Lesli Cuascut

“But Gemma, you could change the world."
"That should take far more than my power," I say.
"True. But change needn't happen all at once. It can be small gestures."
"Moments. Do you understand?" He's looking at me differently now, though I cannot say how. I only know I need to look away...
We pass by the pools, where the mud larks sift. And for only a few seconds, I let the magic loose again.
"Oi! By all the saints!" a boy cries from the river.
"Gone off the dock?" an old woman calls. The mud larks break into cackles.
"'S not a rock!" he shouts. He races out of the fog, cradling something in his palm. Curiosity gets the better of the others. They crowd about trying to see. In his palm is a smattering of rubies. "We're rich mates! It's a hot bath and a full belly for every one of us!"
Kartik eyes me suspiciously. "That was a strange stroke of good fortune."
"Yes it was."
"I don't suppose that was your doing."
"I'm not sure I don't know what you mean," I say.
And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.”
― Douglas Adams

“In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger choppings or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book.
All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the old try.
And no one can help me. Not even you.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“it is a principle of his that no man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner. He says, no varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations