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“This is either the most disturbing truth I have ever encountered, or the most brilliant lie.”
“Whatever. I looked up the definition for nerd in the dictionary. Know what it said?” “I bet you’ll tell me.” “‘If you’re reading this, you are one.’”
“Dwarfs don’t fall either!” Grandpa huffed, clearly perturbed. “Tell that to this one,” Coulter muttered.
“Relax, have fun!” Warren encouraged. “Right, while I try to follow all of my instructions and avoid getting abducted,” Kendra moaned. “That’s the spirit!” Warren cheered.
flashing a smile that showed a gold tooth. “You two are getting the V.I.P. treatment, in part because you could end up with the R.I.P. treatment. Heaven forbid.”
She pictured herself running from a hoard of ravenous zombies on a hot day, eventually collapsing from heatstroke and getting devoured. Then she imagined Hal giving a rousing eulogy at her funeral, explaining how Kendra’s death was a beautiful sacrifice allowing the noble zombies to live on, delighting future generations by mindlessly trying to eat them.
Kendra noticed beige rabbit feet dangling from Neil’s pierced earlobes. “Are those lucky?” Kendra asked, indicating the earrings. “Jackalope,” Neil said. “If we’re going to find a pathway, we’ll need all the luck we can get.” She refrained from telling Neil the obvious—that the feet had clearly not been very lucky for the jackalope.
“What if he comes to retrieve it tonight?” Gavin smirked. “Coyote-on-a-stick, remember?”
Stupidity was when you took risks for no good reason. Courage was when you took a calculated risk in order to accomplish something important.
“The only thing more alarming than what is in that cave will be your punishment if we somehow survive.” “If we survive, I’ll have made a good choice.”
To fall from greatness, from the dizziest heights to the deepest depths, knowing one might have prevented it, certain one will never reclaim what one has lost, cripples the will. Life holds no more meaning than one chooses to impose, and I quit pretending long ago.”
Had you been full-grown, a seasoned hero of legendary renown, well-trained, armed with charms and talismans, I would have been deeply impressed. But for a mere boy to perform such a feat? I was truly surprised.”
“Time for some culinary therapy. What’s for breakfast?”
His sister had an uncanny ability to guess when he had been up to something, and he did not want her to know that he had broken down and turned into a bookworm while she was off having adventures.
The only thing that would make her jealous would be if I led a parade riding a unicorn while ballerinas sang love songs.” “Don’t try to pin your secret dreams on me,” Kendra said with a smirk.
In order to grasp at straws, we need straws!
“It was an emergency!” Seth blurted. “Read my lips—emergency reading—not some demented idea of fun. If I were starving, I would eat asparagus. If somebody held a gun to my head, I would watch a soap opera. And to save Fablehaven, I would read a book, okay, are you happy?”
Grandpa came into the kitchen, glancing over his shoulder in the direction Seth had departed. “What’s eating him?” “Kendra accused him of voluntarily reading,” Grandma said gravely. Grandpa raised his eyebrows. “Should I telephone the authorities?” Grandma shook her head. “I’ll not have my grandson subjected to the humiliation of his reading habit becoming public. We have to cope with this disgrace discreetly.” “I have an idea, Grandpa,” Kendra announced. “Board up the windows so the paparazzi won’t catch him in the act?” Grandpa guessed.
Why did fabulous ideas tend to occur to him at the wrong time?
“That was awesome,” Seth told Kendra. “You’re psychotic,” Kendra replied.
Seth was beginning to grasp that Verl was the satyr equivalent of a nerd. If he wanted to get away, it would require some finesse. “Hey, Verl, I just caught the redhead staring at you.”
We humans are conflicted beings. Our beliefs don’t always harmonize with our instincts, and our behavior doesn’t always reflect our beliefs. We constantly struggle with right and wrong. We wage war between the person we are and the person we hope to become. We have a lot of practice wrestling with ourselves. As a result, compared to magical creatures, we humans are much more able to suppress our natural inclinations in order to deliberately choose our identities.”
“Each human being has significant potential for light and darkness,” Grandpa continued. “Over a lifetime, we get a lot of practice leaning toward one or the other. Having made different choices, a renowned hero could have been a wretched villain.
In order to be good, you must recognize the difference between right and wrong and strive to choose the right. To be truly evil you must do the contrary. Being good or evil is a choice.
“If a starving bear ate my family, even though he may have had no wicked intentions, even though he was just being a bear, his nature has made him a menace, and I’m going to shoot him.” He sounded exasperated by the conversation.
“When did daylight saving time go into effect?” “Around World War I,” Grandma said. “Probably after the safe was created.” “Let’s go by standard time, then, and hope the safe isn’t as smart as my cell phone, automatically updating itself,”
“We overlooked your insult out of pity,” Broadhoof fumed. “Yet you persist?” “I thought I was dead,” Seth said. “Keep it straight, you nag.”
He lamented to think of his precious emergency kit sitting under his bed. How had he forgotten to bring it when he had gone down the trapped staircase? He had jelly beans in there!
“When jumping is the sole option, you jump, and try to make it work.
“There is no shame in sorrow, Kendra,”
Live a fruitful life. Resist evil. Give more than you take. Help others do likewise. The rest will take care of itself.
Kendra stared at the golem’s jutting stones and prickly thorns. It looked like Hugo had joined a biker gang.
given your level of involvement, I may as well inform all of you. Or perhaps I should say most of you.” He paused, eying Newel and Doren. “My finely tuned social weather vane is detecting a hint,” Newel said.
Why did life always have to roll relentlessly forward? Why was every victory or defeat followed by new worries and new problems?
