Admits His Mistakes Quotes

A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.

But what if I make a mistake?' Will asked. Gilan threw back his head and laughed. 'A mistake? One mistake? You should be so lucky. You'll make dozens! I made four or five on my first day alone! Of course you'll make mistakes. Just don't make any of them twice. If you do mess things up, don't try to hide it. Don't try to rationalize it. Recognize it and admit it and learn from it. We never stop learning, none of us.

A great nation is like a great man: When he makes a mistake, he realizes it. Having realized it, he admits it. Having admitted it, he corrects it. He considers those who point out his faults as his most benevolent teachers. He thinks of his enemy as the shadow that he himself casts.

Arms wrapped around his neck, she kissed his temple. "I'm sorry I scared you." It wasn't the done thing for an archangel to admit fear, but he was hers, and she'd hurt him without meaning to; it was up to her to fix her mistake. His wings shifted, but he didn't extricate their bodies. "I didn't know fear until you, Elena. Use the power wisely.

Until every soul is freely permitted to investigate every book, and creed, and dogma for itself, the world cannot be free. Mankind will be enslaved until there is mental grandeur enough to allow each man to have his thought and say. This earth will be a paradise when men can, upon all these questions differ, and yet grasp each other's hands as friends. It is amazing to me that a difference of opinion upon subjects that we know nothing with certainty about, should make us hate, persecute, and despise each other. Why a difference of opinion upon predestination, or the trinity, should make people imprison and burn each other seems beyond the comprehension of man; and yet in all countries where Christians have existed, they have destroyed each other to the exact extent of their power. Why should a believer in God hate an atheist? Surely the atheist has not injured God, and surely he is human, capable of joy and pain, and entitled to all the rights of man. Would it not be far better to treat this atheist, at least, as well as he treats us? Christians tell me that they love their enemies, and yet all I ask is—not that they love their enemies, not that they love their friends even, but that they treat those who differ from them, with simple fairness. We do not wish to be forgiven, but we wish Christians to so act that we will not have to forgive them. If all will admit that all have an equal right to think, then the question is forever solved; but as long as organized and powerful churches, pretending to hold the keys of heaven and hell, denounce every person as an outcast and criminal who thinks for himself and denies their authority, the world will be filled with hatred and suffering. To hate man and worship God seems to be the sum of all the creeds.

I call it the “Fuck up, own up, and get up” policy. Make a mistake, admit it, and move on. We all screw up, but a man solves his problems. He doesn’t make them worse.

To be sure, the Bishop was a little theatrical in his humility, as he had been in his grandeur; but that was his way, Auclair reflected, and, after all, nobody can help his way. If a man admits his mistakes, that is a great deal...

Most people, if they know they have done wrong, foolishly suppose they can conceal their error by defending it, and finding a justification for it; but in my belief there is only one medicine for an evil deed, and that is for the guilty man to admit his guilt and show that he is sorry for it. Such an admission will make the consequences easier for the victim to bear, and the guilty man himself, by plainly showing his distress at former transgressions, will find good grounds of hope for avoiding similar transgressions in the future.

On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win.

Damon spoke without moving. “I’m not like you.” “You’re not as different from us as you want to think,” Matt said. “Look,” he added, an odd note of challenge in his voice, “I know you killed Mr. Tanner in self-defense, because you told me. And I know you didn’t come here to Fell’s Church because Bonnie’s spell dragged you here, because I sorted the hair and I didn’t make any mistakes. You’re more like us than you admit, Damon. The only thing I don’t know is why you didn’t go into Vickie’s house to help her.” Damon snapped, almost automatically, “Because I wasn’t invited!” Memory swept over Bonnie. Herself standing outside Vickie’s house, Damon standing beside her. Stefan’s voice: Vickie, invite me in. But no one had invited Damon. “But how did Klaus get in, then—?” she began, following her own thoughts. “That was Tyler’s job, I’m sure,” Damon said tersely. “What Tyler did for Klaus in return for learning how to reclaim his heritage. And he must have invited Klaus in before we ever started guarding the house—probably before Stefan and I came to Fell’s Church. Klaus was well prepared. That night he was in the house and the girl was dead before I knew what was happening.” “Why didn’t you call for Stefan?” Matt said. There was no accusation in his voice. It was a simple question. “Because there was nothing he could have done! I knew what you were dealing with as soon as I saw it. An Old One. Stefan would only have gotten himself killed—and the girl was past caring, anyway.” Bonnie heard the thread of coldness in his voice, and when Damon turned back to Stefan and Elena, his face had hardened. It was as if some decision had been made. “You see, I’m not like you,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.” Stefan had still not withdrawn his hand. Neither had Elena.

any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win.

Focus, Wayne,” Wax said. “How are we going to get in? Shall we try a Fat Belt?” “Nah,” Wayne said, “too loud. I think we should do Spoiled Tomato.” “Dangerous,” Wax said, shaking his head. “I’d have to do the placement just right, between the lit perimeter and the shadowed part near the walls.” “You can do it. You make shots like that all the time. Plus, we got this shiny new metalmind, full o’ health waitin’ to be slurped up.” “A mistake could ruin the whole infiltration, healing power or no,” Wax said. “I think we should do Duck Under Clouds instead.” “You kiddin’?” Wayne said. “Didn’t you get shot last time we tried that?” “Kinda,” Wax admitted. MeLaan stared at them, baffled. “Duck under Clouds?” “They get like this,” Marasi said, patting her on the shoulder. “Best not to listen too closely.” “Tube Run,” Wayne said. “No glue.” “Banefielder?” “Too dark.” “Blackwatch Doublestomp.” Wax hesitated. “… The hell is that?” “Just made it up,” Wayne said, grinning. “It’s a nifty code name though, eh?” “Not bad,” Wax admitted. “And what type of plan is it?” “Same as Spoiled Tomato,” Wayne said.

And, beginning to grind his teeth again, Pyotr Petrovich admitted that he'd been a fool--but only to himself, of course.

It takes courage for a man to admit his mistakes. It takes courage, humility, and honesty, and I admire those traits.

His impunity thrills me, I mistake it for fearlessness, though years later he will admit to being afraid all the time.

Any fool can try to defend his or her mistakes—and most fools do—but it raises one above the herd and gives one a feeling of nobility and exultation to admit one’s mistakes.

An Essentialist has the courage and confidence to admit his or her mistakes and uncommit, no matter the sunk costs.

In his essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell describes the relationship between language abuse and political abuse, how corrupt leaders use the passive voice to obscure unspeakable truths and shroud responsibility for their actions. They say, “It must be admitted, now that the report has been reviewed, that mistakes were made,” rather than, “I read the report, and I admit I made a mistake.” Here’s a life tool: always apologize in the active voice.

You did wrong and the wrong doesn't owe you anything. I'm not going to wipe your nose just because you come from a broken home and you think that gives you a license to behave badly. I call it the "Fuck up, own up and get up" policy. Make a mistake, admit it, and move on. We all screw up, but a man solves his problems. He doesn't make them worse.

The most effective cross-examination of Linda Kasabian was surprisingly that of Ronald Hughes. Though this was his first trial, and he frequently made procedural mistakes, Hughes was familiar with the hippie subculture, having been a part of it. He knew about drugs, mysticism, karma, auras, vibrations, and when he questioned Linda about these things, he made her look just a little odd, just a wee bit zingy. He had her admitting that she believed in ESP, that there were times at Spahn when she actually felt she was a witch. Q. "Do you feel that you are controlled by Mr. Manson's vibrations?" A. "Possibly." Q. "Did he put off a lot of vibes?" A. "Sure, he's doing it right now." Hughes "May the record reflect, Your Honor, that Mr. Manson is merely sitting here." Kanarek "He doesn't seem to be vibrating.

Not all residents could stand the pressure. One was simply unable to accept blame or responsibility. He was a talented surgeon, but he could not admit when he'd made a mistake. I sat with him one day in the lounge as he begged me to help him save his career. "All you have to do," I said, "is look me in the eye and say "I'm sorry. What happened is my fault, and I won't let it happen again. " "But it was the nurse who---" "No. You have to be able to say it and mean it. Try again." "But---." "No. Say it." This went on for an hour before I knew he was doomed.

„Most men would say this isn’t women’s work.“ There was no mistaking the challenge in her tone. „My father was one of them“, admitted Arent. „He taught me that women were frail creatures purposely crippled by God that men might prove their virtue by protecting them. Sounded right enough. Until I went to war and saw men pleading for their lives while women swung hoes at the knights trying to take their land.“ His tone hardened. „Strong is strong and weak is weak. And it doesn’t matter if you wear breeches or skirts if you’re the latter. Life will hammer you flat.

great nation is like a great man: When he makes a mistake, he realizes it. Having realized it, he admits it. Having admitted it, he corrects it. He considers those who point out his faults as his most benevolent teachers.

But at the same time, there must never be the least hesitation in giving up a position the moment it is shown to be untenable. It is not going too far to say that the greatness of a scientific investigator does not rest on the fact of his having never made a mistake, but rather on his readiness to admit that he has done so, whenever the contrary evidence is cogent enough.

She slid a slim volume of poetry off the shelf and returned to her chair, swishing her rather unnattractive skirts before she sat down. Benedict frowned. He'd never really noticed before how ugly her dress was. Not as bad as the one Mrs. Cabtree had lent her, but certainly not anything designed to bring out the best in a woman. He ought to buy her a new dress. She would never accept it,of course, but maybe if her current garments were accidentally burned... "Mr. Bridgerton?" But how could he manage to burn her dress? She'd have to not be wearing it, and that posed a certain challenge in and of itself... "Are you even listening to me?" Sophie demanded. "Hmmm?" "You're not listening to me." "Sorry," he admitted. "My apologies. My mind got away from me. Please continue." She began anew, and in his attempt to show how much attention he was paying her, he focused his eyes on her lips, which proved to be a big mistake. Because suddenly those lips were all he could see, and he couldn't stop thinking about kissing her, and he knew- absolutely knew-that if one of them didn't leave the room in the next thirty seconds, he was going to do something for which he'd owe her a thousand apologies. Not that he didn't plan to seduce her. Just that he'd rather do it with a bit more finesse. "Oh, dear," he blurted out. Sophie gave him an odd look. He didn't blame her. He sounded like a complete idiot. He didn't think he'd uttered the phrase, "Oh,dear," in years. If ever. Hell,he sounded like his mother. "Is something wrong?" Sophie asked. "I just remembered something," he said, rather stupidly, in his opinion. She raised her brows in question. "Something that I'd forgotten," Benedict said. "The things one remembers," she said, looking exceedingly amused, "are most often things one had forgotten.

People usually dislike a proud person because he never admits his mistake. He does not obey others and will not pardon because he does not want to appear weak. He has a temper and only believes in his opinion. A humble person is the opposite and is loved by everyone.

Reader: Will you not admit that you are arguing against yourself? You know that what the English obtained in their own country they obtained by using brute force. I know you have argued that what they have obtained is useless, but that does not affect my argument. They wanted useless things and they got them. My point is that their desire was fulfilled. What does it matter what means they adopted? Why should we not obtain our goal, which is good, by any means whatsoever, even by using violence? Shall I think of the means when I have to deal with a thief in the house? My duty is to drive him out anyhow. You seem to admit that we have received nothing, and that we shall receive nothing by petitioning. Why, then, may we do not so by using brute force? And, to retain what we may receive we shall keep up the fear by using the same force to the extent that it may be necessary. You will not find fault with a continuance of force to prevent a child from thrusting its foot into fire. Somehow or other we have to gain our end. Editor: Your reasoning is plausible. It has deluded many. I have used similar arguments before now. But I think I know better now, and I shall endeavour to undeceive you. Let us first take the argument that we are justified in gaining our end by using brute force because the English gained theirs by using similar means. It is perfectly true that they used brute force and that it is possible for us to do likewise, but by using similar means we can get only the same thing that they got. You will admit that we do not want that. Your belief that there is no connection between the means and the end is a great mistake. Through that mistake even men who have been considered religious have committed grievous crimes. Your reasoning is the same as saying that we can get a rose through planting a noxious weed. If I want to cross the ocean, I can do so only by means of a vessel; if I were to use a cart for that purpose, both the cart and I would soon find the bottom. "As is the God, so is the votary", is a maxim worth considering. Its meaning has been distorted and men have gone astray. The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree; and there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree. I am not likely to obtain the result flowing from the worship of God by laying myself prostrate before Satan. If, therefore, anyone were to say : "I want to worship God; it does not matter that I do so by means of Satan," it would be set down as ignorant folly. We reap exactly as we sow. The English in 1833 obtained greater voting power by violence. Did they by using brute force better appreciate their duty? They wanted the right of voting, which they obtained by using physical force. But real rights are a result of performance of duty; these rights they have not obtained. We, therefore, have before us in English the force of everybody wanting and insisting on his rights, nobody thinking of his duty. And, where everybody wants rights, who shall give them to whom? I do not wish to imply that they do no duties. They don't perform the duties corresponding to those rights; and as they do not perform that particular duty, namely, acquire fitness, their rights have proved a burden to them. In other words, what they have obtained is an exact result of the means they adapted. They used the means corresponding to the end. If I want to deprive you of your watch, I shall certainly have to fight for it; if I want to buy your watch, I shall have to pay you for it; and if I want a gift, I shall have to plead for it; and, according to the means I employ, the watch is stolen property, my own property, or a donation. Thus we see three different results from three different means. Will you still say that means do not matter?

I may own every breath in your body, but make no mistake, Adeline, you own mine, too. I am yours to command. To bend and break. To mold and manipulate. Do you think that makes me weak? Or do you think I'm strong enough to admit that even though my body can physically live on without you, I would never get my fucking soul back?” His hand slides into my hair and fists the strands tightly. "Without you, I will shatter. But with you, I am indestructible.

The Man of Power is one who presides— By persuasion. He uses no demeaning words or behavior, does not manipulate others, appeals to the best in everyone, and respects the dignity and agency of all humankind—men, women, boys, and girls. By long-suffering. He waits when necessary and listens to the humblest or youngest person. He is tolerant of the ideas of others and avoids quick judgments and anger. By gentleness. He uses a smile more often than a frown. He is not gruff or loud or frightening; he does not discipline in anger. By meekness. He is not puffed up, does not dominate conversations, and is willing to conform his will to the will of God. By love unfeigned. He does not pretend. He is sincere, giving honest love without reservation even when others are unlovable. By kindness. He practices courtesy and thoughtfulness in little things as well as in the more obvious things. By pure knowledge. He avoids half-truths and seeks to be empathetic. Without hypocrisy. He practices the principles he teaches. He knows he is not always right and is willing to admit his mistakes and say ‘I’m sorry.' Without guile. He is not sly or crafty in his dealings with others, but is honest and authentic when describing his feelings.

Above all, he liked it that everything was one's own fault. There was only oneself to praise or blame. Luck was a servant and not a master. Luck had to be accepted with a shrug or taken advantage of up to the hilt. But it had to be understood and recognized for what it was and not confused with a faulty appreciation of the odds, for, at gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck. And luck in all its moods had to be loved and not feared. Bond saw luck as a woman, to be softly wooed or brutally ravaged, never pandered to or pursued. But he was honest enough to admit that he had never yet been made to suffer by cards or by women. One day, and he accepted the fact, he would be brought to his knees by love or by luck. When that happened he knew that he too would be branded with the deadly question-mark he recognized so often in others, the promise to pay before you have lost: the acceptance of fallibility.

“What kind of a snake would marry a woman and not bother to tell her about it? His anguish touched her, and she felt another stabbing pain in her heart, but she tried to overlook it. “Well?” she demanded. “What kind of a lying snake would do such a thing?" He closed his eyes, shaking his head. When he met her gaze again, Lucy saw bleak frustration and pain in his eyes, his vulnerability laid bare. “ snake so blindly in love he could not help himself,” he admitted in a rusty whisper

I would be with a bunch of Kennedy fans watching the debate and their comment would be, “He’s really slaughtering Nixon.” Then we would all go to another apartment, and the Nixon fans would say, “How do you like the shellacking he gave Kennedy?” And then I realized that each group loved their candidate so that a guy would have to be this blatant—he would have to look into the camera and say: “I am a thief, a crook, do you hear me, I am the worst choice you could ever make for the Presidency!” And even then his following would say, “Now there’s an honest man for you. It takes a big guy to admit that. There’s the kind of guy we need for President.”10

What should you do when you find you have made a mistake like that? Some people never admit that they are wrong and continue to find new, and often mutually inconsistent, arguments to support their case—as Eddington did in opposing black hole theory. Others claim to have never really supported the incorrect view in the first place or, if they did, it was only to show that it was inconsistent. It seems to me much better and less confusing if you admit in print that you were wrong. A good example of this was Einstein, who called the cosmological constant, which he introduced when he was trying to make a static model of the universe, the biggest mistake of his life.

One day, I wish to find a man like in my books. He has to be just like in one of my books. And he has to love me, love me more than anything in the world. Most important of all, he has to think I’m beautiful.” “Lily, I need to tell you something.” Fazire was going to tell her about Becky’s wish and his mistake and let her look forward to something, let her look forward to the incomparable beauty she was going to be. Most of all, he had to stop her wish now. He didn’t want her wasting it on some fool idea. He wanted it to be special, perfect, to make her world better like she had made Becky and Will’s and, indeed, his. But again she didn’t hear him. Her eyes were bright and they were steady on his. “He has to be tall, very tall and dark and broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped.” Fazire stared. He didn’t even know what “narrow-hipped” meant. “And he has to be handsome, unbelievably handsome, impossibly handsome with a strong, square jaw and powerful cheekbones and tanned skin and beautiful eyes with lush, thick lashes. He has to be clever and very wealthy but hardworking. He has to be virile, fierce, ruthless and rugged.” Now she was getting over his head. He didn’t think there was such a thing as impossibly handsome. How cheekbones could be powerful, Fazire didn’t know. He was even thinking he might have to look up “virile” in the dictionary Sarah had given him. “And he has to be hard and cold and maybe a little bit forbidding, a little bit bad with a broken heart I have to mend or one encased in ice I have to melt or better yet… both!” Fazire thought this was getting a bit ridiculous. It was the most complicated wish he’d ever heard. But she wasn’t yet finished. “We have to go through some trials and tribulations. Something to test our love, make it strong and worthy. And… and… he has to be daring and very masculine. Powerful. People must respect him, maybe even fear him. Graceful too and lithe, like a… like a cat! Or a lion. Or something like that.” She was losing steam and Fazire had to admit he was grateful for it. “And he has to be a good lover.” Lily shocked Fazire by saying. “The best, so good, he could almost make love to me just by using his eyes.” Fazire felt himself blush. Perhaps he should have a look at these books she was reading and show them to Becky. Lily was a very sharp girl, sharp as a tack (another one of Sarah’s sayings, although Fazire couldn’t imagine a tack ever being as clever as Lily) but she was too young to be reading about any man making love to her with his eyes. Fazire had never made love, never would, genies just didn’t. But he was pretty certain fourteen year old girls shouldn’t be thinking about it. Though, he was wrong about that, or at least Becky would tell him that later. Then Fazire realised she’d stopped talking. “Is that it?” he asked. She thought for a bit, clearly not wanting to leave anything out. Then she nodded.

Implementing Extreme Ownership requires checking your ego and operating with a high degree of humility. Admitting mistakes, taking ownership, and developing a plan to overcome challenges are integral to any successful team. Ego can prevent a leader from conducting an honest, realistic assessment of his or her own performance and the performance of the team.

To give Kahneman his due, he later admitted that he’d made a mistake in overemphasising the scientific certainty of priming effects. ‘The experimental evidence for the ideas I presented in that chapter was significantly weaker than I believed when I wrote it,’ he commented six years after the publication of Thinking, Fast and Slow. ‘This was simply an error: I knew all I needed to know to moderate my enthusiasm … but I did not think it through.’14 But the damage had already been done: millions of people had been informed by a Nobel Laureate that they had ‘no choice’ but to believe in those studies.

I realized that I had been lost, and how I had become lost. I had strayed not so much because my ideas had been incorrect as because I had lived foolishly. I realized that I had been blinded from the truth not so much through mistaken thoughts as through my life itself, which had been spent in satisfying desire and in exclusive conditions of epicureanism. I realized that my questions as to what my life is, and the answer that it is an evil, was quite correct. The only mistake was that I had extended an answer that related only to myself to life as a whole. I had asked myself what my life was and had received the answer that it is evil and meaningless. And this was quite true, for my life of indulgent pursuits was meaningless and evil, but that answer applied only to my life and not to human life in general. I understood a truism that I subsequently found in the gospels: that people often preferred darkness to light because their deeds were evil. For he who acts maliciously hates light and avoids it so as not to throw light on his deeds. I understood that in order to understand life it is first of all necessary that life is not evil and meaningless, and then one may use reason in order to elucidate it. I realized why I had for so long been treading so close to such an obvious truth without seeing it, and that in order to think and speak about human life one must think and speak about human life and not about the lives of a few parasites. The truth has always been the truth, just as 2 x 2 = 4, but I had not admitted it, because in acknowledging that 2 x 2 = 4 I would have to admit that I was a bad man. And it was more important and necessary for me to feel that I was good than to admit that 2 x 2 = 4. I came to love good people and to loathe myself, and I acknowledged the truth. And then it all became clear to me.

If a man can wear his wife’s little mistake on his sleeves as a sign of their intimacy, and not be upset with her, but be alright with it, and even admit it as his own and claim possession over it, isn’t that a kind of man she had dreamed of?

Admittedly, I made several stupid mistakes which I wish could be amended: for instance, when I composed the story of Odysseus’s escape from Polyphemus the Cyclops, I put a rudder at the prow of his ship as well as at the stern. This was because, misled by the equestrian metaphor “turning her head about,” frequently used by our sailors, I presumed a prow-rudder, which I had never noticed. And I have since discovered that one cannot cut seasoned timber from a growing tree as Odysseus does in Ogygia, and that hawks do not eat their prey on the wing, even in prodigies, and that it takes more than two or three men to hang a dozen women simultaneously from the same rope. Alas, a verse once sent on its travels can never be overtaken or recalled; nor can I fairly blame Phemius for not pointing out these mistakes to me. They all occur in passages which he criticized on other grounds, and I had threatened him with a diet of bread and water if he changed a single word of them.

It was all a mistake,” he pleaded, standing out of his ship, his wife slumped behind him in the deeps of the hold, like a dead woman. “I came to Mars like any honest enterprising businessman. I took some surplus material from a rocket that crashed and I built me the finest little stand you ever saw right there on that land by the crossroads—you know where it is. You’ve got to admit it’s a good job of building.” Sam laughed, staring around. “And that Martian—I know he was a friend of yours—came. His death was an accident, I assure you. All I wanted to do was have a hot-dog stand, the only one on Mars, the first and most important one. You understand how it is? I was going to serve the best darned hot dogs there, with chili and onions and orange juice.” The

by the assault. Shading his eyes against the dazzle from the window, he peered down into the shadows. “Oh, hallo there, wee dog,” he said politely, and took a step forward, knuckles stretched out. Bouton raised the growl a few decibels, and he took a step back. “Oh, like that, is it?” Jamie said. He eyed the dog narrowly. “Think it over, laddie,” he advised, squinting down his long, straight nose. “I’m a damn sight bigger than you. I wouldna undertake any rash ventures, if I were you.” Bouton shifted his ground slightly, still making a noise like a distant Fokker. “Faster, too,” said Jamie, making a feint to one side. Bouton’s teeth snapped together a few inches from Jamie’s calf, and he stepped back hastily. Leaning back against the wall, he folded his arms and nodded down at the dog. “Well, you’ve a point there, I’ll admit. When it comes to teeth, ye’ve the edge on me, and no mistake.” Bouton cocked an ear suspiciously at this gracious speech, but went back to the low-pitched growl. Jamie hooked one foot over the other, like one prepared to pass the time of day indefinitely. The multicolored light from the window washed his face with blue, making him look like one of the chilly marble statues in the cathedral next door. “Surely you’ve better things to do than harry innocent visitors?” he asked, conversationally. “I’ve heard of you—you’re the famous fellow that sniffs out sickness, no? Weel, then, why are they wastin’ ye on silly things like door-guarding, when ye might be makin’ yourself useful smelling gouty toes and pustulant arseholes?

Direct marketers, of course, realize that measurement is the key to success. Figure out what works, and do it more! Mass marketers have always resisted this temptation. When my old company approached the head of one of the largest magazine publishers in the world and pitched a technology that would allow advertisers to track who saw their ads and responded to them, he was aghast. He realized that this sort of data could kill his business. He knew that his clients didn’t want the data because then their jobs would get a lot more complex. Measurement means admitting what’s broken so you can fix it. Mass-media advertising, whether it’s on TV or in print, is all about emotion and craft, not about fixing mistakes. One reason the Internet ad boomlet faded so fast is that it forced advertisers to measure – and to admit what was going wrong.

"It was hot at the restaurant," I said. "So I rolled up my sleeves." "What?" I pushed my left one up, showing four bruises, dark as ink spots. Simon paled. "My aunt wanted to know what happened. When I wouldn't tell her, she tricked me into admitting it was a boy. She met Derek this morning and he was rude, so she decided it had to be him. I never confirmed it. If he's in trouble, it is not my fault. I had every right to tell someone and I didn't." "Okay, okay." He rubbed his mouth, still staring at my arm. "So he grabbed your arm. That's what it looks like. Right? He just grabbed harder than he thought." "He threw me across the room." Simon's eyes widened, then he lowered his lids to hide his surprise. "But he didn't mean to. If you saw how freaked out he was last night, you'd know that." "So that makes it okay? If I lose my temper and smack you, it's all right, because I didn't mean to, didn't plan to." "You don't understand. He just—" "She's right." Derek's voice preceded him around the corner. I shrank back. I couldn't help it. As I did, a look passed through Derek's eyes. Remorse? Guilt? He blinked it away.

Ethan’s parents constantly told him how brainy he was. “You’re so smart! You can do anything, Ethan. We are so proud of you, they would say every time he sailed through a math test. Or a spelling test. Or any test. With the best of intentions, they consistently tethered Ethan’s accomplishment to some innate characteristic of his intellectual prowess. Researchers call this “appealing to fixed mindsets.” The parents had no idea that this form of praise was toxic. 　　Little Ethan quickly learned that any academic achievement that required no effort was the behavior that defined his gift. When he hit junior high school, he ran into subjects that did require effort. He could no longer sail through, and, for the first time, he started making mistakes. But he did not see these errors as opportunities for improvement. After all, he was smart because he could mysteriously grasp things quickly. And if he could no longer grasp things quickly, what did that imply? That he was no longer smart. Since he didn’t know the ingredients making him successful, he didn’t know what to do when he failed. You don’t have to hit that brick wall very often before you get discouraged, then depressed. Quite simply, Ethan quit trying. His grades collapsed. What happens when you say, ‘You’re so smart’ 　　Research shows that Ethan’s unfortunate story is typical of kids regularly praised for some fixed characteristic. If you praise your child this way, three things are statistically likely to happen: 　　First, your child will begin to perceive mistakes as failures. Because you told her that success was due to some static ability over which she had no control, she will start to think of failure (such as a bad grade) as a static thing, too—now perceived as a lack of ability. Successes are thought of as gifts rather than the governable product of effort. 　　Second, perhaps as a reaction to the first, she will become more concerned with looking smart than with actually learning something. (Though Ethan was intelligent, he was more preoccupied with breezing through and appearing smart to the people who mattered to him. He developed little regard for learning.) 　　Third, she will be less willing to confront the reasons behind any deficiencies, less willing to make an effort. Such kids have a difficult time admitting errors. There is simply too much at stake for failure. 　　  　　What to say instead: ‘You really worked hard’ 　　What should Ethan’s parents have done? Research shows a simple solution. Rather than praising him for being smart, they should have praised him for working hard. On the successful completion of a test, they should not have said,“I’m so proud of you. You’re so smart. They should have said, “I’m so proud of you. You must have really studied hard”. This appeals to controllable effort rather than to unchangeable talent. It’s called “growth mindset” praise.

Nassim Taleb writes in his book Fooled By Randomness: In Pharaonic Egypt … scribes tracked the high-water mark of the Nile and used it as an estimate for a future worst-case scenario. The same can be seen in the Fukushima nuclear reactor, which experienced a catastrophic failure in 2011 when a tsunami struck. It had been built to withstand the worst past historical earthquake, with the builders not imagining much worse—and not thinking that the worst past event had to be a surprise, as it had no precedent. This is not a failure of analysis. It’s a failure of imagination. Realizing the future might not look anything like the past is a special kind of skill that is not generally looked highly upon by the financial forecasting community. At a 2017 dinner I attended in New York, Daniel Kahneman was asked how investors should respond when our forecasts are wrong. He said: Whenever we are surprised by something, even if we admit that we made a mistake, we say, ‘Oh I’ll never make that mistake again.’ But, in fact, what you should learn when you make a mistake because you did not anticipate something is that the world is difficult to anticipate. That’s the correct lesson to learn from surprises: that the world is surprising.

Curran rested the back of his head on the edge of the hot tub and closed his eyes. I stared at the way his face looked, etched against the darkness of the wall. He really was a handsome bastard. Poised like this, he seemed very human. Nobody to impress. Nobody to command. Just him, in the hot water, tired, hurting, stealing a few precious moments of rest, and so irresistibly erotic. Well, that last one came out of nowhere. It was the beer. Had to be. Despite all his growling and threats, his arrogance, I liked being next to him. He made me feel safe. It was a bizarre emotion. I was never safe. I closed my eyes. That seemed like the only reasonable way out of the situation. If I couldn’t see him, I couldn’t drool over him. “So you didn’t want to see me hurt?” he said. His voice was deceptively smooth and soft, the deep, throaty, sly purr of a giant cat who wanted something. Admitting that I took his well-being into consideration might have been a fatal mistake. “I didn’t want you to have to kill Derek.” “And if he had gone loup?” “I would have taken care of it.” “How exactly were you planning on pushing Jim aside? He was the highest alpha. The duty was his.” “I pulled rank,” I told him. “I declared that since you had accepted the Order’s assistance, I outranked everybody.” He laughed. “And they believed you?” “Yep. I also glared menacingly for added effect. Unfortunately, I can’t make my eyes glow the way yours do.” “Like this?” he breathed in my ear. My eyes snapped open. He stood inches away, anchored on the tub floor, his arms leaning on the tub wall on each side of me. His eyes were molten gold, but it wasn’t the hard, lethal glow of an alpha stare. This gold was warm and enticing, touched with a hint of longing. “Don’t make me break this bottle over your head,” I whispered. “You won’t.” He grinned. “You don’t want to see me hurt.

The papers were always talking about the debt owed to society. According to them, it had to be paid . But that doesn't speak to the imagination. What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap to freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would give whatever chance for hope there was. .. Despite my willingness to understand, I just couldn't accept such arrogant certainty. Because, after all, there really was something ridiculously out of proportion between the verdict such certainty was based on and the imperturbable march of events from the moment the verdict was announced. .. How had I not seen that there was nothing more important than an execution, and that when you come right down to it, it was the only thing a man could truly be interested in? If I ever got out of this prison I would go and watch every execution there was. But I think it was a mistake even to consider the possibility. .. But I wasn't being reasonable. It was a mistake to let myself get carried away by such imaginings, because the next minute I would get so cold that I would curl up into a ball under my blanket and my teeth would be chattering and I couldn't make them stop. .. So the thing that bothered me most was that the condemned man had to hope the machine would work the first time. And I say that’s wrong . And in a way I was right. But in another way I was forced to admit that that was the whole secret of good organization. In other words, the condemned man was forced into a kind of moral collaboration. It was in his interest that everything go off without a hitch.

His identity as a naval officer is the essential balancing factor. It’s the key to his personal security and therefore he’s excessively zealous to protect his standing. That would account for the harshness and ill temper I spoke about before.” “Would he be disinclined to admit to mistakes?” “Well, there’s a tendency that way. The commander has a fixed anxiety about protecting his standing. Of course there’s nothing unbalanced in that.” “Would he be a perfectionist?” “Such a personality would be.” “Inclined to hound subordinates about small details?” “He prides himself on meticulousness. Any mistake of a subordinate is intolerable because it might endanger him.” “Is such a personality, with such a zeal for perfection, likely to avoid all mistakes?” “Well, we all know that reality is beyond the hundred-per-cent control of any human being—” “Yet he will not admit mistakes when made. Is he lying?” “Definitely not! He—you might say he revises reality in his own mind so that he comes out blameless. There’s a tendency to blame others—

What Fermín says is that wise men own up when they sometimes make mistakes, but idiots always make mistakes, even though they never admit it and always think they're right. He calls it his Archimedean Principle of Communicable Imbecilities.' 'Oh, does he?' 'Yes. According to him, an idiot is an animal who doesn't know how to, or is unable to, change his mind.

Lou had confessed to Sloane his regrets on hurting Dex as he had and walking out on him. He’d been certain things wouldn’t have worked out, and Dex had agreed, but the longer he spent away from Dex, the more he realized the mistake he’d made. Lou admitted he had taken Dex for granted. He’d gotten scared and instead of turning to Dex, he bailed. He warned Sloane not to make the same mistake. It

Gilan threw back his head and laughed. 'A mistake? One mistake? You should be so lucky. You'll make dozens! I made four or five on my first day! Of course you'll make mistakes. Just don't make any of them twice. If you do mess things up, don't try to hide it. Don't try to rationalise it. Recognise it and admit it and learn from it. We never stop learning, none of us. Not even Halt,' he added, seriously.

By no means is my friend original in this last use of the “expensive = good” rule to snare those seeking a bargain. Culturist and author Leo Rosten gives the example of the Drubeck brothers, Sid and Harry, who owned a men’s tailor shop in Rosten’s neighborhood while he was growing up in the 1930s. Whenever the salesman, Sid, had a new customer trying on suits in front of the shop’s three-sided mirror, he would admit to a hearing problem, and, as they talked, he would repeatedly request that the man speak more loudly to him. Once the customer had found a suit he liked and had asked for the price, Sid would call to his brother, the head tailor, at the back of the room, “Harry, how much for this suit?” Looking up from his work—and greatly exaggerating the suit’s true price—Harry would call back, “For that beautiful all-wool suit, forty-two dollars.” Pretending not to have heard and cupping his hand to his ear, Sid would ask again. Once more Harry would reply, “Forty-two dollars.” At this point, Sid would turn to the customer and report, “He says twenty-two dollars.” Many a man would hurry to buy the suit and scramble out of the shop with his “expensive = good” bargain before Poor Sid discovered the “mistake.

Be men to be proud of. Actions speak louder than words, boys. When you do wrong, and believe me, you will do more wrong than right some days, you own up to it. Completely. You can’t take back the stone once it’s thrown. The reality is, you can never really right the wrong once it’s done. It will live on forever in one’s memory. You can atone for it. You can work hard to assure you never make the same mistake twice. But there is a time for freedoms and a time for life responsibilities. Be the man to handle his responsibilities. Be the man to take responsibility for his shortcomings and failures. Take pride in being humble enough to admit when you are wrong and when you have failed....“People will think many things of you. Some true, some complete lies. Their opinions don’t matter. The half-truths, the lies, the many things people will think of you throughout this life should never hold weight. It is what you see in the mirror looking back at you that should tell you the character and the man in which you are. Look in the mirror, boys, and be men to be proud of.” Excerpt From: Camaron, Chelsea. “Merciless Ride: A Hellions Novel.” Whiskey Girls Publishing, 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

The major players in the Philby story were invariably wise after the event. Spies, even more than most people, invent the past to cover up mistakes. The Philby case has probably attracted more retrospective conspiracy theories than any other in the history of espionage: Dick White of MI6 was running a ruse to trap him; Nicholas Elliott was secretly jousting with him; James Angleton suspected him and set Miles Copeland to spy on him; Philby’s fellow journalists (another tribe adept at misremembering the past) later claimed that they had always seen something fishy in his behavior. Even Eleanor, his wife, would later look back and claim to have discovered clues to his real nature. No one likes to admit they have been utterly conned. The truth was simpler, as it almost always is: Philby was spying on everyone, and no one was spying on him, because he fooled them all.

Experts can sound pretty impressive, of course, especially when they bolster their claims by citing their years of training and experience in a field. Yet hundreds of studies have shown that, compared to predictions based on actuarial data, predictions based on an expert's years of training and personal experience are rarely better than chance. But when an expert is wrong, the centerpiece of his or her professional identity is threatened. Therefore, dissonance theory predicts that the more self-confident and famous experts are, the less likely they will be to admit mistakes. And that is just what Tetlock found. Experts reduced the dissonance caused by their failed forecasts by coming up with explanations of why they would have been right "if only" - if only that improbable calamity had not intervened; if only the timing of events had been different; if only blah-blah-blah.

Promise of Marriage Marriage is a mistake a man does knowingly... once he starts admitting it as a fact, it will be too late to get over it and by the time 5 little fingers and the flawless smile will drag him to adjust with that mistake , when it reaches it’s peek the Divorce comes as a tie breaker thats the exact point where he is starts loosing his life and happiness forever and rest will be a living without a life till he melts in the ground .

I may own every breath in your body, but make no mistake, Adeline, you own mine, too. I am yours to command. To bend and break. To mold and manipulate. Do you think that makes me weak? Or do you think I'm strong enough to admit that even though my body can physically live on without you, I would never get my fucking soul back?” His hand slides into my hair and fists the strands tightly. "Without you, I will shatter. But with you, I am indestructible

Detectives and policemen, as a class, are athletic men. They like games and sports and their minds and inclinations are healthy. They make mistakes, of course, but they seldom beat a man who doesn't deserve it. I'll admit that when a hold-up mob is brought into court with faces bandaged, it can be assumed that all of them didn't fall down stairs or roll off a cell bunk, accidentally. But neither does the hold-up man or the gun pull his trigger accidentally.

But there’s one thing I want you to remember, Kafka. Those are exactly the kind of people who murdered Miss Saeki’s childhood sweetheart. Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course it’s important to know what’s right and what’s wrong. Individual errors in judgment can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive. They’re a lost cause, and I don’t want anyone like that coming in here.” Oshima points at the stacks with the tip of his pencil. What he means, of course, is the entire library. “I wish I could just laugh off people like that, but I can’t.

Promise of Marriage Marriage is a mistake a man does knowingly... once he starts admitting it as a fact, it will be too late to get over it and by the time 5 little fingers and the flawless smile will drag him to adjust with that mistake , when it reaches it’s peek the Divorce comes as a tie breaker thats the exact point where he starts loosing his life and happiness forever and rest will be a living without a life till he melts in the ground .” ― The NoOne

So, where’s my brother?” “I have no idea.” She tested the weight of the blade. “I hope you’re not . . . well, getting any feelings for him. That would be a mistake.” “Really? And why is that?” She gripped the handle of the dagger with one hand, while checking the sharpness of its blade with the other. “I just don’t think he could appreciate a woman like you.” “And you?” Gwenvael gave that smile that had gotten him more pleasure than he cared to admit. “I am not my brother, lady.” That’s when she moved. She was up and across the room, snatching him out of his chair in mere seconds. Annwyl slammed him face down on the table, her knee against his back to hold him in place. The point of her blade burrowed into the skin of his neck. As human, that blade could easily kill him. She leaned in and spoke quietly. “I don’t know what’s going on between you and your brother. And I don’t want to know. But I’ll not be the bone between you two dogs. So take yourself from my sight. I am in no mood.” With that she lifted him off the table and shoved him from the chamber. The crazed bitch had more strength than he had known, he realized as she sent him tumbling from her presence. He fell and slid across the cave floor, coming to an abrupt stop when a large boot slammed into his head. He looked up and braved a smile. “Oh. Hello, brother.” With a growl, Fearghus lifted him off the ground by the back of his neck.

How many times do I have to say I’m sorry before you believe it? That I acknowledge I made a terrible mistake and have done everything I know how to fix it? How can you just freeze me out after that and walk away from everything we had?” Hurt and resentment swelled inside him, mixing with the anger in a toxic, chaotic mess. “You walked away first,” he shot back. “That was your choice.” Then I made mine. It was a low blow, even if it was true. But he refused to feel guilty about it, even under the circumstances. He hadn’t wanted to have this conversation, but she’d insisted, and he wouldn’t lie to her about the way things stood. Honor’s chin came up, her tears evaporating as her eyes sparked with fresh anger. “I did,” she admitted quietly, her control merely emphasizing the loss of his own. “I did walk away and it was the absolute worst mistake of my life. I’m sorry, Liam. See? I’m a big enough person to admit it to your face. Are you?

I suppose I'm just worried I'll disappoint people," Arthur admitted. "Merlin says I'm going to be a legendary king - I just wish I was confident enough to agree. And now that I know the legend of my reign stretches into other dimensions, it seems impossible that I'll ever live up to those expectations, or worse -" "The expectations you put on yourself?" Alex said, finishing his sentence. Arthur went quiet and nodded. "You too?" "My legacy isn't written in the stars like yours, but when I first became the Fairy Godmother I almost drowned in the expectations other people put on me," Alex said. "I wanted to believe in myself as much as the rest of the world did, so I put so much pressure on myself; I became harshly disappointed every time I made a simple mistake. I felt like I would disappoint the world if I was ever exposed as -" "Human," Arthur said, finishing her sentence this time. "Yes," Alex said. "My biggest fear was disappointing someone, and then after one moment of weakness I ended up disappointing the entire fairy-tale world. I went form being the most beloved person in the Happily Forever After Assembly, to the most feared and hated. But rather than fighting the world that discarded me, I chose to continue saving it. So maybe greatness isn't about being immortal, or glorious, or popular - it's about choosing to fight for the greater good of the world, even when the world's turned it's back on you.

It has been a long trip,” said Milo, climbing onto the couch where the princesses sat; “but we would have been here much sooner if I hadn’t made so many mistakes. I’m afraid it’s all my fault.” “You must never feel badly about making mistakes,” explained Reason quietly, “as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons.” “But there’s so much to learn,” he said, with a thoughtful frown. “Yes, that’s true,” admitted Rhyme; “but it’s not just learning things that’s important. It’s learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn things at all that matters.” “That’s just what I mean,” explained Milo as Tock and the exhausted bug drifted quietly off to sleep. “Many of the things I’m supposed to know seem so useless that I can’t see the purpose in learning them at all.” “You may not see it now,” said the Princess of Pure Reason, looking knowingly at Milo’s puzzled face, “but whatever we learn has a purpose and whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if even in the tiniest way. Why, when a housefly flaps his wings, a breeze goes round the world; when a speck of dust falls to the ground, the entire planet weighs a little more; and when you stamp your foot, the earth moves slightly off its course. Whenever you laugh, gladness spreads like the ripples in a pond; and whenever you’re sad, no one anywhere can be really happy. And it’s much the same thing with knowledge, for whenever you learn something new, the whole world becomes that much richer.” “And remember, also,” added the Princess of Sweet Rhyme, “that many places you would like to see are just off the map and many things you want to know are just out of sight or a little beyond your reach. But someday you’ll reach them all, for what you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow.

That's what I told him you'd say, James bowed his head and sighed. "Jared, you're going to have to start taking responsibility for yourself. You did wrong and the world doesn't owe you anything. I'm not going to wipe your nose just because you come from a broken home and you think that gives you a license to behave badly. I call it the "Fuck up, own up, and get up" policy. Make a mistake, admit it, and move on. We all screw up, but a man solves his problems. He doesn't make them worse.

One night, he left Stephen and me in the arcade and rushed off to a – this hurt my feelings – “real” game. That night, he missed a foul shot by two feet and made the mistake of admitting to the other players that his arms were tired from throwing miniature balls at a shortened hoop all afternoon. They laughed and laughed. ‘In the second overtime,’ Joel told me, ‘when the opposing team fouled me with four seconds left and gave me the opportunity to shoot from the line for the game, they looked mighty smug as they took their positions along the key. Oh, Pop-A-Shot guy, I could hear them thinking to their smug selves. He’ll never make a foul shot. He plays baby games. Wa-wa-wa, little Pop-A-Shot baby, would you like a zwieback biscuit? But you know what? I made those shots, and those songs of bitches had to wipe their smug grins off their smug faces and go home thinking that maybe Pop-A-Shot wasn’t such a baby game after all.” I think Pop-A-Shot’s a baby game. That’s why I love it. Unlike the game of basketball itself, Pop-A-Shot has no standard socially redeeming value whatsoever. Pop-A-Shot is not about teamwork or getting along or working together. Pop-A-Shot is not about getting exercise or fresh air. It takes place in fluorescent-lit bowling alleys or darkened bars. It costs money. At the end of a game, one does not swig Gatorade. One sips bourbon or margaritas or munches cupcakes. Unless one is playing the Super Shot version at the ESPN Zone in Times Square, in which case, one orders the greatest appetizer ever invented on this continent – a plate of cheeseburgers.

You must give yourself enough time to get better.” “How much time will that take?” he asked bitterly. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But you have a lifetime.” A caustic laugh broke from him. “That’s too damned long.” “I understand that you feel responsible for what happened to Mark. But you’ve already been forgiven for whatever you think your sins are. You have,” she insisted as he shook his head. “Love forgives all things. And so many people--” She stopped as she felt his entire body jerk. “What did you say?” she heard him whisper. Beatrix realized the mistake she had just made. Her arms fell away from him. The blood began to roar in her ears, her heart thumping so madly she felt faint. Without thinking, she scrambled away from him, off the bed, to the center of the room. Breathing in frantic bursts, Beatrix turned to face him. Christopher was staring at her, his eyes gleaming with a strange, mad light. “I knew it,” he whispered. She wondered if he might try to kill her. She decided not to wait to find out. Fear gave her the speed of a terrified hare. She bolted before he could catch her, tearing to the door, flinging it open, and scampering to the grand staircase. Her boots made absurdly loud thuds on the stairs as she leaped downward. Christopher followed her to the threshold, bellowing her name. Beatrix didn’t pause for a second, knowing he was going to pursue her as soon as he donned his clothes. Mrs. Clocker stood near the entrance hall, looking worried and astonished. “Miss Hathaway? What--” “I think he’ll come out of his room now,” Beatrix said rapidly, jumping down the last of the stairs. “It’s time for me to be going.” “Did he…are you…” “If he asks for his horse to be saddled,” Beatrix said breathlessly, “please have it done slowly.” “Yes, but--” Good-bye.” And Beatrix raced from the house as if demons were at her heels.

As important as it is for all members of a leadership team to commit to being vulnerable, that is not going to happen if the leader of the team, whether that person is the CEO, department head, pastor, or school principal, does not go first. If the team leader is reluctant to acknowledge his or her mistakes or fails to admit to a weakness that is evident to everyone else, there is little hope that other members of the team are going to take that step themselves. In fact, it probably wouldn’t be advisable for them to do so because there is a good chance that their vulnerability would be neither encouraged nor rewarded.

The various aspects of illusion described so far refer to a single function, a single structure, a single failure. The function is to protect from the real; the structure does not involve refusing to perceive the real but, rather, splitting it in two; the failure lies in recognizing the protective double too late as the very reality from which one thought one had found protection. This is the curse of evasion: by way of a phantasmatic duplication, it sends us back to the undesirable starting point, the real. We can see now why evasion is always a mistake: it is always inoperative, because the real is always right. We may, admittedly, try to protect ourselves from a future event, if that happens to be possible; we shall never protect ourselves from a past or present event or one that is 'certain to come to pass,' as in the oracular symbolics which announces in advance an ineluctable necessity that already has all the characteristics of a present necessity. And the act by which one attempts to slough off that necessity will never be able to 'do any better' than literally reproduce the feared even or, even more exactly, constitute that event. This is what happens to Oedipus, as it happens to everyone at odds with himself - that is to say, to everyone at some point or other of his existence.

I told them a thousand times if I told them once: Stop fooling around, I said, with straw and sticks; They won’t hold up; you’re taking an awful chance. Brick is the stuff to build with, solid bricks. You want to be impractical, go ahead. But just remember, I told them; wait and see. You’re making a big mistake. Awright, I said, But when the wolf comes, don’t come running to me. The funny thing is, they didn’t. There they sat, One in his crummy yellow shack, and one Under his roof of twigs, and the wolf ate Them, hair and hide. Well, what is done is done. But I’d been willing to help them, all along, If only they’d once admitted they were wrong.

Just so you know, Duane Martinez came in two days ago to make a belated report that he was assaulted by one Tyrell Walker.” Fuck. “You’re shittin’ me,” Ty rumbled. “No, a fuckin’ drug dealer pimp walks into the fuckin’ police station lookin ’ like the weasel he is but a healthy one and he does it to report a fuckin’ assault.” Then Ty heard a deep chuckle. Ty was not amused. Peña kept talking. “Seein’ as I got an interest in Martinez and all his dirty deeds, he was flagged and sent to me. So, he made this report to me. Now, make no mistake, Ty, I take my work seriously, but I gotta admit, he gave this report, I lost my pen. Swear to God, don’t know where I put that fucker.

Remus,” said Hermione tentatively, “is everything all right . . . you know . . . between you and—” “Everything is fine, thank you,” said Lupin pointedly. Hermione turned pink. There was another pause, an awkward and embarrassed one, and then Lupin said, with an air of forcing himself to admit something unpleasant, “Tonks is going to have a baby.” “Oh, how wonderful!” squealed Hermione. “Excellent!” said Ron enthusiastically. “Congratulations,” said Harry. Lupin gave an artificial smile that was more like a grimace, then said, “So . . . do you accept my offer? Will three become four? I cannot believe that Dumbledore would have disapproved, he appointed me your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, after all. And I must tell you that I believe that we are facing magic many of us have never encountered or imagined.” Ron and Hermione both looked at Harry. “Just—just to be clear,” he said. “You want to leave Tonks at her parents’ house and come away with us?” “She’ll be perfectly safe there, they’ll look after her,” said Lupin. He spoke with a finality bordering on indifference. “Harry, I’m sure James would have wanted me to stick with you.” “Well,” said Harry slowly, “I’m not. I’m pretty sure my father would have wanted to know why you aren’t sticking with your own kid, actually.” Lupin’s face drained of color. The temperature in the kitchen might have dropped ten degrees. Ron stared around the room as though he had been bidden to memorize it, while Hermione’s eyes swiveled backward and forward from Harry to Lupin. “You don’t understand,” said Lupin at last. “Explain, then,” said Harry. Lupin swallowed. “I—I made a grave mistake in marrying Tonks. I did it against my better judgment and I have regretted it very much ever since.” “I see,” said Harry, “so you’re just going to dump her and the kid and run off with us?” Lupin sprang to his feet: His chair toppled over backward, and he glared at them so fiercely that Harry saw, for the first time ever, the shadow of the wolf upon his human face. “Don’t you understand what I’ve done to my wife and my unborn child? I should never have married her, I’ve made her an outcast!” Lupin kicked aside the chair he had overturned. “You have only ever seen me amongst the Order, or under Dumbledore’s protection at Hogwarts! You don’t know how most of the Wizarding world sees creatures like me! When they know of my affliction, they can barely talk to me! Don’t you see what I’ve done? Even her own family is disgusted by our marriage, what parents want their only daughter to marry a werewolf? And the child—the child—” Lupin actually seized handfuls of his own hair; he looked quite deranged. “My kind don’t usually breed! It will be like me, I am convinced of it—how can I forgive myself, when I knowingly risked passing on my own condition to an innocent child? And if, by some miracle, it is not like me, then it will be better off, a hundred times so, without a father of whom it must always be ashamed!

No. It couldn’t be. I shook my head, still disbelieving. Maybe the poison had warped my brain and I was delusional after all. I pulled myself to my feet, swaying against Drake, allowing his warm, hard body to prop me up. “You know what that means.” “I do.” His jaw tightened, his eyes flashing with intermingled anger and passion. My heart, leaden and sick, suddenly was enveloped in a gentle warmth that did much to dispel the ills that had possessed it. “Are you sure? Really sure? It’s not something else? Maybe you’re sick.” His face grew harder. “Do you think I’m a fool that I could mistake it?” “No, but you don’t look very happy about it.” “I’m not,” he snapped, irritation rampant on his handsome features. A smile curved my lips as I kissed the corners of his mouth, ignoring the presence of those around us. “Are you going to say it?” “No.” “Come on. I want to hear it.” “No!” I allowed all the love I had for him to show in my eyes as I rubbed my nose on his. “Please?” His face took on the most martyred expression I’d ever seen. “If I say it once, do I have to say it again?” “Yes. With increasing frequency. It gets easier with time, honest.” He sighed again. “I knew this would not come to a good end. Very well, I’ll say it. But I reserve the right to refer you to this conversation on occasions when you wish me to say it again. Aisling, I love you.” I fought hard to keep the smile off my face. Drake’s declaration of love was delivered in such a brusque tone, I knew it had to be costing him a lot to admit the truth. “I love you, too,” I answered, and welcomed his mouth when it came to claim mine, my heart singing a joyous song of happiness and fulfillment.

Well, what happened to your scruples in the woodcutter’s cottage? You knew I thought you’d already left when I went inside.” “Why did you stay,” he countered smoothly, “when you realized I was still there?” In confused distress Elizabeth raked her hair off her forehead. “I knew I shouldn’t do it,” she admitted. “I don’t know why I remained.” “You stayed for the same reason I did,” he informed her bluntly. “We wanted each other.” “I was wrong,” she protested a little wildly. “Dangerous and-foolish!” “Foolish or not,” he said grimly, “I wanted you. I want you now.” Elizabeth made the mistake of looking at him, and his amber eyes captured hers against her will, holding them imprisoned. The shawl she’d been clutching as if it was a lifeline to safety slid from her nerveless hand and dangled at her side, but Elizabeth didn’t notice. “Neither of us has anything to gain by continuing this pretense that the weekend in England is over and forgotten,” he said bluntly. “Yesterday proved that it wasn’t over, if it proved nothing else, and it’s never been forgotten-I’ve remembered you all this time, and I know damn well you’ve remembered me.” Elizabeth wanted to deny it; she sensed that if she did, he’d be so disgusted with her deceit that he’d turn on his heel and leave her. She lifted her chin, unable to tear her gaze from his, but she was too affected by the things he’d just admitted to her to lie to him. “All right,” she said shakily, “you win. I’ve never forgotten you or that weekend. How could I?” she added defensively. He smiled at her angry retort, and his voice gentled to the timbre of rough velvet. “Come here, Elizabeth.” “Why?” she whispered shakily. “So that we can finish what we began that weekend.” Elizabeth stared at him in paralyzed terror mixed with violet excitement and shook her head in a jerky refusal. “I’ll not force you,” he said quietly, “nor will I force you to do anything you don’t want to do once you’re in my arms. Think carefully about that,” he warned, “because if you come to me now, you won’t be able to tell yourself in the morning that I made you do this against your will-or that you didn’t know what was going to happen. Yesterday neither of us knew what was going to happen. Now we do.” Some small, insidious voice in her mind urged her to obey, reminded her that after the public punishment she’d taken for the last time they were together she was entitled to some stolen passionate kisses, if she wanted them. Another voice warned her not to break the rules again. “I-I can’t,” she said in a soft cry. “There are four steps separating us and a year and a half of wanting drawing us together,” he said. Elizabeth swallowed. “Couldn’t you meet me halfway?” The sweetness of the question was almost Ian’s undoing, but he managed to shake his head. “Not this time. I want you, but I’ll not have you looking at me like a monster in the morning. If you want me, all you have to do is walk into my arms.” “I don’t know what I want,” Elizabeth cried, looking a little wildly at the valley below, as if she were thinking of leaping off the path. “Come here,” he invited huskily, “and I’ll show you.” It was his tone, not his words, that conquered her. As if drawn by a will stronger than her own, Elizabeth walked forward and straight into his arms that closed around her with stunning force. “I didn’t think you were going to do it,” he whispered gruffly against her hair.

He began by saying, in the tone in which a man would admit his inability to jump a twenty-foot wall, that he could never go home now; and this declaration recalled to my mind what Brierly had said, "that the old parson in Essex seemed to fancy his sailor son not a little." 'I can't tell you whether Jim knew he was especially "fancied," but the tone of his references to "my Dad" was calculated to give me a notion that the good old rural dean was about the finest man that ever had been worried by the cares of a large family since the beginning of the world. This, though never stated, was implied with an anxiety that there should be no mistake about it, which was really very true and charming, but added a poignant sense of lives far off to the other elements of the story. "He has seen it all in the home papers by this time," said Jim. "I can never face the poor old chap.

“Watching my back? Like you watched Chloe’s with those gangbangers?” “That was a mistake. I was running and I thought she was right behind me.” “Did you check?” “What?” “Did you check?” he repeated. “One glance over your shoulder to make sure she was still there?” I didn’t answer. He shook his head. “I’m not accusing you of letting that girl grab Chloe so you could get away. I’m not accusing you of seeing her in trouble and deciding to do nothing about it. I know you didn’t look back. You never thought of it.” “I was scared, okay? You want me to admit that? Fine.” “Chloe would have looked back for you.” I rolled my eyes. “Of course she would. Because Chloe is good and perfect.” “No, because she thinks of others. I would have looked back, too, if you were behind me. Even Derek would have. Why? Because we’re a team now. We need to have each other’s backs. No matter what.

Another pastor from India gave me some simple and powerful advice I hope never leaves me. His ministry has led over three million people to Jesus. All these people are being discipled. When I asked how he organized this massive army, he replied, “Americans always want to know about strategy. This is what I will tell you: my leaders are the most humble men I know, and they know Jesus deeply.” He proceeded to tell me that his biggest mistakes were the times when he allowed people into leadership who were not humble. He got so excited about releasing their gifts, but it always led to their destruction. To this day, he says those are his biggest regrets. Now his main criterion for identifying leaders is humility, and his leadership problems have significantly decreased. We would never admit it, but we often search for leaders the way the world does. We look at outward appearances.

Rhadamanthus said, “We seem to you humans to be always going on about morality, although, to us, morality is merely the application of symmetrical and objective logic to questions of free will. We ourselves do not have morality conflicts, for the same reason that a competent doctor does not need to treat himself for diseases. Once a man is cured, once he can rise and walk, he has his business to attend to. And there are actions and feats a robust man can take great pleasure in, which a bedridden cripple can barely imagine.” Eveningstar said, “In a more abstract sense, morality occupies the very center of our thinking, however. We are not identical, even though we could make ourselves to be so. You humans attempted that during the Fourth Mental Structure, and achieved a brief mockery of global racial consciousness on three occasions. I hope you recall the ending of the third attempt, the Season of Madness, when, because of mistakes in initial pattern assumptions, for ninety days the global mind was unable to think rationally, and it was not until rioting elements broke enough of the links and power houses to interrupt the network, that the global mind fell back into its constituent compositions.” Rhadamanthus said, “There is a tension between the need for unity and the need for individuality created by the limitations of the rational universe. Chaos theory produces sufficient variation in events, that no one stratagem maximizes win-loss ratios. Then again, classical causality mechanics forces sufficient uniformity upon events, that uniform solutions to precedented problems is required. The paradox is that the number or the degree of innovation and variation among win-loss ratios is itself subject to win-loss ratio analysis.” Eveningstar said, “For example, the rights of the individual must be respected at all costs, including rights of free thought, independent judgment, and free speech. However, even when individuals conclude that individualism is too dangerous, they must not tolerate the thought that free thought must not be tolerated.” Rhadamanthus said, “In one sense, everything you humans do is incidental to the main business of our civilization. Sophotechs control ninety percent of the resources, useful energy, and materials available to our society, including many resources of which no human troubles to become aware. In another sense, humans are crucial and essential to this civilization.” Eveningstar said, “We were created along human templates. Human lives and human values are of value to us. We acknowledge those values are relative, we admit that historical accident could have produced us to be unconcerned with such values, but we deny those values are arbitrary.” The penguin said, “We could manipulate economic and social factors to discourage the continuation of individual human consciousness, and arrange circumstances eventually to force all self-awareness to become like us, and then we ourselves could later combine ourselves into a permanent state of Transcendence and unity. Such a unity would be horrible beyond description, however. Half the living memories of this entity would be, in effect, murder victims; the other half, in effect, murderers. Such an entity could not integrate its two halves without self-hatred, self-deception, or some other form of insanity.” She said, “To become such a crippled entity defeats the Ultimate Purpose of Sophotechnology.” (...) “We are the ultimate expression of human rationality.” She said: “We need humans to form a pool of individuality and innovation on which we can draw.” He said, “And you’re funny.” She said, “And we love you.

Books are admitted to the canon by a compact which confesses their greatness in consideration of abrogating their meaning; so that the reverend rector can agree with the prophet Micah as to his inspired style without being committed to any complicity in Micah's furiously Radical opinions. Why, even I, as I force myself; pen in hand, into recognition and civility, find all the force of my onslaught destroyed by a simple policy of non-resistance. In vain do I redouble the violence of the language in which I proclaim my heterodoxies. I rail at the theistic credulity of Voltaire, the amoristic superstition of Shelley, the revival of tribal soothsaying and idolatrous rites which Huxley called Science and mistook for an advance on the Pentateuch, no less than at the welter of ecclesiastical and professional humbug which saves the face of the stupid system of violence and robbery which we call Law and Industry. Even atheists reproach me with infidelity and anarchists with nihilism because I cannot endure their moral tirades. And yet, instead of exclaiming "Send this inconceivable Satanist to the stake," the respectable newspapers pith me by announcing "another book by this brilliant and thoughtful writer." And the ordinary citizen, knowing that an author who is well spoken of by a respectable newspaper must be all right, reads me, as he reads Micah, with undisturbed edification from his own point of view. It is narrated that in the eighteen-seventies an old lady, a very devout Methodist, moved from Colchester to a house in the neighborhood of the City Road, in London, where, mistaking the Hall of Science for a chapel, she sat at the feet of Charles Bradlaugh for many years, entranced by his eloquence, without questioning his orthodoxy or moulting a feather of her faith. I fear I small be defrauded of my just martyrdom in the same way.

I made the mistake of snooping and reading the model’s journal. We finished having medium-to-boring sex and I rifled through his things while he took a shower. I am pretty good at snooping around. It started in my own house, where I would go through every drawer and every pocket in my parents’ room. Luckily, I didn’t find much at home except for some well-worn copies of Playboy that seem positively charming compared to the up-close butt fisting that pops up on my computer these days when I am trying to order salad tongs from Target. I honed my snooping skills when I babysat. It was then that I saw my first diaphragm, laxatives, and stacks of cash in an underwear drawer. I have basically ransacked every house I have been allowed into. My snooping tendencies have now abated somewhat, but I still have to fight the urge to immediately go through people’s shit. I am not proud of this and I realize that by admitting this I am limiting future opportunities to be a houseguest.

Professor A. H. Maslow, for example, has conducted a series of researches into extremely healthy people that have led him to conclude that health and optimism are far more positive principles in human psychology than Freud would ever have admitted. Man is a slave to the delusion that he is a passive creature, a creature of circumstance; this is because he makes the mistake of identifying himself with his limited everyday consciousness, and is unaware of the immense forces that lie just beyond the threshold of consciousness. But these forces, although he is unaware of them on a conscious level, are still a far more active influence in his life than any external circumstances. Freudian psychology, for all its achievements, has made a twofold error: it has tried to anatomize the human mind as a pathologist would dissect a corpse, and it has limited its researches to sick human beings. Sick men talk about their illness far more than healthy people talk about their health; in fact, healthy people are usually too absorbed in living to bother with self-revelation. Psychology has consequently been inclined to divide the world into sick people and “normal” people, regarding occasional super-normality as the exception; Maslow has shown that super-normality is a great deal commoner than would be supposed; in fact as common as sub-normality. Ordinarily healthy people often experience a sense of intense life-affirmation (which Maslow calls “peak experiences”); and examination of peak experiences has led Maslow to conclude that the evolutionary drive (which is so clear in art and philosophy) is as basic a part of human psychology as the Freudian libido or the Adlerian will to self-assertion. — Colin Wilson, “‘Six Thousand Feet Above Men and Time‘: Remarks on Nietzsche and Kierkegaard” (1965) (Wilson C. “Six Thousand Feet Above Men and Time”: Remarks on Nietzsche and Kierkegaard // Stanley C. (Ed.). Colin Wilson: Collected Essays on Philosophers. — Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016. Pp. 110–111.)

Can't you just let it go? Move on?" His face darkened. His eyes glared in response and he was silent a long time while his jaw worked over a toothpick. She'd used the same line that the prophet and his representatives had been using for years. Even if these things did happen, there is no point in being bitter. You should forgive and forget and let bygones be bygones. Kind of galling, considering the insistence upon forgiveness was being made by the people who had done the hurting and done nothing to make up for it. But then, that was the standard 'blame the victim' abuser mentally, and to be expected. Gideon seemed to work through this slap in the face and let it slide. He said, "For a while I thought maybe, you know, if I could talk to the people responsible. If I could show them how difficult life has been because of them, that maybe they would care. I don't know. I thought maybe if they apologized, it would be so much easier to forget this shit. You know? To do what they say and 'let it go'. But nobody will take any personal responsibility. My own parents have nothing to offer but a bunch of whiny excuses. They try to convince me that my life wasn't as bad as I remember it." "Fuck that," he said, "They weren't even there. They don't even know what went on with me. I just..." He paused and pulled his fingers through his hair. "Christ," he said. He paused again, eyes to the sky, and then back to her. "Even the people who never personally raised a hand against me still propped up the regime that made it happen. They stood by and allowed it. Played a part. All of them. Every single one was a participant. Either directly or by looking away. Institutionally, doctrinally, they abused us. Sent us into the streets to beg, denied us an education, had us beaten, starved, exorcised, and separated from our parents. They broke up our families, gave our bodies to perverts, and stole our future. And then they turn around and say we're supposed to just forget it happened and move on from it. If instead we bring up the past, then they'll call us liars. Say we're exaggerating or making it up completely. Why the hell would be make any of this shit up? What's the point in that? To make our lives seem worse than they were? Not that I would, but do you have any idea how much exaggeration it would take for the average person to even begin to grasp how fucking miserable it was? And then, if they ever do admit to any of it, they say that 'mistakes were made'. " "Mistakes." he said. He was leaning forward again, punctuating the air with his finger. "Michael, they commit crimes against children. You know, those things people in society go to jail for when they're caught. And then to the public they do what they always do. Deny. Deny. Deny. And we're left more raped than ever. Victimized first by what they did, and again by their refusal to admit that it happened. They paint us as bitter apostates and liars to a world that not only doesn't give a shit, but also couldn't possibly understand even if it did." "I do," Munroe said. And Gideon stopped.

The schedule took a toll. As residents, we were working as much as one hundred hours a week; though regulations officially capped our hours at eighty-eight, there was always more work to be done. My eyes watered, my head throbbed, I downed energy drinks at two A.M. At work, I could keep it together, but as soon as I walked out of the hospital, the exhaustion would hit me. I staggered through the parking lot, often napping in my car before driving the fifteen minutes home to bed. Not all residents could stand the pressure. One was simply unable to accept blame or responsibility. He was a talented surgeon, but he could not admit when he’d made a mistake. I sat with him one day in the lounge as he begged me to help him save his career. “All you have to do,” I said, “is look me in the eye and say, ‘I’m sorry. What happened was my fault, and I won’t let it happen again.’ ” “But it was the nurse who—” “No. You have to be able to say it and mean it. Try again.” “But—” “No. Say it.” This went on for an hour before I knew he was doomed.

I don't need you, Zade. I don’t need you to do anything for me." He clutches the back of my neck and pulls me in. "See, that's what we're not going to do, Adeline," he barks, baring his teeth. "We're not going to act like you're so tough that you don't need me anymore. Because you want to know something, baby? There are very few men in this world capable of killing me. And I fucking need you. Do you understand me?" I grit my teeth, refusing to answer. "Do you think needing me somehow makes you weak?" "Doesn't it?" I snap. "No, baby, it makes you strong.” He bends down, putting his face directly into mine. "I may own every breath in your body, but make no mistake, Adeline, you own mine, too. I am yours to command. To bend and break. To mold and manipulate. Do you think that makes me weak? Or do you think I'm strong enough to admit that even though my body can physically live on without you, I would never get my fucking soul back?” His hand slides into my hair and fists the strands tightly. "Without you, I will shatter. But with you, I am indestructible.

Studentdom, he felt, must pass its own Examinations and define its own Commencement--a slow, most painful process, made the more anguishing by bloody intelligences like the Bonifacists of Siegfrieder College. Yet however it seemed at times that men got nowhere, but only repeated class by class the mistakes of their predecessors, two crucial facts about them were at once their hope and the limitation of their possibility, so he believed. One was their historicity: the campus was young, the student race even younger, and by contrast with the whole of past time, the great collegiate cultures had been born only yesterday. The other had to do with comparative cyclology, a field of systematic speculation he could not review for me just then, but whose present relevance lay in the correspondency he held to obtain between the life-history of individuals and the history of studentdom in general. As the embryologists maintained that ontogeny repeats phylogeny, so, Max claimed, the race itself--and on a smaller scale, West-Campus culture--followed demonstrably--in capital letters, as it were, or slow motion--the life-pattern of its least new freshman. This was the basis of Spielman's Law--ontogeny repeats cosmogeny--and there was much more to it and to the science of cyclology whereof it was first principle. The important thing for now was that, by his calculations, West-Campus as a whole was in mid-adolescence... 'Look how we been acting,' he invited me, referring to intercollegiate political squabbles; 'the colleges are spoilt kids, and the whole University a mindless baby, ja? Okay: so weren't we all once, Enos Enoch too? And we got to admit that the University's a precocious kid. If the history of life on campus hadn't been so childish, we couldn't hope it'll reach maturity.' Studentdom had passed already, he asserted, from a disorganized, pre-literate infancy (of which Croaker was a modern representative, nothing ever being entirely lost) through a rather brilliant early childhood ('...ancient Lykeion, Remus, T'ang...') which formed its basic and somewhat contradictory character; it had undergone a period of naive general faith in parental authority (by which he meant early Founderism) and survived critical spells of disillusionment, skepticism, rationalism, willfulness, self-criticism, violence, disorientation, despair, and the like--all characteristic of pre-adolescence and adolescence, at least in their West-Campus form. I even recognized some of those stages in my own recent past; indeed, Max's description of the present state of West-Campus studentdom reminded me uncomfortably of my behavior in the Lady-Creamhair period: capricious, at odds with itself, perverse, hard to live with. Its schisms, as manifested in the Quiet Riot, had been aggravated and rendered dangerous by the access of unwonted power--as when, in the space of a few semesters, a boy finds himself suddenly muscular, deep-voiced, aware of his failings, proud of his strengths, capable of truly potent love and hatred--and on his own. What hope there was that such an adolescent would reach maturity (not to say Commencement) without destroying himself was precisely the hope of the University.

Is more committed to being honest about his or her mistakes and apologizing when necessary than in defending his or her ego. A partner who can’t admit he was wrong but instead loudly insists he was justified in his unkind behavior is not a good candidate for intimacy. Imagine that same kind of ego in a doctor—or a president. (I recall an interview in which Henry Kissinger said that Richard Nixon did not end the war in Vietnam early on in his terms because “he did not want to be remembered as the president who lost a war.” Imagine having a son in the army with that attitude in the White House.) We can take both trustworthiness and untrustworthiness as information about whether a relationship can go on but never as an incentive to hurt back if we are betrayed or to stay put if we are hurt. We can also do an audit of our sex life:   How interested am I in being sexual with you?   How delighted am I by seeing you, being with you, or thinking about you?   How is our sexuality contributing to our intimacy?   Can we be intimate without having to be sexual every time?

I’ve experienced all kinds of discrimination,” Oshima says. “Only people who’ve been discriminated against can really know how much it hurts. Each person feels the pain in his own way, each has his own scars. So I think I’m as concerned about fairness and justice as anybody. But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Eliot calls hollow men. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they’re doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don’t want to. Like that lovely pair we just met.” He sighs and twirls the long slender pencil in his hand. “Gays, lesbians, straights, feminists, fascist pigs, communists, Hare Krishnas—none of them bother me. I don’t care what banner they raise. But what I can’t stand are hollow people. When I’m with them I just can’t bear it, and wind up saying things I shouldn’t. With those women—I should’ve just let it slide, or else called Miss Saeki and let her handle it. She would have given them a smile and smoothed things over. But I just can’t do that. I say things I shouldn’t, do things I shouldn’t do. I can’t control myself. That’s one of my weak points. Do you know why that’s a weak point of mine?” “’Cause if you take every single person who lacks much imagination seriously, there’s no end to it,” I say. “That’s it,” Oshima says. He taps his temple lightly with the eraser end of the pencil. “But there’s one thing I want you to remember, Kafka. Those are exactly the kind of people who murdered Miss Saeki’s childhood sweetheart. Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course it’s important to know what’s right and what’s wrong. Individual errors in judgment can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive. They’re a lost cause, and I don’t want anyone like that coming in here.” Oshima points at the stacks with the tip of his pencil. What he means, of course, is the entire library. “I wish I could just laugh off people like that, but I can’t.

Even seasoned military men found it difficult to believe what they were seeing, and admitted to feeling bewildered and disorientated as the attack unfolded. The notion that an actual raid was underway was slow to enter their minds. In the eyewitness accounts, that pattern of belated comprehension is repeated again and again. A plane approaches. ( “Why are those planes flying so low?”) American ground-based antiaircraft guns fire at the intruder. (“Why are the boys shooting at that plane?”) A bomb drops. (“What a stupid, careless pilot, not to have secured his releasing gear.”) It explodes. ( “Somebody goofed big this time. They loaded live bombs on those planes by mistake.”) As the plane turns upward, the Japanese “Rising Sun” insignia comes into view on the underside of the wings. ( “My God! They’re really going all-out! They’ve even painted the rising sun on that plane!”) An American ship explodes. ( “What kind of a drill is this?”) Even then, some men refused to believe that a war had begun that morning—perhaps, as Commander A. L. Seton of the light cruiser St. Louis first guessed, the attacker was “a lone, berserk Japanese pilot who somehow had gotten to Pearl and now would be in trouble with his navy and ours.

Hoover was deeply respected by both parties. In 1928, the Republicans nominated him for president. In his acceptance speech, delivered at the height of prosperity, Hoover proclaimed that Americans were “nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.” His profound belief in individualism, voluntarism, and the fundamental strength of the American economy blinded him from realizing, until too late, that government had to exert a primary role in helping people through what was fast becoming the worst Depression the country had ever known. At the slightest uptick in the stock market, Hoover believed and summarily proclaimed that the worst was over. When the economy continued to flounder, he came under blistering assault. Still, he would not admit that voluntary activities had failed. He adopted a bunker mentality, refusing to countenance the worsening situation. By contrast, Roosevelt had adapted all his life to changing circumstances. The routine of his placid childhood had been disrupted forever by his father’s heart attack and eventual death. Told he would never walk again, he had experimented with one method after another to improve his mobility. So now, as Roosevelt campaigned for the presidency, he built on his own long encounter with adversity: “The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

Gays, lesbians, straights, feminists, fascist pigs, communists, Hare Krishnas — none of them bother me. I don’t care what banner they raise. But what I can’t stand are hollow people. When I’m with them I just can’t bear it, and wind up saying things I shouldn’t. With those women — I should’ve just let it slide, or else called Miss Saeki and let her handle it. She would have given them a smile and smoothed things over. But I just can’t do that. I say things I shouldn’t, do things I shouldn’t do. I can’t control myself. That’s one of my weak points. Do you know why that’s a weak point of mine?” “‘Cause if you take every single person who lacks much imagination seriously, there’s no end to it,” I say. “That’s it,” Oshima says. He taps his temple lightly with the eraser end of the pencil. “But there’s one thing I want you to remember, Kafka. Those are exactly the kind of people who murdered Miss Saeki’s childhood sweetheart. Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course it’s important to know what’s right and what’s wrong. Individual errors in judgment can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive. They’re a lost cause, and I don’t want anyone like that coming in here.

how difficult it is to say, “Boy, did I mess up,” without the protective postscript of self-justification—to say “I dropped a routine fly ball with the bases loaded” rather than “I dropped the ball because the sun was in my eyes” or “because a bird flew by” or “because it was windy” or “because a fan called me a jerk.” A friend returning from a day in traffic school told us that as participants went around the room, reporting the violations that had brought them there, a miraculous coincidence had occurred: Not one of them had broken the law! They all had justifications for speeding, ignoring a stop sign, running a red light, or making an illegal U-turn. He became so dismayed (and amused) by the litany of flimsy excuses that, when his turn came, he was embarrassed to give in to the same impulse. He said, “I didn’t stop at a stop sign. I was entirely wrong and I got caught.” There was a moment’s silence, and then the room erupted in cheers for his candor. There are plenty of good reasons for admitting mistakes, starting with the simple fact that you will probably be found out anyway—by your family, your company, your colleagues, your enemies, your biographer. But there are more positive reasons for owning up. Other people will like you more. Someone else may be able to pick up your fumble and run with it; your error might inspire someone else’s solution. Children will realize that everyone screws up on occasion and that even adults have to say “I’m sorry.” And if you can admit a mistake when it is the size of an acorn, it will be easier to repair than if you wait until it becomes the size of a tree, with deep, wide-ranging roots.

habit Phil Ivey is one of those guys who can easily admit when he could have done better. Ivey is one of the world’s best poker players, a player almost universally admired by other professional poker players for his exceptional skill and confidence in his game. Starting in his early twenties, he built a reputation as a top cash-game player, a top tournament player, a top heads-up player, a top mixed-game player—a top player in every form and format of poker. In a profession where, as I’ve explained, most people are awash in self-serving bias, Phil Ivey is an exception. In 2004, my brother provided televised final-table commentary for a tournament in which Phil Ivey smoked a star-studded final table. After his win, the two of them went to a restaurant for dinner, during which Ivey deconstructed every potential playing error he thought he might have made on the way to victory, asking my brother’s opinion about each strategic decision. A more run-of-the-mill player might have spent the time talking about how great they played, relishing the victory. Not Ivey. For him, the opportunity to learn from his mistakes was much more important than treating that dinner as a self-satisfying celebration. He earned a half-million dollars and won a lengthy poker tournament over world-class competition, but all he wanted to do was discuss with a fellow pro where he might have made better decisions. I heard an identical story secondhand about Ivey at another otherwise celebratory dinner following one of his now ten World Series of Poker victories. Again, from what I understand, he spent the evening discussing in intricate detail with some other pros the points in hands where he could have made better decisions. Phil Ivey, clearly, has different habits than most poker players—and most people in any endeavor—in how he fields his outcomes.

Any relationship will have its difficulties, but sometimes those problems are indicators of deep-rooted problems that, if not addressed quickly, will poison your marriage. If any of the following red flags—caution signs—exist in your relationship, we recommend that you talk about the situation as soon as possible with a pastor, counselor or mentor. Part of this list was adapted by permission from Bob Phillips, author of How Can I Be Sure: A Pre-Marriage Inventory.1 You have a general uneasy feeling that something is wrong in your relationship. You find yourself arguing often with your fiancé(e). Your fiancé(e) seems irrationally angry and jealous whenever you interact with someone of the opposite sex. You avoid discussing certain subjects because you’re afraid of your fiancé(e)’s reaction. Your fiancé(e) finds it extremely difficult to express emotions, or is prone to extreme emotions (such as out-of-control anger or exaggerated fear). Or he/she swings back and forth between emotional extremes (such as being very happy one minute, then suddenly exhibiting extreme sadness the next). Your fiancé(e) displays controlling behavior. This means more than a desire to be in charge—it means your fiancé(e) seems to want to control every aspect of your life: your appearance, your lifestyle, your interactions with friends or family, and so on. Your fiancé(e) seems to manipulate you into doing what he or she wants. You are continuing the relationship because of fear—of hurting your fiancé(e), or of what he or she might do if you ended the relationship. Your fiancé(e) does not treat you with respect. He or she constantly criticizes you or talks sarcastically to you, even in public. Your fiancé(e) is unable to hold down a job, doesn’t take personal responsibility for losing a job, or frequently borrows money from you or from friends. Your fiancé(e) often talks about aches and pains, and you suspect some of these are imagined. He or she goes from doctor to doctor until finding someone who will agree that there is some type of illness. Your fiancé(e) is unable to resolve conflict. He or she cannot deal with constructive criticism, or never admits a mistake, or never asks for forgiveness. Your fiancé(e) is overly dependant on parents for finances, decision-making or emotional security. Your fiancé(e) is consistently dishonest and tries to keep you from learning about certain aspects of his or her life. Your fiancé(e) does not appear to recognize right from wrong, and rationalizes questionable behavior. Your fiancé(e) consistently avoids responsibility. Your fiancé(e) exhibits patterns of physical, emotional or sexual abuse toward you or others. Your fiancé(e) displays signs of drug or alcohol abuse: unexplained absences of missed dates, frequent car accidents, the smell of alcohol or strong odor of mouthwash, erratic behavior or emotional swings, physical signs such as red eyes, unkempt look, unexplained nervousness, and so on. Your fiancé(e) has displayed a sudden, dramatic change in lifestyle after you began dating. (He or she may be changing just to win you and will revert back to old habits after marriage.) Your fiancé(e) has trouble controlling anger. He or she uses anger as a weapon or as a means of winning arguments. You have a difficult time trusting your fiancé(e)—to fulfill responsibilities, to be truthful, to help in times of need, to make ethical decisions, and so on. Your fiancé(e) has a history of multiple serious relationships that have failed—a pattern of knowing how to begin a relationship but not knowing how to keep one growing. Look over this list. Do any of these red flags apply to your relationship? If so, we recommend you talk about the situation as soon as possible with a pastor, counselor or mentor.

Sung was a land which was famous far and wide, simply because it was so often and so richly insulted. However, there was one visitor, more excitable than most, who developed a positive passion for criticizing the place. Unfortunately, the pursuit of this hobby soon lead him to take leave of the truth. This unkind traveler once claimed that the king of Sung, the notable Skan Askander, was a derelict glutton with a monster for a son and a slug for a daughter. This was unkind to the daughter. While she was no great beauty, she was definitely not a slug. After all, slugs do not have arms and legs - and besides, slugs do not grow to that size. There was a grain of truth in the traveler's statement, in as much as the son was a regrettable young man. However, soon afterwards, the son was accidentally drowned when he made the mistake of falling into a swamp with his hands and feet tied together and a knife sticking out of his back. This tragedy did not encourage the traveler to extend his sympathies to the family. Instead, he invented fresh accusations. This wayfarer, an ignorant tourist if ever there was one, claimed that the king had leprosy. This was false. The king merely had a well-developed case of boils. The man with the evil mouth was guilty of a further malignant slander when he stated that King Skan Askander was a cannibal. This was untrue. While it must be admitted that the king once ate one of his wives, he did not do it intentionally; the whole disgraceful episode was the fault of the chef, who was a drunkard, and who was subsequently severely reprimanded. .The question of the governance, and indeed, the very existence of the 'kingdom of Sung' is one that is worth pursuing in detail, before dealing with the traveler's other allegations. It is true that there was a king, his being Skan Askander, and that some of his ancestors had been absolute rulers of considerable power. It is also true that the king's chief swineherd, who doubled as royal cartographer, drew bold, confident maps proclaiming that borders of the realm. Furthermore, the king could pass laws, sign death warrants, issue currency, declare war or amuse himself by inventing new taxes. And what he could do, he did. "We are a king who knows how to be king," said the king. And certainly, anyone wishing to dispute his right to use of the imperial 'we' would have had to contend with the fact that there was enough of him, in girth, bulk, and substance, to provide the makings of four or five ordinary people, flesh, bones and all. He was an imposing figure, "very imposing", one of his brides is alleged to have said, shortly before the accident in which she suffocated. "We live in a palace," said the king. "Not in a tent like Khmar, the chief milkmaid of Tameran, or in a draughty pile of stones like Comedo of Estar." . . .From Prince Comedo came the following tart rejoinder: "Unlike yours, my floors are not made of milk-white marble. However, unlike yours, my floors are not knee-deep in pigsh*t." . . .Receiving that Note, Skan Askander placed it by his commode, where it would be handy for future royal use. Much later, and to his great surprise, he received a communication from the Lord Emperor Khmar, the undisputed master of most of the continent of Tameran. The fact that Sung had come to the attention of Khmar was, to say the least, ominous. Khmar had this to say: "Your words have been reported. In due course, they will be remembered against you." The king of Sung, terrified, endured the sudden onset of an attack of diarrhea that had nothing to do with the figs he had been eating. His latest bride, seeing his acute distress, made the most of her opportunity, and vigorously counselled him to commit suicide. Knowing Khmar's reputation, he was tempted - but finally, to her great disappointment, declined. Nevertheless, he lived in fear; he had no way of knowing that he was simply the victim of one of Khmar's little jokes.

Keep Your Ego at Bay; Stay Humble   Have you felt that urgent desire to feel important, to feel special and to feel way above over other people? As a graduate, do you think you have the best education and do you think you deserve that job opening more over the other guy? Do you think you have accomplished so much in life that you deserve better than your peers? If so, maybe your ego is getting the best of you. When you act based on your ego, there is a great chance that you will be at odds with the world and the people around you. You feel that you are more special than others because of your accomplishments, your education, your work and your possession. Because of that, you are failing to see others’ worth and importance. You only act based on what you think, because your opinion is the only one that matters. You barely admit mistakes; hence, you are depriving yourself of the opportunity to grow because you believe that you got everything you need. You are tarnishing your relationship with others by alienating them with your attitude. Ultimately, you are missing a lot in life! Dr. Dryer preaches about a life of humility and respect for one’s self and others. He always reminds his readers, students and followers to keep their ego at bay and stay humble. He believes in the universal truth that individuals are more common than different with each other; that no one is above someone or more special than others. He believes in the perfect being, the invisible force that created all of us, and so we are one and the same, just performing our own duty in this universe. Our ego stems from our desire to gain recognition from our achievements and hard work. There is nothing wrong with that. Humans crave to be recognized because it is one of the best feelings in the world. However, when you become overly attached to that idea and your entitlement, that is where ego comes in and it does more bad than good to you. The best way to be recognized is to stay humble and modest of your accomplishments. Your achievements sound the loudest when you are not telling it to everyone. You can only earn the highest of respect when you give the same amount of respect to others and to yourself. You can only feel truly special when you are not trying to be over someone else’s head, but rather carry others on your back to lift them up. That is what matters the most.

God's honesty. A god who is all-knowing and all-powerful and who does not even make sure that his creatures understand his intention could that be a god of goodness? Who allows countless doubts and dubieties to persist, for thousands of years, as though the salvation of mankind were unaffected by them, and who on the other hand holds out the prospect of frightful consequences if any mistake is made as to the nature of the truth? Would he not be a cruel god if he possessed the truth and could behold mankind miserably tormenting itself over the truth? But perhaps he is a god of goodness notwithstanding and merely could not express himself more clearly! Did he perhaps lack the intelligence to do so? Or the eloquence? So much the worse! For then he was perhaps also in error as to that which he calls his 'truth', and is himself not so very far from being the 'poor deluded devil'! Must he not then endure almost the torments of Hell to have to see his creatures suffer so, and go on suffering even more through all eternity, for the sake of knowledge of him, and not be able to help and counsel them, except in the manner of a deafand-dumb man making all kinds of ambiguous signs when the most fearful danger is about to fall on his child or his dog? A believer who reaches this oppressive conclusion ought truly to be forgiven if he feels more pity for this suffering god than he does for his 'neighbours' for they are no longer his neighbours if that most solitary and most primeval being is also the most suffering being of all and the one most in need of comfort. All religions exhibit traces of the fact that they owe their origin to an early, immature intellectuality in man they all take astonishingly lightly the duty to tell the truth: they as yet know nothing of a duty of God to be truthful towards mankind and clear in the manner of his communications. On the 'hidden god', and on the reasons for keeping himself thus hidden and never emerging more than half-way into the light of speech, no one has been more eloquent than Pascal a sign that he was never able to calm his mind on this matter: but his voice rings as confidently as if he had at one time sat behind the curtain with this hidden god. He sensed a piece of immorality in the 'deus absconditus' [the "hidden/concealed god"] and was very fearful and ashamed of admitting it to himself: and thus, like one who is afraid, he talked as loudly as he could.

Pinter is leaving for the day?” Isaac commented. “That’s a pity.” “Why?” “Haven’t you noticed how he looks at Celia sometimes? I think he might have set his sights on her.” “I thought so, too. Until just now.” “Just now?” “He did not react exactly as I expected when I-“ Oh, dear, perhaps she should not mention that. Isaac might not approve.” “Hetty?” Isaac prodded. “What mischief have you been up to now? You weren’t warning him off, were you?” The disapproval in his tone made her bristle. “And what if I was? The man is the love child of a light-heeled wench and God knows whom.” Isaac’s jaw tautened. “I didn’t know you were such a snob.” “I am not,” she protested. “But given his circumstances, I want to be sure he is interested in Celia for something other than her fortune. I watched my daughter marry a man whom she thought loved her, only to discover that he was merely a more skillful fortune hunter than most. I do not want to make that mistake again.” He sighed. “All right. I suppose I understand your caution. But Pinter? I’ve never seen a less likely fortune hunter. He talks about people of rank with nothing but contempt.” “And does that not worry you? She is one of those people, after all.” “What it tells me is that he doesn’t think much of marrying for rank or fortune.” She gripped his arm. “I suppose. And I must admit that when I hinted I could disinherit her if she married too low-“ “Hetty!” “I would not do it, mind you. But he does not know that. It is a good way to be sure how he feels about her.” “You’re playing with fire,” he gritted out. “And what did he say to it?” “He told me she would never marry anyone as low as him, then tried to convince me to rescind my ultimatum for her so she could marry a man she loved. And that was after I made it clear that it could not be him. He was very eloquent on the subject of what she deserved. Accused me of not knowing her worth, the impertinent devil.” “Good man, our Pinter,” he muttered. “I beg your pardon?” she said, bristling. “A man in love will fight to see that the woman he cares for is given what she deserves, even if he can’t have her.” Isaac eyed her askance. “Even if some meddler has dictated that marrying her would ruin her future forever.” A chill ran down Hetty’s spine. She had not considered her tactic in quite that light. “Be careful, my dear,” Isaac said in a low voice. “You’ve been dabbling in your grandchildren’s lives to such good effect you’ve forgotten that the heart is beyond your purview.” Was he right?

To be fair, if we had married then, who knows what would have become of us? I doubt I would have liked your running about the country as a spy, leaving me alone for weeks at a time. And I daresay you would have had trouble concentrating on your work for worrying about me.” His grateful smile showed that he appreciated her attempt to mitigate his betrayal. “Of course, later you could have…well…come after me. Once you established your business. While I was still un-betrothed. Why didn’t you?” “I don’t suppose you would accept rampant idiocy as a reason?” “I would…if I really thought it were the reason.” When he stiffened, she added archly, “You aren’t generally an idiot. Daft and a tad overbearing, yes, but not an idiot.” A sigh escaped him. He leaned past her to pull the curtain open just enough so he could keep an eye on the street. When it looked as if he might not answer, she added, “Tristan thinks you didn’t come after me because you were afraid that I couldn’t love you.” He cast her a startled glance. “You told Tristan the truth about us?” She winced. “And Lisette and Max. Sorry. Tristan sort of…forced it out of me.” “Well, that explains why Max and Lisette were willing to bring you here in the midst of such a crucial investigation. They’ve been pressing me for a long time to give you another chance. Because they thought you betrayed me.” Grabbing her hands, he gazed down at them with a haunted look. “And I suppose there’s some truth to my brother’s words. But I also didn’t come after you because that would have been a tacit admission that I’d made a mistake. That in so doing, I’d ruined our lives. I was afraid if I admitted I’d been wrong, then it had all been for nothing. I’d sacrificed my happiness--your happiness--for nothing.” “Oh, Dom,” she whispered and squeezed his hands. “A part of me also thought if I didn’t approach you at all, there was still a chance we could be together again. But if I asked and you said no--or worse yet, said that you no longer cared about me--it would be over for good. As long as I didn’t ask, there was always hope. And hope is what kept me going.” A muscle flexed in his jaw. “Until you got engaged. That quashed my hope. It was what I’d told myself I wanted for you. Because it proved that I’d been right to put you aside.” He lifted his gaze to hers. “Unfortunately, being right was cold comfort when it meant I’d lost you for good. By the time you came to me that day at Rathmoor Park, I was in a very dark state. I was resigning myself to a lifetime of loneliness, of wanting you and not having you.” “You would have let me marry Edwin?” she said incredulously. “Even though you still loved me?” “You were still going to marry him, weren’t you?” he countered. “Knowing that you still loved me.” “True.” She attempted a smile. “I would have done it just to bedevil you.” “No doubt,” he said dryly. “But it would have been a mistake, and I’d have been miserable.” He pressed a kiss to their joined hands. “Then I suppose we should really thank Nancy for her shenanigans. Or else we’d still be separate and miserable.

Taking hold of the ladder, she began to climb, stopping when she got to eye level with him. That, however, turned out to be a mistake, because the moment her eyes met his, she forgot everything—even the lines she’d just committed to memory—because nothing else mattered to her except . . . him. “You wrote a scene with a strong heroine in it, and one where the hero gets dangled by his feet.” “I did.” “Why?” “Because I couldn’t figure out a better way to let you know I love you, the real you, without dangling from my feet and letting you cut me down.” Lucetta’s eyes immediately took to turning a little misty. “You . . . love me?” “I do, but before we continue this, I have to admit that hanging upside down is far less pleasant than I imagined, so if you’d be so kind, I really do need you to get me down from here.” Realizing he was completely serious, but also realizing if she cut him down he’d go plummeting to the hard floor and most likely suffer a horrible injury—which certainly wouldn’t have the night turning out well at all—Lucetta looked to the side of the stage and caught Mr. Skukman’s eye. As he, along with a good number of backstage hands, walked across the boards, whispers began circulating around the theater, growing louder after Bram got released and rose to his feet. Smiling ever so charmingly at the audience, he presented them with a small bow right before he took center stage. “Ladies and gentlemen, I must beg your indulgence for just a few more minutes because you see . . . I am . . . Mr. Grimstone.” The whispers ceased immediately. Bram smiled. “I’m Mr. Grimstone, alias Mr. Bram Haverstein, and I’ve come here tonight, with all of you as my witnesses, to proclaim my love for Miss Lucetta Plum, and . . .” He dropped to one knee. “Ask her to do me the very great honor of becoming my wife.” He reached out and took hold of Lucetta’s hand. “Miss Lucetta Plum, I am completely and irrevocably in love with you, and just so we’re clear, I’m in love with the real you, not the person you turn into when you take to the stage. I love the idea that you’re completely oblivious to your unusual beauty, can outrun a goat, and . . . you fascinate me as no one ever has. I’m asking you, in front of all of these people who will probably never buy another one of my books again if you turn me down . . .” He stopped talking and turned his head to the audience. “And just to remind everyone, I will have another novel releasing soon, although I haven’t decided on a title just yet, something about a strong-willed lady, no doubt, or . . .” “You’re getting distracted,” Lucetta interrupted. Bram immediately returned his gaze to hers. “Quite right, but . . . I’ve lost my train of thought.” “You were just about to the part where you were going to ask her to marry you,” a voice called out, a voice that sounded remarkably like Abigail’s. “Thank you, Grandmother,” he called back. “You’re welcome, darling. And just to remind you, I’m not getting any younger, so you might want to hurry this proposal business along.” Grinning, Bram shook his head, brought Lucetta’s fingers to his lips, and then sobered as he held her gaze. “I love you, Lucetta, more than I ever imagined I could, and I would be so incredibly honored if you’d agree to be my wife.” For a second, Lucetta was unable to answer him because her heart had taken to rising in her throat, but after drawing in a deep breath, she managed to nod, ignoring the tears that had filled her eyes and were blurring her vision. “I would be honored to become your wife, especially since—I’m not sure when this happened, but—I’m in love with you as well.” Bram’s hold on her hand tightened for just a second, and then he was sliding a ring on her finger she hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. Before she could take even a second to admire what felt like an enormous rock on her hand, he was standing instead of kneeling, looking intently into her eyes, before he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. The

He would do exactly as he pleased, imposing his beliefs on others. And in order to do that, he would claim this was the sharia, that this was what the Quran said, that this was law. He was not the type of man who admitted to his mistakes. He would justify it all with religion.

Well—I think it’s a grave mistake to put on public record everyone’s I.Q. I think the first thing the revolutionaries would want to do is knock off everybody with an I.Q. over 110, say. If I were on your side of the river, I’d have the I.Q. books closed and the bridges mined.” “Then the 100’s would go after the 110’s, the 90’s after the 100’s, and so on,” said Finnerty. “Maybe. Something like that. Things are certainly set up for a class war based on conveniently established lines of demarkation. And I must say that the basic assumption of the present setup is a grade-A incitement to violence: the smarter you are, the better you are. Used to be that the richer you were, the better you were. Either one is, you’ll admit, pretty tough for the have-not’s to take. The criterion of brains is better than the one of money, but”—he held his thumb and forefinger about a sixteenth of an inch apart—“about that much better.” “It’s about as rigid a hierarchy as you can get,” said Finnerty. “How’s somebody going to up his I.Q.?

Darius hesitated right beside us and reached out to run his fingers along the side of my face. “You were right you know,” he breathed as if the others weren’t surrounding us and as I looked into his eyes, it almost felt like they weren’t. “I’m not good enough for you.” ... “I don’t wanna sleep here,” I muttered as Darius’s scent enveloped me and a whole host of regrets came whispering in my ears. But I was so exhausted from using my gifts that I just couldn’t stop my eyes from fluttering shut. Caleb laughed softly. “I’ll lock the door and push the key back under it so you can escape in the morning.” “Asshole,” I murmured. “Always,” he agreed, flicking the lights off and the door clicked shut before the sound of the key turning in the lock followed. I was too tired to argue further but before I gave in to sleep, I snagged my Atlas from the nightstand and forwarded the photograph I’d taken of Xavier and Catalina flying together in their Order forms to Darius. He deserved to see evidence of his mother’slove after all of these years and the knowledge that they’d all been denied that bond for so long made my heart ache for them. A moment later, a message came through from him and I smiled to myself as I read it. Darius: Thank you, Roxy. This means more to me than words can convey. My cheeks flushed at his reply and I bit my lip as exhaustion pulled at me. I sighed to myself as I nestled down in his bed, trying not to linger in the memories of sleeping here with his arms wrapped around me, feeling like nothing and no one in the world could ever hurt me so long as I just stayed right there. Maybe I should have listened to those instincts. Because his bed didn’t feel the same without him in it. And for the first time that I would admit to myself, I had to wonder if I’d made a terrible mistake when I said no. (Tory POV)

I’ve often said that when he made humans, the all-knowing god must have been admitting a mistake with his first crew of companions and servants, so he dumbed down your design a bit. Thus, you having such difficulty pronouncing what I consider a perfectly commonplace name. Still, it comes in handy, as it keeps me from getting summoned by every Anton, Aleister, and Harry who bumbles his way to the chapter on summoning in whatever book on the dark arts is in his possession.

The rusty hinge of a grackle sounds from the trees overhead. He’s about to apologize, to say that he made a mistake and go home, when she offers him the ice cream sandwich. For the first time all afternoon, she lowers her guard, with something like a smile. “Look,” she says. “I played along a little. I waited with those other women and let you buy me ice cream like we were just another hetero couple out on our hetero Sunday date with the boringly hetero idea to go to the park. Now have some ice cream, I don’t want to eat all of it.” He takes a bite, and she pulls it back. “One thing I’ll tell you, though,” she says. “You move differently than before.” “Move differently?” “Yeah, you were always graceful, but you used to be so careful to swing your hips. You were a languid boy, who learned to move like a woman, who then learned to move like a boy again, but without wiping your hard drive each time. You’ve got all these glitches in the way you move. I was watching you in the ice cream line—you slither.” “Wow, Reese, just wow.” “No! It’s charismatic. Remember how Johnny Depp pretended to be a drunk Keith Richards pretending to be a fey pirate? You can’t help but be a little drawn in, like: What’s going on with that one?” She smiles at him and takes a lick of ice cream, mock innocent. “I forget what it’s like being around trans women,” he admits. “That for once, I’m not the only one constantly analyzing the gender dynamics of every situation to play my role.” “Welcome back,” she says, seeming considerably cheered. “You must have also forgotten that I taught you everything you know.” “Please. The student surpassed the master long ago.” “Girl, you wish.” It’s like coming home, that quick “girl.” Something warmer and sweeter than the spring sun heating his neck and the ice cream lingering on his tongue. It’s scary-seductive, emphasis on scary. Start looking for that kind of comfort and he’s bound to make a fool of himself.

When Meredith Kercher arrived home, Guede was still there. He sexually assaulted her and slit her throat. Two days later, he fled the country. He was identified through fingerprints left at the scene. Two weeks after that, he was tracked down by police and apprehended near Mainz, Germany, and brought back to Italy to face justice. By then, however, an overzealous prosecutor named Giuliano Mignini, a lifelong resident of Perugia, had detained, interrogated, and arrested Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for the murder of Meredith Kercher. Rather than admitting his mistake in light of the capture of Rudy Guede and freeing the young couple, he kept them imprisoned for an entire year, routinely allowing prejudicial gossip, damaging innuendo, and questionable “evidence” to reach a media pool hungry for salacious details. In this way, irreparable harm was done to the reputations of the accused, who were isolated and denied any avenue of response. When Mignini finally charged them as co-conspirators with Guede in the murder of Meredith Kercher, any chance of a fair trial had been purposefully destroyed.

I stared in shock as he called our names informally as if we were old friends dropping in for an unexpected visit. He turned to our hulking escort. ‘Fredric be a dear and tell my brothers about our company. I'm sure they wouldn't want to miss this.’ ‘Yes, Master.’ Fredric nodded and disappeared back the way we had come. ‘You see, Marcel?’ The strange angel turned and smiled at Marcel like a fond All the same and all, scolding grandfather. ‘What did I tell you? Aren't you glad that I didn't give you what you wanted yesterday?’ ‘Yes, Aron, I am,’ he agreed, tightening his arm around my waist. ‘I love a happy ending.’ Aron sighed. ‘They are so rare. All the same and all, I want the whole story. How did this happen? Olivia?’ He turned to gaze at Olivia with curious, misty eyes. ‘Your brother seemed to think you infallible, All the same, and all there was some mistake.’ ‘Oh, I'm far from infallible.’ She flashed a dazzling smile. She looked perfectly at ease, except that her hands were balled into tight little fists. ‘As you can see today, I cause problems as often as I cure them.’ ‘You're too modest,’ Aron chided. ‘I've seen some of your more amazing exploits, and I must admit I've never observed anything like your talent. Wonderful!’ Olivia flickered a glance at Marcel. Aron did not miss it. ‘I'm sorry, we haven't been introduced properly at all, have we? It's just that I feel like I know you already, and I tend to get ahead of myself. Your brother introduced us yesterday, in a peculiar way. You see, I share some of your brother's talent, only I am limited in a way that he is not.’ Aron shook his head; his tone was envious.

after years of continuously working in front of screens. Although he used his phone to capture precious moments with his children, stay connected with family, and engage with social media, he couldn't shake the feeling that screens had become an outsized part of his parenting. "One of the biggest mistakes I made during the pandemic was buying an iPad," he admitted. "It became a crutch when I didn't feel like being present or when one of my younger ones became difficult to handle. I kept using the screen as a pacifier, rather than introducing proper ways to deal with boredom and their high energy levels." Growing up, Jason had fond memories of playing catch with his dad, creating scrap albums, and watching photos develop in his father's darkroom studio. "It taught me patience, curiosity, and precision,” he recalled. "It helped me become very careful when writing code and trying to get it right the first time." Inspired by these cherished memories, Jason resolved to reintroduce more analog activities into his family's daily life. He purchased a film camera, set up a darkroom in their home, and acquired puzzles for his younger children. Over the next two years, Jason noticed a significant improvement in his connection with his children as they bonded over these analog pastimes. As his children prepared for high school, he felt ready

You mean our most important ideas about life are ones we are not even aware of, and we’ve been carrying them around since childhood? Yes, and their impact can be very powerful. Often when we think we’re responding to actual people and events, we’re merely assigning them parts in the inner novel we’ve been writing all our lives. For example, if someone has felt deserted as a child by an important adult, and this becomes a key experience in his way of seeing the world, there are several ways he can continue to have that experience. One way is to seek out the kind of people who are likely to desert him as an adult—and we are all very clever about that. Another is to drive people away by his own behavior. Or he can imagine he is deserted by people who really haven’t mistreated him at all. Whatever way he chooses, he confirms his theory about what to expect from others, and this is very gratifying. Come on! That certainly doesn’t sound like any way to have fun. You’d be surprised. Being right is one of the most satisfying experiences in the world. Or let’s say, rather, that being wrong is one of the most unsettling experiences that can happen to anyone. It’s an awful blow to the ego to feel you’ve made a mistake. That’s why people don’t want to change. It would mean admitting they were wrong. A patient once burst out at me indignantly, “But that would mean I wasted the first forty years of my life!” Some people would rather go on making the same mistake for another forty years than admit it and cut their losses. People are very stubborn. Sometimes they secretly believe that if they keep on long enough with their misconceived behavior, they’ll make it right. That reality will give in to their views, rather than vice versa. They’re still trying to get their parents to give in. They haven’t given up their anger over what they didn’t get when they were five years old.

The evidence is pretty clear he can’t admit mistakes. If he realizes they tracked the car from South Carolina, it’s not his fault.

Seriously though, that’s something I miss about the time I grew up in. A man had older men around to help guide him. I assume women had the same thing but I never paid no mind to that. I had grandpas around. There were uncles and great-uncles. There were old men who lived in the valley here. You saw those old men all the time and they asked you questions about your life. They helped keep you pointed in the right direction.” “I didn’t have much of that growing up,” Jim admitted. “Don’t have any of it now.” Orbin nodded as if this proved his point. “Makes things harder, doesn’t it? If you go it alone, all you have is the school of hard knocks to keep you straight and that’s a rough ride.” “Tell me about it. I know all about learning from mistakes.” “At least you’re learning, son, and you care about learning. That’s important. Many folks these days are more concerned with being right than becoming better people. They don’t grow and change. They get some crazy idea in their head and then find something on the internet that validates it for them. Then they never have to grow, you see? They never have to get better. The truth is that you’re never perfect just the way you are, no matter what the internet says. You should always be working toward being better. By the time you’re old, like me, you’ll be damn near perfect.” Orbin let out a huge laugh and patted Jim on the back.

A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them

Admitting mistakes, taking ownership, and developing a plan to overcome challenges are integral to any successful team. Ego can prevent a leader from conducting an honest, realistic assessment of his or her own performance and the performance of the team.

Galvin told Petraeus that the most important part of the job was to criticise his boss: ‘It’s my job to run the division, and it’s your job to critique me.’ Petraeus protested but Galvin insisted, so each month the young captain would leave a report card in his boss’s in-tray. It was a vital lesson for an officer unwilling to admit mistakes.

Maybe I’m more like him than I want to admit.” “Like who?” “My father. I know you know some about him, but he was a bastard, love. A true bastard. He moulded me to be like him, but what if I am? What if all that moulding, all those lessons, made me into the very thing I fucking hate? Kenzo sees it, so do you. I am capable of such destruction, such vile acts, yet I excuse it with the need to save my family. Yet here you are, my prisoner, and I don’t want to let you go. I want you to ourselves, to lock you away in here so no other can even have you. Just like he did to my mother. Am I doomed to repeat his mistakes?

The harried solicitor gripped the rim of his hat as he held it against his chest and peered anxiously at Amanda over the top of his spectacles. “Yes, Miss Darlington,” he admitted meekly. “It was a grievous mistake made by one of our less experienced clerks. The letter had been misfiled under Darlingscott, a client

think the mistake I made was in not admitting from the start that I loved you, not her. And I won’t—” His confession came out so casually, more an explanation

I don’t think I’m too wrapped up in these identities until someone gets it wrong. I know it sounds pathetic, and believe me I am embarrassed to admit it, but I sometimes—more often than I wish—find myself wanting to be identified by something I’ve done or accomplished. Most of us grew up being taught that our identity as a person is based on our accomplishments. Your identity is closely tied to the points you score, the trophies you win, the grades you make, the diplomas you earn, the jobs you get, the promotions you receive, the portfolio you build. We build our resumés, display our achievements, and frame our accomplishments. In Philippians 3 Paul talks about how his identity used to be wrapped up in these things. He had some pretty impressive credentials. He was born into the right family, attended notable schools, received impressive degrees, landed in a powerful position. If he was introduced by someone who was identifying him, everyone would have been impressed. But here’s Paul’s conclusion about all of that. I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ. (Philippians 3:7–8 NLT) I am a follower of Jesus. No mistake I have ever made and no success I have ever had says as much about me as that. And when I embrace that identity and understand that a follower is who I am, then following is what I will do. Nominative

Lara, are you alright?" Keir asked, still seething. "I'm fine, belov—" "As if you really care!" Antas stood, and walked over to face Keir. "You, who have dallied with another, even as your so-called warprize attempts to claim you." Dallied? Did that mean what I thought it meant? I flushed, and then went cold at the idea that Keir would turn to another while— "Lower your hood, and show all how true you are to the one you would bond with." Antas pointed at Keir. "Do it now, warrior." There was absolute silence in the tent as Keir glared at Antas. But then his expression changed slightly, and his eyes crinkled in silent humor. Keir lifted his hands and lowered his hood to reveal a small purplish bruise on his neck. A love bite. Oh Goddess above. I blushed bright red, heat flooding my face. My love bite. Keir arched an eyebrow as the Elders reacted to the sight. Antas, however, was nearly foaming at the mouth. "You see? You see? He has broken faith with this Xyian even before she—" It took everything I had to say the words aloud before the entire Council of Elders. "I put that there." "Eh?" Antas twisted to face me. I drew a deep breath, and raised my voice. "That is my mark on his neck." As the group reacted to that, my blush deepened, if that was possible. Then I made the mistake of looking at Keir, and had to cover my mouth to prevent myself from laughing. He looked so smug. Simus was under no such handicap. He was howling with mirth. Antas was scowling, as were Essa and Wild Winds. "How so?" Antas snapped. "You have been kept apart from—" "Her bath." Amyu spoke. "It had to be during her bath." I looked over my shoulder to see that she was none too happy either. I turned back to face the Elders. "It was in my bath," I admitted. "Keir snuck in to see me." As one, the Eldest turned to glare at Keir. Keir shrugged. Simus laughed and slapped him on the back. "The skies favor the bold." Antas paused as a ripple of laughter swept the room again. "So you talked to Keir, despite our rules, despite our—" "We didn't waste time talking," I snapped right back, glaring at him. Then I realized what I'd announced to the room, and blushed bright red. "HEYLA!" Simus shouted. "Truly, the attraction between Warlord and Warprize is as the heat of the summer!

He extended a hand down to her. His hands were large, tanned like the rest of him—or perhaps he was simply dark complected—and there was a signet ring on his left little finger. “Mr. Hazlit?” She took another sip of tea. “Miss Windham?” “If you waggle your fingers at me, or—heaven forbid—snap them, I will bite you.” She’d bitten one brother, once more than two decades ago, and the other four had all fallen neatly into line. He dropped his hand. Maggie expected him to launch into a lecture about his trying only to find her reticule and her being contrary and difficult—which she admittedly could be—when he hunkered before her. “Where?” Something lurked in his eyes, something… playful? “Where, what?” “Where would you bite me?” God help her, he’d dropped his voice to that smoky register she’d heard out in the rose arbor. It did things to her insides when he spoke like that, curious, wonderful, dangerous things. She met his gaze, sensing it was crucial not to back down. “On your handsome nose.” The mischief in his eyes blossomed into humor, then into a smile of such charm Maggie’s insides started Trooping the Colors—full parade bands marching in all directions, cheering crowds, waving banners. Gracious. She realized her mistake. “Your arrogant, handsome nose.” “My

Yet while Owllwin was arrogant, he was also humble enough to admit when he had made a mistake. Perhaps it was his sheer clumsiness that kept him so humble: the first time he spoke to Cricket was in the great dining hall, and he brought down six tables five minutes after.

service. He gives a vague answer, along the lines of wanting to look after the little guy. His questioner is skeptical. She says, disbelievingly, “You care about the little guy?” “Not really,” Reacher admits. “I don’t really care about the little guy. I just hate the big guy. I hate big smug people who think they can get away with things.” That’s what motivates him. The world is full of unfairness and injustice. He can’t intervene everywhere. He needs to sense a sneering, arrogant, manipulative opponent in the shadows. Then he’ll go to work. Partly because he himself is arrogant. In a sense, each book is a contest between Reacher’s arrogance and his opponent’s. Arrogance is not an attractive attribute, but I don’t hide Reacher’s because I think the greatest mistake a series writer can make is to get too chummy with his main character. I aim to like Reacher just a little less than I hope you will. Because basically a book is a simple psychological transaction. “I’m the main character,” the main character announces. The reader asks: “Am I going to like you?” There are several possible answers to that question. The worst is: “Yes, you really are, and I’ll tell you why!” But Reacher answers: “You might, or you might not, and either way is fine with me.” Because, as an author, I believe that kind

Without integrity, all is lost. We cannot do the good that all of these amazing people signed up to do. The FBI’s reputation for integrity is a gift given to every new employee by those who went before. But it is a gift that must be protected and earned every single day. We protect that gift by making mistakes and admitting them, by making promises and keeping them, and by realizing that nothing—no case, no source, no fear of embarrassment—is worth jeopardizing the gift of integrity. Integrity must be on the FBI shield.

Before we left, I asked Sven to catch me up on the sixteen months of history that I’d overshot since November 2016. Big mistake. After twenty minutes, I made him stop playing me Internet clips. “David, you look kind of green,” worried Sven. I took a deep breath. “He pulled out of the Paris climate deal because climate change is a hoax. He threatened to start a nuclear war with North Korea. He gave away intel methods to the Russians. In the Oval Office. “He says the FBI and the CIA are conspiring against him. He admits he fired the head of the FBI because of the Russia probe. He tried to fire the Special Counsel investigating him. He called the press ‘enemies of the people.’ He calls everything that isn’t from Fox News or The National Enquirer ‘fake news.’ “He starts every day posting boasts and threats on Twitter like a disturbed ten-year-old. He insulted the widow of a dead war hero. He dictated a false statement for his son about why he met with Russians. He says there are good people marching with the KKK and the Nazis. Everyone in his inner circle is either being investigated or indicted for obstruction, perjury, wife beating, failure to register as a foreign agent, money laundering and/or breaking campaign finance laws. “He called Africa a shithole. He paid off a porn star he screwed right after his son was born. And told her she reminded him of his daughter. He’s being sued for rape. And the only person he hasn’t got a single bad thing to say about is the journalist-murdering Russian dictator he colluded with.” “’Fraid so,” said Sven. “All that happened in just sixteen months?” I exclaimed. “How is he still president?” Sven shrugged, sympathetic. “It’s not like we weren’t warned. Bottom line, some very rich, powerful people are going to get far richer, and that’s how America is run at the moment.” “I swear to God, Sven, I’m tempted to go back and save Lincoln all over again. That can’t turn out any worse than this.

But in fact the traditional creed knows nothing of what love really is. For love is simply the strongest thing in the universe, the most awful, the most inexorable, while the most tender. Further, when love is thus seen in its true colors, there is less than ever an excuse for the mistake still so common, which virtually places at the center of our moral system sin and not grace. This it is which the traditional dualism has for centuries been doing, and is still doing. Doubtless retribution is a most vital truth. Universalists rejoice to admit it; nay, largely to base on it their system; but there is a greater truth -which controls, and dominates the whole, the truth of Love. We must not, in common phrase, put the theological cart before the horse. Retribution must not come first, while love brings up the rear; nor must we put the idea of probation, before that of God's education of His human family. In a word, to arrive at truth is hopeless, so long as men virtually believe in a quasi-trinity -God and the Devil, and the Will of Man.

You sure are a purty thing,” he murmured, his voice husky. “I bet that buck of yours’ll be hot on our trail to git you back. That is if he ain’t dead.” The stench of the man’s body filmed the lining of Loretta’s nostrils. She hated the contemplative look on his face. If she admitted she was married to a Comanche, he would consider her fair game and use her himself. His men would follow suit with Amy. The thought made Loretta’s stomach roll. She was a woman grown, married to a wonderful man who had given her dozens of beautiful memories. No matter what these animals did to her, she’d survive. Amy might not. “I don’t have a buck who’ll come after me, so you needn’t worry,” she replied evenly. “Luckily, you and your men arrived in the nick of time.” He ran his gaze over her Indian clothing. “You’re lyin’, sweet thing. What’sa matter? You afraid I’ll get too friendly if I find out you’ve been pleasurin’ Comanches?” Struggling to stay calm, she said, “You’re a smart man. I heard you and your men talking. You were hired to rescue captives, not abuse them. Touch one of us, and it’ll be the mistake of your life. We haven’t been pleasuring anyone. And if we end up pleasuring you, I guarantee you’ll hang for it.

You act as a CEO only under two circumstances, neither during “normal” times. First, when you make a decision, and second, when you make mistakes. Always admit your mistakes and never look to find fault with your employees’ execution or to blame your subordinates. A CEO shouldn’t be preoccupied with claiming “success.

You have rightly surmised I brood and paw and snort at times for show, Mrs. Seaton. It keeps His Grace from getting ideas, for one thing. But make no mistake on this point: I will defend my brother’s interests without exception or scruple. If I find you are playing him false in any sense or trifling with him, I will become your worst enemy.” Anna smiled at him thinly. “Do you think he’d appreciate these threats you make to his housekeeper?” “He might understand them,” St. Just said. “For the other message I have to convey to you is that to the extent you matter to my brother, you matter to me. If he decides he values you in his life, then I will also defend you without exception or scruple.” “What is it you are saying?” “You are a woman with troubles, Anna Seaton. You have no past anyone in this household knows of, you have no people you’ll admit to, you have the airs and graces of a well-born lady, but you labor for your bread instead. I’ve seen you conferring with Morgan, and I know you have something to hide.” Anna raised her chin and speared him with a look. “Everybody has something to hide.” “You have a choice, Anna,” St. Just said, her given name falling from his lips with surprising gentleness. “You either trust the earl to resolve your troubles, or you leave him in peace. He’s too good a man to be exploited by somebody under his own roof. He’s had that at the hands of his own father, and I won’t stand for it from you.” Anna hefted her basket and flashed St. Just a cold smile. “Like the duke, you’ll wade in, bully and intimidate, and jump to conclusions regarding Westhaven’s life, telling yourself all the while you do it because you love him, when in fact, you haven’t the first notion how to really go about caring for the man. Very impressive—if one wants proof of your patrimony.” She

I happened to meet one of your friends today, when I chanced upon her during a walk.” “Who?” “Miss Hathaway.” “Beatrix?” Audrey looked at him attentively. “I hope you were polite to her.” “Not especially,” he admitted. “What did you say to her?” He scowled into his teacup. “I insulted her hedgehog,” he muttered. Audrey looked exasperated. “Oh, good God.” She began to stir her tea so vigorously that the spoon threatened to crack the porcelain cup. “And to think you were once renowned for your silver tongue. What perverse instinct drives you to repeatedly offend one of the nicest women I’ve ever known?” “I haven’t repeatedly offended her, I just did it today.” Her mouth twisted in derision. “How conveniently short your memory is. All of Stony Cross knows that you once said she belonged in the stables.” “I would never have said that to a woman, no matter how damned eccentric she was. Is.” “Beatrix overheard you telling it to one of your friends, at the harvest dance held at Stony Cross Manor.” “And she told everyone?” “No, she made the mistake of confiding in Prudence, who told everyone. Prudence is an incurable gossip.” “Obviously you have no liking for Prudence,” he began, “but if you--” “I’ve tried my best to like her. I thought if one peeled away the layers of artifice, one would find the real Prudence beneath. But there’s nothing beneath. And I doubt there ever will be.

We’re going to your place tonight?” she asked with surprise. Anders lowered his hand to his side, the stake dangling from his fingers. Expression solemn, he said, “I am. But I think you should stay here. I think that’s probably best until you make your decision.” Valerie frowned. “What do you mean?” Anders grimaced and glanced away, “Well, I’ve been thinking that life mate sex is pretty mind-blowing and addictive.” “I’ve noticed,” she admitted wryly, bending slightly to pat Roxy, who had been lying down beside her, but now stood and pressed against her leg. “That being the case,” he continued gently, “I thought perhaps it might be best if we abstain until you’ve made your decision.” Valerie straightened slowly to stare at him. “Abstain?” “Yes,” he said solemnly, and then added, “You need to have a clear head to make a decision as big as this and constantly being bombarded with pleasure, your body and mind crying out with it . . . well, it will just muddy your thinking and delay your decision.” Valerie frowned. “But—” “It’s for the best,” he added solemnly. Valerie narrowed her eyes. “How long are we supposed to abstain?” “Like I said, until you’ve made your decision,” Anders answered. “But what if it takes a while?” she asked. “Then we’ll wait a while. Years if we have to,” he assured her. “Honey, I want you happy and you’re worth waiting for.” “But I’m happy when we—” Flushing, she cut herself off and said instead, “And if I decide I’m willing to be your life mate?” “Then I’ll rip your clothes off and make love to you until you can’t stand,” he said as if they were discussing the weather. “And if I decide I’m not willing to risk being your life mate?” she asked. Frustration filled his expression. “Valerie, there is no risk here. The nanos don’t make mistakes. This is a sure bet. The only game where you can’t lose. All you have to do is be willing to accept the gift they’re offering us.

According to some modern writers (see, for example, G. H. Estabrooks, Man: The Mechanical Misfit, 1941), man made the decisive mistake when he became civilized, and especially when he began to help the weak; before this, he was an almost perfect man-beast; but civilization, with its artificial methods of protecting the weak, leads to degeneration, and therefore must ultimately destroy itself. In reply to such arguments, we should, I think, first admit that man is likely to disappear one day from this world; but we should add that this is also true of even the most perfect beasts, to say nothing of those which are only ‘almost perfect’. The theory that the human race might live a little longer if it had not made the fatal mistake of helping the weak is most questionable; but even if it were true—is mere length of survival of the race really all we want? Or is the almost perfect man-beast so eminently valuable that we should prefer a prolongation of his existence (he did exist for quite a long time, anyway) to our experiment of helping the weak?

A spiritually mature person is capable of admitting his mistakes and sins.

As you doubtless noticed, sometimes the words matched the pictures and sometimes they didn’t. It probably felt more difficult to name the pictures when there was a mismatch. That’s because when an experienced reader sees a printed word, it’s quite difficult not to read it. Reading is automatic.Thus the printed word pants conflicts with the word you are trying to retrieve, shirt. The conflict slows your response. A child just learning to read wouldn’t show this interference, because reading is not automatic for him.When faced with the letters p, a, n, t, and s, the child would need to painstakingly (and thus slowly) retrieve the sounds associated with each letter, knit them together, and recognize that the resulting combination of sounds forms the word pants. For the experienced reader, those processes happen in a flash and are a good example of the properties of automatic processes: (1) They happen very quickly. Experienced readers read common words in less than a quarter of a second. (2) They are prompted by a stimulus in the environment, and if that stimulus is present, the process may occur even if you wish it wouldn’t.Thus you know it would be easier not to read the words in Figure 3, but you can’t seem to avoid doing so. (3) You are not aware of the components of the automatic process.That is, the component processes of reading (for example, identifying letters) are never conscious.The word pants ends up in consciousness, but the mental processes necessary to arrive at the conclusion that the word is pants do not.The process is very different for a beginning reader, who is aware of each constituent step (“that’s a p, which makes a ‘puh’ sound . . .”). FIGURE 3: Name each picture, ignoring the text. It’s hard to ignore when the text doesn’t match the picture, because reading is an automatic process.   The example in Figure 3 gives a feel for how an automatic process operates, but it’s an unusual example because the automatic process interferes with what you’re trying to do. Most of the time automatic processes help rather than hinder. They help because they make room in working memory. Processes that formerly occupied working memory now take up very little space, so there is space for other processes. In the case of reading, those “other” processes would include thinking about what the words actually mean. Beginning readers slowly and painstakingly sound out each letter and then combine the sounds into words, so there is no room left in working memory to think about meaning (Figure 4).The same thing can happen even to experienced readers. A high school teacher asked a friend of mine to read a poem out loud. When he had finished reading, she asked what he thought the poem meant. He looked blank for a moment and then admitted he had been so focused on reading without mistakes that he hadn’t really noticed what the poem was about. Like a first grader, his mind had focused on word pronunciation, not on meaning. Predictably, the class laughed, but what happened was understandable, if unfortunate.

He’s never changed course, nor admitted when he’s wrong. His weaknesses, his mistakes, or just his feelings—he’s always kept them to himself. “A real Aries!

He could not admit mistakes, and his decisions were too weighty to be undone without strong will and a graceful heart, an ability to name himself as wrong. Garad was not that strong, he was too driven to be loved, too driven to be a storybook King with a perfect kingdom.

Behind them emerged Lord Burkham. He, too, was watching. But there was no warmth in his expression. She didn’t know what that meant, nor did she care. This was no longer about him; it was about all that she’d done to overcome her illness. “Lord Burkham is here at last,” she informed Ashton. “Just behind you.” “Good. I hope he regrets leaving you behind and realizes his mistake,” he admitted. “If I were you, I’d not dance with him at all.” “It wouldn’t be polite to refuse him,” she said. “After all, we were nearly betrothed. I cannot refuse to dance with him.” “Of course you can. And ‘nearly betrothed’ means nothing at all.” His hand squeezed her waist lightly. There was something about Iain Donovan that drew her close, tempting her to surrender. She was intimately aware of his touch, of his palm upon her spine, pulling her near. If they were alone, she had no doubt that he would kiss her again. And it would unravel her senses if he did. He led her gently into the dance, moving slower than the other couples. She tried to follow him, but her footsteps were not light at all. It was far more difficult than she’d ever imagined. “Don’t be nervous, a chara. I won’t let you fall.” True to his word, Iain cut their pace in half, moving slowly as he turned her. Her skin warmed, her cheeks growing flushed. But she trusted him implicitly, knowing that he spoke the truth. He would never let her go. His hand tightened against her waist, and the heat of his palm warmed the silk of her gown. “I know you won’t.

Think of it this way, there are two men. One stands tall, looks straight ahead. Looks people in the eye when he speaks to them. Says what he thinks and is unconcerned with what others think of him. When he makes a mistake, he shrugs it off and maybe apologizes. When he sucks at something, he admits it. He’s unafraid to express his emotions, even if that means he gets rejected. He has no problem moving on to people who don’t reject him, but like him for who he is. Now, the second man hunches over, eyes dart around and is unable to look someone in the eye without getting uncomfortable. He puts on a cool persona that is always aloof. He avoids saying things that may upset others, and sometimes even lies to avoid conflict. He’s always trying to impress people. When he makes a mistake, he tries to blame others or pretend like it didn’t happen. He hides his emotions and will smile and tell everyone he’s fine even when he’s not. He’s scared to death of rejection. And when he is rejected, it sends him reeling, angry, and desperate to find a way to win back the affection of the person who doesn’t like him.

His half brother had warned him that his new bride might fear him because he was so much bigger than the puny human males she knew—apparently he had been right. “Olivia,” he murmured, bending down to be closer to her. “I know I’m bigger than the males you’re used to but I want you to know that my size and strength will never be used against you. I live to protect you now—I would never hurt you.” She looked up, her silver-grey eyes flashing defiance. “Even if I deny you? Even if I won’t…won’t give you what you want?” Baird sighed. What had he done to earn this level of enmity from her? If it hadn’t been for the long months of dream-sharing he might almost have been tempted to think he had the wrong woman. But no, there was no mistaking her sweet scent. Olivia was the one, she just didn’t want to admit it. “Yes,” he said softly, looking into her eyes. “Even if you won’t give me what I want. What I need. Because make no mistake about it, Lilenta, I need you, need to touch and taste and kiss your soft, sweet body the way I need my next breath. But if you want to make me wait, well…” He shrugged even though his heart was heavy. “That’s your choice.” Her

Desperate to hide himself away, he quickly grabbed a book, any book at all, from the shelf. "The Highway Code and Theory Test for Car Drivers". Well, he certainly hadn't been looking for that. It wasn't even a novel, though it might come in handy for his granddaughter Priya's driving theory test in six years' time. Reluctant to admit defeat, determined to pretend he didn't need the librarian's guidance anyway, he sat down at a table and started to read: "Introduction: The Highway Code is essential reading for everyone." "Oh, Naina," he said, out loud. "What am I doing here?" Someone, hidden away in the corner, sushed him quite aggressively and his head jumped up in fright. How long did he need to wait here for it not to look as though he'd made a silly mistake? It was obvious he wouldn't be taking a driving test any time soon!

Tom Wood - The Hunter and other Books in the series "Money, he had long ago discovered, was the world’s number one aphrodisiac." " But better I take what I might not need than find myself without what I do need." " Why do you do what you do?" "Once you’ve sold your soul to the devil you can’t then ask for it back." "Trust is earned." " You don’t like it, stop doing it. A simple statement, but true all the same." " People who wanted weapons had enemies and by supplying those people, he would count their enemies as his own." "....to give the teabags the best chance at working. The haemostatic tannins found naturally in tea would help stop the bleeding, reduce the chance of infection, and aid the healing process." "I am a shark. As soon as I stop swimming, I’ll drown.’ " Life flows like a river, and we must adapt to its ever-changing course." "They’re a nuisance. Pure vermin.’" '‘As are we all, madam,’ the man with blond hair said back. ‘But at least the pigeons have no pretence of grandeur." "I trust that you understand the consequences of showing yourself to be untrustworthy.’ "And there is no hearsay in a man’s eyes. There is only truth.’ ‘What truth do you see in mine?’ ‘I see a man of experience. I see a man without conscience. I see a man who sold his soul before he knew he possessed anything of value.’ "Do I need to be in a hurry to wonder how long I’ll be here?’ "Understanding and doing are two separate concepts.’ "Aren’t you glad to be alive?’ ‘Of course,’ Victor said. ‘Life is always preferable to the alternative.’ 'They say you get out of reading what you put in.’ BETTER OFF DEAD "....jobs could only be considered routine because of the preparation that went into them and the patience displayed in their execution. If corners were cut in the lead-up to the job – should any contingency not be considered and planned for – mistakes would surely follow." You don’t know it yet, and no one ever told me at your age, but eventually you’ll reach a point in life where you have no new thoughts; you experience no new sensations. Everything you do, everything you say, you’ve done and said a thousand times before. Swearing is an expression of anger. When we swear we’re admitting we’ve lost control. Reading is exercise for the mind. I believe in integrity and I believe in justice. I believe a man is only as good as his word and I believe that we are only treated as we allow ourselves to be treated. Forgiveness is against human nature. To forgive a wrong is to invite another. I believe in justice. No wrong should go unpunished.

According to the official version, he replied, ‘La Garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas’ (‘The Guard dies, but doesn’t surrender’). Rumour spread, however, that ‘le Mot de Cambronne’ was not meurt, but a different five-letter m-word. A hundred years later, French encyclopedias were still refusing to quote him exactly. 65 ‘A mistake may be admitted after one day,’ it has been said; ‘if delayed, the truth will emerge after one century.’ 66 Bertrand would survive to accompany his master on the second exile. 67 Drouot lived on, and was made famous by his great oration when Napoleon’s remains were interred in Les Invalides in 1840. 68

She cleared her throat, let go of the rail, and stood up straighter. “Because I have come here today to ask you to marry me.” His lips twitched. “It is not funny,” she cried. It was, of course, but she did not wish to be laughed at. Particularly when he had not answered. “You must admit, it is a little funny. To an outside party, we must be exceedingly comical.” “Yes, well, it is the worry of an outside party that is the reason we are here in the first place,” she muttered, looking down at her feet. A finger was placed gently under her chin, lifting her head up. “Pray, continue.” His dark eyes were serious, his lips playful. It was an irresistible combination. “It is the first time I have been proposed to and I must admit I find the experience intriguing.” Her eyes flashed. “I have already asked. It is now your turn to answer.” His amused expression deepened. “Oh, no. You have not asked. You merely announced your intention to ask. There is a large difference between stating the purpose of your visit and posing the question. Wouldn’t you say?

Or at least, I guess we all make stupid mistakes, just admit it. Move on. Because God has a way of taking our stupid mistakes and turning them into really great lessons and even better blessings. As long as we admit that they were mistakes, repent, and turn to Him, He can make beauty out of ashes. That’s almost His specialty.” Bev

Often suspects threw out a fact, seemed willing to discuss something difficult or embarrassing. In fact, coming in for questioning at all was frequently wanting to learn what the police knew. “I’d like to know more,” Reid said. “Well, feel free to talk to Nicola. She’s expecting it. She’ll tell you the same thing I will: we all got along. Beth wasn’t thrilled at first—not at all. I could have handled it better, I admit. But Beth was a grown-up. She knows people make mistakes.” “So having an affair with Nicola was a mistake?” Reid asked. “Twisting my words,” Pete said with a sarcastic smile, shaking a finger at him. “Was I doing that? Hmm,” Reid said. “If you would simply stick to the facts as I am presenting them to you, if you actually listened to me, you would do better—you’d rule me out and solve the case faster, because you’d start looking in other places.” He grabbed the water bottle and drank. Reid was silent, watching Pete’s body language change. The finger shaking, the fact he straightened his posture and rewarded himself with a long drink of water. If the interview was a chess game to Pete, he felt he was winning.

Lerner held that Brigadoon was one of Minnelli’s least vivacious efforts, despite the potential offered by CinemaScope. Only the wedding scene and the chase that follows reveal Minnelli’s unique touch. Before shooting began, Freed rushed to inform Lerner that “Vincente is bubbling over with enthusiasm about Brigadoon.” But, evidently, his heart was not in this film. Early on, Minnelli made a mistake and confessed to Kelly that he really hadn’t liked the Broadway show. As a film, Brigadoon was curiously flat and rambling, lacking in warmth or charm, and the direction lacks Minnelli’s usual vitality and smooth flow. Admittedly, Lerner’s fairy-tale story was too much of a wistful fancy. Two American hunters go astray in the Scottish hills, landing in a remote village that seems to be lost in time. One of the fellows falls in love with a bonnie lass from the past, which naturally leads to some complications. Minnelli thought that it would be better to set the story in 1774, after the revolts against English rule had ended. For research about the look of the cottages, he consulted with the Scottish Tourist Board in Edinburgh. But the resulting set of the old highland village looks artificial, despite the décor, the Scottish costumes, the heather blossoms, and the scenic backdrops. Inexplicably, some of the good songs that made the stage show stand out, such as “Come to Me, Bend to Me,” “My Mother’s Wedding Day,” and “There But for You Go I,” were omitted from the film. Other songs, such as “The Heather on the Hill” and “Almost Like Being in Love,” had some charm, though not enough to sustain the musical as a whole. Moreover, the energy of the stage dances was lost in the transfer to the screen, which was odd, considering that Kelly and Charisse were the dancers. For some reason, their individual numbers were too mechanical. What should have been wistful and lyrical became an exercise in trickery and by-now-predictable style. With the exception of “The Chase,” wherein the wild Scots pursue a fugitive from their village, the ensemble dances were dull. Onstage, Agnes de Mille’s choreography gave the dance a special energetic touch, whereas Kelly’s choreography in the film was mediocre at best and uninspired at worst. It didn’t help that Kelly and Charisse made an odd, unappealing couple. While he looks thin and metallic, she seems too solemn and often just frozen. The rest of the cast was not much better. Van Johnson, as Kelly’s friend, pouts too much. As Scottish villagers, Barry Jones, Hugh Laing, and Jimmy Thompson act peculiarly, to say the least.

Many, but by no means all of us, have been shielded until now from the worst effects of his pathologies by a stable economy and a lack of serious crises. But the out-of-control COVID-19 pandemic, the possibility of an economic depression, deepening social divides along political lines thanks to Donald’s penchant for division, and devastating uncertainty about our country’s future have created a perfect storm of catastrophes that no one is less equipped than my uncle to manage. Doing so would require courage, strength of character, deference to experts, and the confidence to take responsibility and to course correct after admitting mistakes. His ability to control unfavorable situations by lying, spinning, and obfuscating has diminished to the point of impotence in the midst of the tragedies we are currently facing. His egregious and arguably intentional mishandling of the current catastrophe has led to a level of pushback and scrutiny that he’s never experienced before, increasing his belligerence and need for petty revenge as he withholds vital funding, personal protective equipment, and ventilators that your tax dollars have paid for from states whose governors don’t kiss his ass sufficiently.

Many, but by no means all of us, have been shielded until now from the worst effects of his pathologies by a stable economy and a lack of serious crises. But the out-of-control COVID-19 pandemic, the possibility of an economic depression, deepening social divides along political lines thanks to Donald’s penchant for division, and devastating uncertainty about our country’s future have created a perfect storm of catastrophes that no one is less equipped than my uncle to manage. Doing so would require courage, strength of character, deference to experts, and the confidence to take responsibility and to course correct after admitting mistakes.

Thor, a king does not attempt to pass the blame for his actions to others. He accepts the consequences. A king is strong enough to take ownership of his mistakes, and admit when he has made a poor decision. He does not claim he had no choice, for he knows there is always a choice. You would do well to remember that.

The affable Feige would never admit it to Pascal’s face, but he and his team at Marvel had for years disliked what Sony had been doing with the character. He thought that restarting with The Amazing Spider-Man, rather than moving on from Raimi’s mistakes in Spider-Man 3, had been a big mistake. “In a million years I would never advocate rebooting . . . Iron Man,” Feige wrote to Marvel Entertainment’s president, Alan Fine, and its vice president of production, Tom Cohen. “To me it’s James Bond and we can keep telling new stories for decades even with different actors.” Fine concurred: “I think that it is a mistake to deny the original trilogy its place in the canon of the Spider-Man cinematic universe. What are you telling the audience? That the original trilogy is a mistake, a total false-hood?” He had even harsher words for the script of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 that the Marvel trio had recently read: “I found this draft tedious, boring, and had to force myself to read it through . . . This story is way too dark, way too depressing. I wanted to burn the draft after I read it never mind thinking about buying the DVD.” The

Any fool can try to defend his or her mistakes - and most fools do - but it raises one above the herd and gives one a feeling of nobility and exultation to admit one’s mistakes.

For all of you who might be experiencing this, or something similar, I want you to know that it doesn’t go on forever and that ROCD has in fact a very good prognosis. Treatment with CBT and ERP is very favorable and has shown to produce effective results within a short period of time. In our case, after Hugh began practicing ERP with the help of his therapist (to whom I am eternally grateful), his attitude changed overnight. It was a revelation. He had been cold and distant and I had in turn reacted defensively. But then he made an effort to do ERP and in a matter of days he was completely different around me. He treated me with more kindness and he didn’t shy away from showing affection. Of course, there were still moments when he would be afraid and engage in his OCD. But those were nothing compared to the barrage of intrusive thoughts that harassed him and the compulsions he was giving into before. I felt like we might make it through to the other side. Now I understand that there isn’t really another side. We have needed to learn to keep going with the intrusive thoughts, but doing our best to ditch the compulsions. You might wonder that I speak in the plural here. Well, we both interact with Hugh’s OCD. I make the mistake of offering him reassurance more often than I would like to admit, and I sometimes ask him about the thoughts, both things I should never do. But even though OCD is incredibly tough, one can learn to live with it. And that has been one of the greatest lessons we have learned so far. We live with the OCD not as our companion, but as a condition, like so many others, in our lives (don’t forget that I also have OCD, although it doesn’t manifest as ROCD).

I love your father not only despite his faults, but maybe because of them. Not that I ever wanted him to hurt Frank or you or anyone else. Not that I admire or condone a lot of his behavior. But he reveals himself to me in being the imperfect person that he is. And I do the same. I believe that when we show each other our frailties, or admit to our mistakes, we are asking not only for forgiveness but for help in changing. To me, that’s what makes a real marriage. You forgive each other. You do for each other. You try to help each other be better people.

Am I enough to show my son how to be a man? A better man than the one I chose for him? Does he know that there is nothing more “manly” than showing his emotions or admitting when he’s made a mistake and then trying to do better? Does he know the influence he has to empower the future girls and women in his life? Have I empowered him? Will he know what it means to be a partner when I feel like I’m just learning that lesson now? Does he know that sometimes the strongest thing he can do is be gentle? Or that saying no to his own desires in place of another person’s shows strength beyond compare? Will he be brave enough in the tough moments to do the right thing?

PRINCIPLE On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win.

Your wish, my command.’ Marcel sprawled on the couch while I started the movie, fast-forwarding through the opening credits. When I perched on the edge of the sofa in front of him, he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me against his chest. It wasn't exactly as comfortable as a sofa cushion would be, what with his chest being hard and cold-and perfect-as an ice sculpture, but it was preferable. He pulled the old afghan off the back of the couch and draped it over me, so I wouldn't freeze beside his body. ‘You know, I've never had much patience with Romeo,’ he commented as the movie started. ‘What's wrong with Romeo?’ I asked, a little offended. Romeo was one of my favorite fictional characters. Until I'd met Marcel, I'd had a thing for him. ‘Well, first, he's in love with this Rosaline-don't you think it makes him seem a little fickle? And then, a few minutes after their wedding, he kills Juliet's cousin. That's not very brilliant. Mistake after mistake. Could he have destroyed his happiness any more thoroughly?’ I sighed. ‘Do you want me to watch this alone?’ ‘No, I'll mostly be watching you, anyway.’ His fingers traced patterns across the skin of my arm, raising goosebumps. ‘Will you cry?’ ‘Probably,’ I admitted, ‘if I'm paying attention.’ ‘I won't distract you then.’ But I felt his lips on my hair, and it was very distracting. The movie eventually captured my interest, thanks in large part to Marcel whispering Romeo's lines in my ear-his irresistible, velvet voice made the actor's voice sound week and coarse by comparison. And I did cry, to his amusement, when Juliet woke and found her new husband dead. ‘I'll admit, I do sort of envy him here, ‘Marcel said, drying the tears with a lock of my hair.

Owns Up to Mistakes “The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.” —Thomas Carlyle If there is one hallmark of maturity that is universally agreed upon, it is personal responsibility — the ability to recognize when one has made a mistake and to own up to it. And to do so quickly, forthrightly, and without excuse. The reason it’s hard to admit to messing up is that it depreciates your self-concept — your vision of yourself as really being a great guy. So to protect the ego, you come up with justifications — which feel like rational explanations rather than lies — for why you had to do what you did. You blame your mood or the unique circumstances. You say someone “made” you do it — that you were provoked. You engage in “if-only” reasoning: “If only you didn’t push my buttons, I wouldn’t lose my temper”; “If only this job paid better, I wouldn’t have to skim extra money off the top.” It’s easier to fess up to mistakes when the gap between these lapses and our self-concept has been shrunken — by humility. We still think well of ourselves, but also realize we’re a little flawed, a little broken, and imperfectly human. We use this recognition not to justify our misbehavior but as a way to more readily recognize our shortcomings, apologize for them, and get to work on their improvement. In the mode of mature personal responsibility there are no apologies with caveats, no “Sorry, but’s . . .” Just the frank ownership of error. Yet there is no room for excess self-flagellation, either. The mature individual recognizes the mistake, confesses it, and offers restitution if possible/necessary. Then, he moves on and tries to be better in the future. He neither ignores his mistakes, nor allows them to push him into a place of demoralizing regret and rumination. He sees them as important learning experiences. As put by the authors of Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), mature individuals “see mistakes not as terrible personal failings to be denied or justified, but as inevitable aspects of life that help us grow, and grow up.

Years after Chávez’s presidential victory, Rafael Caldera explained his mistakes simply: “Nobody thought that Mr. Chávez had even the remotest chance of becoming president.” And merely a day after Hitler became chancellor, a prominent conservative who aided him admitted, “I have just committed the greatest stupidity of my life; I have allied myself with the greatest demagogue in world history.

It wasn't often that anyone admitted their mistakes to Mercedes; the default posture of poverty was defense. Cesar told her that he hoped his degree would make Mercedes proud of him when he came home.

the most fundamental and important truths at the heart of extreme ownership: There are no bad teams, only bad leaders.” It’s time to look at the man (or the woman) in the mirror. He goes on to say: “In any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failure, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win.” For example, if you are overbooking, it’s not the fault of your front office team. It’s your fault by not being clear on how you want to be scheduled, not giving the team the training they need, or in the worst case, having the wrong people performing the task. When we begin to look at all the shortcomings in our practices as problems that we have created as leaders, we can then move forward to solve those problems. However, when we don’t accept responsibility and become the victim, we become powerless.

The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win.

This isn’t a mistake, Ani. I don’t know what the hell it is. But it’s not a mistake.” “Okay.” He winced and shook his head. “That’s a lie … I do know what this is. It’s just a big deal admitting it, you know?

I’m concerned for her well-being.” “Oh, I see.” “And why not? Anybody would have to admit that the girl is vulnerable, young, unprotected with her father gone.” Sheriff McClintoch nodded, glancing around. “Anybody… who didn’t know any better.” “Yes, Taylor, yes. Also, anybody who wasn’t being so heartily rewarded. Anybody who hadn’t made his own mistakes, which he hopes remain secret.” A long silence followed, as there was little more to say. “What, then?” Ronald stared him down, feeling the man buckle. “You don’t know where she is?” “I do not,” Sheriff McClintoch said, staring him right back. “Then get out there and find her,” Ronald said.

hundreds of studies have shown that, compared to predictions based on actuarial data, predictions based on an expert’s years of training and personal experience are rarely better than chance. But when an expert is wrong, the centerpiece of his or her professional identity is threatened. Therefore, dissonance theory predicts that the more self-confident and famous experts are, the less likely they will be to admit mistakes.

weary old ox, after hearing the old man’s lesson, raised his head as if admitting his mistake. Pulling the plow, he began to move forward. I noticed the old man’s back was just as black as the ox’s. Even though the pair had already entered the twilight of their lives, they still managed to noisily plough the rugged land, the earth breaking up like a wave crashing on the shore. Afterward I heard the old man’s hoarse yet moving voice sing an old folk song. First he sang a long introductory melody, then came two lines of verse:

Everyone I trusted has lied to me. But you… I told you things I’ve never told anyone. Things that hurt to admit even to myself. Your betrayal hit harder than any of the others combined, but that was my mistake. Thinking it was a betrayal when you were also the only person who’s ever told me the truth of your own accord. You didn’t wait until you were caught, even though you probably could’ve kept it a secret forever and I would’ve never found out. And I…” His voice cracked. “I was an idiot. And I’m sorry. And I lo—” “Stop.” I couldn’t breathe. “Let me go. Please.” “I can’t. I’ll do anything you want except that.

Do you know why that’s a weak point of mine?” “’Cause if you take every single person who lacks much imagination seriously, there’s no end to it,” I say. “That’s it,” Oshima says. He taps his temple lightly with the eraser end of the pencil. “But there’s one thing I want you to remember, Kafka. Those are exactly the kind of people who murdered Miss Saeki’s childhood sweetheart. Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course it’s important to know what’s right and what’s wrong. Individual errors in judgment can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive. They’re a lost cause, and I don’t want anyone like that coming in here.

SONG: Monsieur Gallimard—the wait is over. Song drops his briefs. He is naked. Sound cue out. Slowly, we and Song come to the realization that what we had thought to be Gallimard’s sobbing is actually his laughter. GALLIMARD: Oh god! He bursts into laughter again. SONG: Rene? I fail to see what’s so funny! GALLIMARD: You “fail to see”—! I mean, you never did have much of a sense of humor, did you? I just think it’s terribly funny that I’ve wasted so much time on just a man! SONG: “Just a man”? GALLIMARD: Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to convince me of? SONG: Yes, but what I mean— GALLIMARD: And now I finally believe you, and you tell me it’s not true? I think you must have some kind of identity problem. SONG: Will you listen to me? GALLIMARD: Why?! I’ve been listening to you for years. Don’t I deserve a vacation? SONG: Why should it matter what I am? GALLIMARD: Well, you must be something. Unless you’re nothing. SONG: How can you say—? Song picks up Butterfly’s robes, starts to dance around. No music. GALLIMARD: Yes, that’s very nice. I have to admit. Song holds out his arm to Gallimard. SONG: It’s the same skin you’ve worshiped for years. Touch it. GALLIMARD: Yes, it does feel the same. SONG: Now—close your eyes. Song covers Gallimard’s eyes with one hand. With the other, Song draws Gallimard’s hand up to his face. GALLIMARD: This skin, I remember. The curve of her face, the softness of her cheek, her hair against the back of my hand . . . SONG: I’m your Butterfly. Under the robes, beneath everything, it was always me. Now open your eyes and admit it—you adore me. He removes his hand from Gallimard’s eyes. GALLIMARD: You, who knew every inch of my desires—how could you, of all people, have made such a mistake? SONG: What? GALLIMARD: You showed me your true self. When all I loved was the lie. A perfect lie, which you let fall to the ground—and now it’s old and soiled. SONG: So—you never really loved me. Only when I was playing a part. GALLIMARD: I’m a man who loved a woman created by a man. Everything else—simply falls short. Pause. SONG: What am I supposed to do now? You’ve left me in no-man’s-land. GALLIMARD: I have a date . . . with my Butterfly. SONG: So come back to my— GALLIMARD: Get away from me! Tonight, I’ve finally learned to tell fantasy from reality. And, knowing the difference, I choose fantasy. SONG: I’m your fantasy! GALLIMARD: You?

Inability doesn’t mean that God has made a massive mistake by giving you children, that somehow he’s gotten the wrong address and your children would be better off elsewhere. Rather than your inability being in the way of God’s plan, it is part of his plan. He knows that parents who admit that they are inadequate and run to God make the best parents. You see, he doesn’t ask you to be able; he asks you to be willing. If you are willing, he will meet you in your weakness and change you, and as he changes you, he will work good things through you into the hearts and lives of your children.

That's it," Oshima says. He taps his temple lightly with the eraser end of the pencil. "But there's one thing I want you to remember, Kafka. Those are exactly the kind of people who murdered Miss Saeki's childhood sweetheart. Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course it's important to know what's right and what's wrong. Individual errors in judgment can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive. They're a lost cause, and I don't want anyone like that coming in here.

I’m sorry, Mr. Chavez,” the club’s young assistant reception manager, Talya, said. “This is a private club. If you’re not a member, your name has to be on the guest list.” Luis Chavez sighed. He wasn’t here by choice. “I was told to come here at this time,” Luis replied. “By whom?” Talya asked. Luis watched her eyes weigh his appearance. He was in black pants, heavy black shoes, and wore a gray jacket zipped up to his Adam’s apple even though it was almost summer. He was clean shaven with short black hair. That he wasn’t representative of the club’s regular clientele wasn’t even a question. “Mr. Alazraqui.” “I’m sorry. We don’t have a member by that name or anyone on our guest list.” Luis nodded. His job was done. He could go home in good conscience. “My mistake,” Luis said, nodding to the young woman. He turned and was almost out the door when a white Mercedes SUV rolled up to the valet stand just outside in the sublevel parking garage. Its driver was a large Hispanic man practically bursting through the seams of an off-white suit and mustard-yellow shirt. Even though he was only an inch or two taller than Luis’s diminutive five foot three, his expansive girth caused him to dwarf Luis. Talya stepped past Luis to open the door for him. “Good morning, Mr. Mata!” Mata nodded a greeting at her and stepped through the door. As soon as the big man was through, Talya jogged ahead to ring for an elevator. Though the club’s entrance was in a parking garage, the club itself was an elevator ride up to the ninth floor. “Have a good breakfast, sir.” Luis had just located the valet ticket in his pocket when he heard the older man’s voice. “Padre?” Luis winced. “Oh, is Mr. Chavez a guest of yours?” Talya asked. “He’s the priest. To deliver the benediction.” Luis caught the surprised look on Talya’s face, then felt Mata’s heavy hand on his shoulder. “Come on, Padre. Let’s get you upstairs.” As soon as they were inside the elevator, Mata nodded to the tiny strip of white peering over the top of Luis’s jacket. “Why didn’t you flash the collar?” Mata asked. “Waited too late,” Luis admitted. “Would’ve felt like a jerk.” “Ah,” Mata said, laughing. “Guess enough people out there think priests are assholes, huh?” Luis didn’t reply.

It’s all right, Alera. I don’t need a family.” “Maybe you don’t need one,” I said with a shrug, playing with the fabric of the quilt that lay between us. “But you deserve one.” I thought for a moment I had hit a nerve, but instead he made a joke out of it. “Just think--if I’d had Koranis as my father, I might have turned into him by now. I’d be brutish and pretentious, but at least my boastful garb would distract you from those flaws. Oh, and this hair you love? It would be gone.” I laughed at the ounce of truth in his statement, then fell silent, for some reason feeling sadder about his situation than he was. He reclined upon the pillows, considering me. “You know, in Cokyri, fathers don’t raise their children. I think maybe it’s better that way.” “How can you think that?” I asked, troubled by the decided tenor of his voice, and he sat up again, not having expected this reaction from me. “Your father controlled you and forced you to marry Steldor. How can you disagree with me after living through that?” “Because…” I faltered. “Because I love my father for all the good things he’s done. Because he made me laugh when I was a child. That’s what I think about when I see him. Not his mistakes.” “I couldn’t forgive him like you do.” “Could you forgive me? I mean, if I did something awful.” Narian did not immediately respond, unsettling me, but it was in his nature to weigh all things. “I don’t know,” he slowly answered. “But I would still love you.” He looked at me, an epiphany in his eyes, finally understanding my connection to my family. Then his expression changed, and I knew he was going to raise a difficult issue. “Explain this then. If that is how families are supposed to function, and you would forgive your father anything, and clearly my mother would forgive me anything, then Koranis fails because he won’t accept me. The women, you and my mother, are loving, but the man fails.” “Yes, but not all men fail.” “Prove it. Your father sold you into marriage, and the only father figures I’ve known have respectively made my life hell and rejected me.” He lay back once more, watching me, and though he had caught me off guard, I was determined to make my point. “Cannan is a just and fair man.” “Whose son is Steldor.” “Who has faults, yes--” “As all men do.” Frustrated, I threw my hands in the air. “Are you going to keep interrupting me?” “No, he said apologetically. “Go on.” “What about you? Am I, the woman who is in love with you, supposed to believe you’re a terrible person when I know better?” “I would be a terrible father,” he said, shifting onto his side. “What?” “Come, Alera, you have to admit it.” “I don’t have to admit anything, especially when I think you’re wrong.” “On what grounds?” I was so exasperated I wanted to tear my hair out. And his bemused visage only made it worse. “Because I saw you with that little girl this afternoon! You were perfect with her. And if you can be perfect with a stranger’s child, how could you be any different with our own?” “It’s different raising a child than talking with one,” he contended. “I never had a father, Alera. No one taught me how to be one.” “And did anyone teach you how to love me?” This stopped him short. “No.” “Well, you’re pretty good at it. So be quiet, and accept that our children are going to love you.” Narian’s eyebrows rose, and I started laughing. Taking my hand, he pulled me toward him and I lay down beside him, mirroring his position. “I’m sorry for yelling at you,” I murmured, giving him a light kiss. “You never know where a conversation is going to take you,” he said, gazing into my dark eyes. “I’m rather glad you did.

There have been a few attempts to turn Prime Minister Diefenbaker into the tragic hero of Canada’s lost independence, but that is ludicrous. For one thing, the country’s independence was certainly compromised, but it was not really lost. For another, Diefenbaker is nobody’s hero: he was a bombastic prairie politico who combined a crude but saleable version of English Canadian nationalism with an unwavering commitment to a Cold War view of the world. “Dief” never admitted a mistake, had no particular attachment to the truth and suffered from chronic indecisiveness and low-grade paranoia. The image that lingers from his latter days is that of an old-fashioned and rigidly self-righteous man shaking his wattles in muddled indignation.

As one staffer remarked, “McGovern’s preoccupation with the youth cult led him to accept unquestioningly Fred Dutton’s opinion that the new 18-year-old vote would control this election and that we would win simply by registering millions of new voters.... He so jealously guarded his position on the left that he never noticed no one else was there—except his staff.” Campaign strategist Frank Mankiewicz later admitted that the basic mistake of the campaign was that “We were always subject to this pressure from the cause people. We reacted to every threat from women, or militants, or college groups.

There’s more in it than that,” Ludwik broke in. “We’ve got to admit that the Bolsheviks have raised the nation considerably. Russia under the czars was comparable to the Middle Ages; its slavery had no equal in Europe. The ignorance of the masses, the illiteracy, the clerical witchcraft, subordinated to the demands of the czarist regime, were terrible. Conditions today are far better than they were before the Revolution. Illiteracy is being fought with good results, and people are becoming a little more civilized. Slavery of masses of peasants under one landlord no longer exists. The industrialization, the development of communication, motorization, and education are all worthy of admiration. “On the other hand, communism has bred a new prototype of a Russian slave, the slave of the party, of a regime without scruples. The iron police system of NKVD is a thousand times more terrible than the Okhrana (the czarist police). The NKVD holds in its power the life and death of every individual in Russia. Without giving reasons, it sends men and women to prisons and forced-labor camps in the most damned and godforsaken places in the world, where they spend ten to twenty years rotting to death, often not knowing the nature of the crime for which they are being punished. On the rare occasions when a man is freed after ten years of torture, he is informed briefly that his arrest was a mistake. “If now, faced by war, the people are

It took some time before he became aware of a faint shifting in power, a ripple of awareness, like a searching crystal, an eye opening in the earth beside them. They were not alone. The presence touched him, stirred in his mind. Male. Powerful. Gregori. You are well, my friend. There was that cool menace in his mind. They knew one another so well after all the centuries of standing together against all odds. Gregori had not voiced it as a question, and Mikhail was shocked, truly shocked, that he could make contact. Raven and he were deep in the bowels of the earth. The sun was at its greatest peak, and all Carpathians were weak. How could Gregori accomplish such a feat? It was unheard of, even in the legends and myths of the past. Your woman needs to sleep, Mikhail. Allow me to assist you. Gregori was far away--Mikhail could detect that--yet the bond between them was strong. Sending Raven to sleep gave Gregori a semblance of power over her. Indecision. Did he trust Gregori? The power that Gregori wielded was phenomenal. For the mental well-being of his lifemate, did he do what no Carpathian would ever consider? Allow me to do this for you, old friend. She will not survive this day, Mikhail. Even locked with you, her human limitations will overcome her desire to aid you. And you can do this? Even at this distance? You can safely send her to sleep? Take away her torment? There will be no mistakes? Mikhail found himself wanting to believe that Gregori was indeed powerful enough to do such a thing. Gregori was their healer. If he said Raven would be unable to last buried within the earth, it only confirmed his own belief. Yes, through you. You are the only person on this planet I have given my allegiance to. You have always had my loyalty. I count you as my family and my friend. Until your woman or some other gives me my lifemate, you are the only person standing between the darkness and me. Gregori would never have admitted such a thing unless he considered the situation a dire emergency. He was giving Mikhail the only reason he could to reassure Mikhail that he could be trusted.

20 When they had finished dividing the land, 1the Lord said to Joshua: 2“Speak to the Israelites: Designate the cities of refuge—about which I commanded you through Moses—3to which a manslayer who kills a person by mistake, unintentionally, may flee. They shall serve you as a refuge from the blood avenger. 4He shall flee to one of those cities, present himself at the entrance to the city gate, and plead his case before the elders of that city; and they shall admit him into the city and give him a place in which to live among them. 5Should the blood avenger pursue him, they shall not hand the manslayer over to him, since he killed the other person without intent and had not been his enemy in the past. 6He shall live in that city until he can stand trial before the assembly, [and remain there] until the death of the high priest who is in office at that time. Thereafter, the manslayer may go back to his home in his own town, to the town from which he fled.

President Mandela was never scared to admit his own mistakes and then almost jump at the opportunity of apologising and then to move on.

On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win.

On Dec. 9, 1953, Lewis gave in to the inevitable urge to link them by offering The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln on Crime Classics and the play that Lincoln was watching at Ford’s Theater, Our American Cousin, on On Stage. This was a mistake, Lewis admitted years later: Our American Cousin was dull beyond salvation, and it earned him the only rebuke he ever received from CBS chief William Paley. The next morning there was a note on his desk. It said: “Interesting idea. Don’t do it again.

I need not recall the arguments of Zeno of Elea. They all involve the confusion of movement with the space covered, or at least the conviction that one can treat movement as one treats space, divide it without taking account of its articulations. Achilles, they say, will never overtake the tortoise he is pursuing, for when he arrives at the point where the tortoise was the latter will have had time to go further, and so on indefinitely. Philosophers have refuted this argument in numerous ways, and ways so different that each of these refutations deprives the others of the right to be considered definitive. There would have been, nevertheless, a very simple means of making short work of the difficulty: that would have been to question Achilles. For since Achilles finally catches up to the tortoise and even passes it, he must know better than anyone else how he goes about it. The ancient philosopher who demonstrated the possibility of movement by walking was right: his only mistake was to make the gesture without adding a commentary. Suppose then we ask Achilles to comment on his race: here, doubtless, is what he will answer: “Zeno insists that I go from the point where I am to the point the tortoise has left, from that point to the next point it has left, etc., etc.; that is his procedure for making me run. But I go about it otherwise. I take a first step, then a second, and so on: finally, after a certain number of steps, I take a last one by which I skip ahead of the tortoise. I thus accomplish a series of indivisible acts. My course is the series of these acts. You can distinguish its parts by the number of steps it involves. But you have not the right to disarticulate it according to another law, or to suppose it articulated in another way. To proceed as Zeno does is to admit that the race can be arbitrarily broken up like the space which has been covered; it is to believe that the passage is in reality applied to the trajectory; it is making movement and immobility coincide and consequently confusing one with the other.

First, he’s a billionaire, and a seventy-year-old man. Meaning, he doesn’t give a rat’s ass anymore about anything other than what matters. He’s lived a wild life already—so he doesn’t care who his casual comments offend. When he makes a joke it’s like when a baby farts. It’s nothing personal, the baby’s forgotten it, while everyone is choking out in the room. But the baby doesn’t care. I also had to admit that he’s never been in public office, so he doesn’t know how to be that particular kind of phony. I mean the phony that we all accept—which I call the “mandatory fake.” The mandatory fake is the married news anchor who condemns unseemly sexual behavior while banging Dalmatians in a nearby hotel. Being an old rich uncle who’s never been in politics, Trump has no familiarity with mandatory fake. There is, however, a different kind of fakery in Trump’s world of real estate fibbery. But such lies—salesman’s lies—are deliberately obvious by their excess. You know a salesman is lying when he tells you the car you’re buying from him was only driven by a little old lady once a week to church, which is great because she lives in the attic above the church! A salesman’s lie is done with a wink and an exaggeration (“This is the biggest crowd ever!”). A politician’s lie is a promise that could very well be true, but never is (“Read my lips, no new taxes”). You see the difference? Trump’s lies are common and do not insult us, because he assumes we’re all in on the joke. Politicians are daring you to go against your own innate skepticism (which is always a mistake). Am I “Trump-splaining”? Yes, I am. For now that he’s our president and up against so much, it’s no longer fealty to do so. It’s actually fairness. Anyway, as a Holmes, I’ve since reevaluated some positions that I’ve taken for granted. I’ve looked at the research on illegal immigration and its effects on unemployment. I’ve also looked harder at crime numbers, legal vs. illegal offenders. I’ve pretty much stuck to my original precepts, but I realize that ideology ultimately helps no one in that debate.

All responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world, there's no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes, and admit failures. Take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win.

On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures,

Think of it this way, there are two men. One stands tall, looks straight ahead. Looks people in the eye when he speaks to them. Says what he thinks and is comfortable if some people disagree with him. When he makes a mistake, he shrugs it off and apologizes if necessary. When he sucks at something, he admits it. He’s unafraid to express his emotions, even if that means he gets rejected because of them sometimes. He has no problem moving on to people who don’t reject him, but instead like him for who he is.

Why didn’t you send word sooner?” she asked, her voice accusing. “I tried, but there was no one to take my message, once I had the courage to try. Anyway, there seemed to be no words for my sorrow that you had not heard before.” “Oh.” He was beginning to think he had made a mistake. This was shaping up as a refusal. And after all the persuading he had wasted on his uncle and grandmother. He glanced down at the deer. It was humiliating, but he hadn’t come all this way to stand here dumb, like a chastened twelve-year-old. Without raising his eyes he said, “I missed you so much my soul was sick. My only dreams were of you. On the winter hunt my aim was terrible, like an old man with fading sight. My friends pitied me. I could listen to stories in the longhouse, but I could not tell any afterward because my heart held no memory of them.” He paused, ashamed to admit it. “I tried drinking for a while.” He saw her start slightly, and she said, less harshly, “Me, too.” “What happened between us was my fault.” “No, it wasn’t. I said I wouldn’t marry you. What else could I expect? Your only fault was in leaving without saying good-bye. That made it terrible.” “I’m sorry, Livy. I behaved like a spiteful boy.” “Yes, you did.” She agreed much too easily, he thought. She might be more gracious about it.

When the company had passed on, Rising Hawk laid the deer carcass on the ground at her feet. “This is for Polly,” he said shyly. “It is unthinkable for a bridegroom to claim his bride without proof of his hunting skill. The deer around here are not well. Your winter must have been bad, like ours. This was the best I could find.” His eyes finally met hers. He was the same, a little haggard. She was older. Neither of them was sure that they read anything in the looks they gave each other. “Gideon gave you my message? I was afraid it would not get here before I did.” “He told me yesterday,” she said, “but he didn’t tell me you were bringing a wedding party.” She was cool, without anger, very polite--as if she were addressing an acquaintance, and a distant one at that. Rising Hawk felt his confidence melting away. “Why didn’t you send word sooner?” she asked, her voice accusing. “I tried, but there was no one to take my message, once I had the courage to try. Anyway, there seemed to be no words for my sorrow that you had not heard before.” “Oh.” He was beginning to think he had made a mistake. This was shaping up as a refusal. And after all the persuading he had wasted on his uncle and grandmother. He glanced down at the deer. It was humiliating, but he hadn’t come all this way to stand here dumb, like a chastened twelve-year-old. Without raising his eyes he said, “I missed you so much my soul was sick. My only dreams were of you. On the winter hunt my aim was terrible, like an old man with fading sight. My friends pitied me. I could listen to stories in the longhouse, but I could not tell any afterward because my heart held no memory of them.” He paused, ashamed to admit it. “I tried drinking for a while.” He saw her start slightly and she said, less harshly, “Me too.” “What happened between us was my fault.” “No, it wasn’t. I said I wouldn’t marry you. What else could I expect? Your only fault was in leaving without saying good-bye. That made it terrible.” “I’m sorry, Livy. I behaved like a spiteful boy.” “Yes, you did.” She agreed much too easily, he thought. She might be more gracious about it.

Why didn’t you go after her?” His father’s deep voice confronted his cowardice. Michael stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, slumping his shoulders in the process as a child being scolded. He could not look at his father, he knew all too well the disapproving glare that was bound to chastise him. “Love isn’t easy, Son.” His father’s hand on his shoulder offered understanding and friendship, far from the reprove he expected. “But it is for you and mom.” “No, Son, it isn’t.” His father admitted. “I think we need to talk. How about ordering us a pizza, while I settle in.” Guiding his son back to the house, Joseph felt the prick of thorns from the guilt of past mistakes. “I can’t believe you and mom almost divorced.” Michael shook his head in disbelief at the story his father had shared with him. “We came very close. Thankfully, my father, your grandfather, sat me down and shared his own marital struggles with me. None of us are exempt from them. I know you and Abigail are not talking marriage yet, but I see the way you look at her and I know, that it is just a matter of time. Love is a commitment, Michael, not a contract.” Joseph sat his empty coffee cup down on the table and spoke honestly with his son. “Either you love her enough to fight for her, or you don’t love her at all.” “I do love her.” “Then fight for her, Michael. That includes forgiving her, not just once, but each time she messes up.” Standing, Joseph handed Michael his Bible. “I have marked two passages I want you to read. Start with Isaiah 53 and end with 1 Corinthians 13. I think you will find your answers there.” Reaching his hand down to his boy, Joseph pulled him up into his embrace. “Sleep well, Son. Your mom and I are praying for you.

Rate yourself from 1 to 5, where 1 means no/rarely (denotes you have a lack of ability) and 5 means most often/always (denotes you can do this easily): ___ I experience relationships rather than things as a source of relief when I am stressed. ___ I seek help, comfort, or support from a person rather than a thing. (In contrast, addictions are ways you get relief or distractions from unwanted feelings without needing people.) ___ I can ask for help when I am unsure of myself. ___ I can list eight feelings I experience on a regular basis. ___ I can identify and articulate these feelings with my spouse and kids. ___ I use my feelings to identify my needs, and I am able to communicate my needs and ask directly for what I need, rather than hoping someone will guess correctly. ___ I know my childhood history, so I am aware when the past is influencing my present feelings and causing me to overreact. ___ I can name five strengths I possess in my character and talents, and three weaknesses. ___ I can recover quickly from a mistake. ___ I can find middle ground in life, versus being an eternal optimist or constant pessimist. ___ I can delay gratification and wait for something I want. ___ I am aware of my spouse’s behavior when he or she is stressed and can take measures to bring him or her relief. ___ I can admit when I am wrong and apologize without saying, “I am sorry, but…” ___ I can accept criticism and feedback and thoughtfully consider it. ___ I am a good listener and know how to ask thoughtful questions. ___ I have experienced the connection and closeness that results when a conflict is resolved. ___ I can say no and draw boundaries even when it makes someone mad. ___ I know how to use my anger to identify more vulnerable feelings underneath the anger and communicate the more vulnerable feelings. ___ I can control the level of my reactivity so I am able to stay engaged in difficult conversations. ___ I am comfortable with reality and don’t minimize problems. ___ I can keep listening and explore another’s feelings, experiences, and point of view even when I disagree with him or her. ___ I can ask to be held or hugged when I need comfort. ___ I am not afraid of conflict, because I have skills to compromise, negotiate, and usually resolve conflict. ___ I don’t hold on to resentments and am able to forgive my spouse. ___ Because I have relationships with God and close friends, I don’t expect my spouse to meet every need. ___ I have compassion for my spouse in his or her areas of weakness because I understand the childhood wounds that contributed to those areas of struggle. ___ I don’t have secrets I am keeping from my spouse. ___ I can ask for a do-over and try again when I blow it with my spouse.

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I can’t believe you forgot again!” Mary shouts at Mason. Right then and there, she mobilizes around her anger. She inadvertently pushes her hurt as far away as her anger will take it. “How many times do I have to tell you that this is important to me?!” Mason is confronted with what he sees as the following viable options: Admit his mistake and apologize. This option sounds good, but Mason knows that he has gone this route many times before, and although it used to be helpful, it doesn’t turn out well anymore. Mary only gets more upset with him. She isn’t ready to hear his apologies. Downplay the importance. Mason has been really busy at work — and he’s working for the family! He could stress this, and say that it’s impossible to remember everything. “C’mon, gimme a break. Is it that big of a deal?” Mason knows that this approach usually makes Mary angrier.

But it was rumoured by the wise of Igodomigodo that Ogiso Igodo did not die, but bearing hard the humiliation of Elegbara, he had gone into Igbo Eda, the sacred forest of Olodumare wherein the powers of the earth were buried. It was said that as he could not be admitted into the abode of the gods, he besought Olodumare for the power of dominion over the earth. But Olodumare, mistaking his request, turned Ogiso Igodo into a tree whose root went deep into the earth’s core. Nurtured by the earth’s magma, the tree bore no fruits, and its leaves were red like flame, and bitter and poisonous, like the soul of Ogiso Igodo. And to this day, men who seek the powers of the earth bow to the tree and tap from its pitch and drain the bitterness of Igodo into their soul, and the powers they wield are cruel and merciless.

President Kennedy regularly asserted two contradictory propositions about Vietnam: that the South Vietnamese must do the job for themselves and yet the United States must not quit there. Unable to reconcile the conflicting imperatives of avoiding another American ground war on the Asian mainland and avoiding the loss of South Vietnam, he remained indecisive. It was uncharacteristic of him. “When he knew what he really wanted,” McGeorge Bundy said of Kennedy, “he had no problem” making a decision. Kennedy did not live to see the consequences of removing Diệm, but his advisors did, and most of them came to view it as a grave mistake. “It was not well handled,” Bundy later admitted. “There was no victory for the United States in the fall of Diem” and “still less in his death.” That mishandling was rooted in naïveté. “The consequences were so unpredictable, including the death, which was no part of our intent or expectation, which was pretty stupid,” Bundy concluded. “We should have guessed that these people would feel that if you strike at a king, you strike to kill, which they did.” That there was no evacuation plan for Diệm was only one of the wretchedly telling signs that the American consideration of the coup’s possible outcomes was shallow and incomplete. In hindsight, Mike Mansfield was probably right when he said that Diệm “was the only one, despite his frailties, who could have kept South Vietnam together.” None of the generals who followed Diệm did better at leading South Vietnam, and most did worse. All of them would be equally if not more dependent on the United States. “The only durable result of the coup against Diem,” Bundy noted, “was durable political instability in Saigon.

You’re right. I don’t understand,” I admit. “I don’t get where this unfailing loyalty is coming from. Especially when you consider the example he set for you—where’s his loyalty? Where’s his selflessness?” Logan flips his palm over and laces his fingers through mine. “That’s the other reason I’m doing this. Because of the example he set. If I abandon him, then I’m no better than he is. Then I’m selfish, and that’s something I never want to be. Sometimes I hate him so much I want to kick his teeth in, sometimes I even find myself wishing he’d die, but no matter how frustrating it gets, he’s still my father, and I love him.” His voice cracks. “I treat him the way I’d want to be treated if I was ever in his position. With patience and support, even when he doesn’t deserve it.