About Limbs Quotes

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.

When you don't fit in, you become superhuman. You can feel everyone else's eyes on you, stuck like Velcro. You can hear a whisper about you from a mile away. You can disappear, even when it looks like you're still standing right there. You can scream, and nobody hears a sound. You become the mutant who fell into the vat of acid, the Joker who can't remove his mask, the bionic man who's missing all his limbs and none of his heart. You are the thing that used to be normal, but that was so long ago, you can't even remember what it was like.

Whoever said that love hurts was wrong. Love is excruciating, especially when you can feel it slipping through your fingers and there is nothing you can do about it. Like someone was playing tug-of-war with my limbs, ripping to shreds whatever was left behind. What it would feel like when love was lost...I wouldn't survive that

Bones didn’t share any of my qualms about suddenly holding an arm that wasn’t attached to a body anymore. He just grabbed the ghoul by his other arm and began thumping him over the head with the loose limb. I’d heard Bones threaten to beat someone with their own limb before, but I’d always assumed that was a figure of speech. Apparently not.

God made a very obvious choice when he made me voluptuous; why would I go against what he decided for me? My limbs work, so I'm not going to complain about the way my body is shaped.

I want to talk to her. I want to have lunch with her. I want her to give me a book she just read and loved. She is my phantom limb, and I just can’t believe I’m here without her.”- on losing her best friend

A number of years ago, when I was a freshly-appointed instructor, I met, for the first time, a certain eminent historian of science. At the time I could only regard him with tolerant condescension. I was sorry of the man who, it seemed to me, was forced to hover about the edges of science. He was compelled to shiver endlessly in the outskirts, getting only feeble warmth from the distant sun of science- in-progress; while I, just beginning my research, was bathed in the heady liquid heat up at the very center of the glow. In a lifetime of being wrong at many a point, I was never more wrong. It was I, not he, who was wandering in the periphery. It was he, not I, who lived in the blaze. I had fallen victim to the fallacy of the 'growing edge;' the belief that only the very frontier of scientific advance counted; that everything that had been left behind by that advance was faded and dead. But is that true? Because a tree in spring buds and comes greenly into leaf, are those leaves therefore the tree? If the newborn twigs and their leaves were all that existed, they would form a vague halo of green suspended in mid-air, but surely that is not the tree. The leaves, by themselves, are no more than trivial fluttering decoration. It is the trunk and limbs that give the tree its grandeur and the leaves themselves their meaning. There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before. 'If I have seen further than other men,' said Isaac Newton, 'it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.

When the black thing was at its worst, when the illicit cocktails and the ten-mile runs stopped working, I would feel numb as if dead to the world. I moved unconsciously, with heavy limbs, like a zombie from a horror film. I felt a pain so fierce and persistent deep inside me, I was tempted to take the chopping knife in the kitchen and cut the black thing out I would lie on my bed staring at the ceiling thinking about that knife and using all my limited powers of self-control to stop myself from going downstairs to get it.

The thing I admire most about you is no matter how hard, or how much the world has tried to beat you, break you, destroy you, and throw you to the wolves you are still here, turning all your pain all your suffering into armor, into determination, into weapons and earning the respect of that same pack of wolves that were meant to rip you limb from limb.

I wish I didn't have to think about you. You wanted to impress me; well, I'm not impressed, I'm disgusted...You wanted to make damn good and sure I'd never be able to turn over in bed again without feeling that body beside me, not there but tangible, like a leg that's been cut off. Gone but the place still hurts.

Once Addie let someone in, she was impossible to forget. There was something about her that crawled inside a person and built a nice comfy home there, her goodness expanding until it filled every limb.

I didn't sleep at all last night, my heart and mind plagued and conflicted and I cant feel my limbs, I cant taste the food I'm not eating and I cant see straight, I cant focus on the things I'm supposed to be hearing. All I can think about are all the casualties and Warner's lips on my neck, his hands on my body, the pain and passion in his eyes and the many possible ways I could die today. I can only think about Warner touching me, kissing me, torturing me with his heart and Adam sitting beside me, not knowing what I've done.

I grew up in a household where we didn't really talk about our feelings, and where the only reason you went to a doctor was because you'd accidentally cut off a limb with a chain saw.

What’s your name, lad?” “Newton. Newton Pulsifer.” “LUCIFER? What’s that you say? Are ye of the Spawn of Darkness, a tempting beguiling creature from the pit, wanton limbs steaming from the fleshpots of Hades, in tortured and lubricious thrall to your Stygian and hellish masters?” “That’s Pulsifer,” explained Newton. “With a P. I don’t know about the other stuff, but we come from Surrey.” The voice on the phone sounded vaguely disappointed.

Love is excruciating, especially when you can feel it slipping through your fingers and there is nothing you can do about it. Like someone was playing tug-of-war with my limbs, ripping to shreds whatever was left behind. What it would feel like when love was lost...I wouldn't survive that. I closed my eyes willing the tears to stay hidden behind my eyelids and focusing on breathing in and out instead of the pain that was ramming in my heart.

What’s three?” I asked, hoping to move away from this uncomfortable topic. The smile pulled at his lips again. “Three.” One of his hands cupped my face and the other slid around my back. He pulled my body against his and my heart began to pound. I took advantage of my free hand and pushed at his chest. “I don’t think so, Lily,” he said. “If you want to get rid of me, you’ll need to do better than that.” I drew a sharp breath and tried to wiggle away, but he held me firmly in place, watching me struggle. He grinned as he lifted me up onto the sink. “What are you doing?” I started to panic. “Someone could come in!” “If they see us, they’ll just turn around and get out of here,” he murmured, lips touching my ear. “No one crosses me.” His hips pressed against my knees, opening them, pushing my skirt up my legs. I gripped his shirt, clinging to him so I wouldn’t fall into the sink. His hand pushed into my lower back. I gasped as his body fitted against mine. Heat flooded my chest, my pelvis. I thought I would drown in it. “We can’t—” His lips stopped my words. The kiss just made me dizzier. I dug my fingers into his shoulders. “You said you didn’t want to be left alone.” His tongue flicked over my cheekbone. “This is me pestering you.” “Aren’t you breaking the rules?” I could barely get the words out. “What about the union?” “I’d rather have you on my own terms.” His hand slipped between my thighs. All strength fled my limbs. “I can’t breathe.” “That means you like it.” He kissed me again.

My body felt completely disposable, like a placeholder for something more valuable. I fantasized about taking it apart and lining my limbs up side by side to compare them.

You mean that because I have no name I cannot die and that you cannot be held answerable for death even if you kill me?" "That is about the size of it," said the Sergeant. I felt so sad and so entirely disappointed that tears came into my eyes and a lump of incommunicable poignancy swelled tragically in my throat. I began to feel intensely every fragment of my equal humanity. The life that was bubbling at the end of my fingers was real and nearly painful in intensity and so was the beauty of my warm face and the loose humanity of my limbs and the racy health of my red rich blood. To leave it all without good reason and to smash the little empire into small fragments was a thing too pitiful even to refuse to think about.

The mockingbird took a single step into the air and dropped. His wings were still folded against his sides as though he were singing from a limb and not falling, accelerating thirty-two feet per second per second, through empty air. Just a breath before he would have been dashed to the ground, he unfurled his wings with exact, deliberate care, revealing the broad bars of white, spread his elegant, white-banded tail, and so floated onto the grass. I had just rounded a corner when his incouciant step caught my eye; there was no one else in sight. The fact of his free fall was like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

I'll tell you what you did with Atheists for about 1500 years. You outlawed them from the universities or any teaching careers, besmirched their reputations, banned or burned their books or their writings of any kind, drove them into exile, humiliated them, seized their properties, arrested them for blasphemy. You dehumanised them with beatings and exquisite torture, gouged out their eyes, slit their tongues, stretched, crushed, or broke their limbs, tore off their breasts if they were women, crushed their scrotums if they were men, imprisoned them, stabbed them, disembowelled them, hanged them, burnt them alive. And you have nerve enough to complain to me that I laugh at you.

People sometimes say that sorrow is mental but longing is physical. One is a wound, the other an amputated limb, a withered petal compared to a snapped stem. Anything that grows closely enough to what it loves will eventually share the same roots. We can talk about loss, we can treat it and give it time, but biology still forces us to live according to certain rules: plants that are split down the middle don’t heal, they die.

Beginning with a critique of my own limbs, which she said, justly enough, were nothing to write home about, this girl went on to dissect my manners, morals, intellect, general physique, and method of eating asparagus with such acerbity that by the time she had finished the best you could say of Bertram was that, so far as was known, he had never actually committed murder or set fire to an orphan asylum.

Be brave. Even if you're not, pretend to be. No one can tell the difference. Don't allow the phone to interrupt important moments. It's there for your convenience, not the callers. Don't be afraid to go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is. Don't burn bridges. You'll be surprised how many times you have to cross the same river. Don't forget, a person's greatest emotional need is to feel appreciated. Don't major in minor things. Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Helen Keller, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein. Don't spread yourself too thin. Learn to say no politely and quickly. Don't use time or words carelessly. Neither can be retrieved. Don't waste time grieving over past mistakes Learn from them and move on. Every person needs to have their moment in the sun, when they raise their arms in victory, knowing that on this day, at his hour, they were at their very best. Get your priorities straight. No one ever said on his death bed, 'Gee, if I'd only spent more time at the office'. Give people a second chance, but not a third. Judge your success by the degree that you're enjoying peace, health and love. Learn to listen. Opportunity sometimes knocks very softly. Leave everything a little better than you found it. Live your life as an exclamation, not an explanation. Loosen up. Relax. Except for rare life and death matters, nothing is as important as it first seems. Never cut what can be untied. Never overestimate your power to change others. Never underestimate your power to change yourself. Remember that overnight success usually takes about fifteen years. Remember that winners do what losers don't want to do. Seek opportunity, not security. A boat in harbor is safe, but in time its bottom will rot out. Spend less time worrying who's right, more time deciding what's right. Stop blaming others. Take responsibility for every area of your life. Success is getting what you want. Happiness is liking what you get. The importance of winning is not what we get from it, but what we become because of it. When facing a difficult task, act as though it's impossible to fail.

To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about. If someone vomits watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation. But one must remember that there is such a thing as good bad taste and bad bad taste. it's easy to disgust someone; I could make a ninety-minute film of people getting their limbs hacked off, but this would only be bad bad taste and not very stylish or original. To understand bad taste one must have very good taste. Good bad taste can be creatively nauseating but must, at the same time, appeal to the especially twisted sense of humor, which is anything but universal.

Nobody would commit suicide if the pain of being inside herself, the agony of the sleepless, tortured hours spent watching the world get smaller and uglier, were bearable or could be relieved by other people telling her how they wanted her to feel. A depressed person is selfish because her self, the very core of who she is, will not leave her alone, and she can no more stop thinking about this self and how to escape it than a prisoner held captive by a sadistic serial killer can forget about the person who comes in to torture her everyday. Her body is brutalized by her mind. It hurts to breathe, eat, walk, think. The gross maneuverings of her limbs are so overwhelming, so wearying, that the fine muscle movements or quickness of wit necessary to write, to actually say something, are completely out of the question.

Here’s the truth about healing. It’s a fucking myth—an idea they try to sell you on to keep you from killing yourself. You love someone and they leave, but they never entirely go away. You feel them there, acutely, like an amputated limb.

What puzzled Abel about life was how much one forgot but then lived with anyway—like phantom limbs, he supposed.

The things that brought me the most comfort now were too small to list. Raspberries in cream. Sparrows with cocked heads. Shadows of bare limbs making for sidewalk filigrees. Roses past their prime with their petals loose about them. The shouts of children at play in the neighborhood, Ginger Rogers on the black-and-white screen.

Martin said, "It feels as though part of my self has detached and gone to Amsterdam, where it—she—is waiting for me. Do you know about phantom-limb syndrome?" Julia nodded. "There's pain where she ought to be. It's feeding the other pain, the thing that makes me wash and count and all that. So her absence is stopping me from going to find her. Do you see?

it has been one of the greatest and most difficult years of my life. i learned everything is temporary. moments. feelings. people. flowers. i learned love is about giving. everything. and letting it hurt. i learned vulnerability is always the right choice because it is easy to be cold in a world that makes it so very difficult to remain soft. i learned all things come in twos. life and death. pain and joy. salt and sugar. me and you. it is the balance of the universe. it has been the year of hurting so bad but living so good. making friends out of strangers. making strangers out of friends. learning mint chocolate chip ice cream will fix just about everything. and for the pains it can’t there will always be my mother’s arms. we must learn to focus on warm energy. always. soak our limbs in it and become better lovers to the world. for if we can’t learn to be kind to each other how will we ever learn to be kind to the most desperate parts of ourselves.

All of us , I believe , carry about in our heads places and landscapes we shall never forget because we have experienced such intensity of life there :places where, like the child that 'feels its life in every limb' in Wordsworth's poem'We are seven' ,our eyes have opened wider, and all our senses have somehow heightened.By way of returning the compliment , we accord these places that have given us such joy a special place in our memories and imaginations. They live on in us, wherever we may be, however far from them.

Through Rohan over fen and field where the long grass grows The West Wind goes walking, and about the walls it goes. What news from the West, oh wandering wind, do you bring to me tonight? Have you seen Boromir the Tall by moon or by starlight? ‘I saw him ride over seven streams, over waters wide and grey; I saw him walk in empty lands, until he passed away Into the shadows of the North. I saw him then no more. The North Wind may have heard the horn of the son of Denethor.’ Oh, Boromir! From the high walls westward I looked afar. But you came not from the empty lands where no men are. From the mouth of the sea the South Wind flies, From the sand hills and the stones; The wailing of the gulls it bears, and at the gate it moans What news from the South, oh sighing wind, do you bring to me at eve? Where now is Boromir the Fair? He tarries and I grieve. ‘Ask me not where he doth dwell--so many bones there lie On the white shores and on the black shores under the stormy sky; So many have passed down Anduin to find the flowing sea. Ask of the North Wind news of them the North Wind sends to me!’ Oh Boromir! Beyond the gate the Seaward road runs South, But you came not with the wailing gulls from the grey seas mouth. From the Gate of Kings the North Wind rides, And past the roaring falls And loud and cold about the Tower its loud horn calls. What news from the North, oh mighty wind, do you bring to me today? What news of Boromir the Bold? For he is long away. ‘Beneath Amon Hen I heard his cry. There many foes he fought His cloven shield, his broken sword, they to the water brought. His head so proud, his face so fair, his limbs they laid to rest; And Rauros, Golden Rauros Falls, bore him upon its breast.’ Oh Boromir! The Tower of Guard shall ever northward gaze To Rauros, Golden Rauros Falls until the end of days.

Let me tell you the truth about the world to which you so desperately want to return. It is a place of pain and suffering and grief. When you left it, cities were being attacked. Women and children were being blasted to pieces or burned alive by bombs dropped from planes flown by men with wives and children of their own. People were being dragged from their homes and shot in the street. Your world is tearing itself apart, and the most amusing thing of all is that it was little better before the war started. War merely gives people an excuse to indulge themselves further, to murder with impunity. There were wars before it, and there will be wars after it, and in between people will fight one another and hurt one another and maim one another and betray one another, because that is what they have always done. And even if you avoid warfare and violent death, little boy, what else do you think life has in store for you? You have already seen what it is capable of doing. It took your mother from you, drained her of health and beauty, and then cast her aside like the withered, rotten husk of a fruit. It will take others from you too, mark me. Those whom you care about--lovers, children--will fall by the wayside, and your love will not be enough to save them. Your health will fail you. You will become old and sick. Your limbs will ache, your eyesight will fade, and your skin will grow lined and aged. There will be pains deep within that no doctor will be able to cure. Diseases will find a warm, moist place inside you and there they will breed, spreading through your system, corrupting it cell by cell until you pray for the doctors to let you die, to put you out of your misery, but they will not. Instead you will linger on, with no one to hold your hand or soothe your brow, as Death comes and beckons you into his darkness. The life you left behind you is no life at all. Here, you can be king, and I will allow you to age with dignity and without pain, and when the time comes for you to die, I will send you gently to sleep and you will awaken in the paradise of your choosing, for each man dreams his own heaven.

She had thought often of Ada's words about inventing new endings to stories and choosing joy over sorrow. In recent years she had decided her sister had been in part wrong. Suffering and death and loss were inescapable. And yet, what Ada had written about joy was entirely true. When she stands before you with her long, naked limbs and her mysterious smile, you must embrace her while you can.

The thing is, you can cut off a couple passions and only focus on one, but after a while, you’ll start to feel phantom limb pain.

He sighed profoundly, and flung himself - there was a passion in his movements which deserves the word - on the earth at the foot of the oak tree. He loved, beneath all this summer transiency, to feel the earth's spine beneath him; for such he took the hard root of the oak tree to be; or, for image followed image, it was the back of a great horse that he was riding; or the deck of a tumbling ship - it was anything indeed, so long as it was hard, for he felt the need of something which he could attach his floating heart to; the heart that tugged at his side; the heart that seemed filled with spiced and amorous gales every evening about this time when he walked out. To the oak tree he tied it and as he lay there, gradually the flutter in and about him stilled itself; the little leaves hung, the deer stopped; the pale summer clouds stayed; his limbs grew heavy on the ground; and he lay so still that by degrees the deer stopped nearer and the rooks wheeled round him and the swallows dipped and circled and the dragonflies shot past, as if all the fertility and amorous activity of a summer's evening were woven web-like about his body.

Suppose for a moment that God began taking from us the many things for which we have failed to give thanks. Which of our limbs and faculties would be left? Would I still have my hands and my mind? And what about loved ones? If God were to take from me all those persons and things for which I have not given thanks, who or what would be left of me?

Hey you, dragging the halo- how about a holiday in the islands of grief? Tongue is the word I wish to have with you. Your eyes are so blue they leak. Your legs are longer than a prisoner's last night on death row. I'm filthier than the coal miner's bathtub and nastier than the breath of Charles Bukowski. You're a dirty little windshield. I'm standing behind you on the subway, hard as calculus. My breath be sticking to your neck like graffiti. I'm sitting opposite you in the bar, waiting for you to uncross your boundaries. I want to rip off your logic and make passionate sense to you. I want to ride in the swing of your hips. My fingers will dig in you like quotation marks, blazing your limbs into parts of speech. But with me for a lover, you won't need catastrophes. What attracted me in the first place will ultimately make me resent you. I'll start telling you lies, and my lies will sparkle, become the bad stars you chart your life by. I'll stare at other women so blatantly you'll hear my eyes peeling, because sex with you is like Great Britain: cold, groggy, and a little uptight. Your bed is a big, soft calculator where my problems multiply. Your brain is a garage I park my bullshit in, for free. You're not really my new girlfriend, just another flop sequel of the first one, who was based on the true story of my mother. You're so ugly I forgot how to spell. I'll cheat on you like a ninth grade math test, break your heart just for the sound it makes. You're the 'this' we need to put an end to. The more you apologize, the less I forgive you. So how about it?

The funny thing about my procrastination was that I was almost done with the screenplay. I was like a person who had fought dragons and lost limbs and crawled through swamps and now, finally, the castle was visible. I could see tiny children waving flags on the balcony; all I had to do was walk across a field to get to them. But all of a sudden I was very, very sleepy. And the children couldn't believe their eyes as I folded down to my knees and fell to the ground face-first, with my eyes open. Motionless, I watched ants hurry in and out of a hole and I knew that standing up again would be a thousand times harder than the dragon or the swamp and so I did not even try. I just clicked on one thing after another after another.

I might’ve said something like I’d tear her apart limb by limb and feed her to barrats.” He stared at me. I sighed. “It wasn’t one of my finer moments, I admit.” “Damn.” Casteel broke the silence, his gaze the shade of heated honey. “I wish we weren’t about to have this meeting because I really want to fuck you on this table right now.” My eyes widened. “Gods,” Kieran muttered, sitting back as he dragged a hand over his face.

I'm going to go out on a limb here. I've thought a lot about this one, as a feminist, and as an author. How should traditional roles be portrayed? In fantasy literature there is a school of thought that holds that women must be treated precisely like men. Only the traditional male sphere of power and means of wielding power count. If a woman is shown in a traditionally female role, then she must be being shown as inferior. After a lot of thought, and some real-life stabs at those traditional roles, I've come to firmly disagree with this idea. For an author to show that only traditional male power and place matter is to discount and belittle the hard and complex lives of our peers and our ancestresses.

[Tessa] knew about phantom limbs [....] Her cheek, where the Englishman's fingers had been, did not exactly ache ... but very strangely, most curiously ... it felt.

I didn’t have room inside me for any more pain. As it turned out, though, I was wrong about that.

The next night I went back to the sea dressed in 1950s silk travel scarves – Paris with the Eiffel tower and ladies in hats and pink poodles, Venice with bronze horses and gondoliers, New York in celestial blue and silver. I brought candles and lit the candles, all the candles, in a circle around the lifeguard stand and put a tape in my boom box. I came down the ramp with the sea lapping at my feet and the air like a scarf of warm silk and the stars like my tiara. And my angel was sitting there solemnly in the sand, sitting cross-legged like a buddha, with sand freckling his brown limbs and he watched me the way no boy had ever watched me before, with so much tenderness and also a tremendous sorrow, which was what my dances were about just as much, the sorrow of not being loved the way my womb, rocking emptily inside of me, insisted I be loved, the sorrow of never finding the thing I had been searching for.

Poverty is not caused by men and women getting married; it's not caused by machinery; it's not caused by "over-production"; it's not caused by drink or laziness; and it's not caused by "over-population". It's caused by Private Monopoly. That is the present system. They have monopolized everything that it is possible to monopolize; they have got the whole earth, the minerals in the earth and the streams that water the earth. The only reason they have not monopolized the daylight and the air is that it is not possible to do it. If it were possible to construct huge gasometers and to draw together and compress within them the whole of the atmosphere, it would have been done long ago, and we should have been compelled to work for them in order to get money to buy air to breathe. And if that seemingly impossible thing were accomplished tomorrow, you would see thousands of people dying for want of air - or of the money to buy it - even as now thousands are dying for want of the other necessities of life. You would see people going about gasping for breath, and telling each other that the likes of them could not expect to have air to breathe unless the had the money to pay for it. Most of you here, for instance, would think and say so. Even as you think at present that it's right for so few people to own the Earth, the Minerals and the Water, which are all just as necessary as is the air. In exactly the same spirit as you now say: "It's Their Land," "It's Their Water," "It's Their Coal," "It's Their Iron," so you would say "It's Their Air," "These are their gasometers, and what right have the likes of us to expect them to allow us to breathe for nothing?" And even while he is doing this the air monopolist will be preaching sermons on the Brotherhood of Man; he will be dispensing advice on "Christian Duty" in the Sunday magazines; he will give utterance to numerous more or less moral maxims for the guidance of the young. And meantime, all around, people will be dying for want of some of the air that he will have bottled up in his gasometers. And when you are all dragging out a miserable existence, gasping for breath or dying for want of air, if one of your number suggests smashing a hole in the side of one of th gasometers, you will all fall upon him in the name of law and order, and after doing your best to tear him limb from limb, you'll drag him, covered with blood, in triumph to the nearest Police Station and deliver him up to "justice" in the hope of being given a few half-pounds of air for your trouble.

We need to talk about the hierarchy of grief. You hear it all the time—no grief is worse than any other. I don’t think that’s one bit true. There is a hierarchy of grief. Divorce is not the same as the death of a partner. Death of a grandparent is not the same as the death of a child. Losing your job is not the same as losing a limb. Here’s the thing: every loss is valid. And every loss is not the same. You can’t flatten the landscape of grief and say that everything is equal. It isn’t. It’s easier to see when we take it out of the intensely personal: stubbing your toe hurts. It totally hurts. For a moment, the pain can be all-consuming. You might even hobble for a while. Having your foot ripped off by a passing freight train hurts, too. Differently. The pain lasts longer. The injury needs recovery time, which may be uncertain or complicated. It affects and impacts your life moving forward. You can’t go back to the life you had before you became a one-footed person. No one would say these two injuries are exactly the same.

Ages of happiness. - An age of happiness is quite impossible, because men want only to desire it but not to have it, and every individual who experiences good times learns to downright pray for misery and disquietude. The destiny of man is designed for happy moments - every life has them - but not for happy ages. Nonetheless they will remain fixed in the imagination of man as 'the other side of the hill' because they have been inherited from ages past: for the concepts of the age of happiness was no doubt acquired in primeval times from that condition of which, after violent exertion in hunting and warfare, man gives himself up to repose, stretches his limbs and hears the pinions of sleep rustling about him. It is a false conclusion if, in accordance with that ancient familiar experience, man imagines that, after whole ages of toil and deprivation, he can then partake of that condition of happiness correspondingly enhanced and protracted.

At this point two elderly security guards in parkas, the guys who normally work the front desk at the plant, asked John to step behind the tape. John claims that here he told the guards that he could not speak English and when that failed to persuade them, he fa...ked a violent seizure. I am unclear as to the purpose of this part of his plan. John flung himself down and began rolling around in the snow, thrashing his limbs about and screaming “EL SEIZURE!!! NO ES BUENO!!!” in a Mexican accent.

One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; — hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; — hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence; — hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin — a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it — if such a thing were possible — even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.

As a citizen, of course. As a parent, of course. But as an artist, that's where the paradox is - your responsibility is to be irresponsible. As soon as you talk about political or social responsibility, you've amputated the best limbs you've got as an artist.

...for most people in the [Jewish] Ghetto [of Warsaw] nature lived only in memory -- no parks, birds, or greenery existed in the Ghetto -- and they suffered the loss of nature like a phantom-limb pain, an amputation that scrambled the body's rhythms, starved the senses, and made basic ideas about the world impossible for children to fathom.

THERE'S NO REASON TO SLEEP CURLED UP AND BENT. IT'S NOT COMFORTABLE, IT'S NOT GOOD FOR YOU, AND IT DOESN'T PROTECT YOU FROM DANGER. IF YOU'RE WORRIED ABOUT AN ATTACK YOU SHOULD STAY AWAKE OR SLEEP LIGHTLY WITH LIMBS UNFURLED FOR ACTION.

I once saw a show about an amputee who lost his leg and still feels it. He actually wakes up at night to scratch his leg as if it’s still there, attached to him. They call it a phantom limb. I would be like that. A phantom draki, tormented with the memory of what I once was.

In filmmaking circles, there is a simple axiom that describes the structure of a great character journey: somebody wants something badly, and goes for it, against all odds. (Another variation is, a person falls into a hole, and tries to get out.) If you think about any movie you’ve ever liked, any character you’ve ever rooted for, it’s because they wanted something you could relate to and they struggled, risking life and limb, to achieve it. What’s true about movies is also true about life: You tell me what you want, and I’ll tell you who you are.

Where woman do not fit the Iron Maiden [societal expectations/assumptions about women's bodies], we are now being called monstrous, and the Iron Maiden is exactly that which no woman fits, or fits forever. A woman is being asked to feel like a monster now though she is whole and fully physically functional. The surgeons are playing on the myth's double standard for the function of the body. A man's thigh is for walking, but a woman's is for walking and looking "beautiful." If women can walk but believe our limbs look wrong, we feel that our bodies cannot do what they are meant to do; we feel as genuinely deformed and disabled as the unwilling Victorian hypochondriac felt ill.

