“
The fact that a cloud from a minor volcanic eruption in Iceland—a small disturbance in the complex mechanism of life on the Earth—can bring to a standstill the aerial traffic over an entire continent is a reminder of how, with all its power to transform nature, humankind remains just another species on the planet Earth.
”
”
Slavoj Žižek
“
I’m in love with you,” I whisper.
He tries to smile but his eyes flood instead. “Don’t love me more than your dreams, myshka. Because I love you too much to let you give them up for me.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
We have flooded ourselves with the media in all its many forms. Our minds are now open to signals. We have become aerials.
”
”
Jeff Noon
“
We all traverse in and out of people’s worlds, leaving footprints. Some larger, some smaller, but there is always a mark. We can’t sweep it away.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
I’ve found that life is a series of crossroads, dead-ends and U-turns. There is no real destination. There is no goal to end all goals. As long as we’re living, we’ll always keep driving.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
I’d help you every day so that you could see a better tomorrow. I will never give you less than that.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
Anne had no sooner uttered the phrase, "home o'dreams," than it captivated her fancy and she immediately began the erection of one of her own. It was, of course, tenanted by an ideal master, dark, proud, and melancholy; but oddly enough, Gilbert Blythe persisted in hanging about too, helping her arrange pictures, lay out gardens, and accomplish sundry other tasks which a proud and melancholy hero evidently considered beneath his dignity. Anne tried to banish Gilbert's image from her castle in Spain but, somehow, he went on being there, so Anne, being in a hurry, gave up the attempt and pursued her aerial architecture with such success that her "home o'dreams" was built and furnished before Diana spoke again.
”
”
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Avonlea (Anne of Green Gables, #2))
“
Anisette! You will eat your food, not demonstrate aerial warfare across the table with it.
”
”
T.A. Miles (Raventide)
“
God damn the geraniums! ...It was like trying to screw during an aerial attack.
”
”
Charles Bukowski (Post Office)
“
The things greater than us, Thora, they’re not impossible. It’s just fear talking, telling you that you can’t when you can. I know you can.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
This was unintentional.”
It became something more without noticing. Without realizing. “Am I a mistake—”
“No, myshka. You’re just the unexpected, beautiful thing in my life.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
Why are you so patient with me?” I whisper.
“Because every part of me wants to take care of you.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
I don't advise a haircut, man. All hairdressers are in the employment of the government. Hairs are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos, and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight.
”
”
Bruce Robinson (Withnail and I: the Original Screenplay)
“
We’re not going to fit together.”
“We are,” he says lowly. “In all ways.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
I am my biggest cheerleader. Always have been. Probably always will be.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
I am the suburb of a non-existent town, the prolix commentary on a book never written. I am nobody, nobody. I am a character in a novel which remains to be written, and I float, aerial, scattered without ever having been, among the dreams of a creature who did not know how to finish me off.
”
”
Fernando Pessoa
“
I’m average. I’ve been average most of my life, but there are moments where I feel extraordinary. Invincible. Able to conquer any fear and step outside any box. There is no illusion, no fantasy. I can climb a forty-foot pole. I can fly eighty-feet in the air. I can be taller than tall. It’s a dream that I’m living. Every day. With him.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
She would fain have caught at the skirts of that departing time, and prayed it to return, and give her back what she had too little valued while it was yet in her possession. What a vain show Life seemed! How unsubstantial, and flickering, and flitting! It was as if from some aerial belfry, high up above the stir and jar of the earth, there was a bell continually tolling, ‘All are shadows!—all are passing!—all is past!
”
”
Elizabeth Gaskell (North and South)
“
As if sensing the oncoming theatre, the pigeons arrived from nowhere, and dug in close on the powerlines. They were perched on TV aerials, and, God forbid, on the trees. There was also a single crow, fat-feathered and plump, like a pigeon disguised in a trench coat.
”
”
Markus Zusak (Bridge of Clay)
“
Some politicians have a gift for language. Trump is not one of those politicians. His sentences call to mind an aerial shot of a burning, derailed freight train. The syntax is mangled. The grammar is gone. “Donald Trump isn’t a simpleton, he just talks like one,” reads a Politico article from last August.
”
”
Katy Tur (Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History)
“
Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
Youth means a tempermental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of 60 more than a boy of 20. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirits back to dust.
Whether 60 or 16, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite of what's next and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station: so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the Infinite, so long are you young.
When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at 20, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at 80.
”
”
Samuel Ullman
“
I’m sure if the carpet had eyes, it’d be fixated on his cock too.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
I have lived partially. Halfly. Incompletely. To be whole, I did not know until my bones thundered and bellowed for more."
I am whole and happy.
And this is more.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Infini (Aerial Ethereal, #2))
“
Air is the very substance of our freedom, the substance of superhuman joy.... aerial joy is freedom.
”
”
Gaston Bachelard
“
You’re supposed to stare at me like I’m a devil, not a god.”
Wittier words actually come to me, my face lighting before I say, “I think you’ve always been both.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
The stars were going out now, one by one, dropping like pennies behind the television aerials and the skylights and the washing strung between the chimneys. The sky was still dark - a sated, navy-blue woman - but the grass was jittery with the expectation of dawn.
”
”
Peter S. Beagle (A Fine and Private Place)
“
War is not just the shower of bullets and bombs from both sides, it is also the shower of blood and bones on both sides.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Am I a mistake—” “No, myshka. You’re just the unexpected, beautiful thing in my life.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
Wow.A sylph.I think that's the first confirmed contact ever!"
I raised my hand. "Umm,hello? Girl who was kidnapped by said sylph? Anyone want to fill me in on what it is and why it decided to give me an aerial tour of our fine state?
”
”
Kiersten White (Supernaturally (Paranormalcy, #2))
“
Trust me.”
“I don’t even know you,” I say softly, adrenaline pulsating through my veins. He has led me to the precipice of a cliff, pushed me off, and now he’s clasping my wrist. He can let go at any moment, and I will fall.
“Every day,” he says lowly, “I hold a person’s life in my hands. The circus is based one-hundred percent off trust. I give it all to someone, and they give it all to me. I’m asking you, right now, to trust me.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
What black eyes you have…”
“All the better to devour you with.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
Barking machines!" Dylan exclaimed. "Didn't I tell you? I've never seen a beastie that couldn't get up on its own. Well, except a turtle. And one of my auntie's cats."
Alek raised an eyebrow. "And I'm sure your auntie's cat would have survived that aerial bomb."
"You'd be surprised. He's quite fast.
”
”
Scott Westerfeld (Leviathan (Leviathan, #1))
“
I've been Corporate's Least Favorite Kotova since I was fifteen. And with an extended family that fills one-third of all Aerial Ethereal shows, being the worst or best Kotova takes actual effort.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Infini (Aerial Ethereal, #2))
“
On the aerial swings, there was a moment when you let go of one and reached for the next, when you realized you’d made a mistake and you no longer felt weightless, when you simply started to fall.
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1))
“
Stephanie Plum, off-road warrior. Now this was the way it should be, I thought. Taking action. Hauling ass in the woods behind Diesel. Well, okay – truthfully, I wanted to be in front of Diesel. I wanted to ride point, lead the charge, be the big kahuna. Unfortunately, Diesel was the one who’d memorized the aerial map. And he was supposedly the one with super senses.
‘Big whoop-de-do, super senses,’ I said.
‘I heard that,’ Diesel yelled back to me.
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘Yes. I did.
”
”
Janet Evanovich (Plum Spooky (Stephanie Plum, #14.5))
“
To write, for a lesbian, is to learn to take down the patriarchal posters in her room. It means learning to live with bare walls for a while. It means learning how not to be afraid of the ghosts which assume the color of the bare wall.
”
”
Nicole Brossard (The Aerial Letter)
“
Her mighty lakes, like oceans of liquid silver; her mountains, with bright aerial tints; her valleys, teeming with wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad, deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine - no, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery.
”
”
Washington Irving (The Sketch Book)
“
In pursuit of counterrevolution and in the name of freedom, U.S. forces or U.S.-supported surrogate forces slaughtered 2,000,000 North Koreans in a three-year war; 3,000,000 Vietnamese; over 500,000 in aerial wars over Laos and Cambodia; over 1,500,000 in Angola; over 1,000,000 in Mozambique; over 500,000 in Afghanistan; 500,000 to 1,000,000 in Indonesia; 200,000 in East Timor; 100,000 in Nicaragua (combining the Somoza and Reagan eras); over 100,000 in Guatemala (plus an additional 40,000 disappeared); over 700,000 in Iraq;3 over 60,000 in El Salvador; 30,000 in the “dirty war” of Argentina (though the government admits to only 9,000); 35,000 in Taiwan, when the Kuomintang military arrived from China; 20,000 in Chile; and many thousands in Haiti, Panama, Grenada, Brazil, South Africa, Western Sahara, Zaire, Turkey, and dozens of other countries, in what amounts to a free-market world holocaust.
”
”
Michael Parenti (Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism)
“
He's thinking about sex. I'm thinking about sex. We're all thinking about sex here.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
...We'll exchange rings, we'll throw rice. We'll put down roots.'
We don't have roots. We're network people. We have aerials.
”
”
Bruce Sterling (Distraction)
“
He’s made me appreciate myself more, love myself more, and as a result, I’ve come to see him as more than just a great athlete, a charismatic performer.
Nikolai Kotova is the sum of his brothers and sister. And more.
He is selfless, loyal, dedicated and wholly determined—the most responsible twenty-six-year-old, the most mature man. He is power and strength. But most importantly, he is love. And family.
He kisses me again, his hand warming the back of my neck. “Whatever happens, just know that the parts of my life with you have been my favorite.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
I wish you'd keep your fingers out of my eye," said the aerial voice, in a tone of savage expostulation. "The fact is, I'm all here:head, hands, legs, and all the rest of it, but it happens I'm invisible. It's a confounded nuisance, but I am. That's no reason why I should be poked to pieces by every stupid bumpkin in Iping, is it?
”
”
H.G. Wells (The Invisible Man)
“
The air space is obviously for the Aerial Transports—ATs, and the roads are for the Ground Vehicles—GVs. However, even among the GVs, strict rules apply for the ones with wheels and tires—they must stay nearest to the earth. A truck with monster tires, like hers, must stay away from the upper-level highways if she wants to avoid stares.
”
”
Misba (The High Auction (Wisdom Revolution, #1))
“
Once upon a time we all walked on the golden road. It was a fair highway, through the Land of Lost Delight; shadow and sunshine were blessedly mingled, and every turn and dip revealed a fresh charm and a new loveliness to eager hearts and unspoiled eyes.
On that road we heard the song of morning stars; we drank in fragrances aerial and sweet as a May mist; we were rich in gossamer fancies and iris hopes; our hearts sought and found the boon of dreams; the years waited beyond and they were very fair; life was a rose-lipped comrade with purple flowers dripping from her fingers.
We may long have left the golden road behind, but its memories are the dearest of our eternal possessions; and those who cherish them as such may haply find a pleasure in the pages of this book, whose people are pilgrims on the golden road of youth.
”
”
L.M. Montgomery (The Golden Road (The Story Girl, #2))
“
Hold out your hands to feel the luxury of sunbeams. Press the soft blossoms against your cheek, and finger their graces of form, their delicate mutability of shape, their pliancy and freshness. Expose your face to the aerial floods that sweep the heavens, ‘inhale great draughts of space,’ wonder, wonder at the wind’s unwearied activity. Pile note on note the infinite music that flows increasingly to your soul from the tactual sonorities of a thousand branches and tumbling waters. How can the world be shriveled when this most profound, emotional sense, touch, is faithful to its service? I am sure that if a fairy bade me choose between the sense of sight and that of touch, I would not part with the warm, endearing contact of human hands…
”
”
Helen Keller (The Open Door)
“
For those suggesting criticisms of drone kills should wait until the election: that'd be reasonable if he stops killing until the election.
”
”
Glenn Greenwald
“
I'm clawing at something that doesn't want me. And to say goodbye is like severing a part of me that I can't easily replace.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
(What can I say? My name is Luka Kotova, I'm an irresponsible fuck-up. Thanks for your time. Now let me be.)
”
”
Becca Ritchie (Infini (Aerial Ethereal, #2))
“
I’m feeling a lot lamer than usual. I mean, I know I’m half-lame most of the time, with flat comebacks and unintentional demonic glares. But I’m reaching new levels.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
How do you two even work?” His face is still in that grimace. “Are you always on top?
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
Blue, holding the puzzle box in her hands, whispered back: “It’s aerial yoga.” Louder, she said, “Calla, it’s about Ronan.”
Calla readjusted, wrapping the silk around her other thigh instead. “Which one’s he again? The pretty one?”
Blue and Gansey exchanged a look. Blue’s look said, I’m so, so sorry. Gansey’s said, Am I the pretty one?
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2))
“
But when I catch my expression in my floor-length mirror, a dark scowl tightens my facial muscles. It's my normal look, unforturnately. I have RBF (resting bitch face). It's one-hundred percent real.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
He is power. Man. And strength. He is charm and desire and indestructible things.
I want to emit an equivalent passion. I want to be strength and desire. But I’m not sure how to match him and still move. It’s easy to be confident in the face of average-standing competition. It’s hard to pretend you’re something greater in the face of someone who’s already beyond great.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
When the towers again twin-tickle the clouds, I offer to walk again, to be the expression of the builder's collective voice. Together, we will rejoice in an aerial song of victory. I will carry my life across the wire, as your life, as all our lives, past, present, and future -the lives lost, the lives welcomed since.
we can overcome.
”
”
Philippe Petit (To Reach the Clouds: My High Wire Walk Between the Twin Towers)
“
The frantumaglia is an unstable landscape, an infinite aerial or aquatic mass of debris that appears to the I, brutally, as its true and unique inner self. The frantumaglia is the storehouse of time without the orderliness of a history, a story. The frantumaglia is an effect of the sense of loss, when we’re sure that everything that seems to us stable, lasting, an anchor for our life, will soon join that landscape of debris that we seem to see. The frantumaglia is to perceive with excruciating anguish the heterogeneous crowd from which we, living, raise our voice, and the heterogeneous crowd into which it is fated to vanish.
”
”
Elena Ferrante (La frantumaglia)
“
My life has never felt more complicated, but this is a complication that I'd rather exist than not have at all.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
I don't regret one day of breaking that rule. Because it'd mean regretting every moment that I spent with Baylee. And I don't. I just don't. I can't.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Infini (Aerial Ethereal, #2))
“
I fucking love her - and that means nothing to everyone but me.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Infini (Aerial Ethereal, #2))
“
Let us take you into a deeper experience, make a moment a lasting conveyable memory. Let us help build your tribe.
