“
Plants are more courageous than almost all human beings: an orange tree would rather die than produce lemons, whereas instead of dying the average person would rather be someone they are not.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
A phenomenon that a number of people have noted while in deep depression is the sense of being accompanied by a second self — a wraithlike observer who, not sharing the dementia of his double, is able to watch with dispassionate curiosity as his companion struggles against the oncoming disaster, or decides to embrace it. There is a theatrical quality about all this, and during the next several days, as I went about stolidly preparing for extinction, I couldn't shake off a sense of melodrama — a melodrama in which I, the victim-to-be of self-murder, was both the solitary actor and lone member of the audience.
”
”
William Styron (Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness)
“
We all are actors of our own destiny, some good and evil, some beautiful and others just ugly.
”
”
Raz Mihal (Just Love Her)
“
The entire universe is God's cosmic motion picture, and that individuals are merely actors in the divine play who change roles through reincarnation; mankind's deep suffering is rooted in identifying too closely with one's current role, rather than with the movie's director, or God.
”
”
Paramahansa Yogananda
“
Take for instance a man driven to incessant work by a sense of deep insecurity and loneliness; or another one driven by ambition, or greed for money. In all these cases the person is the slave of a passion, and his activity is in reality a "passivity" because he is driven; he is the sufferer, not the "actor." On the other hand a man sitting quiet and contemplating, with no purpose or aim except that of experiencing himself and his oneness with the world, is considered to be "passive", because he is not "doing" anything. In reality, this attitude of concentrated meditation is the highest activity there is, an activity of the soul, which is possible only under the condition of inner freedom and independence.
”
”
Erich Fromm (The Art of Loving)
“
In a world where deep down everyone just wants to fit in, I wish we could realize that it takes true confidence to have enough love for ourselves, a belief that we are enough.
”
”
Justin Baldoni (Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity)
“
depression is a deep sadness that does not go away.
”
”
Jim Fields (Robin Williams, Stand-Up, Actor, Kind Soul (Rest-in-Peace))
“
His overriding life necessity was not love, it was his profession…He had come to medicine not by coincidence or calculation but by a deep inner desire. Insofar as it is possible to divide people into categories, the surest criterion is the deep-seated desires that orient them to one or another lifelong activity. Every Frenchman is different. But all the actors the world over are similar.
”
”
Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)
“
-I love you, Lenny.
-From the diaphragm.
-What are you talking about?
-You have to say it from the diaphragm. That's a muscle in here. Real deep, not from the throat. I tried to be an actor once and that's the first thing they told me. That's when I quit. I just didn't have that much in my diaphragm.
”
”
Romain Gary (خداحافظ گاری کوپر)
“
A man driven to incessant work by a sense of deep insecurity and loneliness; or another one driven by ambition, or greed for money. In all these cases the person is the slave of a passion, and his activity is in reality a “passivity” because he is driven; he is the sufferer, not the “actor.” On the other hand, a man sitting quiet and contemplating, with no purpose or aim except that of experiencing himself and his oneness with the world, is considered to be “passive,” because he is not “doing” anything.
”
”
Erich Fromm (The Art of Loving)
“
Why, my man is created from the outside, that is, he is inauthentic in essence- he is always not-himself, because he is determined by form, which is born between people. His "I", therefore, is marked for him in that "interhumanity." An eternal actor, but a natural one, because his artificiality is inborn, it makes up a feature of his humanity-to be a man means to be an actor-to be a man means to pretend to be a man-to be a man means to "act like" a man while not being one deep inside-to be a man is to recite humanity.
”
”
Witold Gombrowicz
“
Insofar as it is possible to divide people in categories, the surest criterion is the deep-seated desires that orient them to one or another lifelong activity.Every Frenchman is different. But all actors are similar.
”
”
Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)
“
The film festival measured a mile in length, from the Martinez to the Vieux Port, where sales executives tucked into their platters of fruits de mer, but was only fifty yards deep. For a fortnight the Croisette and its grand hotels willingly became a facade, the largest stage set in the world. Without realizing it, the crowds under the palm trees were extras recruited to play their traditional roles. As they cheered and hooted, they were far more confident than the film actors on display, who seemed ill at ease when they stepped from their limos, like celebrity criminals ferried to a mass trial by jury at the Palais, a full-scale cultural Nuremberg furnished with film clips of the atrocities they had helped to commit.
”
”
J.G. Ballard (Super-Cannes)
“
Breathe deep... The rain falls but a moment, and in a moment, gives life to another day.
”
”
Laurence Overmire (New York Minute: An Actor's Memoir)
“
Then, why did I do this, you ask?' He stroked his chin, like an actor trying to look deep and thoughtful. 'The short answer is: hope.
”
”
Margaret Peterson Haddix (Sabotaged (The Missing, #3))
“
The light was crude. It made Artaud's eyes shrink into darkness, as they are deep-set. This brought into relief the intensity of his gestures. He looked tormented. His hair, rather long, fell at times over his forehead. He has the actor's nimbleness and quickness of gestures. His face is lean, as if ravaged by fevers. His eyes do not seem to see the people. They are the eyes of a visionary. His hands are long, long-fingered.
Beside him Allendy looks earthy, heavy, gray. He sits at the desk, massive, brooding. Artaud steps out on the platform, and begins to talk about " The Theatre and the Plague."
He asked me to sit in the front row. It seems to me that all he is asking for is intensity, a more heightened form of feeling and living. Is he trying to remind us that it was during the Plague that so many marvelous works of art and theater came to be, because, whipped by the fear of death, man seeks immortality, or to escape, or to surpass himself? But then, imperceptibly almost, he let go of the thread we were following and began to act out dying by plague. No one quite knew when it began. To illustrate his conference, he was acting out an agony. "La Peste" in French is so much more terrible than "The Plague" in English. But no word could describe what Artaud acted out on the platform of the Sorbonne. He forgot about his conference, the theatre, his ideas, Dr. Allendy sitting there, the public, the young students, his wife, professors, and directors.
His face was contorted with anguish, one could see the perspiration dampening his hair. His eyes dilated, his muscles became cramped, his fingers struggled to retain their flexibility. He made one feel the parched and burning throat, the pains, the fever, the fire in the guts. He was in agony. He was screaming. He was delirious. He was enacting his own death, his own crucifixion.
At first people gasped. And then they began to laugh. Everyone was laughing! They hissed. Then, one by one, they began to leave, noisily, talking, protesting. They banged the door as they left. The only ones who did not move were Allendy, his wife, the Lalous, Marguerite. More protestations. More jeering. But Artaud went on, until the last gasp. And stayed on the floor. Then when the hall had emptied of all but his small group of friends, he walked straight up to me and kissed my hand. He asked me to go to the cafe with him.
”
”
Anaïs Nin
“
Quentin took a deep breath.
“My true name,” he said, “ . . . is SUN WUKONG.”
A cold wind passed through the open window, rustling my loose papers like tumbleweed.
“I have no idea who that is,” I said.
Quentin was still trying to cement his “look at me being serious” face. It took him a few seconds to realize I wasn’t flipping out over whoever he was.
“The Sun Wukong,” he said, scooping the air with his fingers. “Sun Wukong the Monkey King.”
“I said, I don’t know who that is.”
His jaw dropped. Thankfully his teeth were still normal-size.
“You’re Chinese and you don’t know me?” he sputtered. “That’s like an American child not knowing Batman!”
“You’re Chinese Batman?”
“No! I’m stronger than Batman, and more important, like—like. Tian na, how do you not know who I am!?”
I didn’t know why he expected me to recognize him. He couldn’t have been a big-time actor or singer from overseas. I never followed mainland pop culture, but a lot of the other people at school did; word would have gotten around if we had a celebrity in our midst.
Plus that was a weird stage name. Monkey King? Was that what passed for sexy among the kids these days?
”
”
F.C. Yee (The Epic Crush of Genie Lo (The Epic Crush of Genie Lo, #1))
“
The main thing is the character's [Truman Capote's] interior and without getting too deep into it, there are lots of parallels in Phil's [Philip Seymour Hoffman's] life, which I knew and only became more evident with time. There was something about that character that he could own that nobody else could.
”
”
Ben Miller
“
He recited from memory, with the stylishness and verve of a polished Shakespearean actor, “Listen to me, people, hear these words: ‘So live, that when thy summons comes to join the innumerable caravan, which moves to that mysterious realm where each shall take his chambers in the silent halls of death, thou go not, like the miserable quarry slave at night, confined to his deep dark dungeon, but soothed and sustained by an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, like one who wraps the drapery of his own couch about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.’”
”
”
John M Vermillion (Packfire (Simon Pack, #9))
“
Because this painting has never been restored there is a heightened poignance to it somehow; it doesn’t have the feeling of unassailable permanence that paintings in museums do.
There is a small crack in the lower left, and a little of the priming between the wooden panel and the oil emulsions of paint has been bared. A bit of abrasion shows, at the rim of a bowl of berries, evidence of time’s power even over this—which, paradoxically, only seems to increase its poetry, its deep resonance. If you could see the notes of a cello, when the bow draws slowly and deeply across its strings, and those resonant reverberations which of all instruments’ are nearest to the sound of the human voice emerge—no, the wrong verb, they seem to come into being all at once, to surround us, suddenly, with presence—if that were made visible, that would be the poetry of Osias Beert.
But the still life resides in absolute silence.
Portraits often seem pregnant with speech, or as if their subjects have just finished saying something, or will soon speak the thoughts that inform their faces, the thoughts we’re invited to read. Landscapes are full of presences, visible or unseen; soon nymphs or a stag or a band of hikers will make themselves heard.
But no word will ever be spoken here, among the flowers and snails, the solid and dependable apples, this heap of rumpled books, this pewter plate on which a few opened oysters lie, giving up their silver.
These are resolutely still, immutable, poised for a forward movement that will never occur. The brink upon which still life rests is the brink of time, the edge of something about to happen. Everything that we know crosses this lip, over and over, like water over the edge of a fall, as what might happen does, as any of the endless variations of what might come true does so, and things fall into being, tumble through the progression of existing in time.
Painting creates silence. You could examine the objects themselves, the actors in a Dutch still life—this knobbed beaker, this pewter salver, this knife—and, lovely as all antique utilitarian objects are, they are not, would not be, poised on the edge these same things inhabit when they are represented.
These things exist—if indeed they are still around at all—in time. It is the act of painting them that makes them perennially poised, an emergent truth about to be articulated, a word waiting to be spoken. Single word that has been forming all these years in the light on the knife’s pearl handle, in the drops of moisture on nearly translucent grapes: At the end of time, will that word be said?
”
”
Mark Doty (Still Life with Oysters and Lemon: On Objects and Intimacy)
“
Have you heard the saying by the actor Lily Tomlin, ‘The road to success is always under construction’? I like this concept. My spiritual journey has certainly been messy and uncomfortable at times. I had several emotional breakdowns before experiencing an emotional breakthrough. In essence, layers of deep denial and negative thought-patterns had to be unravelled and replaced with new and greater self-awareness.
”
”
Christopher Dines (Super Self Care: How to Find Lasting Freedom from Addiction, Toxic Relationships and Dysfunctional Lifestyles)
“
Ogling Douglas' wife, who looked trampily deep into bipolar meds & high-end anti-aging crêmes, Jerzy thought: Now that is a hot fuck. He wondered if Douglas got his C by being wayback viral throatstroked by papilloma.....seems like a person would have to go down on a boatload of broads to get HPV in the gullet (well, do the math), if the actor scarfed half as much pussy as dimpled dad kirk-King Leer, Kirk the lyin' King-then he just might have qualified.
”
”
Bruce Wagner (Dead Stars)
“
[To actor Strother Martin] You know, as character actors we play all kinds of sex psychos, nuts, creeps, perverts, and weirdos. And we laugh it off, saying what the hell it's just a character. But deep down inside, it's you, baby.
”
”
Lee Marvin
“
Good writers always have a strong sense of who they are and who they are not. Like actors, their boundaries are strong, and fluid. They have a deep understanding of the human condition, and an empathy that is not so diffuse that it is diluted.
”
”
Suzy Davies
“
My basic profession is as an actor, and I have learnt much about life through working as an actor. Working as an actor is really a spiritual profession, since it means to create life on the stage. It means to play a role totally, while at the same time you know deep down inside yourself that you are not the role that you are playing. Working as an actor gave me early a spiritual discipline, which taught me a lot about awareness and meditation. Life is also about learning to play different roles, and learning to change between different roles with the same easiness that you change shirt.
”
”
Swami Dhyan Giten
“
The man was transparent—if he looked into his eyes long enough, Kafuku thought, he could probably see the wall behind him. There was nothing warped, nothing nasty. Hardly the type to dig a deep hole at night and wait for someone to fall in. But neither, in all likelihood, was he a man destined to achieve greatness as an actor.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (Men Without Women)
“
Putin is a rational actor inside a bunker, so deep, so deprived of light and information, that he is pulling levers without understanding how the modern world is responding, without understanding that some of his levers at least are no longer working, without understanding that invading countries at peace is what the Nazis did.
”
”
John Sweeney (Killer in the Kremlin)
“
The planetary perspective provides a kind of out of body experience for us—hovering in orbit and watching ourselves sleepwalk through a slow disaster of our own making. Now, can this experience help us to shake ourselves awake? For virtually all of its history Earth has evolved without us, and we have always seen ourselves as autonomous actors on a passive planetary backdrop. But now we are beginning to see that our futures—those of humanity and of planet Earth—are tightly conjoined. If human civilization is to persist and thrive we will need a completely different view of our planet, and of ourselves, in which we acknowledge both our deep dependence and our increasing influence.
”
”
David Grinspoon (Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet's Future)
“
Malina and Parsons are of particular interest in this book’s research, as Ghislaine Maxwell’s brother-in-law Roger Malina’s father was this very man—Frank Malina—one of the original “Rocketmen” from the “Suicide Squad” and a good friend of Jack Parsons, whose own iconoclastic interests in turn involved devotion to the dark teachings of Aleister
”
”
Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
“
plausible. He killed her, then panicked and tried to dismember her body to get rid of it. But the dog interrupted him. He decided to pretend he had been asleep through the whole thing. When we arrived, the dad was asleep when Joel went up, but he might have pretended to be. Joel said he seemed out of it, though. Might just be a good actor.” “It’s all a lot of theories so far,” I said with a deep exhale. It was going to be a long day for me. I was so grateful I had my parents nearby. I grew up in Ft. Lauderdale, further down south, but when I left for college, my parents wanted to try something new. They bought a motel by the beach in Cocoa Beach a few years after I left the house. The place was a haven for the kids. They never missed me while
”
”
Willow Rose (Eleven, Twelve ... Dig and Delve (Rebekka Franck #6))
“
IN HIS PRESENCE, I FEEL OUR AXIS RECALIBRATING. Where North was once —and for eons — the assigned pull of the Earth, in Sunny’s universe, all magnets drive us South. Or West. Or deep into the core because that’s more interesting to him. He’s a world-creator; he doesn’t walk from A to B the way most humans do, seeing what’s provided then dealing with, lamenting or pondering it. He creates what he wants and when you walk a path with him, you get shaped and reinvented, too. Not against your will, but more in tune with aspects of it, unfolding into the potential of a secret craving, fully funded.
~Amie, getting to know Sunny in The LOOK
”
”
Laurie Perez (The Look of Amie Martine)
“
We celebrate the dedication of Olympic athletes who diet and train and exercise daily for years in order to prepare for the games. They give up not only physical comfort but also any hope of a normal social and family life. When police officers or firefighters die, often thousands turn out for their funerals. We honor our children who die in military service in much the same way—often arranging public ceremonies and holidays. We expect television celebrities such as actors, news correspondents and musicians to sacrifice any kind of normal life in order to entertain us around the clock—and they are paid millions of dollars to do so. The names of astronauts become household words because they risk their lives in order to forward the conquest of space. But the minute a Christian young person starts to fast and pray, consider the mission field or give up career or romance for Christ—concerned counselors, family and friends will spend hours trying to keep him or her from “going off the deep end on this religious stuff.” Even devout Christian parents will oppose Christian service when their own son or daughter is about to give up all for Christ. Discipline, pain, sacrifice and suffering are rewarded with fame and fortune in the world. Why then do we refuse to accept it as a normal part of giving spiritual birth in the kingdom of our Lord?
”
”
K.P. Yohannan (The Road to Reality: Coming Home to Jesus from the Unreal World)
“
In a democratic society, presumably, the public business is carried on in conversation with the actual values of people who are the society. In a survey of North Carolinians in the 1970s, seventy-four percent agree with the statement: "Human rights come from God and not merely from laws." . . . North Carolinians may be more "traditional" than other Americans on these scores, although there is no reason to assume that. One suspects, rather, that there is among Americans a deep and widespread uneasiness about the denial of the obvious. The obvious is that, in some significant sense, this is, as the Supreme Court said in 1931, a Christian people. The popular intuition is that this fact ought, somehow, to make a difference. It is not an embarrassment to be denied or disguised. It is an inescapable part of what Bickel calls the "tradition of our society and of kindred societies that have gone before." Not only is it tradition in the sense of historic past; it is demonstrably the present source of moral vitalities by which we measure our virtues and hypocrisies.
The notion that this is a secular society is relatively new. . . . In a democratic society, state and society must draw from the same moral well. In addition, because transcendence abhors a vacuum, the state that styles itself as secular will almost certainly succumb to secularism. Because government cannot help but make moral judgments of an ultimate nature, it must, if it has in principle excluded identifiable religion, make those judgments by "secular" reasoning that is given the force of religion. . . .
More than that, the notion of the secular state can become the prelude to totalitarianism. That is, once religion is reduced to nothing more than privatized conscience, the public square has only two actors in it--the state and the individual. Religion as a mediating structure--a community that generates and transmits moral values--is no longer available as a countervailing force to the ambitions of the state. . . . No, the chief attack is upon the institutions that bear and promulgate belief in a transcendent reality by which the state can be called to judgment. Such institutions threaten the totalitarian proposition that everything is to be within the state, nothing is to be outside the state.
”
”
Richard John Neuhaus (The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America)
“
Lovers of God possess intense concentration. In prayer their attention rivets itself so completely onto God that nothing can tear it away. Even a suggestion of the divine may draw them into a higher state of consciousness. Occasionally this can be somewhat inconvenient. Sri Ramakrishna once went to see a religious drama produced by his disciple. The curtain went up and a character started singing the praises of the Lord. Sri Ramakrishna immediately began to enter the supreme state of consciousness. The stage faded; the actors and actresses faded. As only a great mystic can, he uttered a protest: "I come here, Lord, to see a play staged by my disciple, and you send me into ecstasy. I won't let it happen!" And he started saying over and over, "Money... money...money," so as to keep some awareness of the temporal world.
”
”
Eknath Easwaran (Passage Meditation: Bringing the Deep Wisdom of the Heart into Daily Life (Essential Easwaran Library))
“
The life of man is a story; an adventure story; and in our vision the same is true even of the story of God. The Catholic faith is the reconciliation because it is the realisation both of mythology and philosophy. It is a story and in that sense one of a hundred stories; only it is a true story. It is a philosophy and in that sense one of a hundred philosophies; only it is a philosophy that is like life. But above all, it is a reconciliation because it is something that can only be called the philosophy of stories. That normal narrative instinct which produced all the fairy tales is something that is neglected by all the philosophies—except one. The Faith is the justification of that popular instinct; the finding of a philosophy for it or the analysis of the philosophy in it. Exactly as a man in an adventure story has to pass various tests to save his life, so the man in this philosophy has to pass several tests and save his soul. In both there is an idea of free will operating under conditions of design; in other words, there is an aim and it is the business of a man to aim at it; we therefore watch to see whether he will hit it. Now this deep and democratic and dramatic instinct is derided and dismissed in all the other philosophies. For all the other philosophies avowedly end where they begin; and it is the definition of a story that it ends differently; that it begins in one place and ends in another. From Buddha and his wheel to Akhen Aten and his disc, from Pythagoras with his abstraction of number to Confucius with his religion of routine, there is not one of them that does not in some way sin against the soul of a story. There is none of them that really grasps this human notion of the tale, the test, the adventure; the ordeal of the free man. Each of them starves the story-telling instinct, so to speak, and does something to spoil human life considered as a romance; either by fatalism (pessimist or optimist) and that destiny that is the death of adventure; or by indifference and that detachment that is the death of drama; or by a fundamental scepticism that dissolves the actors into atoms; or by a materialistic limitation blocking the vista of moral consequences; or a mechanical recurrence making even moral tests monotonous; or a bottomless relativity making even practical tests insecure. There is such a thing as a human story; and there is such a thing as the divine story which is also a human story; but there is no such thing as a Hegelian story or a Monist story or a relativist story or a determinist story; for every story, yes, even a penny dreadful or a cheap novelette, has something in it that belongs to our universe and not theirs. Every short story does truly begin with creation and end with a last judgement.
”
”
G.K. Chesterton (The Everlasting Man)
“
We live in a world where we have to sacrifice our comfort for the sake of others. Where we have to go an extra mile to meet others' needs. Where we have to dig deep in our resources to please others.
I have gone out of my comfort zone for some people. Some people have gone out of their comfort zone for me. And I'm grateful.
It's life. It's a common thing.
There is no right or wrong to this behaviour. We do it because either we want to or that we must.
By the way, our self-sacrificing service can be unhealthy to us.
Some people burn themselves down trying to keep others warm. Some break their backs trying to carry the whole world. Some break their bones trying to bend backwards for their loved ones.
All these sacrifices are, sometimes, not appreciated. Usually we don't thank the people who go out of their comfort zone to make us feel comfortable.
Again, although it's not okay, it's a common thing. It's another side of life.
To be fair, we must get in touch with our humanity and show gratitude for these sacrifices.
We owe it to so many people. And sometimes we don't even realise it.
Thanks be to God for forgiving our sins — which we repeat.
Thanks to our world leaders and the activists for the work that they do to make our economic life better.
Thanks to our teachers, lecturers, mentors, and role models for shaping our lives.
Thanks to our parents for their continual sacrifices.
Thanks to our friends for their solid support.
Thanks to our children, nephews, and nieces. They allow us to practise discipline and leadership on them.
Thanks to the doctors and nurses who save our lives daily.
Thanks to safety professionals and legal representatives. They protect us and our possessions.
Thanks to our church leaders, spiritual gurus and guides, and meditation partners. They shape our spiritual lives.
Thanks to musicians, actors, writers, poets, and sportspeople for their entertainment.
Thanks to everyone who contributes in a positive way to our society. Whether recognised or not.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!
”
”
Mitta Xinindlu
“
When they were first casting for my part in the movie, the producers asked if I had any suggestions.
“I’ll tell you what I don’t want,” I said. “I don’t want someone in their early twenties who’s never had any heartbreak or gone through anything difficult.”
I heard later that Clint thought he’d have a hard time casting me. I hope that was because I’m such a complex but soulful person, though you never know.
When he settled on Sienna Miller, he hit it on the head. The first time I talked to her, it felt like I was speaking to an old girlfriend. She got everything. Whether I explained how it felt the first time Chris kissed me, or how it felt when he held me, she completely understood. She’s a woman with deep empathy as well as a great actor.
My part--her part--in the movie isn’t very big, but it’s important, and I felt it was in good hands. She knows what it’s like to be a mom, and she knows how it feels to worry about someone and to live through situations you can’t control.
Still, I remained nervous: What if, despite all their efforts, they didn’t manage to convey what Chris was all about? The director, the actors, they were all at the top of their field, but that was no guarantee that they could pull it off.
”
”
Taya Kyle (American Wife: Love, War, Faith, and Renewal)
“
She was interviewing one of my favorite television actors, Don Johnson of Miami Vice. As he reclined on a couch in his lovely home, Don told Barbara about the joys and difficulties in his life. He talked of past struggles with drug and alcohol abuse and work addiction. Then he spoke of his relationships with women—how exciting and attractive he found them. I could see his energy rise and his breath quicken as he spoke. An air of intoxication seemed to fill the room. Don said his problem was he liked women too much and found it hard to be with one special partner over a long period. He would develop a deep friendship and intimacy, but then his eyes would wander. I thought to myself, this man has been sexually abused! His problems sounded identical to those of adult survivors I counsel in my practice. But then I reconsidered: Maybe I’ve been working too hard. Perhaps I’m imagining a sexual abuse history that isn’t really there. Then it happened. Barbara leaned forward and, with a smile, asked, “Don, is it true that you had your first sexual relationship when you were quite young, about twelve years old, with your seventeen-year-old baby-sitter?” My jaw dropped. Don grinned back at Barbara. He cocked his head to the side; a twinkle came into his blue eyes. “Yeah,” he said, “and I still get excited just thinking about her today.” Barbara showed no alarm. The next day I wrote Barbara Walters a letter, hoping to enlighten her about the sexual abuse of boys. Had Don been a twelve-year-old girl and the baby-sitter a seventeen-year-old boy, we wouldn’t hesitate to call what had happened rape. It would make no difference how cooperative or seemingly “willing” the victim had been. The sexual contact was exploitive and premature, and would have been whether the twelve-year-old was a boy or a girl. This past experience and perhaps others like it may very well be at the root of the troubles Don Johnson has had with long-term intimacy. Don wasn’t “lucky to get a piece of it early,” as some people might think. He was sexually abused and hadn’t yet realized it. Acknowledging past sexual abuse is an important step in sexual healing. It helps us make a connection between our present sexual issues and their original source. Some survivors have little difficulty with this step: They already see themselves as survivors and their sexual issues as having stemmed directly from sexual abuse. A woman who is raped sees an obvious connection if she suddenly goes from having a pleasurable sex life to being terrified of sex. For many survivors, however, acknowledging sexual abuse is a difficult step. We may recall events, but through lack of understanding about sexual abuse may never have labeled those experiences as sexual abuse. We may have dismissed experiences we had as insignificant. We may have little or no memory of past abuse. And we may have difficulty fully acknowledging to ourselves and to others that we were victims. It took me years to realize and admit that I had been raped on a date, even though I knew what had happened and how I felt about it. I needed to understand this was in fact rape and that I had been a victim. I needed to remember more and to stop blaming myself before I was able to acknowledge my experience as sexual abuse.
”
”
Wendy Maltz (The Sexual Healing Journey: A Guide for Survivors of Sexual Abuse)
“
We cannot provide a definition of those products from which the age takes it name, the feuilletons. They seem to have formed an uncommonly popular section of the daily newspapers, were produced by the millions, and were a major source of mental pabulum for the reader in want of culture.
They reported on, or rather "chatted" about, a thousand-and-one items of knowledge. The cleverer writers poked fun at their own work. Many such pieces are so incomprehensible that they can only be viewed as self-persiflage on the part of the authors.
In some periods interviews with well-known personalities on current problems were particularly popular. Noted chemists or piano virtuosos would be queried about politics, for example, or popular actors, dancers, gymnasts, aviators, or even poets would be drawn out on the benefits and drawbacks of being a bachelor, or on the presumptive causes of financial crises, and so on.
All that mattered in these pieces was to link a well-known name with a subject of current topical interest.
It is very hard indeed for us to put ourselves in the place of those people so that we can truly understand them. But the great majority, who seem to have been strikingly fond of reading, must have accepted all these grotesque things with credulous earnestness.
If a famous painting changed owners, if a precious manuscript was sold at auction, if an old palace burned down, the readers of many thousands of feature articles at once learned the facts.
What is more, on that same day or by the next day at the latest they received an additional dose of anecdotal, historical, psychological, erotic, and other stuff on the catchword of the moment.
A torrent of zealous scribbling poured out over every ephemeral incident, and in quality, assortment, and phraseology all this material bore the mark of mass goods rapidly and irresponsibly turned out.
Incidentally, there appear to have been certain games which were regular concomitants of the feature article. The readers themselves took the active role in these games, which put to use some of their glut of information fodder.
Thousands upon thousands spent their leisure hours sitting over squares and crosses made of letters of the alphabet, filling in the gaps according to certain rules.
But let us be wary of seeing only the absurd or insane aspect of this, and let us abstain from ridiculing it. For these people with their childish puzzle games and their cultural feature articles were by no means innocuous children or playful Phaeacians.
Rather, they dwelt anxiously among political, economic, and moral ferments and earthquakes, waged a number of frightful wars and civil wars, and their little cultural games were not just charming, meaningless childishness.
These games sprang from their deep need to close their eyes and flee from unsolved problems and anxious forebodings of doom into an imaginary world as innocuous as possible.
They assiduously learned to drive automobiles, to play difficult card games and lose themselves in crossword puzzles--for they faced death, fear, pain, and hunger almost without defenses, could no longer accept the consolations of the churches, and could obtain no useful advice from Reason.
These people who read so many articles and listened to so many lectures did not take the time and trouble to strengthen themselves against fear, to combat the dread of death within themselves; they moved spasmodically on through life and had no belief in a tomorrow.
”
”
Hermann Hesse
“
The notion that property is the means to all other means was ruled out by the new radicals. The deep seated ressentiment towards private property, indeed towards anything private, blocked the conclusion that follows from any impartial examination of wealth-producing and freedom-favouring mechanisms: an effective world improvement would call for the most general possible propertization. Instead, the political metanoeticians enthused over general dispossession, akin to the founders of Christian orders who wanted to own everything communally and nothing individually. The most important insight into the dynamics of economic modernization remained inaccessible to them: money created by lending on property is the universal means of world improvement. They are all the blinder to the fact that for the meantime, only the modern tax state, the anonymous hyper-billionaire, can act as a general world-improver, naturally in alliance with the local meliorists - not only because of its traditional school power, but most of all thanks to its redistributive power, which took on unbelievable proportions in the course of the twentieth century. The current tax state, for its part, can only survive as long as it is based on a property economy whose actors put up no resistance when half of their total product is taken away, year after year, by the very visible hand of the national treasury for the sake of communal tasks. What the un-calm understands least of all is the simple fact that when government expenditures constitute almost 50 per cent of the gross national product, this fulfills the requirements of actually existing liberal-fiscal semi-socialism, regardless of what label is used to describe this situation - whether people call it the New Deal, 'social market economy' or 'neoliberalism'. What the system lacks for total perfection is a homogeneous worldwide tax sphere and the long-overdue propertization of the impoverished world.
”
”
Peter Sloterdijk (You Must Change Your Life)
“
Mystery is the sugar in the cup,' said the Doctor. She picked up the container of white crystals the delicatessen had included in the picnic basket and poured a large dollop into her cognac.
'I don’t think I’d do that, Gunilla,' said Darcourt.
'Nobody wants you to do it, Simon. I am doing it, and that’s enough. That is the curse of life—when people want everybody to do the same wise, stupid thing. Listen: Do you want to know what life is? I’ll tell you. Life is a drama.'
'Shakespeare was ahead of you, Gunilla,' said Darcourt. '"All the world’s a stage,"' he declaimed.
'Shakespeare had the mind of a grocer,' said Gunilla. 'A poet, yes, but the soul of a grocer. He wanted to please people.'
'That was his trade,' said Darcourt. 'And it’s yours, too. Don’t you want this opera to please people?'
'Yes, I do. But that is not philosophy. Hoffmann was no philosopher. Now be quiet, everybody, and listen, because this is very important. Life is a drama. I know. I am a student of the divine Goethe, not that grocer Shakespeare. Life is a drama. But it is a drama we have never understood and most of us are very poor actors. That is why our lives seem to lack meaning and we look for meaning in toys—money, love, fame. Our lives seem to lack meaning but'—the Doctor raised a finger to emphasize her great revelation—'they don’t, you know.' She seemed to be having some difficulty in sitting upright, and her natural pallor had become ashen.
'You’re off the track, Nilla,' said Darcourt. 'I think we all have a personal myth. Maybe not much of a myth, but anyhow a myth that has its shape and its pattern somewhere outside our daily world.'
'This is all too deep for me,' said Yerko. 'I am glad I am a Gypsy and do not have to have a philosophy and an explanation for everything. Madame, are you not well?'
Too plainly the Doctor was not well. Yerko, an old hand at this kind of illness, lifted her to her feet and gently, but quickly, took her to the door—the door to the outside parking lot. There were terrible sounds of whooping, retching, gagging, and pitiful cries in a language which must have been Swedish. When at last he brought a greatly diminished Gunilla back to the feast, he thought it best to prop her, in a seated position, against the wall. At once she sank sideways to the floor.
'That sugar was really salt,' said Darcourt. 'I knew it, but she wouldn’t listen. Her part in the great drama now seems to call for a long silence.'
'When she comes back to life I shall give her a shot of my personal plum brandy,' said Yerko. 'Will you have one now, Priest Simon?
”
”
Robertson Davies (The Lyre of Orpheus (Cornish Trilogy, #3))
“
There are truths which are best recognized by mediocre heads, because they are most appropriate for them; there are truths which have charm and seductive power only for mediocre minds: — at this very point we are pushed back onto this perhaps unpleasant proposition, since the time the spirit of respectable but mediocre Englishmen — I cite Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer — is successfully gaining pre-eminence in the middle regions of European taste. In fact, who could doubt how useful it is that such spirits rule from time to time? It would be a mistake to think that highly cultivated spirits who fly off to great distances would be particularly skilful at establishing many small, common facts, collecting them, and pushing to a conclusion: — they are, by contrast, as exceptional men, from the very start in no advantageous position vis-à-vis the “rules.”
In the final analysis, they have more to do than merely have knowledge — for they have to be something new, to mean something new, to present new values! The gap between knowing something and being able to do something is perhaps greater as well as more mysterious than people think. It’s possible that the man who can act in the grand style, the creating man, will have to be a person who does not know; whereas, on the other hand, for scientific discoveries of the sort Darwin made a certain narrowness, aridity, and conscientious diligence, in short, something English, may not be an unsuitable arrangement. Finally we should not forget that the English with their profoundly average quality have already once brought about a collective depression of the European spirit.
What people call “modern ideas” or “the ideas of the eighteenth century” or even “French ideas” — in other words, what the German spirit has risen against with a deep disgust — were English in origin. There’s no doubt of that. The French have been only apes and actors of these ideas, their best soldiers, as well, and at the same time unfortunately their first and most complete victims. For with the damnable Anglomania of “modern ideas” the âme française [French soul] has finally become so thin and emaciated that nowadays we remember almost with disbelief its sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its profoundly passionate power, its resourceful nobility. But with our teeth we must hang on to the following principle of historical fairness and defend it against the appearance of the moment: European noblesse [nobility] — in feeling, in taste, in customs, in short, the word taken in every higher sense — is the work and invention of France; European nastiness, the plebeian quality of modern ideas, the work of England.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil)
“
There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr Gray. All influence is immoral — immoral from the scientific point of view.'
'Why?'
'Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly — that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion — these are the two things that govern us. And yet —'
'Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a good boy,' said the painter, deep in his work, and conscious only that a look had come into the lad's face that he had never seen there before.
'And yet,' continued Lord Henry, in his low, musical voice, and with that graceful wave of the hand that always was so characteristic of him, and that he had even in his Eton days, 'I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream — I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediævalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal — to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame—
”
”
Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
“
A good actor,' said Sunay in a light theatrical tone, 'is a man who represents the sediment, the unexplored and unexplained powers that have drifted down the centuries. He takes the lessons he has gleaned and hides them deep inside himself. His self-mastery is awesome; never does he bare his heart; no one may know how powerful he is until he enters on to the stage. All his life, he travels down unfamiliar roads, to perform at the most out-of-the-way theatres in the most godforsaken town, and everywhere he goes, he searches for a voice that will grant him genuine freedom. If he is so fortunate as to find that voice, he must embrace it fearlessly and follow it to the end.
”
”
Orhan Pamuk (Snow)
“
From the smoothness of their skin, the length of their hemlines, the banality of their song lyrics and sitcom plots, these young stars embody an ideal of teenage innocence that adults are grateful to embrace. For as many seasons as the illusion can be maintained they remain, at least on screen, uncomplicated, untroubled good girls on the verge of, but never actually awakening to, their sexuality.
There is a lot of money to be made and a lot of parental anxiety to be tapped by walking that line.
There is also a lot of fury unleashed at those who step across it. When young stars pose semi-nude or get caught drinking they threaten the notion that our own daughter's coming of age could be effortless. Suddenly the role models, who perpetuated that myth, become the vector of our fears. The betrayal feels personal and cuts deep.
”
”
Peggy Orenstein (Don't Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life)
“
Crime Classics grew out of a long-standing and deep interest of actor-director Elliott Lewis in history’s great murder cases. Lewis had compiled an extensive library of true crime cases, often primary source material dating from the 17th century. He decided to re-create not only the facts of the crimes but also the times in which they had occurred. This would encompass the sounds of an Edinburgh street in the 1830s as well as the dialects, the attitudes, and the way people thought in that distant time. Writers Morton Fine and David Friedkin would dramatize lightly: their routine (as described to Radio Life) was more a matter of discussion than writing. With Lewis, they would comb through the original periodicals, seldom rewriting but making “verbal revisions” as they went. Once they got an outline down, the scripting was
”
”
John Dunning (On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio)
“
I don’t drink alcohol even when I’m not in the family way. Never have.”
“Never?”
“Nope.”
“Never drank once in all your life? That’s impossible.”
“It’s partly a religious decision. I’m a Mormon. From Utah, you know.”
He stared, mouth slightly agape. “How many wives does your husband know.”have?”
“Oh please. Mormons aren’t polygamists.”
“Yes they are,” the driver piped up. He wore one of those cliché chauffeur hats low over his eyes. “Everyone knows. The men have loads of wives, make them all wear bonnets.”
Becky sighed and gave her speech. “Some Mormons were polygamists in the nineteenth century, but they gave up the practice in 1890. There are small religious groups around the Utah area who practice polygamy, but they have nothing to do with the LDS Church.”