The articles were extremely eye-opening. Not just in Teen Vogue but in Seventeen and CosmoGirl as well. They were all about being yourself, staying natural, loving your body as is, and going green! The messages were the exact opposite of Vik and Viv's. Hmmmmm. Frankie turned to face the full-length mirror that was up against the yellow wardrobe. She opened her robe and examined her body. Fit, muscular, and exquisitely proportioned, she agreed with the magazines. So what if her skin was mint? Or her limbs were attached with seams? According to the magazines, which were - no offense! - way more in touch with the times than her parents were, she was suppose to love her body just the way it was. And she did! Therefor if the normies read magazines (which obviously they did, because they were in them), then they would love her, too. Natural was in. Besides she was Daddy's perfect little girl. And who didn't love perfect?

No, you don't feel it now. Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with itshideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it terribly.Now, wherever you go, you charm the world. Will it always be so? . . . You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. Gray. Don't frown. You have. And beauty is a form of genius-- is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you won't smile. . . . People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial.That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thought is. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders.It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. . . . Yes, Mr. Gray, the gods have been good to you.But what the gods give they quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully.When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats.Every month as it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. You will suffer horribly.... Ah! realize your youth while you have it. Don't squander the gold of your days,listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure,or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals,of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing. . . . A new Hedonism-- that is what our century wants. You might be its visible symbol.With your personality there is nothing you could not do.The world belongs to you for a season. . . . The moment I met you I saw that you were quite unconscious of what you really are, of what you really might be. There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt I must tell you something about yourself.I thought how tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is such a little time that your youth will last--such a little time.The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again.The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now.In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!

The Barbies with their stick legs and rocket breasts were another problem Megan had to endure. She was supposed to spend hours dressing up or playing house with them, including the darker ones she was supposed to find more relatable. In a fit she'd once tried to commit Barbicide, defaced them with colored marker pens, chopped off hair, extracted eyes with scissors and de-limbed a few... The Barbie invasion proliferated on birthdays and at Christmas, relatives talked about incredible collection, as if she'd actually chosen to have them in her life.

In various states of undress, those about her joined in her fondling, lowering their mouths not only to her nipples but to her arms and legs, so that each limb was held captive about the wrist or ankle, and smothered in kisses and gentle nibbles. In this way, perhaps eight of the assembly joined in pleasuring the young lady, taking care to only deliver the sweetest of sensations. The Gentlemen's Club

...The mockingbird took a single step into the air and dropped. His wings were still folded against his sides as though he were singing from a limb and not falling, accelerating thirty-two feet per second, through empty air. Just a breath before he would have been dashed to the ground, he unfurled his wings with exact, deliberate care, revealing the broad bars of white, spread his elegant white-banded tail, and so floated onto the grass. I had just rounded a corner when his insouciant step caught my eye; there was no one else in sight. The fact of his free fall was like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

Because of the speed of light. The known universe is about sixteen billion light-years across, and it’s still expanding. But the speed of light is only three hundred thousand kilometers per second, a snail’s pace. This means that light can never go from one end of the universe to the other. Since nothing can move faster than the speed of light, it follows that no information and motive force can go from one end of the universe to the other. If the universe were a person, his neural signals couldn’t cover his entire body; his brain would not know of the existence of his limbs, and his limbs would not know of the existence of the brain. Isn’t that paraplegia? The image in my mind is even worse: The universe is but a corpse puffing up.” “Interesting, Dr. Guan, very interesting!” “Other than the speed of light, three hundred thousand kilometers per second, there’s another three-based symptom.” “What do you mean?” “The three dimensions. In string theory, excepting time, the universe has ten dimensions. But only three are accessible at the macroscopic scale, and those three form our world. All the others are folded up in the quantum realm.

Ten men of revolting appearance were approaching from the drive. They were low of brow, crafty of eye, and crooked of limb. They advanced huddled together with the loping tread of wolves, peering about them furtively as they came, as though in constant terror of ambush; they slavered at their mouths, which hung loosely over the receding chins, while each clutched under his ape-like arm a burden of curious and unaccountable shape. On seeing the Doctor they halted and edged back, those behind squinting and moulting over the companions' shoulders.

Jess actually dreaded having a boyfriend, because of having to tell her mum. Perhaps she would just avoid it until her mum eighty or something and in an old-people's home, and then Jess, who would by then be about fifty, would drop by and casually remark, "Oh, by the way, Mum, I've got a boyfriend." And even then her mum would probebly hurtle out of her wheelchair and smack her hard across the face, crying "You trash! You whore! Get outta my house--I mean, my room!" It was hard sometimes, being the daughter of a radical feminist who hated men.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" I Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird. II I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds. III The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime. IV A man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one. V I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after. VI Icicles filled the long window With barbaric glass. The shadow of the blackbird Crossed it, to and fro. The mood Traced in the shadow An indecipherable cause. VII O thin men of Haddam, Why do you imagine golden birds? Do you not see how the blackbird Walks around the feet Of the women about you? VIII I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know. IX When the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles. X At the sight of blackbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply. XI He rode over Connecticut In a glass coach. Once, a fear pierced him, In that he mistook The shadow of his equipage For blackbirds. XII The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying. XIII It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing And it was going to snow. The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs.

Riding down the unhorsed Saxons and spearing and clubbing them and leaping from their mounts with knives and running about on the ground with a peculiar bandylegged trot like creatures driven to alien forms of locomotion and stripping the clothes from the dead and seizing them up by the hair and passing their blades about the skulls of the living and the dead alike and snatching aloft the bloody wigs and hacking and chopping at the naked bodies, ripping off limbs, heads, gutting the strange white torsos and holding up great handfuls of viscera, genitals, some of the savages so slathered up with gore they might have rolled in it like dogs and some who fell upon the dying and sodomized them with loud cries to their fellows.

Trauma doesn't occur in a vacuum. You don't outgrow it with time. It grows with you, even if the growing goes all wrong. It's like breaking an arm and never putting it in a cast. You're bigger, but the bone is still broken. Maybe there's a throb of pain once in a while. You can't just stop using the arm. The more you use it the more it tears and contorts. You get clumsy. You break more limbs. Even if you see a doctor now, there's no going back to the beginning.

A crack of a tree limb and falling foliage forced me to open my eyes. A tree fell right above my head, frightened birds flew out of the leaves and a cackle of laughter echoed across the ravine – extreme happiness mingled with the loathing hate. Selfishly, I prayed the fight would end in my favor and quickly. But then suddenly I heard something that sounded like a sizzling firework and felt someone’s surprise turned into fear… then nothing. The evil vanished. I breathed a sigh of relief too soon as the branch shifted in the earth next to me. “Hurry!” I cried, but it was too late. I screamed as I fell, knowing I was about to die.

Another tidbit you might be interested in is when it comes to chicks and open mouths, guys -" Decebel leaned over and covered Jen's mouth with his hand and warned her with a glare to swallow her words. "Thanks, Dec. That's usually my job," Sally told him. "But I was in such shock that I couldn't get my limbs to move." Decebel inclined his head. "Is that why you always seem to stand so close to her?" "It's of utmost importance that whoever is within her reach be ready at any and all moments to intercept what might come from that wicked tongue." en was frantically trying to talk around Decebel's hand at Sally's comment. Decebel was quickly learning how Jennifer's brain worked, and could only imagine what she wanted to voice in regards to Sally's wicked tongue comment. He leaned forward to whisper in her ear. "I'm going to uncover your mouth. It would be wise of you to just let the wicked tongue comment slide." Jen glared at him from the corner of her eye, and after a tense moment finally nodded once in submission. Decebel slowly uncovered her mouth, ready if need be to slap it right back over her lips. The room began to get quiet and they all directed their attention to the front of the room. As Vasile welcomed everyone for coming and began to explain about the meeting he had with the other Alphas, Jen leaned over to Decebel. "You owe me. Sally walked right into it with that whole wicked tongue thing." Decebel chuckled and whispered back, "For some reason, ţinere de meu inimă (one who holds my heart), I have a feeling there will be plenty of opportunities for you to embarrass your friends for questionable comments they innocently walk into." Jen shrugged. "True enough, but you still owe me. And what are you calling me when you speak Romanian? You've said the same phrase to me twice now." Decebel patted her leg, causing all sorts of tingling sensations. "Dar tu romaneste, Micul meu lup. (but you speak Romanian, my little wolf)" "I know what lup is and I am not a wolf. Whatever else you said I'm sure is a load of crap as well.

Major Major's father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbors sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” he counseled one and all, and everyone said, “Amen.

Weak and narrow are the powers implanted in the limbs of men; many the woes that fall on them and blunt the edge of thought; short is the measure of the life in death through which they toil; then are they borne away, like smoke they vanish into air, and what they dream they know is but the little each hath stumbled on in wandering about the world; yet boast they all that they have learned the whole—vain fools! for what that is, no eye hath seen, no ear hath heard, nor can it be conceived by mind of man. Thou, then, since thou hast fallen to this place, shalt know no more than human wisdom may attain.