”
”
Deep Immersion
“
The Overtakelessness of Those
Who have accomplished Death -
Majestic is to me beyond
The majesties of Earth -
The Soul her "Not at Home"
Inscribes upon the Flesh -
And takes a fine aerial gait
Beyond the Writ of Touch.
”
”
Emily Dickinson
“
Look at them, the bugs. Humans have used everything in their power to extinguish them: every kind of poison, aerial sprays, introducing and cultivating their natural predators, searching for and destroying their eggs, using genetic modification to sterilize them, burning with fire, drowning with water. Every family has bug spray, every desk has a flyswatter under it… this long war has been going on for the entire history of human civilization. But the outcome is still in doubt. The bugs have not been eliminated. They still proudly live between the heavens and the earth, and their numbers have not diminished from the time before the appearance of the humans. The Trisolarans who deemed the humans bugs seemed to have forgotten one fact: The bugs have never been truly defeated. A small black cloud covered the sun and cast a moving shadow against the ground. This was not a common cloud, but a swarm of locusts that had just arrived. As the swarm landed in the fields nearby, the three men stood in the middle of a living shower, feeling the dignity of life on Earth. Ding Yi and Wang Miao poured the two bottles of wine they had with them on the ground beneath their feet, a toast for the bugs.
”
”
Liu Cixin (The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1))
“
All he had loved, and moulded into thought,
From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound,
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought
Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,
Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,
Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day;
Afar the melancholy thunder moaned,
Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,
And the wild winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.
”
”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (Adonais)
“
Of whatever class or nation, however, all successful participants in the repetitive and unrelenting stress of aerial fighting came eventually to display its characteristic physiognomy: skeletal hands, sharpened noses, tight-drawn cheek bones, the bared teeth of a rictus smile and the fixed, narrowed gaze of men in a state of controlled fear.
”
”
John Keegan (The First World War)
“
Look at them, the bugs. Humans have used everything in their power to extinguish them: every kind of poison, aerial sprays, introducing and cultivating their natural predators, searching for and destroying their eggs, using genetic modification to sterilize them, burning with fire, drowning with water. Every family has bug spray, every desk has a fly-swatter under it... this long war has been going on for the entire history of human civilization. But the outcome is still in doubt. The bugs have not been eliminated.
”
”
Liu Cixin (The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1))
“
When I think of excellence in motion, I think of the big picture. Because of the magnitude of this concept, I look at it from an aerial perspective. It is a mindset that challenges the boundaries of self-induced limits—that point where you aspire to exceed your expectations, where the mind-body-achievement connection resides and wins time and time again.
”
”
Lorii Myers (No Excuses, The Fit Mind-Fit Body Strategy Book (3 Off the Tee, #3))
“
Stage 13 was, then, a toy shop, a magic chest, a sorcerer’s trunk, a trick manufactory, and an aerial hangar of dreams at the center of which Roy stood each day, waving his long piano fingers at mythic beasts to stir them, whispering, in the ten-billion-year slumbers.
”
”
Ray Bradbury (A Graveyard for Lunatics: Another Tale of Two Cities (Crumley Mysteries, #2))
“
Timo is the kind of guy you wish you knew. Intriguing. Captivating. I'm the shadow to his ceaseless light.
”
”
Becca Ritchie (Infini (Aerial Ethereal, #2))
“
Life is a rollercoaster with no volunteers. We’re all forced to take a seat and ride it out.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
I know what it's like to be second-best to people you love. Hell, not even second-best. Third-best. Fifth best. In some scenarios, the worst.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Infini (Aerial Ethereal, #2))
“
One out of one-fifty. That’s how unlucky I am.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
It’s like leaving the bathroom with a piece of toilet paper hanging from my pants.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
I admire your courage. I know what you’ve given up to be here. I know the kind of artist it takes to land a role. I know that you won’t receive one on your own. And I imagine you, myshka, two years from now, working at Phantom with the same aspirations, the same dreams, in the same place where you are now. It’s wasted courage. And wasted love. You shouldn’t have to waste those things.”
I’m speechless.
And overwhelmed. When someone reaches out and gives you a hand—for no other reason than to see your success—it’s powerful. And rare.
He wipes beneath my eye with his thumb. “I’d rather feed your hunger than watch you starve
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
The United States is an equal-opportunity bomber. The only qualifications for a country to become a target are: (a) it poses an obstacle – could be anything – to a particular desire of the American Empire; (b) it is virtually defenseless against aerial attack; (c) it does not possess nuclear weapons.
”
”
William Blum (America's Deadliest Export: Democracy The Truth about US Foreign Policy and Everything Else)
“
In his corner of West London, and in his self-preoccupied daily round, it was easy for Clive to think of civilization as the sum of all the arts, along with design, cuisine, good wine, and the like. But now it appeared that this was what it really was- square miles of meager modern houses whose principal purpose was the support of TV aerials and dishes; factories producing worthless junk to be advertised on the televisions and, in dismal lots, lorries queuing to distribute it, and everywhere else, roads and the tyranny of traffic.
”
”
Ian McEwan (Amsterdam)
“
She’s not my type! While her ambitions are slightly endearing, they’re mostly delusional! But that’s not even the problem.” I did catch that compliment in there. I mean, this could be worse. Right?
“What’s the problem?” Nikolai asks, opening the floodgates.
“She has a vagina!” The music switched songs right when he screamed that. It came out so much louder than it should have.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
I, the most important passenger, the youth who had once been the glorious god Apollo, was forced to sit in the back of the dragon. Oh, the indignities I had suffered since Zeus stripped me of my divine powers! It wasn’t enough that I was now a sixteen-year-old mortal with the ghastly alias Lester Papadopoulos. It wasn’t enough that I had to toil upon the earth doing (ugh) heroic quests until I could find a way back into my father’s good graces, or that I had a case of acne which simply would not respond to over-the-counter zit medicine. Despite my New York State junior driver’s license, Leo Valdez didn’t trust me to operate his aerial bronze steed!
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Dark Prophecy (The Trials of Apollo, #2))
“
It was like hundreds of roads he'd driven over - no different - a stretch of tar, lusterless, scaley, humping toward the center. On both sides were telephone poles, tilted this way and that, up a little, down...
Billboards - down farther an increasing clutter of them. Some road signs. A tottering barn in a waste field, the Mail Pouch ad half weathered away. Other fields. A large wood - almost leafless now - the bare branches netting darkly against the sky. Then down, where the road curved away, a big white farmhouse, trees on the lawn, neat fences - and above it all, way up, a television aerial, struck by the sun, shooting out bars of glare like neon. ("Thompson")
”
”
George A. Zorn (Shock!)
“
She’s trying to find herself. Some days I still wonder if I’ve found me. Maybe we never stop searching. Maybe we evolve the way seasons change, seamlessly without really knowing, not until all the leaves have fallen. This is who I am today. Tomorrow I may be the same. But in years, I’ll be someone else. Someone I may like more. Someone I may like less. And that’s okay. Because I’m still living.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
“
In waiting for the glorious moment of that first book contract, writers must have giant reservoirs of patience. Yet they must persevere because they don't know the destiny that is being worked out for them. They creep humbly along the ground, without the spacious aerial vision of their lives that would show them the destiny in store for them.
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Ron Chernow
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Once they got there, it wasn’t a pretty landing. With the oars damaged and the foresail torn, Leo could barely manage a controlled descent. The others strapped themselves in below—except for Coach Hedge, who insisted on clinging to the forward rail, yelling, “YEAH! Bring it on, lake!” Leo stood astern, alone at the helm, and aimed as best he could. Festus creaked and whirred warning signals, which were relayed through the intercom to the quarterdeck. “I know, I know,” Leo said, gritting his teeth. He didn’t have much time to take in the scenery. To the southeast, a city was nestled in the foothills of a mountain range, blue and purple in the afternoon shadows. A flat desert landscape spread to the south. Directly beneath them the Great Salt Lake glittered like aluminum foil, the shoreline etched with white salt marshes that reminded Leo of aerial photos of Mars. “Hang on, Coach!” he shouted. “This is going to hurt.” “I was born for hurt!
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Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
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He’s… There are no perfect words for what I feel. For what I see. It’s staring at a Michelangelo painting and being intimate with the subject beneath the brush strokes. It’s falling to your knees and looking up at a god, who belongs to you.
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Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
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If paparazzi armed with telephoto lenses have long been the scourge of the rich and famous; civilian drones are fast becoming the new menace to the ordinary man on the street.
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Alex Morritt (Impromptu Scribe)
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And overwhelmed. When someone reaches out and gives you a hand—for no other reason than to see your success—it’s powerful. And rare.
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Krista Ritchie (Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal, #1))
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It’s supposed to be a joke, but John is the one with the insults while Timo exultantly chases after him, like a firefly in a storm cloud.
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Becca Ritchie (Infini (Aerial Ethereal, #2))
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Twenty-five, six-foot-something Colombian-American. Unshaven jaw, windswept brown hair, and a never-ending gruff expression. Like the universe just took a giant shit on his head.
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Becca Ritchie (Infini (Aerial Ethereal, #2))
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By now you will not be surprised to learn that Gaston Bachelard had a few things to say about the element of air. In a book called "Air and Dreams". he points out that we categorize many of our emotions by their relative weight; they make us feel heavier or lighter. Perhaps because uprightness is the human quality, we imagine human emotions arranged on a vertical scale from ground to sky. So sadness is weighed down and earthbound. joy is aerial, and the sensation of freedom defies the bonds of gravity. "Air," Bachelard writes, "is the very substance of our freedom, the substance of superhuman joy." Elation, effervescence, elevation, levity, inspiration: air words all, alveolated with vowels, leavening the dough of everyday life.
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Michael Pollan (Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation)
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My mind blurs to a ripple of pleasure when his soft, full lips at last make contact with mine. He starts to deepen the kiss, but pauses, intent on the glass behind me. “You gotta be kidding.”
I glance over my shoulder. Outside, Morpheus hangs on the glass in moth form, level with my head, glaring at us with his bulbous gaze. Even without a face, his smugness is apparent. His favorite pastime is interrupting Jeb’s romantic moments. I try not to laugh, but can’t help myself.
“Cocky son of a bug.” Jeb sets me on the floor and draws the dropcloth tighter around me.
A barn owl swoops from the sky and skims the glass. Morpheus launches off in a tizzy, trying to outrun the bird. Now Jeb’s the one laughing.
I slap his shoulder. “Hey, that’s not funny.”
“Ah, he’ll be okay.” Jeb raises an eyebrow, watching the aerial pursuit taking place outside the glass. “It’s a new genus of vegetarian owls. They’re only in it for the chase. Besides, Morphie-boy can change to his other form anytime he wants.”
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A.G. Howard (Ensnared (Splintered, #3))
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And with distance in time it is the same as with distance in place. The imagination has its atmosphere and its sunlight as well as the earth has; only its mists are even more gorgeous and delicate, its aerial perspectives are even more wide and profound. It also transifgures and beautifies things in far more various ways. For the imagination is all senses in one; it is sight, it is smell, it is hearing; it is memory, regret, and passion. Everything goes to nourish it, from first love to literature - literature, which, for cultivated people, is the imagination's gastric juice.
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William Hurrell Mallock (In An Enchanted Island: Or A Winter's Retreat In Cyprus)
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From the advertisement, his eyes moved up the skywalk, the zigzagging metal bridge that connected various locations in the neighborhood to the Banda train station. Behind the metal grid, men moved back and forth. Tommy Sir's eyes grew tired. He felt that up there, on that seemingly never-ending bridge, shadowy figures were moving toward obscure destinations, possibly only to return to their point of origin, like in an architectural sketch of infinity by M.C. Escher. Hell is a choice, made daily and by millions, and breathing slowly and watching this aerial cage, Tommy Sir saw Mumbai, minute by minute, unbecome and become hell.
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Aravind Adiga
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Many people lay the blame at Bush’s feet for beginning weaponized drone warfare, but in reality it was President Clinton who began the U.S. weaponized drone program.1 After an aerial drone spotted bin Laden in October 2000, President Clinton was frustrated that he could not simply push a button to end the life of the man who had sullied his foreign policy and national security records. President Clinton “gave orders to create an armed drone force.”2 That program came to fruition under President Bush when on June 18th 2004, the first weaponized drone struck in Waziristan.
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Andrew P. Napolitano (Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty)
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To Hera
O Royal Hera of majestic mien, aerial-form'd, divine, Zeus' blessed queen,
Thron'd in the bosom of cærulean air, the race of mortals is thy constant care.
The cooling gales thy pow'r alone inspires, which nourish life, which ev'ry life desires.
Mother of clouds and winds, from thee alone producing all things, mortal life is known:
All natures share thy temp'rament divine, and universal sway alone is thine.
With founding blasts of wind, the swelling sea and rolling rivers roar, when shook by thee.
Come, blessed Goddess, fam'd almighty queen, with aspect kind, rejoicing and serene.
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Orpheus
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Like a vast, random experiment targeting the environment with health doomed to be collateral damage, chemicals have been released into the air, soil, and water since nineteenth-century industrialism. While some may shrug that the aerial release of chemical nanoparticles and nano-sensors, microprocessors, and biologicals under the classified Project Cloverleaf is just more of the same, nanoparticles able to breach the blood-brain barrier make it uniquely diabolical, as does the global conspiracy of power to turn the entire planet into an electromagnetic grid and plug everyone into it. War has gone corporate and all of life reframed as a battlespace of disposable noncombatants (civilians) redefined as potential “terrorists.” The military is no longer a protector but partnered with giant transnational corporations and wealthy dynastic cartels like that of Big Pharma and Big Oil.
