utte accent had been enough to earn my coin. But to assuage her pride I commented on each of her worthless treasures, fighting the urge to speak Utte. (I spoke Universal with the accent of an upper class Mearan though I wondered if she had seen me wetting the cobblestones like a shameless commoner.) After she had arranged her wares, she looked up at me. “What do you desire, O Noble Born?”
I laughed, certain now that she had seen my act in front of the Snake House and, letting my accent match the coarseness of my dress, I again offered the copper.
 “Nay, Noble One. You must choose.” She lifted a strand of red beads. “These to adorn your lady’s bosom?”
            I shook my head. I wanted her lamp. But to steal the light from this woman ... I couldn’t ask for it. She reached into her bag once more and withdrew a book, leather-bound, the pages gilded on the edges. “Be this worthy of desire, Noble Born?”
 I stood stunned a moment, then touched the crescent stamped into the leather and asked if she’d stolen the book. She denied it. I’ve had the Training; she spoke truth. Yet how could she have come by a book bearing the Royal Seal of the Haesyl Line? I opened it. The pages were blank.
“Take it,” she urged. “Record your deeds for study. Lo, the steps of your life mark the journey of your soul.”
  I told her I couldn’t afford the book, but she smiled as if poverty were a blessing and said, “The price be one copper. Tis a wee price for salvation, Noble One.”
  So I bought this journal. I hide it under my mattress. When I lie awake at night, I feel the journal beneath my back and think of the woman who sold it to me. Damn her. She plagues my soul. I promised to return the next night, but I didn’t. I promised to record my deeds. But I can’t. The price is too high.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“The bomb planted by Colonel Count Stauffenberg exploded two meters to the right of me. It seriously wounded a number of my true and loyal collaborators, one of whom has died. I myself am entirely unhurt, aside from some very minor scratches, bruises and burns. I regard this as a confirmation of the task imposed upon me by Providence…”
― William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

“It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight! I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can’t do it at night, for I know John would suspect something at once. And John is so queer now, that I don’t want to irritate him.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

“He had done nothing on Christmas day, just wandered around outside in the frozen woods. Hard ground, chill winds and bare branches that looked like they'd been dipped in sugar. None of it seemed real, like walking around in a desolate dream, but one he didn't want to wake up from.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“To the north of them the great continental glacier had dipped southward, as though straining to encompass the beautiful icy mountains within its overwhelming frozen embrace. They were in the most frigid land on earth, between the glistening mountain tors and the immense northern ice, and it was the depths of winter. The air itself was sucked dry by the moisture-stealing glaciers greedily usurping every drop to increase their bloated, bedrock-crushing mass, building up reserves to withstand the onslaught of summer heat. The battle between glacial cold and melting warmth for control of the Great Mother Earth was almost at a standstill, but the tide was turning; the glacier was gaining. It would make one more advance, and reach its farthest southward point, before it was beaten back to polar lands. But even there, it would only bide its time.”
― Jean M. Auel, The Plains of Passage

“Every human being on the face of the earth has a steel plate in his head, but if you lie down now and then and get still as you can, it will slide open like elevator doors, letting in all the secret thoughts that have been standing around so patiently, pushing the button for a ride to the top. The real troubles in life happen when those hidden doors stay closed for too long.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

“The point is to find something you love and give it a shot. You don’t have to be great at it; you just have to want to try.”
― Andrew Robin, TAPAS LIFE: A Rich and Rewarding Life After Your Long Career

“Cleaning out clutter and giving stuff away may well leave you feeling emotionally lighter, too.”
― Andrew Robin, TAPAS LIFE: A Rich and Rewarding Life After Your Long Career

“I felt it as a G-force that building pressure that starts in your chest and spreads outward, reminding you that you have mass and the universe has more.”
― Steven Decker, MOTE: SCIFI ADVENTURE SERIES

“People just need to be near other people when something has happened that is too large to process alone.”
― Steven Decker, MOTE: SCIFI ADVENTURE SERIES

“Some people just don’t appreciate it when you save their planet.”
― Steven Decker, MOTE: SCIFI ADVENTURE SERIES

“A story is not only what it says. A story is what it does. It infects. Then it propagates.”
― J.K. Franko, What You Let In

“In public, she always won by being the first person to tell the story.”
― J.K. Franko, What You Let In

“Miranda's reward to herself, after a chief investigator dubbed her "the Eloise of four-year-old detectives," was to stretch her age.  She’d now taken to informing people that she was four- and-a-half-and-three-quarters. She didn't seem to grasp the concept of almost-five.”
― Theasa Tuohy, Mademoiselle le Sleuth

“I can't say." Miranda mimicked a very grown-up sound with her imperious tone. "I wasn't at the morgue. I was in school.”
― Theasa Tuohy, Mademoiselle le Sleuth

“When they reached the Hôtel de Ville, early as it was, its fountain waters already danced in the lights playing on the magnificent old building. On good days, dusk stays long in Paris, but barely into September as it was now, evenings stretched way into the night”
― Theasa Tuohy, Mademoiselle le Sleuth

“The film image of a dead child dressed in blood-red floating, Ophelia-like, in "Don’t Look Now" swam before her eyes. It must be some kind of diabolical threat!”
― Theasa Tuohy, Mademoiselle le Sleuth

“More yelling rolled out amid crashing sounds of a fight, the flat at the back of the stage swayed, the actors exchanged frightened looks, and the curtain abruptly fell.”
― Theasa Tuohy, Mademoiselle le Sleuth

“The lure of deep water
and gathering night,
held in the mystery
I kneel to taste
at the earth altar.”
― Don Hynes, Stranger to the Beautiful: A Journey of Faith, Hope, and Transformation

“What broke me was wildness,
and wildness my salvation.”
― Don Hynes, Stranger to the Beautiful: A Journey of Faith, Hope, and Transformation

“The earth opens
and down I tumble,
into a vault of seeds,
perfect and unbroken.”
― Don Hynes, Stranger to the Beautiful: A Journey of Faith, Hope, and Transformation

“Once you start liking someone, the truth is harder to see.”
― John Edgell, Seed of the Defiled

“How it will come about remains a question. That it will come about is not a point in question.”
― John Edgell, Seed of the Defiled

“Deep inside he felt a sense of relief—of hope. And hope was something he had not felt for a long time.”
― John Edgell, Seed of the Defiled

“It seems to me that we are the ones who choose beauty or ugliness. And yes, too often we choose the latter.”
― John Edgell, Seed of the Defiled

“None of the other kids my age has to do all the grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, and bill paying. It’s just not fair that I have to be an adult when I’m still a kid.”
― Wayne Edwards, A Stone's Throw: A heartwarming story of a city girl and her rancher grandfather turning adversity into love and community

“Dear Lord! I can’t wait to tell Mom and Cho I brought my lunch in a saddlebag and shared my sandwich and cookies with a den of rattlesnakes!”
― Wayne Edwards, A Stone's Throw: A heartwarming story of a city girl and her rancher grandfather turning adversity into love and community