In a vast space left free between the crowd and the fire, a young girl was dancing. Whether this young girl was a human being, a fairy, or an angel, is what Gringoire, sceptical philosopher and ironical poet that he was, could not decide at the first moment, so fascinated was he by this dazzling vision. She was not tall, though she seemed so, so boldly did her slender form dart about. She was swarthy of complexion, but one divined that, by day, her skin must possess that beautiful golden tone of the Andalusians and the Roman women. Her little foot, too, was Andalusian, for it was both pinched and at ease in its graceful shoe. She danced, she turned, she whirled rapidly about on an old Persian rug, spread negligently under her feet; and each time that her radiant face passed before you, as she whirled, her great black eyes darted a flash of lightning at you. All around her, all glances were riveted, all mouths open; and, in fact, when she danced thus, to the humming of the Basque tambourine, which her two pure, rounded arms raised above her head, slender, frail and vivacious as a wasp, with her corsage of gold without a fold, her variegated gown puffing out, her bare shoulders, her delicate limbs, which her petticoat revealed at times, her black hair, her eyes of flame, she was a supernatural creature.

His feet started in her direction, his body following rather as a dog would its master, with no thought of deviating from the path chosen by her for him— iAm grabbed his arm and yanked him back. “Don’t even fucking think about it.” Trez’s first impulse was to rip himself free, even if he left his own limb behind in his brother’s grip. “I don’t know what you’re talking about—” “Do not make me grab your hard-on to prove my point,” iAm hissed. Numbly, Trez looked down at the front of himself. Well. What do you know. “I’m not going to…” Fuck her came to mind, but God, he couldn’t use the f-word around that female, even in the hypothetical. “You know, do anything.” “You actually expect me to believe that.” Trez’s eyes flipped over to the doorway she’d disappeared through. Shit. Talk about having no credibility on the subject of abstinence

the sun was up so high when i waked, that i judged it was after eight o’clock. i laid there in the grass and the cool shade, thinking about things and feeling rested and ruther comfortable and satisfied. i could see the sun out at one or two holes, but mostly it was big trees all about, and gloomy in there amongst them. there was freckled places on the ground where the light sifted down through the leaves, and the freckled places swapped about a little, showing there was a little breeze up there. a couple of squirrels set on a limb and jabbered at me very friendly.

The creature had nut-brown skin mixed with patches of ash. It was human-sized and formed, but its skin looked like the bark of an old, old tree. About the same height as Donna, it was spindly with arms and legs that were all joints and angles. Its face was narrow and pointed, with hair on top of its head like thick moss and narrow black eyes that glinted even in the dim light of the room. The thing’s body was clothed in lichen and moss, with vines twining around its sharp limbs. The creature opened its lipless mouth, a dark slash across its twisted face. Donna’s mind flashed back to the party and the shadow she’d seen sliding through the darkness outside Xan’s house. She hadn’t been imagining things, after all. The wood elves had returned to the city.

Thanks for putting me in bed last night,” I said, watching the swift line of his throat as he yawned again. He grumbled, “Uh–huh,” as he rolled his shoulders before slipping his arms beneath the covers again. “And for giving me a massage.” I had already tried moving my legs, and sure they were sore, but I knew how much worse they could be. I’d done everything I was supposed to do to help prevent the stiffness, but there was only so much a body that wasn’t 100 percent to begin with could handle. “There wasn’t much to massage.” Uh. “What’s the supposed to mean?” “I have more muscles in my glutes than you have in your thighs.” Anyone who had seen Aiden’s ass would know that was a fact, so I wasn’t going to take it personally. Maybe because I was still so sleepy, I raised my eyebrows at him and said, “Have you seen your butt? That’s not an insult. It has more muscles in it than most people have all over their bodies.” His own thick eyebrows rose about a millimeter, just slightly but enough for me to notice. “I didn’t know you paid that much attention to it.” “Why do you think you have so many female fans?” Aiden let out another low groan, but he didn’t tell me to stop. “You could raise a small fortune if you ever auctioned off the chance for a person to take a—” “Vanessa!” Mr. Proper reached over to throw a hand over my mouth, like he was shocked. That big hand literally covered me from ear to ear, and I burst out laughing though it was muffled. “You make me feel cheap,” he said as he slowly pulled his hand away, but the shine in his eyes said he didn’t really mind it that much. I stretched my own limbs with a yawn. “I’m just telling you what anyone else would.” “No, no one else would ever say that to me.” So he had a point. “Well, I’ll tell you the truth then.” He made this noise that had me rolling to face him again. “You always have

The average gym junkie today is all about appearance, not ability. Flash, not function. These men may have big, artificially pumped up limbs, but all that the size is in the muscle tissue; their tendons and joints are weak . Ask the average muscleman to do a deep one-leg squat-ass-to-floor-style-and his knee ligaments would probably snap in two. What strength most bodybuilders do have, they cannot use in a coordinated way; if you asked them to walk on their hands they'd fall flat on their faces.

I can’t imagine what other people think cold turkey is like. It is fucking awful. On the scale of things, it’s better than having your leg blown off in the trenches. It’s better than starving to death. But you don’t want to go there. The whole body just sort of turns itself inside out and rejects itself for three days. You know in three days it’s going to calm down. It’s going to be the longest three days you’ve spent in your life, and you wonder why you’re doing this to yourself when you could be living a perfectly normal fucking rich rock star life. And there you are puking and climbing walls. Why do you do that to yourself? I don’t know. I still don’t know. Your skin crawling, your guts churning, you can’t stop your limbs from jerking and moving about, and you’re throwing up and shitting at the same time, and shit’s coming out your nose and your eyes, and the first time that happens for real, that’s when a reasonable man says, “I’m hooked.” But even that doesn’t stop a reasonable man from going back on it.

Outside in the yard, Arsinoe follows Jules past the chicken coops as she and Camden stretch their sore limbs in the sun. Then she darts off into the woodpile. “What are you digging for?” Jules asks. “Nothing.” But Arsinoe returns with a book, brushing bits of bark off the soft green cover. She holds it up and Jules frowns. It is a book of poison plants, lifted discreetly from one of the shelves in Luke’s bookshop. “You shouldn’t be messing about with that,” Jules says. “And what if someone sees you with it?” “Then they’ll think I’m trying to get revenge, for what was done to you.” “That won’t work. Reading a book to out-poison the poisoners? You can’t even poison a poisoner, can you?” “Say ‘poison’ one more time, Jules.

I find some small, twisted comfort in thinking that perhaps we used each other. Him, for a glimpse into what it would be like to live a life entirely different from the one he'd been raised to desire, and me for the steady diet of angst and emotional damage that seemed to make me better, sharper, like a sword against a whetstone. I was his intellectual escape from a long parade of pretty, empty girls... and he was my drug of choice -- unhealthy, probably lethal, but ultimately so addictive it was hard to turn away. The problem, of course, with this theory of mutual exploitation, is that it is the deepest of lies. There was nothing equal or mutual about the way we used each other. I barely scratched his surface while he sliced me limb from limb. There's no comfort in that. None at all.

Wearing my scarlet dress and high heels, I walk down the street a proud woman. A woman flawed, but still, a woman who takes chances, a woman who has loved and been loved. To go out on a limb (or twenty -or forty or sixty, for that matter) is what life is about. It's about trying until you get it right. I'm okay with where I'm at right now. I still don't have a job, a loft, a husband, or kids - but I have me. My grandpa is right. I can maybe maybe myself to death or make peace with the past, with any mistakes I might have made, remember the good times and move forward.

With a great sigh, Jesper removed the gun belts at his hips. She had to admit he looked less himself without them. The Zemeni sharpshooter was long-limbed, brown-skinned, constantly in motion. He pressed his lips to the pearl handles of his prized revolvers, bestowing each with a mournful kiss. “Take good care of my babies,” Jesper said as he handed them over to Dirix. “If I see a single scratch or nick on those, I’ll spell forgive me on your chest in bullet holes.” “You wouldn’t waste the ammo.” “And he’d be dead halfway through forgive,” Big Bolliger said as he dropped a hatchet, a switchblade, and his preferred weapon—a thick chain weighted with a heavy padlock—into Rotty’s expectant hands. Jesper rolled his eyes. “It’s about sending a message. What’s the point of a dead guy with forg written on his chest?” “Compromise,” Kaz said. “I’m sorry does the trick and uses fewer bullets.” Dirix laughed, but Inej noted that he cradled Jesper’s revolver’s very gently. “What about that?” Jesper asked, gesturing to Kaz’s walking stick. Kaz’s laugh was low and humorless. “Who’d deny a poor cripple his cane?” “If the cripple is you, then any man with sense.

So I assume that those of you who are married and thus purchased a diamond for your wife are aware of how evil and corrupt the diamond cartel is. I was not. Apparently, diamonds are almost worthless other than the value attached to them by the silly tramps that DeBeers has brainwashed into thinking 'diamond equals love.' Congratulations, ladies, your quest for the perfect princess cut not only supports terrorism and genocide, but has managed to destroy an entire continent. - speaking of blood diamonds, what the hell is going on here? Everyone is upset about African children losing their limbs? Perhaps I missed their concern about these same children during the Rwandan genocide. Here's a solution: Stop buying diamonds. No no, the avarice of the entitled whore cannot be contained. And if blood diamonds are so fucking bad, why can't I by them at a discount? Or at least get them with a death certificate or an appendage or some sort of cogent backstory that might indicate an actual meaning to this useless little cube of carbon. Clearly the diamond market is broken on multiple levels.

Orin and Hal’s term for this routine is Politeness Roulette. This Moms-thing that makes you hate yourself for telling her the truth about any kind of problem because of what the consequences will be for her. It’s like to report any sort of need or problem is to mug her. Orin and Hal had this bit, during Family Trivia sometimes: 'Please, I'm not using this oxygen anyway.' 'What, this old limb? Take it. In the way all the time. Take it.' 'But it's a gorgeous bowel movement, Mario -- the living room needed something, I didn't know what til right this very moment.' The special fantodish chill of feeling both complicit and obliged. Hal despised the way he always retracted, taking the apple, pretending to pretend his reluctance to eat her supper was a pretense. Orin believed she did it all on purpose, which was way too easy. He said she went around with her feelings out in front of her with an arm around the feelings’ windpipe and a Glock 9 mm. to the feelings’ temple like a terrorist with a hostage, daring you to shoot.

Amelia and Poppy both glanced at their younger sister quizzically. “Do you know what we’re talking about, Bea?” Amelia asked. “Yes, of course. Merripen’s in love with her. I knew it a long time ago, from the way he washed her window.” “Washed her window?” both older sisters asked at the same time. “Yes, when we lived in the cottage at Primrose Place. Win’s room had a casement window that looked out onto the big maple tree— do you remember? After the scarlet fever, when Win couldn’t get out of bed for the longest time and she was too weak to hold a book, she would just lie there and watch a birds’ nest on one of the tree limbs. She saw the baby swallows hatch and learn to fly. One day she complained that the window was so dirty, she could barely see through it, and it made the sky look grayish. So from then on Merripen always kept the glass spotless. Sometimes he climbed a ladder to wash the outside, and you know how afraid of heights he is. You never saw him do that?” “No,” Amelia said with difficulty, her eyes stinging. “I didn’t know he did that.” “Merripen said the sky should always be blue for her,” Beatrix said. “And that was when I knew he … are you crying, Poppy?” Poppy used a napkin to dab at the corners of her eyes. “No. I just inh-haled some pepper.” “So did I,” Amelia said, blowing her nose.

I mean, we don’t have to worry about it until winter, anyway,” she said. “I was just wondering if you felt cured.” I didn’t know what to tell her. I didn’t feel cured. I felt like what Cole said —almost cured. A war survivor with a phantom limb. I still felt that wolf that I’d been: living in my cells, sleeping uneasily, waiting to be coaxed out by weather or a rush of adrenaline or a needle in my veins. I didn’t know if that was real or suggested. I didn’t know if one day I would feel secure in my skin, taking my human body for granted. “You look cured,” Grace said. Just her face was visible at the end of the shower curtain, looking in at me. She grinned and I yelled. Grace reached in just far enough to shut off the tap. “I’m afraid,” she said, whipping the shower curtain open all the way and presenting me with my towel, “this is the sort of thing you’ll have to put up with in your old age.” I stood there, dripping, feeling utterly ridiculous, Grace standing opposite, smiling with her challenge. There was nothing for it but to get over the awkwardness. Instead of taking the towel, I took her chin with my wet fingers and kissed her. Water from my hair ran down my cheeks and onto our lips. I was getting her shirt all wet, but she didn’t seem to mind. A lifetime of this seemed rather appealing. I said gallantly, “That better be a promise.

WARNING: DO NOT READ BEYOND THIS PAGE! Good. Now I know I can trust you. You’re curious. You’re brave. And you’re not afraid to lead a life of crime. But let’s get something straight: if, despite my warning, you insist on reading this book, you can’t hold me responsible for the consequences. And, make no bones about it, this is a very dangerous book. No, it won’t blow up in your face. Or bite your head off. Or tear you limb from limb. It probably won’t injure you at all. Unless somebody throws it at you, which is a possibility that should never be discounted. Generally speaking, books don’t cause much harm. Except when you read them, that is. Then they cause all kinds of problems. Books can, for example, give you ideas. I don’t know if you’ve ever had an idea before, but, if you have, you know how much trouble an idea can get you into. Books can also provoke emotions. And emotions sometimes are even more troublesome than ideas. Emotions have led people to do all sorts of things they later regret – like, oh, throwing a book at someone else. But the main reason this book is so dangerous is that it concerns a secret. A big secret.

Since the dawn of time, several billion human (or humanlike) beings have lived, each contributing a little genetic variability to the total human stock. Out of this vast number, the whole of our understanding of human prehistory is based on the remains, often exceedingly fragmentary, of perhaps five thousand individuals. You could fit it all into the back of a pickup truck if you didn't mind how much you jumbled everything up, Ian Tattersall, the bearded and friendly curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, replied when I asked him the size of the total world archive of hominid and early human bones. The shortage wouldn't be so bad if the bones were distributed evenly through time and space, but of course they are not. They appear randomly, often in the most tantalizing fashion. Homo erectus walked the Earth for well over a million years and inhabited territory from the Atlantic edge of Europe to the Pacific side of China, yet if you brought back to life every Homo erectus individual whose existence we can vouch for, they wouldn't fill a school bus. Homo habilis consists of even less: just two partial skeletons and a number of isolated limb bones. Something as short-lived as our own civilization would almost certainly not be known from the fossil record at all. In Europe, Tattersall offers by way of illustration, you've got hominid skulls in Georgia dated to about 1.7 million years ago, but then you have a gap of almost a million years before the next remains turn up in Spain, right on the other side of the continent, and then you've got another 300,000-year gap before you get a Homo heidelbergensis in Germany and none of them looks terribly much like any of the others. He smiled. It's from these kinds of fragmentary pieces that you're trying to work out the histories of entire species. It's quite a tall order. We really have very little idea of the relationships between many ancient species which led to us and which were evolutionary dead ends. Some probably don't deserve to be regarded as separate species at all.

You struggle because you’re locating all of the magic in your life outside of yourself. When you are loved, then you are lovable. When you are left behind, you are unlovable. When you “arrive” at some point of success and fame as a writer, you will be worthy. Until then, you are worthless. As long as you imagine that the outside world will one day deliver to you the external rewards you need to feel happy, you will always perceive your survival as exhausting and perceive your life as a long slog to nowhere. Instead, you have to savor the tiny struggles of the day: The cold glass of water after a long run. The hot bath after hours of digging through the dirt. The satisfaction of writing a good sentence, a good paragraph. You MUST feel these things, because these aren’t small rewards on the path to some big reward; these tiny things are everything. Savoring these things requires tuning in to your feelings, and it requires loving yourself instead of shoving your nose into your own question marks hour after hour, day after day. You are not lost. You are here. Stop abandoning yourself. Stop repeating this myth about love and success that will land in your lap or evade you forever. Build a humble, flawed life from the rubble, and cherish that. There is nothing more glorious on the face of the earth than someone who refuses to give up, who refuses to give in to their most self-hating, discouraged, disillusioned self, and instead learns, slowly and painfully, how to relish the feeling of building a hut in the middle of the suffocating dust. If you can learn to be where you are, without fear, then sooner than you know it, your life will quite naturally be filled with more love and more wonder than you can possibly handle. When that happens, you’ll look back and see that this was the most romantic time of your whole life. These are those terrible days, those gorgeous days, when you first learned to breathe and stand alone without fear, to believe not in finish lines but in the race itself. Your legs are aching and your heart is pounding and the world is electric. You will have 30 years or 50 years, or maybe you’ll be gone tomorrow. All that matters is this moment, right now. This is the moment you learn to be here, to feel your limbs, to feel your full heart, to realize, for the first time, just how lucky you are.

I kind of was beginning to feel like I was being underutilized [as Teen Ambassador to the UN]. I mean, there were a lot more important issues out there for teens that I could have been bringing international attention to than what kids see out their windows. I mean, instead of sitting in the White House press office for three hours after school every Wednesday, or attending International Festival of the Child concerts, I could have been out there alerting the public to the fact that in some countries, it is still perfectly legal for men to take teen brides -- even multiple teen brides! What was that all about? And what about places like Sierra Leone, where teens and even younger kids routinely get their limbs chopped off as "warnings" against messing with the warring gangs that run groups of diamond traffickers? And hello, what about all those kids in countries with unexploded land mines buried in the fields where they'd like to play soccer, but can't because it's too dangerous? And how about a problem a little closer to home? How about all the teenagers right here in America who are taking guns to school and blowing people away? Where are they getting these guns, and how come they think shooting people is a viable solution to their problems? And why isn't anybody doing anything to alleviate some of the pressures that might lead someone to think bringing a gun to school is a good thing? How come nobody is teaching people like Kris Parks to be more tolerant of others, to stop torturing kids whose mothers make them wear long skirts to school?

I was acutely aware of him, and the thought that he was walking me back to my room and would most likely try to kiss me again sent shivers down my spine. For self-preservation purposes, I had to get away. Every minute I spent with him just made me want him more. Since merely annoying him wasn’t working, I’d have to up the ante. Apparently, I needed him not only to fall out-of-like with me, but to hate me as well. I’d frequently been told that I was an all-or-nothing kind of girl. If I were going to push him away, it was going to be so far away that there would be absolutely no change of him ever coming back. I tried to wrench my elbow out of his grasp, but he just held on more tightly. I grumbled at him, “Stop using your tiger strength on me, Superman.” “Am I hurting you?” “No, but I’m not a puppet to be dragged around.” He trailed his fingers down my arm and took my hand instead. “Then you play nice, and I will too.” “Fine.” He grinned. “Fine.” I hissed back. “Fine!” We walked to the elevator, and he pushed the button to my floor. “My room is on the same floor,” Ren edxplained. I scowled and then grinned lopsidedly and just a little bit evilly, “And umm, how exactly is that going to work for you in the morning, Tiger? You really shouldn’t get Mr. Kadam in trouble for having a rather large…pet.” Ren returned my sarcasm as he walked me to my door. “Are you worried about me, Kells? Well, don’t. I’ll be fine.” “I guess there’s no point in asking how you knew which door belong to me, huh, Tiger Nose?” He looked at me in a way that turned my insides to jelly. I spun around but awareness of him shot through my limbs, and I could feel him standing close behind me watching, waiting. I put my key in the lock, and he moved closer. My hand started shaking, and I couldn’t twist the key the right way. He took my hand and gently turned me around. He then put both hands on the door on either side of my head and leaned in close, pinning me against it. I trembled like a downy rabbit caught in the clutches of a wolf. The wolf came closer. He bent his head and began nuzzling my cheek. The problem was…I wanted the wolf to devour me. I began to get lost in the thick sultry fog that overtook me every time Ren put his hands on me. So much for asking for permission…and so much for sticking to my guns, I thought as I felt all my defenses slip away. He whispered warmly, “I can always tell where you are, Kelsey. You smell like peaches and cream.” I shivered and put my hands on his chest to push him away, but I ended up grabbing fistfuls of shirt and held on for dear life. He trailed kisses from my ear down my cheek and then pressed soft kisses along the arch of my neck. I pulled him closer and turned my head so he could really kiss me. He smiled and ignored my invitation, moving instead to the other ear. He bit my earlobe lightly, moved from there to my collarbone, and trailed kisses out to my shoulder. Then he lifted his head and brought his lips about one inch from mine and the only thought in my head was…more. With a devastating smile, he reluctantly pulled away and lightly ran his fingers through the strands of my hair. “By the way, I forgot to mention that you look beautiful tonight.” He smiled again then turned and strolled off down the hall.

Dying was OK because it was sleep and there wasn't no gray ball in death, was there? Was there? She would have to ask somebody about that, somebody she could confide in, and who knew a lot of things, like Sula, for Sula would know or if she didn't she would say something funny that would make it all right. Ooo no, not Sula. Here she was in the midst of it, hating it, scared of it, and again she thought of Sula as though they were still friends and talked things over. That was too much. To lose Jude and not have Sula to talk to about it because it was Sula that he had left her for. Now her thighs were really empty. And it was then that what those women said about never looking at another man made some sense to her, for the real point, the heart of what they said, was the word looked. Not to promise never to make love to another man, not to refuse to marry another man, but to promise and know that she could never afford to look again, to see and accept the way in which their heads cut the air or see moons or tree limbs framed by their necks and shoulders... never to look, for now she could not risk looking - and anyway, so what? For now her thighs were truly empty and dead too and it was Sula who had taken the life from them and Jude who smashed her heart and the both of them who left her with no thighs and no heart just her brain raveling away.

And her heart sprang in Iseult, and she drew With all her spirit and life the sunrise through And through her lips the keen triumphant air Sea-scented, sweeter than land-roses were, And through her eyes the whole rejoicing east Sun-satisfied, and all the heaven at feast Spread for the morning; and the imperious mirth Of wind and light that moved upon the earth, Making the spring, and all the fruitful might And strong regeneration of delight That swells the seedling leaf and sapling man, Since the first life in the first world began To burn and burgeon through void limbs and veins, And the first love with sharp sweet procreant pains To pierce and bring forth roses; yea, she felt Through her own soul the sovereign morning melt, And all the sacred passion of the sun; And as the young clouds flamed and were undone About him coming, touched and burnt away In rosy ruin and yellow spoil of day, The sweet veil of her body and corporal sense Felt the dawn also cleave it, and incense With light from inward and with effluent heat The kindling soul through fleshly hands and feet. And as the august great blossom of the dawn Burst, and the full sun scarce from sea withdrawn Seemed on the fiery water a flower afloat, So as a fire the mighty morning smote Throughout her, and incensed with the influent hour Her whole soul's one great mystical red flower Burst, and the bud of her sweet spirit broke Rose-fashion, and the strong spring at a stroke Thrilled, and was cloven, and from the full sheath came The whole rose of the woman red as flame: And all her Mayday blood as from a swoon Flushed, and May rose up in her and was June. So for a space her hearth as heavenward burned: Then with half summer in her eyes she turned, And on her lips was April yet, and smiled, As though the spirit and sense unreconciled Shrank laughing back, and would not ere its hour Let life put forth the irrevocable flower. And the soft speech between them grew again

I think every one who has some vague belief in God, until he becomes a Christian, has the idea of an exam, or of a bargain in his mind. The first result of real Christianity is to blow that idea into bits. When they find it blown into bits, some people think this means that Christianity is a failure and give up. They seem to imagine that God is very simple-minded! In fact, of course, He knows all about this. One of the very things Christianity was designed to do was to blow this idea to bits. God has been waiting for the moment at which you discover that there is no question of earning a pass mark in this exam, or putting Him in your debt. Then comes another discovery. Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to its father and saying, "Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present." Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child's present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction. When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins. The man is awake now.

The moment after, I began to respire 20 quarts of unmingled nitrous oxide. A thrilling, extending from the chest to the extremities, was almost immediately produced. I felt a sense of tangible extension highly pleasurable in every limb; my visible impressions were dazzling, and apparently magnified, I heard distinctly every sound in the room and was perfectly aware of my situation. By degrees, as the pleasurable sensations increased, I last all connection with external things; trains of vivid visible images rapidly passed through my mind, and were connected with words in such a manner, as to produce perceptions perfectly novel. I existed in a world of newly connected and newly modified ideas. I theorised—I imagined that I made discoveries. When I was awakened from this semi-delirious trance by Dr. Kinglake, who took the bag from my mouth, indignation and pride were the first feelings produced by the sight of the persons about me. My emotions were enthusiastic and sublime; and for a minute I walked round the room, perfectly regardless of what was said to me. As I recovered my former state of mind, I felt an inclination to communicate the discoveries I had made during the experiment. I endeavoured to recall the ideas, they were feeble and indistinct; one collection of terms, however, presented itself: and with the most intense belief and prophetic manner, I exclaimed to Dr Kinglake, 'Nothing exists but thoughts!—the universe is composed of impressions, ideas, pleasures and pains!

Taking both of my hands, he pulls me into the tide. Salt water deepens the lavender satin of my gown to almost black. The waves push into it, making it heavier and heavier. “Tell me when,” he says. I nod. When Galen is neck deep and I’m clinging to him to keep my head above water. When my saturated prom dress feels like an anchor grasping at my limbs. When the moon is directly overhead and makes the silver flecks in his eyes shimmer like gems. That’s when I’m ready. “Now,” I breathe. He brushes his lips against mine. Once Twice. So soft it barely feels like anything. But it also feels like everything. He pulls me under. One day, when Galen and I are mated, I’ll be a princess. But I’ll never feel more like a princess than right now, in his arms, dancing on the ocean floor. He pulls my from my trance with his lips against me ear. “Emma.” It’s silly how my own name can send tingles shooting everywhere. “Hmm?” “I’ve been thinking. About us.” He pulls away from me. “I think…I think I need a distraction.” “Um. A distraction? From me?” The words taste vinegary in my mouth. They turn sweet again when Galen throws his head back and laughs. “Emma,” he says, brushing his thumb across my bottom lip. “You are the one thing I’m sure of. Completely. Without thinking twice. But I want to get away from here for a little while. And I want you to come with me. I know you’re set on going to college in the fall. I’m only asking for the summer. Let’s go somewhere. Do something.” I float up until I’m eye level with him. “Let’s. Where will we go?” He shrugs. “I don’t care, as long as it’s away from any ocean.” “So…the desert?” He grimaces. “The mountains?” I laugh. “Deal. We’ll go to the mountains.” “You’re sure?” I pull him by the neck until our noses touch. “Completely. Without thinking twice.