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Elana Freeland (Under an Ionized Sky: From Chemtrails to Space Fence Lockdown)
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Finding a taxi, she felt like a child pressing her nose to the window of a candy store as she watched the changing vista pass by while the twilight descended and the capital became bathed in a translucent misty lavender glow. Entering the city from that airport was truly unique. Charles de Gaulle, built nineteen miles north of the bustling metropolis, ensured that the final point of destination was veiled from the eyes of the traveller as they descended. No doubt, the officials scrupulously planned the airport’s location to prevent the incessant air traffic and roaring engines from visibly or audibly polluting the ambience of their beloved capital, and apparently, they succeeded. If one flew over during the summer months, the visitor would be visibly presented with beautifully managed quilt-like fields of alternating gold and green appearing as though they were tilled and clipped with the mathematical precision of a slide rule. The countryside was dotted with quaint villages and towns that were obviously under meticulous planning control. When the aircraft began to descend, this prevailing sense of exactitude and order made the visitor long for an aerial view of the capital city and its famous wonders, hoping they could see as many landmarks as they could before they touched ground, as was the usual case with other major international airports, but from this point of entry, one was denied a glimpse of the city below. Green fields, villages, more fields, the ground grew closer and closer, a runway appeared, a slight bump or two was felt as the craft landed, and they were surrounded by the steel and glass buildings of the airport. Slightly disappointed with this mysterious game of hide-and-seek, the voyager must continue on and collect their baggage, consoled by the reflection that they will see the metropolis as they make their way into town. For those travelling by road, the concrete motorway with its blue road signs, the underpasses and the typical traffic-logged hubbub of industrial areas were the first landmarks to greet the eye, without a doubt, it was a disheartening first impression. Then, the real introduction began. Quietly, and almost imperceptibly, the modern confusion of steel and asphalt was effaced little by little as the exquisite timelessness of Parisian heritage architecture was gradually unveiled. Popping up like mushrooms were cream sandstone edifices filigreed with curled, swirling carvings, gently sloping mansard roofs, elegant ironwork lanterns and wood doors that charmed the eye, until finally, the traveller was completely submerged in the glory of the Second Empire ala Baron Haussmann’s master plan of city design, the iconic grand mansions, tree-lined boulevards and avenues, the quaint gardens, the majestic churches with their towers and spires, the shops and cafés with their colourful awnings, all crowded and nestled together like jewels encrusted on a gold setting.
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E.A. Bucchianeri (Brushstrokes of a Gadfly (Gadfly Saga, #1))
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In pursuit of counterrevolution and in the name of freedom, U.S. forces or U.S.-supported surrogate forces slaughtered 2,000,000 North Koreans in a three-year war; 3,000,000 Vietnamese; over 500,000 in aerial wars over Laos and Cambodia; over 1,500,000 in Angola; over 1,000,000 in Mozambique; over 500,000 in Afghanistan; 500,000 to 1,000,000 in Indonesia; 200,000 in East Timor; 100,000 in Nicaragua (combining the Somoza and. Reagan eras); over 100,000 in Guatemala (plus an additional 40,000 disappeared); over 700,000 in Iraq;3 over 60,000 in El Salvador; 30,000 in the "dirty war" of Argentina (though the government admits to only 9,000); 35,000 in Taiwan, when the Kuomintang military arrived from China; 20,000 in Chile; and many thousands in Haiti, Panama, Grenada, Brazil, South Africa, Western Sahara, Zaire, Turkey, and dozens of other countries, in what amounts to a free-market world holocaust.
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Michael Parenti (Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism)
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We leave to monsieur Le Corbusier his style that suits factories as well as it does hospitals. And the prisons of the future: is he not already building churches? I do not know what this individual -- ugly of countenance and hideous in his conceptions of the world -- is repressing to make him want thus to crush humanity under ignoble heaps of reinforced concrete, a noble material that ought to permit an aerial articulation of space superior to Flamboyant Gothic. His power of cretinization is vast. A model by Corbusier is the only image that brings to my mind the idea of immediate suicide. With him moreover any remaining job will fade. And love -- passion -- liberty.
Gilles Ivain (aka Ivan Chtcheglov)
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Tom McDonough (The Situationists and the City: A Reader)
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Noah held his hand out. She accepted it - it was bone-cold, as always - and together they turned to face the huge room. Noah took a deep breath as if they were preparing to explore the jungle instead of stepping deeper into Monmouth Manufacturing.
It seemed bigger with just the two of them there. The cobwebbed ceiling soared, dust motes making mobiles overhead. They turned their heads sideways and read the titles of the books aloud. Blue peered at Henrietta through the telescope. Noah daringly reattached one of the broken miniature roofs on Gansey's scale town. They went through the fridge tucked in the bathroom. Blue selected a soda. Noah took a plastic spoon. He chewed on it as Blue fed Chainsaw a leftover hamburger. They closed Ronan's door - if Gansey still managed to inhabit the rest of the apartment, Ronan's presence was still decidedly pervasive in his room. Noah showed Blue his room. They jumped on his perfectly made bed and then they played a bad game of pool. Noah lounged on the new sofa while Blue persuaded the old record player to play an LP too clever to interest either of them. They opened all the drawers on the desk in the main room. One of Gansey's EpiPens bounced against the interior of the topmost drawer as Blue withdrew a fancy pen. She copied Gansey's blocky handwriting onto a Nino's receipt as Noah put on a preppy sweater he'd found balled under the desk. She ate a mint leaf and breathed on Noah's face.
Crouching, they crab-walked along the aerial printout Gansey had spread the length of the room. He'd jotted enigmatic notes to himself all along the margin of it. Some of them were coordinates. Some of them were explanations of topography. Some of them were Beatles lyrics.