“That’s not what I saw on TV. Mormons, they said. Polygamists. Loads of ’em.”
“I am a Mormon, from Utah, lived there my entire thirty-four years, and I’ve never met a polygamist.”
The driver straightened the Mets plush baseball that dangled from the rearview mirror. “You must not get out much.”
“Yes, that must be it.”
“It’s tragic really,” Felix said. “She’s agoraphobic and hadn’t been out of the house in, what was it, fifteen years?”
“Sixteen,” Becky said.
“Right, sixteen. Last time was when Charles and Diana wed.”
“You’re thinking of the last time I leaned out the window. The last time I actually left the house was for a sale at Sears.”
“Of course, the day you bought those trousers. Sixteen years later, here she is! And in the same trousers, but still . . . We’re so proud of our little Becky!” Felix patted her head. “You dug deep, but you found the courage to step out of that door.”
“I did like you told me, Felix. I just shut my eyes and chanted, ‘The polygamists are not going to eat me, they’re not going to eat me,’ and I wasn’t afraid anymore.”
“She is a rare example of true bravery. Don’t you agree?”
“Uh, yeah,” said the driver. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks.” Becky smiled politely. “Go Mets.”
The driver snorted.
”
”
Shannon Hale (The Actor and the Housewife)
“
As it had turned out, assembling a crowd of sign-waving supporters for a Donald Trump campaign rally in Manhattan was a tricky task. A few days before the event, the billionaire’s team was reduced to putting out a casting call through a New York–based agency offering fifty bucks to background actors who were willing to wear Trump shirts, carry Trump posters, and cheer Trump on during his big announcement. (“We
”
”
McKay Coppins (The Wilderness: Deep Inside the Republican Party's Combative, Contentious, Chaotic Quest to Take Back the White House)
“
The left-hand path considers the position of humanity as it is; it takes into account the manifest and deep-seated desire of each human being to be a free, empowered, independent actor within his or her world.
”
”
Stephen E. Flowers (Lords of the Left-Hand Path: Forbidden Practices and Spiritual Heresies)
“
What is not taken into account is the motivation of activity. Take for instance a man driven to incessant work by a sense of deep insecurity and loneliness; or another one driven by ambition, or greed for money. In all these cases the person is the slave of a passion, and his activity is in reality a 'passivity' because he is driven; he is the sufferer, not the 'actor.' On the other hand, a man sitting quiet and contemplating, with no purpose or aim except that of experiencing himself and his oneness with the world, is considered to be 'passive,' because he is not 'doing' anything. In reality, this attitude of concentrated meditation is the highest activity there is, an activity of the soul, which is possible only under the condition of inner freedom and independence.
”
”
Erich Fromm (The Art of Loving)
“
Similarly, the Russians discovered, in the 1920s, that an actor ordered to show no emotion as he looks out a window will seem to show any emotion the director wishes, if in the editing we, the audience, see something outside the window. Do we see a dying child? The expressionless actor seems to project grief so deep it cannot find expression yet. A dog playing? The same actor with the same non-expression seems to project quiet amusement . . .
”
”
Robert Anton Wilson (Cosmic Trigger III: My Life After Death)
“
Just as a particular racism can only really be defined by the victims of that racism, the deep truth of identity is only available to those who live that identity. Casting a non-minority actor to mimic that identity feels, to the progressive eye, like impersonation, and impersonation carries with it an element of mockery: or at least, it is reductive, lessening the complexity of that experience by channeling it through an actor who hasn’t lived it.*
”
”
David Baddiel (Jews Don't Count)
“
Simon Helberg: We rarely ever went to producers or writers with any kind of concerns, especially story concerns. That might have been the only time. It wasn’t even a deep concern. It was more to hear what Molaro was thinking and to voice what we were slightly wary of, which was potentially upending the dynamic of what existed. How would we sit around and have Chinese food? What happens to our role in the group? Not from an Oh God, I’m going to be written off the show vein but from a place of loving what we had created on the show. And was there going to be a real baby on set all the time? I leave my house in real life where there are babies, and this is the one place there aren’t babies, and now we’re going to have an actor baby? That’s a nightmare! [Laughs] So there was some of that, too.
”
”
Jessica Radloff (The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series)
“
When Sasha was ten she had such an intense crush on Harrison Ford that sometimes she would lie in bed and cry with deep sorrow that they would never be together. She knew it was weird. He was a grown man and a famous actor and she was a child with a dawning awareness that little hairs were growing up and down her legs, and it all compounded into a tragedy so devastating that she could barely stand to watch him in movies when anyone else was in the room. Her brothers obviously noticed her mooning after him and taunted her mercilessly. Later in life, when she saw in some celebrity magazine at the nail salon that Harrison got an earring, she felt embarrassed all over again that she had been obsessed with someone so old.
”
”
Jenny Jackson (Pineapple Street)
“
While it may seem implausible that the US could have orchestrated the OPEC crisis, there is much evidence to support such a conclusion. For starters, all the key Middle Eastern actors in the affair—Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran—were US allies. Given the disparity in power, it would be more precise to describe them as client states. Client states do not harm the interests of their patron state.
”
”
Aaron Good (American Exception: Empire and the Deep State)
“
*I’ve always had an alternative reading of the Body Snatchers movies (Siegel’s, Kaufman’s, and Ferrara’s). Each movie presents the Pod People in a sinister light. Yet really, almost nothing they do on screen really bears out this sinister interpretation. If you’re one who believes that your soul is what makes you you, then I suppose the Pod People are murdering the Earthlings they duplicate and replace. However, if you’re more of the mind that it is your intellect and your consciousness that make you who you are, then the Pod People transformation is closer to a rebirth than a murder. You’re reborn as straight intellect, with a complete possession of your past and your abilities, but unburdened by messy human emotions. You also possess a complete fidelity to your fellow beings and a total commitment to the survival of your species. Are they inhuman? Of course, they’re vegetables. But the movies try to present their lack of humanity (they don’t have a sense of humor, they’re unmoved when a dog is hit by a car) as evidence of some deep-seated sinisterness. That’s a rather species-centric point of view. As human beings it may be our emotions that make us human, but it’s a stretch to say it’s what makes us great. Along with those positive emotions—love, joy, happiness, amusement—come negative emotions—hate, selfishness, racism, depression, violence, and rage. For instance, with all the havoc that Donald Sutherland causes in the Kaufman version, including the murder of various Pod People, there never is a thought of punishment or vengeance on the Pod People’s part, even though he’s obviously proven himself to be a threat. They just want him to become one of them. Imagine in the fifties, when the Siegel film was made, that instead of some little town in Northern California (Santa Mira) that the aliens took root in, it was a horribly racist, segregated Ku Klux Klan stronghold in the heart of Mississippi. Within weeks the color lines would disappear. Blacks and whites would be working together (in genuine brotherhood) towards a common goal. And humanity would be represented by one of the racist Kluxers whose investigative gaze notices formerly like-minded white folks seemingly enter into a conspiracy with some members of the county’s black community. Now picture his hysterical reaction to it (“Those people are coming after me! They’re not human! You’re next! You’re next!”). *Solving the problems, both large and small, of your actors—lead actors especially—is the job of a film director.
”
”
Quentin Tarantino (Cinema Speculation)
“
Thus, there has been what could he describes as the “conspiracy theory conspiracy” wherein state actors intervene in civil society to help create a prevailing common sense wherein reasonable suspicions of high criminality are reflexively dismissed and stigmatized by our sense-making institutions
”
”
Aaron Good (American Exception: Empire and the Deep State)
“
i. In the new version of my new story, the actor cast in the role of my heart will no longer be asked to play arsonist to crumbled ruins in order to collect on the insurance policy of all she risked in the name of love.
ii. She will also no longer feel the need to erect skyscraper scaffolds to prop up walls too weary to hold the weight of their own aspirations.
iii. Instead, she will plant riotous gardens of wildflowers, sing the shooting stars home to her chest, and discover that the secret to healing has been long naps and deep joy all along.
iv. She will, of course, continue to risk it all for love. Why would she possibly do anything but that?
v. Despite all the burning she has known, despite all the ways the ashes of her hopes have fallen ungracefully from great heights, she has always been born for the rise.
vi. She remembers now that she has never fallen without being caught. My god, her people have such strong arms.
vii. She knows that sometimes, it’s not so much rising as being lifted and held until the singed feathers grow back and the wings are strong enough to spread wide and fly again.
viii. Hands at your back, her dearheart says. She feels them there and knows she is never alone.
ix. Every story that dies gives birth to another. This has been the way of stories since the beginning of time.
x. The actor newly cast in the role of my heart is ready for a new story to begin.
”
”
Jeanette LeBlanc
“
With his bushy mustache and caterpillar eyebrows, Buckner was a dead-ringer for Harry Reems, the porn actor who’d just been convicted in Tennessee in April for conspiracy to distribute obscenity across state lines, thanks to his appearance in 1972’s massively popular Deep Throat; and just like Reems, Buckner felt he was being prevented from making full professional use of his stick.
”
”
Dan Epstein (Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of '76)
“
And Samantha began to look more than half-convinced. “So—I don’t know. I mean, what. I just sit here and like don’t say anything? That’s all?” “That’s all,” I said. I took her hand and looked deep into her eyes. “Please, Samantha,” I said. “For Lily Anne.” Totally shameless, I know, but to my surprise, I found I actually meant it—and even worse, I felt moisture collecting in the corners of my eyes. Perhaps it was just a Method actor moment, but it interfered with my vision and was extremely disconcerting. And,
”
”
Jeff Lindsay (Dexter is Delicious (Dexter, #5))
“
During the first week of filming, it began raining in Tunisia’s Nefta Valley for the first time in seven years and didn’t stop for four days. Equipment and vehicles bogged down in the mud, requiring assistance from the Tunisian army to pull everything out of the muck. It was often cold in the morning and blazing hot by afternoon, and Lucas would begin most days in his brown coat, hands shoved deep in the pockets as he peered through the eyepiece of the camera; as the sun rose higher in the sky, he would shrug off his coat, put on his sunglasses, and direct his actors in a checked work shirt, with a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. When it wasn’t raining, high winds tore up the sets, ripping apart the sandcrawler and blowing one set, as a crew member put it, “halfway to Algeria.”7
”
”
Brian Jay Jones (George Lucas: A Life)
“
What Goodby unveiled at the Crowne Plaza was unlike anything Kalinske and his colleagues had ever seen before. Quick cuts. Crazy zooms. Wild camera angles. It felt less like watching a regular commercial than like fast-forwarding through one on the VCR. Loud punk music. Intense lens flares. Aggressive close-ups. It looked sort of like a music video, but only if that music video was suffering from manic-depression and had just ingested a cocktail of heroin, cocaine, and speed. Weird lighting, unpretty actors, nonlinear storytelling—the whole thing was off-putting, migraine-inducing, and offensive to the senses, but it was absolutely incredible. And to tie it all together, at the end of every spot some maniac shouted, “Sega!” “And just remember,” Goodby said as the video presentation came to an end, “we’re only a short drive away.” He then played a short video clip of himself, Silverstein, and a few other guys whacking golf balls off the roof of their office building. Except whenever they hit the ball, the real reaction shot was replaced with footage of golf balls hitting Sega of America headquarters. During the ground-shaking applause that followed, Nilsen subtly elbowed Kalinske. “What did you think?” Kalinske blinked for a second, then replied, “I think vidspeak just became a dead language. Sorry, hedgy wedgy.” He was practically in a state of shock. This was it—everything he had wanted. The tone was edgy, but not too sharp. It cut, but only deep enough to leave a cool scar.
”
”
Blake J. Harris (Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation)
“
Acting in its purest form is an urge from deep in the human psyche to celebrate our aliveness, to act our dreams and fantasies in a public display of our most private selves.
”
”
Darryl Hickman (The Unconscious Actor®: Out of Control, In Full Command®)
“
And indeed today as it struggles with its financial crisis, the central issue in Greek politics remains resentment of the influence of Brussels, Germany, the International Monetary Fund, and other external actors, which are seen as pulling strings behind the back of a weak Greek government. Although there is considerable distrust of government in American political culture, by contrast, the basic legitimacy of democratic institutions runs very deep. Distrust of government is related to the Greek inability to collect taxes. Americans loudly proclaim their dislike of taxes, but when Congress mandates a tax, the government is energetic in enforcement. Moreover, international surveys suggest that levels of tax compliance are reasonably high in the United States; higher, certainly, than most European countries on the Mediterranean. Tax evasion in Greece is widespread, with restaurants requiring cash payments, doctors declaring poverty-line salaries, and unreported swimming pools owned by asset-hiding citizens dotting the Athenian landscape. By one account, Greece’s shadow economy—unreported income hidden from the tax authorities—constitutes 29.6 percent of total GDP.24 A second factor has to do with the late arrival of capitalism in Greece. The United States was an early industrializer; the private sector and entrepreneurship remained the main occupations of most Americans. Greece urbanized and took on other trappings of a modern society early on, but it failed to build a strong base of industrial employment. In the absence of entrepreneurial opportunities, Greeks sought jobs in the state sector, and politicians seeking to mobilize votes were happy to oblige. Moreover, the Greek pattern of urbanization in which whole villages moved from the countryside preserved intact rural patronage networks, networks that industry-based development tended to dissolve.
”
”
Francis Fukuyama (Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy)
“
Before we even met, I knew that if there was ever an actor to play my father, Tony Curtis, it would be John Stamos. They have the same comic energy, captivating flair, sharp humor, keen intelligence, childlike passion, and dare I say, deep sadness behind the mask of a ridiculously handsome man.
-Jamie Lee Curtis
”
”
John Stamos (If You Would Have Told Me)
“
Paul Robeson, Jr. had expressed a very deep truth when he said, “If you scratch the surface of a right-winger you often find a racist.
”
”
Mike Farrell (Just Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and Activist)
“
The Art of Becoming Who I'm Not
I've mastered the art of mimicry,
Bending and twisting, so you'd see
The person you want, not who I am,
A reflection caught in someone else’s plan.
I wear the masks you’ve tailored tight,
Changing my colours in your light.
But the weight of this act has grown too vast—
I’ve lost myself in shadows cast.
You think you know me, but it's a lie,
A crafted version built to satisfy.
I shape-shift, I mold, I rearrange,
A puzzle of fragments that feel so strange.
In your eyes, I’m whole, I’m sound,
Yet inside, I’m nowhere to be found.
A chameleon lost in its own disguise,
Drowning beneath layers of compromise.
Who am I when the curtains fall?
A hollow echo, nothing at all.
An actor lost in endless roles,
Pieces scattered, shattered souls.
So if you think you know my face,
Remember, it’s just another place
Where I’ve hidden, tried to belong—
But this pretence has gone on too long.
I’ve forgotten who I used to be,
Caught in the trap of who you see.
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”
Chloe Holland Dicks
“
What seemed like a problem to liberals—the fact that conservatives identify “up,” with the 1 percent, the planter class—was actually a source of pride to the Tea Party people I came to know. It showed you were optimistic, hopeful, a trier. It wasn’t a problem that you seldom looked behind you in line. Why would you want to blame a guy if he got all the way to the top? they wondered. That gaze forward, even when matters seemed hopeless, was a feature of the brave deep story self. But such a self was less and less a source of honor, it seemed. Rising to the fore was another kind of self, a more upper-middle-class cosmopolitan self, with its more dispersed and looser friendship networks, its preparation to compete for entrance to big-name colleges and tough careers that might take a person far from home. Such cosmopolitan selves were directed to the task of cracking into the global elite. They made do with living farther away from their roots. They were ready to go when opportunity knocked. They took great pride in liberal causes—human rights, racial equality, and the fight against global warming. Many upper-middle-class liberals, white and black, didn’t notice what, emotionally speaking, their kind of self was displacing. For along with blue-collar jobs, a blue-collar way of life was going out of fashion, and with it, the honor attached to a rooted self and pride in endurance—the deep story self. The liberal upper-middle class saw community as insularity and closed-mindedness rather than as a source of belonging and honor. And they didn’t see that, given trends “behind the brow of the hill,” their turn to be displaced might be next. For the Tea Party around the country, the shifting moral qualifications for the American Dream had turned them into strangers in their own land, afraid, resentful, displaced, and dismissed by the very people who were, they felt, cutting in line. The undeclared class war transpiring on a different stage, with different actors, and evoking a different notion of fairness was leading those engaged in it to blame the “supplier” of the imposters—the federal government.
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Arlie Russell Hochschild (Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right)
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Along with becoming more conscious of the shadow, another integral aspect of Jung’s method of treatment was helping his patients find a meaning to their lives. For Jung believed that when stuck in a deep depression, or consumed by an anxiety disorder, to be cured necessitates discovering a “role as one of the actors in the divine drama of life” (Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life).
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Academy of Ideas
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Get the work rolling, involve actors contractually, build sets, collect props and costumes, expose negative, and so get the studio in deep. Once money in some significant amount had been spent, it would be difficult for Harry [Cohn, president of Columbia Pictures] to do anything except scream and holler. If he suspended a film that had been shooting for weeks, he’d be in for an irretrievable loss, not only of money but of ‘face.’ The thing to do was to get the film going.
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Bent Flyvbjerg (How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between)
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At the heart of Stoicism lies a deep fatalism. The universe follows a script not written by you. And as much as you aspire to one day direct, forget about it. You are an actor. Embrace your role. “Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan,” says Epictetus.
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Eric Weiner (The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers)
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Geographical cures rarely work. You can extricate yourself from a place, but you cannot escape your own thoughts. Move somewhere to get away from an uncomfortable situation, and you will likely recreate the drama with a few set of actors playing the same roles. Heal your mind, and you are free anywhere.
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Alan Cohen (A Deep Breath of Life: Daily Inspiration for Heart-Centered Living)
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A voice close to his ear said, “You were the one who warned me.” The accent was educated, the voice deep, with an actor’s gift for measured tone and timbre. It sent Khat right over the edge into homicidal fury. His own voice tight with suppressed rage, he said, “I swear I’ll never do it again.
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Martha Wells (City of Bones)
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Actors are so filled with wonder and imagination that when they get it, they get it real quick, no matter how strange something is; they get it, and their talent is to make it real from a deep place. When that happens it's really, really beautiful.
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David Lynch
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Actors are so filled with wonder and imagination and they get it so quick, no matter how strange something is. They get it, and their talent is to make it real from a deep place. When that happens it's really, really beautiful.
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David Lynch
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Actors aren't particularly deep thinkers. I'll simply tell the truth. That always confuses them.
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Gilbert Morris (The Mermaid in the Basement (Lady Trent Mystery, #1))
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Everyone thinks deep in their hearts (at least when they're young, or have the mind of a young fool) that they can act, simply because the have deep emotions coursing through them all the time (haha, "they" "them" "the individual") not recognizing that it's the absence of those things that creates a good performance, that their emotions (fear, doubt, anxiety, arrogance) will override their performance. Or maybe we all think we would make good actors because we lie, because our lives our lies.
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Halle Butler (The New Me)
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Connecting dots between Andrija Puharich, who was almost certainly a CIA asset during much of the time he conducted parapsychological research, and the volunteers of his Round Table and Lab Nine, we can link the United States government (and specifically the U.S. Army and CIA during the period of mind-control research projects like BLUEBIRD and MKULTRA),
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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If readers want to know more about the unnerving art collections of these depraved minds,
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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Like his namesake, this totem-idol crafted by artist Bart Kresa conquers
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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Whatever we once were,” Obama says on the video, “we’re no longer a Christian nation.”[464] He added, “Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific values.… This is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do.”[465
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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deity about whom Rudyard Kipling wrote the short story, “The Mark of the Beast.” For Obama, who grew up in a household
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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Baby Boomers listened attentively to pastors telling them to focus on human potential and the “god within us
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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Bahgwan Shree Rajneesh had become well known throughout India and other regions as a guru and philosopher who presented
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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On May 14, 2019, a flood of emotion swept across the state of Alabama as Gov. Kay Ivey signed into law a bill banning abortion except in the case of the mother’s life being in danger. This includes cases of rape and incest.[611
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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Cholera, Ebola, MERS, SARS, polio, typhus, and even leprosy can mingle amongst an influx of migrants—be they legal or not. However, a massive onslaught at our borders on the order of magnitude that the Dream Act encourages opens the floodgates to whatever pathogens ride within the bloodstreams and in the gastrointestinal tracts of these dreamers. Sadly, our border facilities and personnel are strained to
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers [archons] against the authorities [exousia], against the cosmic powers [kosmokrators] over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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opened this segment with lyrics from John Lennon’s song Imagine. These lyrics expose the subtle plan of the shadows. We’re to imagine a world without country, nothing to live or die for, and no religion. That, my friends, is the essence of chaos magic. Imagine. Use your mind to conjure up reality; for nothing is real if we do not think it is real.
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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shadows don’t want us to do it. They’re relying on us to remain complicit and complacent and asleep. They want us focused on
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.[724]
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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things as talking to the public-school teacher to explain why our children will no longer attend explicit sex-education classes. We can call the local broadcasting channel and explain why we will no longer support PBS if they air programs vilifying our religious faith. We can
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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The Big Lie: This is a propaganda technique and logical trick (fallacy). The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book, Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” The source of the big lie technique is in a particular passage, taken from chapter 10 of James Murphy’s translation of Mein Kampf. (Adolf Hitler,
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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Ibid. Pollack, Joel. “The Vetting—Exclusive—Obama’s Literary Agent in 1991 Booklet: ‘Born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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Former United Nations General Assembly President John Ashe, who was found with his throat crushed just before he was scheduled to testify with Chinese businessman and codefendant Ng Lap Seng, who was accused of smuggling millions of
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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(including Britain’s Prince Andrew, Joe Biden, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, former Sen. George Mitchell,[329] and numerous others that victims have also named[330]), clergy, and Hollywood insiders who will eventually be arrested
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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Epstein’s Little Saint James “Lolita” island (also known by locals as “Pedophile Island” and “Orgy Island”), where an endless supply of minors was transported by a team of child abductors and forced to partake in debauched ceremonies involving
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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Jewish tradition holds that Noah allowed a seemingly repentant Og on the ark.
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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Rabbi Herczeg replied, “No, more like fallen angels. Og had children with Noah’s daughters and they were hybrid giants called the Anakim or Refaim. They existed in ancient times
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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but one shudders to imagine the dark utility such rarified relics might attain in the capable hands of a studied dark magus. It hardly seems surprising that, at least as far as the public is
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
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This work included frescos in the Church of St. Ignatius in Baltimore, Maryland; the Church of St. Aloysius in Washington, DC; and St. Stephen’s Church in Philadelphia—namely, the Crucifixion, the Martydom of St. Stephen, and the Assumption of Mary.
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Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)