Exoneration of Jesus Christ If Christ was in fact God, he knew all the future. Before Him like a panorama moved the history yet to be. He knew how his words would be interpreted. He knew what crimes, what horrors, what infamies, would be committed in his name. He knew that the hungry flames of persecution would climb around the limbs of countless martyrs. He knew that thousands and thousands of brave men and women would languish in dungeons in darkness, filled with pain. He knew that his church would invent and use instruments of torture; that his followers would appeal to whip and fagot, to chain and rack. He saw the horizon of the future lurid with the flames of the auto da fe. He knew what creeds would spring like poisonous fungi from every text. He saw the ignorant sects waging war against each other. He saw thousands of men, under the orders of priests, building prisons for their fellow-men. He saw thousands of scaffolds dripping with the best and bravest blood. He saw his followers using the instruments of pain. He heard the groans—saw the faces white with agony. He heard the shrieks and sobs and cries of all the moaning, martyred multitudes. He knew that commentaries would be written on his words with swords, to be read by the light of fagots. He knew that the Inquisition would be born of the teachings attributed to him. He saw the interpolations and falsehoods that hypocrisy would write and tell. He saw all wars that would be waged, and-he knew that above these fields of death, these dungeons, these rackings, these burnings, these executions, for a thousand years would float the dripping banner of the cross. He knew that hypocrisy would be robed and crowned—that cruelty and credulity would rule the world; knew that liberty would perish from the earth; knew that popes and kings in his name would enslave the souls and bodies of men; knew that they would persecute and destroy the discoverers, thinkers and inventors; knew that his church would extinguish reason’s holy light and leave the world without a star. He saw his disciples extinguishing the eyes of men, flaying them alive, cutting out their tongues, searching for all the nerves of pain. He knew that in his name his followers would trade in human flesh; that cradles would be robbed and women’s breasts unbabed for gold. And yet he died with voiceless lips. Why did he fail to speak? Why did he not tell his disciples, and through them the world: “You shall not burn, imprison and torture in my name. You shall not persecute your fellow-men.” Why did he not plainly say: “I am the Son of God,” or, “I am God”? Why did he not explain the Trinity? Why did he not tell the mode of baptism that was pleasing to him? Why did he not write a creed? Why did he not break the chains of slaves? Why did he not say that the Old Testament was or was not the inspired word of God? Why did he not write the New Testament himself? Why did he leave his words to ignorance, hypocrisy and chance? Why did he not say something positive, definite and satisfactory about another world? Why did he not turn the tear-stained hope of heaven into the glad knowledge of another life? Why did he not tell us something of the rights of man, of the liberty of hand and brain? Why did he go dumbly to his death, leaving the world to misery and to doubt? I will tell you why. He was a man, and did not know.

The Troubadours Etc." Just for this evening, let's not mock them. Not their curtsies or cross-garters or ever-recurring pepper trees in their gardens promising, promising. At least they had ideas about love. All day we've driven past cornfields, past cows poking their heads through metal contraptions to eat. We've followed West 84, and what else? Irrigation sprinklers fly past us, huge wooden spools in the fields, lounging sheep, telephone wires, yellowing flowering shrubs. Before us, above us, the clouds swell, layers of them, the violet underneath of clouds. Every idea I have is nostalgia. Look up: there is the sky that passenger pigeons darkened and filled— darkened for days, eclipsing sun, eclipsing all other sound with the thunder of their wings. After a while, it must have seemed that they followed not instinct or pattern but only one another. When they stopped, Audubon observed, they broke the limbs of stout trees by the weight of the numbers. And when we stop we'll follow—what? Our hearts? The Puritans thought that we are granted the ability to love only through miracle, but the troubadours knew how to burn themselves through, how to make themselves shrines to their own longing. The spectacular was never behind them. Think of days of those scarlet-breasted, blue-winged birds above you. Think of me in the garden, humming quietly to myself in my blue dress, a blue darker than the sky above us, a blue dark enough for storms, though cloudless. At what point is something gone completely? The last of the sunlight is disappearing even as it swells— Just for this evening, won't you put me before you until I'm far enough away you can believe in me? Then try, try to come closer— my wonderful and less than.

The truth is,” she said shakily, “that I am scared to death of being here.” “I know you are,” he said, sobering, “but I am the last person in the world you’ll ever have to fear.” His words and his tone made the quaking in her limbs, the hammering of her heart, begin again, and Elizabeth hastily drank a liberal amount of her wine, praying it would calm her rioting nerves. As if he saw her distress, he smoothly changed the topic. “Have you given any more thought to the injustice done Galileo?” She shook her head. “I must have sounded very silly last night, going on about how wrong it was to bring him up before the Inquisition. It was an absurd thing to discuss with anyone, especially a gentleman.” “I thought it was a refreshing alternative to the usual insipid trivialities.” “Did you really?” Elizabeth asked, her eyes searching his with a mixture of disbelief and hope, unaware that she was being neatly distracted from her woes and drawn into a discussion she’d find easier. “I did.” “I wish society felt that way.” He grinned sympathetically. “How long have you been required to hide the fact that you have a mind?” “Four weeks,” she admitted, chuckling at his phrasing. “You cannot imagine how awful it is to mouth platitudes to people when you’re longing to ask them about things they’ve seen and things they know. If they’re male, they wouldn’t tell you, of course, even if you did ask.” “What would they say?” he teased. “They would say,” she said wryly, “that the answer would be beyond a female’s comprehension-or that they fear offending my tender sensibilities.” “What sorts of questions have you been asking?” Her eyes lit up with a mixture of laughter and frustration. “I asked Sir Elston Greeley, who had just returned from extensive travels, if he had happened to journey to the colonies, and he said that he had. But when I asked him to describe to me how the natives looked and how they lived, he coughed and sputtered and told me it wasn’t at all ‘the thing’ to discuss ‘savages’ with a female, and that I’d swoon if he did.” “Their appearance and living habits depend upon their tribe,” Ian told her, beginning to answer her questions. “Some of the tribes are ‘savage’ by our standards, not theirs, and some of the tribes are peaceful by any standards…” Two hours flew by as Elizabeth asked him questions and listened in fascination to stories of places he had seen, and not once in all that time did he refuse to answer or treat her comments lightly. He spoke to her like an equal and seemed to enjoy it whenever she debated an opinion with him. They’d eaten lunch and returned to the sofa; she knew it was past time for her to leave, and yet she was loath to end their stolen afternoon.

Hubris you say, brother? Please, tell us the nature of the prince's actions against you. Let everyone know exactly how Prince Styxx offended you." Bethany Disguised as Athena "He has held himself up as a god. His arrogance and pride are an affront to us all." Apollo "Held himself up as a god? Pray tell, when was this? .... Ah, yes, I remember... It was when he dared to slay your Atlantean grandson during battle. Is that not right, brother? I'm sure, like me, you remember that day well. The Atlanteans, led to our shores by your own blood kin, were slaughtering hundreds of Greeks until the beach sands turned red from good Greek blood. The onslaught was so fierce that entire veteran regiments fled from the Atlanteans and cowered. Even the brave, noble Dorians pulled back in fear. But not Prince Styxx. He rode in like a lion and jumped from his horse to save the life of a young shield-bearer who was about to be killed by one of the Atlantean giants." Bethany/Athena Bethany swept her gaze around the people there, who were completely silent now. "And with reckless disregard for his own life and limb, this prince picked the boy up and put him on the back of his royal steed and told him to ride to safety. He spent the rest of the day fighting on foot. Not as a prince or a god, but as a mere, heroic Greek soldier." She turned back to Apollo. "His actions so enraged the Atlantean gods that they turned all of their animosity toward him. And still Prince Styxx fought on for his people, wounded, bloody, and tired. He never backed off or backed down. Not even when your own grandson almost buried his axe through the prince's skull. He hit Styxx's hoplon so hard, it splintered a portion of it off. And as Xan held the prince down, the prince, who was barely more than a child, managed to stab him through the ribs. But now that I think about it, you don't remember that day, do you, Apollo? You weren't even there when it was fought, but later that very night-

Galen slides into his desk, unsettled by the way the sturdy blond boy talking to Emma casually rests his arm on the back of her seat. "Good morning," Galen says, leaning over to wrap his arms around her, nearly pulling her from the chair. He even rests his cheek against hers for good measure. "Good morning...er, Mark, isn't it?" he says, careful to keep his voice pleasant. Still, he glances meaningfully at the masculine arm still lining the back of Emma's seat, almost touching her. To his credit-and safety-Mark eases the offending limb back to his own desk, offering Emma a lazy smile full of strikingly white teeth. "You and Forza, huh? Did you clear that with his groupies?" She laughs and gently pries Galen's arms off her. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the eruption of pink spreading like spilled paint over her face. She's not used to dating him yet. Until about ten minutes ago, he wasn't used to it either. Now though, with the way Mark eyes her like a tasty shellfish, playing the role of Emma's boyfriend feels all too natural. The bell rings, saving Emma from a reply and saving Mark thousands of dollars in hospital bills. Emma shoots Galen a withering look, which he deflects with that he hopes is an enchanting grin. He measures his success by the way her blush deepens but stops short when he notices the dark circles under her eyes. She didn't sleep last night. Not that he thought she would. She'd been quiet on the flight home from Destin two nights ago. He didn't pressure her to talk about it with him, mostly because he didn't know what to say once the conversation got started. So many times, he's started to assure her that he doesn't see her as an abomination, but it seems wrong to say it out loud. Like he's willfully disagreeing with the law. But how could those delicious-looking lips and those huge violet eyes be considered an abomination? What's even crazier is that not only does he not consider her an abomination, the fact that she could be a Half-Breed ignited a hope in him he's got no right to feel: Grom would never mate with a half human. At least, Galen doesn't think he would. He glances at Emma, whose silky eyelids don't even flutter in her state of light sleep. When he clears his throat, she startles. "Thank you," she mouths to him as she picks her pencil back up, using the eraser to trace the lines in her textbook as she reads. He acknowledges with a nod. He doesn't want to leave her like this, anxious and tense and out of place in her own beautiful skin.