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Maggie Stiefvater (The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2))
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Not many years ago, nearly 100 percent of people who thought they were being constantly watched were certifiable paranoids. But recently it was revealed that, in the name of public safety, Homeland Security and more than a hundred other local, state, and federal agencies are operating aerial surveillance drones of the kind previously used only on foreign battlefields— at low altitudes outside the authority of air-traffic control. Soon, the bigger worry will not be that, as you walk your dog, you are secretly being watched but that the rapidly proliferating drones will begin colliding with one another and with passenger aircraft, and that you’ll be killed by the plummeting drone that was monitoring you to be sure that you picked up Fido’s poop in a federally approved pet-waste bag.
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Dean Koontz (Odd Interlude (Odd Thomas, #4.5))
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Listen, then, Jane Eyre, to your sentence: tomorrow, place the glass before you, and draw in chalk your own picture, faithfully, without softening one defect; omit no harsh line, smooth away no displeasing irregularity; write under it, 'Portrait of a Governess, disconnected, poor, and plain.'
"Afterwards, take a piece of smooth ivory--you have one prepared in your drawing-box: take your palette, mix your freshest, finest, clearest tints; choose your most delicate camel-hair pencils; delineate carefully the loveliest face you can imagine; paint it in your softest shades and sweetest lines, according to the description given by Mrs. Fairfax of Blanche Ingram; remember the raven ringlets, the oriental eye;--What! you revert to Mr. Rochester as a model! Order! No snivel!--no sentiment!--no regret! I will endure only sense and resolution. Recall the august yet harmonious lineaments, the Grecian neck and bust; let the round and dazzling arm be visible, and the delicate hand; omit neither diamond ring nor gold bracelet; portray faithfully the attire, aerial lace and glistening satin, graceful scarf and golden rose; call it 'Blanche, an accomplished lady of rank.
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Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
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How beautiful, how beautiful you streamed upon my sight, In glory and in grandeur, as a gorgeous sunset-light!
How softly, soul-subduing, fell your words upon mine ear, Like low aerial music when some angel hovers near!
What tremulous, faint ecstasy to clasp your hand in mine, Till the darkness fell upon me of a glory too divine!
The air around grew languid with our intermingled breath, And in your beauty's shadow I sank motionless as death.
I saw you not, I heard not, for a mist was on my brain--I only felt that life could give no joy like that again.
And this was love--I knew it not, but blindly floated on, And now I'm on the ocean waste, dark, desolate, alone;
The waves are raging round me-- I'm reckless where they guide; No hope is left to lighten me, no strength to stem the tide.
As a leaf along the torrent, a cloud across the sky, As dust upon the whirlwind, so my life is drifting by. The dream that drank the meteor's light--the form from Heav'n has flown--
The vision and the glory, they are passing--they are gone.
Oh! Love is frantic agony, and life one throb of pain; Yet I would bear its darkest woes to dream again.
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A. Norman Jeffares (Ireland's Love Poems)
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The reality is that Facebook has been so successful, it’s actually running out of humans on the planet. Ponder the numbers: there are about three billion people on the Internet, where the latter is broadly defined as any sort of networked data, texts, browser, social media, whatever. Of these people, six hundred million are Chinese, and therefore effectively unreachable by Facebook. In Russia, thanks to Vkontakte and other copycat social networks, Facebook’s share of the country’s ninety million Internet users is also small, though it may yet win that fight. That leaves about 2.35 billion people ripe for the Facebook plucking. While Facebook seems ubiquitous to the plugged-in, chattering classes, its usage is not universal among even entrenched Internet users. In the United States, for example, by far the company’s most established and sticky market, only three-quarters of Internet users are actively on FB. That ratio of FB to Internet user is worse in other countries, so even full FB saturation in a given market doesn’t imply total Facebook adoption. Let’s (very) optimistically assume full US-level penetration for any market. Without China and Russia, and taking a 25 percent haircut of people who’ll never join or stay (as is the case in the United States), that leaves around 1.8 billion potential Facebook users globally. That’s it. In the first quarter of 2015, Facebook announced it had 1.44 billion users. Based on its public 2014 numbers, FB is growing at around 13 percent a year, and that pace is slowing. Even assuming it maintains that growth into 2016, that means it’s got one year of user growth left in it, and then that’s it: Facebook has run out of humans on the Internet. The company can solve this by either making more humans (hard even for Facebook), or connecting what humans there are left on the planet. This is why Internet.org exists, a vaguely public-spirited, and somewhat controversial, campaign by Facebook to wire all of India with free Internet, with regions like Brazil and Africa soon to follow. In early 2014 Facebook acquired a British aerospace firm, Ascenta, which specialized in solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicles. Facebook plans on flying a Wi-Fi-enabled air force of such craft over the developing world, giving them Internet. Just picture ultralight carbon-fiber aircraft buzzing over African savannas constantly, while locals check their Facebook feeds as they watch over their herds.
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Antonio García Martínez (Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley)