Albeit Quotes

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

Stop fighting me!" he said, trying to pull on the arm he held. He was in a precarious position himself, straddling the rail as he tried to lean over far enough to get me and actually hold onto me. “Let go of me!” I yelled back. But he was too strong and managed to haul most of me over the rail, enough so that I wasn’t in total danger of falling again. See, here’s the thing. In that moment before I let go, I really had been contemplating my death. I’d come to terms with it and accepted it. I also, however, had known Dimitri might do something exactly like this. He was just that fast and that good. That was why I was holding my stake in the hand that was dangling free. I looked him in the eye. "I will always love you." Then I plunged the stake into his chest. It wasn’t as precise a blow as I would have liked, not with the skilled way he was dodging. I struggled to get the stake in deep enough to his heart, unsure if I could do it from this angle. Then, his struggles stopped. His eyes stared at me, stunned, and his lips parted, almost into a smile, albeit a grisly and pained one. "That’s what I was supposed to say. . .” he gasped out. Those were his last words.

Then, his struggles stopped. His eyes stared at me, stunned, and his lips parted, almost into a smile, albeit a grisly and pained one. "That’s what I was supposed to say..." he gasped out. Those were his last words.

No it's not!" said Constable Visit. "Atheism is a denial of a god." "Therefore It Is A Religious Position," said Dorfl. "Indeed, A True Atheist Thinks Of The Gods Constantly, Albeit In Terms of Denial. Therefore, Atheism Is A Form Of Belief. If The Atheist Truly Did Not Believe, He Or She Would Not Bother To Deny.

Isolated, she managed somehow to feel free—albeit with a freedom that made her want to smash a hole in the very center of the universe.

I refused to fight them-to beat up on them or potentially kill them if things got out of hand. It was like being in a real, albeit messed-up, version of "The Hunger Games". "The Hunger Games" for alien hybrids.

Psychedelics helped me to escape.. albeit momentarily.. from the prison of my mind. It over-rode the habit patterns of thought and I was able to taste innocence again. Looking at sensations freshly without the conceptual overly was very profound.

Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo---which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead.

Why?" I asked softly. The word was carried away on the wind, but he heard. "Because I want you." I gave him a sad smile, wondering if we'd meet again in the land of the dead. "Wrong answer," I told him. I let go. [...] I looked him in the eye. "I will always love you." Then I plunged the stake into his chest. It wasn't as precise a blow as I would have liked, not with the skilled way he was dodging. I struggled to get the stake in deep enough to his heart, unsure if I could do it from this angle. Then, his struggles stopped. His eyes stared at me, stunned, and his lips parted, almost into a smile, albeit a grisly and pained one. "That's what I was supposed to say..." he gasped out.

It was the truth. He was a friend, albeit one she would cut out her heart for.

Our conscious motivations, ideas, and beliefs are a blend of false information, biases, irrational passions, rationalizations, prejudices, in which morsels of truth swim around and give the reassurance, albeit false, that the whole mixture is real and true. The thinking processes attempt to organize this whole cesspool of illusions according to the laws of plausibility. This level of consciousness is supposed to reflect reality; it is the map we use for organizing our life.

Well, where's the hussy now? Is she in Avalon? Does she live in New York? Is she allergic to strawberries? Because I will send her a gift basket that'll make her wish she'd never laid eyes on Gabriel's deceitful-albeit delicious-body!

Some may be more fortunate than others, and many might feel more like second bests, not sure how to survive. Not seeing the light on their path, they keep on living with fear. Albeit social security systems may be supportive existential anxiety subsists, crushing their identity. Only by converting 'fear' into a challenge, we can grit our teeth, strengthen resilience, and brighten up the dimness in our minds. ("A new life with Schengen"")

For the record, I don't expect you to believe any of this. Not really. I'm a liar by trade, after all; albeit, I like to think, an honest liar.

If God were to hold all Truth concealed in his right hand, and in his left only the steady and diligent drive for Truth, albeit with the proviso that I would always and forever err in the process, and to offer me the choice, I would with all humility take the left hand.

E pur si muove. (Albeit It does move.) [What Galileo purportedly muttered after torturers forced him to recant his theory that the earth orbits the sun.]

One does not have to be a philosopher to be a successful artist, but he does have to be an artist to be a successful philosopher. His nature is to view the world in an unpredictable albeit useful light.

Where utopianism is advanced through gradualism rather than revolution, albeit steady and persistent as in democratic societies, it can deceive and disarm an unsuspecting population, which is largely content and passive. It is sold as reforming and improving the existing society's imperfections and weaknesses without imperiling its basic nature. Under these conditions, it is mostly ignored, dismissed, or tolerated by much of the citizenry and celebrated by some. Transformation is deemed innocuous, well-intentioned, and perhaps constructive but not a dangerous trespass on fundamental liberties.

The true value of man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but rather by his sincere exertion to get to the Truth. It is not possession of Truth by which he extends his powers and in which his ever-growing perfectability is to be found. Possession makes one passive, indolent and proud. If God were to hold all Truth concealed in his right hand, and in his left only the steady and diligent drive for Truth, albeit with the proviso that I would always and forever err in the process, and to offer me the choice, I would with all humility take the left hand.

In essence I find that the foundation of modern conservatism is driven by a clinging to God in fear of the world, whereas the foundation of modern liberalism is a clinging to the world in fear of God; albeit, the true foundation should be one's clinging to God in fear of God.

All things remarkable are surprisingly simple; albeit difficult to find.

I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us—albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human’s efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual.

I looked him in the eye, "I will always love you." Then plunged the stake into his chest. It wasn't as precise a blow as I would have liked, not with the skilled way he was dodging. I struggled to get the stake in deep enough to his heart, unsure if I could do it from this angle. Then, his struggles stopped. His eyes stared at me, stunned, and his lips parted, almost into a smile, albeit a grisly and pained one. "That's what I was supposed to say..." he gasped out.

She nailed the method for applying mindfulness in acute situations, albeit with a somewhat dopey acronym: RAIN. R: recognize A: allow I: investigate N: non-identification

The Chinese believe that before you can conquer a beast you first must make it beautiful. In some strange way, I have tried to do that with manic-depressive illness. It has been a fascinating, albeit deadly, enemy and companion; I have found it to be seductively complicated, a distillation both of what is finest in our natures, and of what is most dangerous.

130. We cannot read the darkness. We cannot read it. It is a form of madness, albeit a common one, that we try.

As to the causation, of the feeling of meaningless, one may say, albeit in an oversimplifying way, that people have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning.

Then must you speak Of one that loved not wisely but too well, Of one not easily jealous but, being wrought, Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand, Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes, Albeit unused to the melting mood, Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees Their medicinable gum. Set you down this, And say besides that in Aleppo once, Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk Beat a Venetian and traduced the state, I took by th' throat the circumcised dog And smote him thus.

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise? Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car? And driven the Hamadryad from the wood To seek a shelter in some happier star? Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

I had a funny feeling he was sizing up the situation and somehow I was to blame for his sleepy--albeit really,really nice--fondling.

The moral of the story is that a NoSQL system may find itself accidentally reinventing SQL, albeit in disguise.

...Whose souls, albeit in a cloudy memory, yet seek back their good, but, like drunk men, know not the road home.

His dominance enlivened her. His veiled desire ignited her blood. His magnetism, albeit a grumpier version, simply captivated her.

It is a terrifying thing when the animals laugh at the hunter. Take a tip from Harlequin and the Joker. If you imitate a fool well, you are not likely to be fooled by others. To be it bluntly, albeit unorginally: "A fool who knows he is a fool is indeed a wise man.

you have to keep upping the ante: run farther, run faster, run uphill. If you don’t keep pushing and pushing and pushing some more, the body will settle into homeostasis, albeit at a different level than before, and you will stop improving. This

How empty are the insincere words of people who, so easily, speak forth "love," "family" and "friendship" without meaning what they say even if their intentions are good albeit mere flattery.

It turns out that the men who ultimately, who unpretentiously value peace are willing to sacrifice their own peace of mind in order to render it. The question is, 'Who, between opposing forces, would do such a thing?' It seems only theoretical albeit true that men who accept an objective rather than subjective moral standard are, in a general sense, more capable of making such sacrifices for the sake of peace.

Life is an honor, albeit anonymously delivered.

everything, every speck of dust, every drop of water continue to exist eternally, albeit in different forms, except for my soul?

Instead he gave Cabal his most professional pat on the shoulder. It was his best pat, the one that said, You have my most sincere albeit non-specific sympathies. It was all he could do.

I looked him in the eye."I will always love you." Then I plunged the stake into his chest. It wasn't as precise a blow as I would have liked, not with the skilled way he was dodging. I struggled to get the stake in deep enough to his heart, unsure if I could do it from this angle. Then, his struggles stopped. His eyes stared at me, stunned, and his lips parted, almost into a smile,albeit a grisly and pained one. "That's what I was supposed to say..."he gasped out. Those were his last words. His failed attempt to dodge the stake had made him lose his balance on the edge. The stake's magic made the rest easy, stunning him and his reflexes. Dimitri fell.

Those whose actions are forever before our eyes, whose words are ever in our ears, will naturally lead us, albeit against our will, slowly, gradually, imperceptibly, perhaps, to act and speak as they do.

i was accused of being against civilization, against science, against humanity. naturally, i was flattered and at the same time surprised, hurt, a little shocked. he repeated the charge. but how, i replied, being myself a member of humanity (albeit involuntarily, without prior consultation), could i be against humanity without being against myself, whom i love - though not very much; how can i be against science, when i gratefully admire, as much as i can, thales, democritus, aristarchus, faustus, paracelsus, copernicus, galiley, kepler, newton, darwin and einstien; and finally, how could i be against civilization when all which i most willingly defend and venerate - including the love of wilderness - is comprehended by the term

The two men flashed edged smiles at each other, reminding Amaranthe of circling wolves, albeit extremely well-dressed wolves.

Okay. Well, firstly, Marcel is not my mortal enemy—he is my friend, albeit one who is unaware that I'm trying to sabotage his hold over the supernatural community of the French Quarter, but a friend nonetheless. And secondly, I daggered Elijah in order to gain Marcel's trust. If I had known he would place my brother in the hands of a particularly nasty teenaged witch, I certainly would have weighed my options a bit differently. And thirdly, sister, please.

In his grave, we praise him for his decency - but when he walked amongst us, we responded with no decency of our own. When he suggested that all men should have a place in the sun - we put a special sanctity on the right of ownership and the privilege of prejudice by maintaining that to deny homes to Negroes was a democratic right. Now we acknowledge his compassion - but we exercised no compassion of our own. When he asked us to understand that men take to the streets out of anguish and hopelessness and a vision of that dream dying, we bought guns and speculated about roving agitators and subversive conspiracies and demanded law and order. We felt anger at the effects, but did little to acknowledge the causes. We extol all the virtues of the man - but we chose not to call them virtues before his death. And now, belatedly, we talk of this man's worth - but the judgement comes late in the day as part of a eulogy when it should have been made a matter of record while he existed as a living force. If we are to lend credence to our mourning, there are acknowledgements that must be made now, albeit belatedly. We must act on the altogether proper assumption that Martin Luther King asked for nothing but that which was his due... He asked only for equality, and it is that which we denied him. [excerpt from a letter to The Los Angeles Times in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; April 8, 1968

This may be impossible for you to believe," Colt said in a hushed voice, "but as recently as last year, I was a hyper, naive-albeit extremely good-looking-minor myself." "And now you're a persistent, outdoorsy, unshaven man-boy who cavorts with clones of your former self?" Colt plucked a round stone out of the water. "I prefer boy-man, but the rest of the sentence sounded fairly accurate.

It is man who kills, man who creates or suffers injustice; it is no longer man who, having lost all restraint, shares his bed with a corpse. Whoever waits for his neighbor to die in order to take his piece of bread is, albeit guiltless, further from the model of thinking man than the most primitive pigmy or the most vicious sadist".

He could have a break at last, albeit a short one, one he sorely needed. And with that appealing thought he further squelched the subconscious screams, true message lost in the deceptive world of emotion and will.

I felt significantly insignificant, as if my presence in the world, albeit small, was still necessary.

As we said, consciousness is everything. Even now, acknowledging inequality begs one to do something about it--and that is a daunting, albeit righteous, responsibility.

A Christian in many American circles, for example, means 'right-wing, gun-toting fanatic who hates Democrats.' As such, a pacifist Democrat who called himself a Christian in those circles, would be lying, albeit unwittingly. To most of this world, America is Christian, just as to most Americans being an Arab means being a Muslim. Both labels have only limited usefulness. I have been called a Christian writer, but I'm not a right-wing, gun-toting fanatic who hates Democrats, not by a long shot. So am I a Christian? Yes and no - it depends on what Christian means to you. . . But labels are almost impossible to shed.

Habitual associates are known to exercise a great influence over each other’s minds and manners. Those whose actions are for ever before our eyes, whose words are ever in our ears, will naturally lead us, albeit against our will, slowly, gradually, imperceptibly, perhaps, to act and speak as they do.

The more leeches there are affixed to a host, the less resources there are to siphon from said hosts, per parasite. The ability to only absorb energy, without the ability or desire to reproduce it in a productive manner, is a dangerous, unsustainable, albeit attractive long term method of collapse and decline.

Among my father’s most important messages were that governments lie to protect themselves and they make incredibly stupid decisions. Years after the publication of Dune, Richard M. Nixon provided ample proof. Dad said that Nixon did the American people an immense favor in his attempt to cover up the Watergate misdeeds. By amplified example, albeit unwittingly, the thirty-seventh president of the United States taught people to question their leaders. In interviews and impassioned speeches on university campuses all across the country, Frank Herbert warned young people not to trust government, telling them that the American founding fathers had understood this and had attempted to establish safeguards in the Constitution.

For hear us falling. Toward the horizon albeit oblique, for we imagine it isn’t our natural state. We are some power to be here and to have changed toward life even to think distinct from these angels lately to be heard speculating in us as if they were learning to hope. We deserve to know what is in us.

The so-called poet with his vague dreams and ideals is indeed no better than a harmless lunatic; the true poet is the worker, who grips life's throat and wrings out its secret, who selects austerely and composes concisely, whose work is as true and clean as razor-steel, albeit its sweep is vaster and swifter than the sun's!

There is no evidence that the complete head shaves we did in the past, which made the patients look like convicts, had any effect on infection rates, which had been the ostensible reason for doing them. I suspect the real – albeit unconscious – reason was that dehumanizing the patients made it easier for the surgeons to operate.

She watches Simon's profile as he drives, concentrating, but he keeps turning to her, and every time he does so, he is smiling. He doesn't seem to care, and she wonders if, actually, he wants to be caught. In some ways she does, because she knows, already, albeit crazily swiftly, that she wants more of this man, that once was never, ever going to be enough.

Yevgeni Krilov knew he was in a room with the richest man in Russia, possibly the world. No one did a ruble’s worth of business in Russia without paying a percentage fee to the supreme boss, albeit through a complex network of shell companies and front men.

Sometimes I think my ability to concentrate is being nibbled away by the internet; other times I think it's being gulped down in huge, Jaws-shaped chunks. In those quaint days before the internet, once you made it to your desk there wasn't much to distract you. You could sit there working or you could just sit there. Now you sit down and there's a universe of possibilities – many of them obscurely relevant to the work you should be getting on with – to tempt you. To think that I can be sitting here, trying to write something about Ingmar Bergman and, a moment later, on the merest whim, can be watching a clip from a Swedish documentary about Don Cherry – that is a miracle (albeit one with a very potent side-effect, namely that it's unlikely I'll ever have the patience to sit through an entire Bergman film again). Then there's the outsourcing of memory. From the age of 16, I got into the habit of memorising passages of poetry and compiling detailed indexes in the backs of books of prose. So if there was a passage I couldn't remember, I would spend hours going through my books, seeking it out. Now, in what TS Eliot, with great prescience, called "this twittering world", I just google the key phrase of the half-remembered quote. Which is great, but it's drained some of the purpose from my life. Exactly the same thing has happened now that it's possible to get hold of out-of-print books instantly on the web. That's great too. But one of the side incentives to travel was the hope that, in a bookstore in Oregon, I might finally track down a book I'd been wanting for years. All of this searching and tracking down was immensely time-consuming – but only in the way that being alive is time-consuming.

There’s a simple joy in casting a rock into still waters and watching the ripples spread. It’s the thrill of destruction combined with the surety that all will be well again—everything as it was. A stone had fallen into my comfortable existence at court, so large that the waves washed me to the ends of the earth, but perhaps on my return I would find it as before, unchanged and waiting to receive me. Much of what men do in later life is just throwing stones, albeit bigger stones into different ponds.

How are you managing to keep everyone from aging?” Celia asks after a while. “Very carefully,” Marco answers. “And they are aging, albeit extremely slowly. How are you moving the circus?” “On a train.” “A train?” Marco asks, incredulous. “The entire circus moved by a single train?” “It’s a large train,” Celia says. “And it’s magic,” she adds, making Marco laugh. “I confess, Miss Bowen, you are not what I had expected.” “I assure you that feeling is mutual.

Belatedly it occurs to me that some members of your HR committee, a few skeptical souls, may be clutching a double strand of worry beads and wondering aloud about the practicality or usefulness of a degree in English rather than, let’s say, computers. Be reassured: the literature student has learned to inquire, to question, to interpret, to critique, to compare, to research, to argue, to sift, to analyze, to shape, to express. His intellect can be put to broad use. The computer major, by contrast, is a technician—a plumber clutching a single, albeit shining, box of tools.

Don't look now,” Jay leaned over to whisper, “but the dude at three o'clock is checking you out.” I immediately looked and Jay grunted. How funny-the guy really was looking at me. Albeit with bloodshot eyes. He gave me a nod and I had to suppress a ridiculously girly giggle as I turned back around. I busied myself playing with a strand of my dirty-blond hair. “You should talk to him,” Jay said. “No way.

Hey, pumpkin head," she said, her ancient smile bright, albeit toothless. "I heard you stumble your way to the bathroom, so I figured I'd earn my keep and make us some coffee. Sure looks like you could use some." I grimaced. "Really? How sweet." Damn. Aunt Lillian couldn't really make coffee. I sat at the counter and pretended to drink a cup. "Is it too strong?" she asked. "No way, Aunt Lil, you make the best." Pretending to drink coffee was similar to faking an orgasm. Where in the supernatural afterlife was the fun in that?

And he enjoyed listening to Caramon's gossip. Raistlin enjoyed proving to his own satisfaction that his fellow mortals were fools and idiots, while Caramon took immense pleasure in bringing a smile - albeit a sardonic smile - to his twin's lips.

I never said that 'Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.' It is fake news. Instead, one could say that 'The perception of reality not being real is an illusion, albeit a persistent one.' Reality is as real as it gets in this life time. Go out in nature and you will find that reality is the ultimate manifestation of Love. Reality is you and all of nature's kind. It is very real. It is true Love. Because all of nature is a manifestation of Love. And that includes You.

In 2011, an interesting milestone in human history was passed. For the first time, more people globally died from non-communicable diseases like heart failure, stroke and diabetes than from all infectious diseases combined.1 We live in an age in which we are killed, more often than not, by lifestyle. We are in effect choosing how we shall die, albeit without much reflection or insight.

This strategy is classic digital minimalism. By removing your ability to access social media at any moment, you reduce its ability to become a crutch deployed to distract you from bigger voids in your life. At the same time, you’re not necessarily abandoning these services. By allowing yourself access (albeit less convenient) through a web browser, you preserve your ability to use specific features that you identify as important to your life—but on your own terms.

It is the case that, albeit to a lesser extent, all fictions make their readers live "the impossible", taking them out of themselves, breaking down barriers, and making them share, by identifying with the characters of the illusion, a life that is richer, more intense, or more abject and violent, or simply different from the one that they are confined to by the high-security prison that is real life. Fictions exist because of this fact. Because we have only one life, and our desires and fantasies demand a thousand lives. Because the abyss between what we are and what we would like to be has to be bridged somehow. That was why fictions were born: so that, through living this vicarious, transient, precarious, but also passionate and fascinating life that fiction transports us to, we can incorporate the impossible into the possible and our existence can be both reality and unreality, history and fable, concrete life and marvellous adventure.

As Patrick Harpur points out, we cannot ‘explain’ or ‘decode’ a myth. To look for the historic or scientific ‘truth’ of a myth is but to retell the myth, albeit in a less satisfying way. We render unto materialism the control of our most precious mythologies if we allow them to be ‘scientifically explained’ to us. A new language is required. New words.

Since I was in flight from religion, I assumed that my classmates had to be in flight from religion too, albeit in a quieter, savvier way than I had as yet been able to discover. Only today do I realize how mistaken I was. They were never in flight at all. Nor are their children in flight, or their grandchildren. By the time I reached by seventieth year, I used to predict, all the churches in the world would have been turned into barns or museums or potteries. But I was wrong. Behold, new churches spring up every day, all over the place, to say nothing of mosques. So Nietzsche's dictum needs to be amended: while it may be so that only the higher animals are capable of boredom, man proves himself highest of all by domesticating boredom, giving it a home.

My runs always remind me of what life is: always putting one foot in front of the other, even when I’m exhausted. It’s about running up the hill, however daunting, and congratulating myself for not stopping. Life, like running, is about getting up and pushing on ahead, even if I’ve tripped on a pothole. It’s about keeping the rhythm and setting a pace. It’s about minding my injuries and allowing myself time to heal, but not letting injuries get the best of me. Running is like life; it is a glorious, albeit sometimes painful, act of always moving forward.

When an attack on home soil causes cultural paroxysms that have nothing to do with the attack, when we respond to real threats to our nation by distrusting ourselves with imagined threats to femininity and family life, when we invest our leaders with a cartoon masculinity and require of them bluster in lieu of a capacity for rational calculation, and when we blame our frailty in 'fifth column' feminists - in short, when we base our security on a mythical male strength that can only increase itself against a mythical female weakness - we should know that we are exhibiting the symptoms of a lethal, albeit curable, cultural affliction (p. 295).

I don't know whether it was the general anxiety of being on a date (albeit one with my would-be date sitting five people away from me) or the specific anxiety of having the Beast stare in my direction, but for some reason, I took off running after Takumi. I thought we were in the clear as we began to round the corner of the bleachers, but then I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a cylindrical orange object getting bigger and bigger, like a fastapproaching sun. I thought: / think that is going to hit me. I thought: J should duck. But in the time between when something gets thought and when it gets done, the ball hit me square across the side of the face. I fell, the back of my head slamming against the gym floor. I then stood up immediately, as if unhurt, and left the gym. Pride had gotten me off the floor of the gym, but as soon as I was outside, I sat down. "I am concussed," I announced, entirely sure of my self-diagnosis. "You're fine," Takumi said as he jogged back toward me. "Let's get out of here before we're killed." "I'm sorry," I said. "But I can't get up. I have suffered a mild concussion." Lara ran out and sat down next to me. "Are you okay?" "I am concussed," I said. Takumi sat down with me and looked me in the eye. "Do you know what happened to you?" "The Beast got me." "Do you know where you are?" "I'm on a triple-and-a-half date." "You're fine," Takumi said. "Let's go." And then I leaned forward and threw up onto Lara's pants.

You can’t imagine how much I regret what happened. For some reason, because of the type of relationship we had, I thought it was an acceptable training exercise; albeit a little extreme. But I’m not going to ask your forgiveness, I don’t want it. I mean to always remember my mistake, so I will never make it again.” (Micah to Kaitlyn)

before you can conquer a beast you first must make it beautiful. In some strange way, I have tried to do that with manic-depressive illness. It has been a fascinating, albeit deadly, enemy and companion; I have found it to be seductively complicated, a distillation both of what is finest in our natures, and of what is most dangerous.

The inner aim of thought is never fully realized until it ripens into vocal utterances through which others can have access- albeit indirect- to our personal experience. In fact,an inner experience only achieves true completeness when it has been spoken. No matter how profound an insight one may gain, as long as it stays inarticulately concealed within an introspective silence, it remains one-dimensional and incomplete.

It is a doctrine, as I believe, taught us in Holy Writ, that when a man is saved by divine grace, he is not wholly cleansed from the corruption of his heart. When we believe in Jesus Christ all our sins are pardoned; yet the power of sin, albeit that it is weakened and kept under by the dominion of the new-born nature which God doth infuse into our souls, doth not cease, but still tarrieth in us, and will do so to our dying day.

Naturally we project that the moon is always there in space-time, even when we are not looking. Quantum physics says no. When we are not looking, the moon’s possibility wave spreads, albeit by a minuscule amount. When we look, the wave collapses instantly; thus the wave could not be in space-time. It makes more sense to adapt an idealist metaphysic assumption: There is no object in space-time without a conscious subject looking at it.

There was nothing worse, Veppers thought, than a loser who’d made it. It was just part of the way things worked – part of the complexity of life, he supposed – that sometimes somebody who absolutely deserved nothing more than to be one of the down-trodden, the oppressed, the dregs of society, lucked out into a position of wealth, power and admiration. At least people who were natural winners knew how to carry themselves in their pomp, whether their ascendancy had come through the luck of being born rich and powerful or the luck of being born ambitious and capable. Losers who’d made it always let the side down. Veppers was all for arrogance – he possessed the quality in full measure himself, as he’d often been informed – but it had to be deserved, you had to have worked for it. Or at the very least, an ancestor had to have worked for it. Arrogance without cause, arrogance without achievement – or that mistook sheer luck for true achievement – was an abomination. Losers made everybody look bad. Worse, they made the whole thing – the great game that was life – appear arbitrary, almost meaningless. Their only use, Veppers had long since decided, was as examples to be held up to those who complained about their lack of status or money or control over their lives: look, if this idiot can achieve something, so can anybody, so can you. So stop whining about being exploited and work harder. Still, at least individual losers were quite obviously statistical freaks. You could allow for that, you could tolerate that, albeit with gritted teeth. What he would not have believed was that you could find an entire society – an entire civilization– of losers who’d made it.

One city and four afterthoughts. Yet, if the residents of Manhattan got down from their self-reverential pedestals, they’d soon realize that Manhattan was the most provincial of towns, albeit wealthier. A more than superficial look would reveal a mini Fort Wayne every three blocks. Duplicates of supermarket, pharmacy, candy store, florist, so that the vertical dwellers need journey no more than three blocks in either direction from their front door. Crossing to a fourth block would only bring repetition of services, with no advantage and a longer walk home.

Their experiences led them to create assumptions about others and related beliefs about themselves such as "this is my lot in life" and "this is what I deserve". Some also learned that personal safety and happiness are of lower priority than survival and that it may be safer to give in than to actively fight off additional abuse and victimization. When abuse is perpetrated by intimates, it is additionally confounding in terms of attachment, betrayal, and trust. Victims may be unable to leave or to fight back due to strong, albeit insecure and disorganized, attachment and misplaced loyalty to abusers. They may have also experienced trauma bonding over the course of their victimization, that is, a bond of specialness with or dependence on the abuser.

Tedium, yes, is boredom with the world, the nagging discomfort of living, the weariness of having lived; tedium is indeed the carnal sensation of endless emptiness of things. But tedium, even more than all that, is a boredom with other worlds, whether real or imaginary; the discomfort of having to keep living, albeit as someone else in some other way, in some other world; weariness not only of yesterday and today but also of tomorrow and of eternity, if such exists, or of nothingness, if that's what eternity is. It's not only the emptiness of things and living beings that troubles the soul afflicted by tedium, it's also the emptiness of the very soul that feels this vacuum, that feels itself to be this vacuum, and that within this vacuum is nauseated and repelled by its own self.

PERFECTION The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pounds of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work-and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

Politics is a great, albeit painful, example of social contract disengagement. Politicians on both sides of the aisle are making laws that they’re not required to follow or that don’t affect them, they’re engaging in behaviors that would result in most of us getting fired, divorced, or arrested. They’re espousing values that are rarely displayed in their behavior. And just watching them shame and blame each other is degrading for us. They’re not living up to their side of the social contract and voter turnout statistics show that we’re disengaging.

Judah had failed to grasp that God’s loyalty to his own character, and therefore to his own creatures, has serious implications. Some of Judah’s leaders had fallen into thinking that, because their nation had been chosen to play a special role for God in history, it did not really matter how the leaders or the nation behaved. This was dangerously irresponsible and undermined the moral fibre of the people, because it led to the rationalization of corrupt and immoral behaviour that was incompatible with the law of God, albeit widely practised in the surrounding nations.

Real life is generally very haphazard in its plotting, and I think a lot of people lament that, and turn to fiction to briefly experience, albeit vicariously, a more satisfying sort of reality. We want to see *sense* -- not necessarily happy endings, but effectual actions and significant outcomes. (Postmodern fiction and metafiction, I gather, aim to call attention to the falsity of these things, which is like selling liquor that perversely makes you more sober).

Jubal shrugged. "Abstract design is all right-for wall paper or linoleum. But art is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudo-intellectual masturbation. . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce- render emotional-his audience, each time. These ladies who won't deign to do that- and perhaps can't- of course lost the public. If they hadn't lobbied for endless subsidies, they would have starved or been forced to go to work long ago. Because the ordinary bloke will not voluntarily pay for 'art' that leaves him unmoved- if he does pay for it, the money has to be conned out of him, by taxes or such." "You know, Jubal, I've always wondered why i didn't give a hoot for paintings or statues- but I thought it was something missing in me, like color blindness." "Mmm, one does have to learn to look at art, just as you must know French to read a story printed in French. But in general terms it's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code like Pepys and his diary. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn. . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything- obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence. Ben, would you call me an artists?” “Huh? Well, I’ve never thought about it. You write a pretty good stick.” “Thank you. ‘Artist’ is a word I avoid for the same reasons I hate to be called ‘Doctor.’ But I am an artist, albeit a minor one. Admittedly most of my stuff is fit to read only once… and not even once for a busy person who already knows the little I have to say. But I am an honest artist, because what I write is consciously intended to reach the customer… reach him and affect him, if possible with pity and terror… or, if not, at least to divert the tedium of his hours with a chuckle or an odd idea. But I am never trying to hide it from him in a private language, nor am I seeking the praise of other writers for ‘technique’ or other balderdash. I want the praise of the cash customer, given in cash because I’ve reached him- or I don’t want anything. Support for the arts- merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore! Damn it, you punched one of my buttons. Let me fill your glass and you tell me what is on your mind.

Revealing my desert thoughts to a visitor one evening, I was accused of being against civilization, against science, against humanity. Naturally I was flattered and at the same time surprised, hurt, a little shocked. He repeated the charge. But how, I replied, being myself a member of humanity (albeit involuntarily, without prior consultation), could I be against humanity without being against myself, whom I love—though not very much; how can I be against science, when I gratefully admire, as much as any man, Thales, Democritus, Aristarchus, Faustus, Paracelsus, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Darwin and Einstein; and finally, how could I be against civilization when all which I most willingly defend and venerate—including the love

If I am to believe everything that I see in the media, happiness is to be six foot tall or more and to have bleached teeth and a firm abdomen, all the latest clothes, accessories, and electronics, a picture-perfect partner of the opposite sex who is both a great lover and a terrific friend, an assortment of healthy and happy children, a pet that is neither a stray nor a mongrel, a large house in the right sort of postcode, a second property in an idyllic holiday location, a top-of-the-range car to shuttle back and forth from the one to the other, a clique of ‘friends’ with whom to have fabulous dinner parties, three or four foreign holidays a year, and a high-impact job that does not distract from any of the above. There are at least three major problems that I can see with this ideal of happiness. (1) It represents a state of affairs that is impossible to attain to and that is in itself an important source of unhappiness. (2) It is situated in an idealised and hypothetical future rather than in an imperfect but actual present in which true happiness is much more likely to be found, albeit with great difficulty. (3) It has largely been defined by commercial interests that have absolutely nothing to do with true happiness, which has far more to do with the practice of reason and the peace of mind that this eventually brings. In short, it is not only that the bar for happiness is set too high, but also that it is set in the wrong place, and that it is, in fact, the wrong bar. Jump and you’ll only break your back.

School went exactly as Violet thought it would: weird. It wasn’t her best, and it wasn’t her worst, day ever. It was just weird. Jay was true to his word, deciding not to hold anything back. And it started the second they got out of the car, when he claimed her hand and refused to let go, even when Violet tugged and pulled to try to get it away from him. He ignored her mute protests and held on tight, smiling more to himself than to her, and paraded her right into the school like that. Not that they’d never held hands before, because they had. But this was entirely different, and Jay was hell-bent on making sure that everyone knew it. And just in case anyone wondered what the hand-holding actually meant, he made sure to clear things up for them by planting a big, albeit very satisfying, kiss on her lips, right in the middle of the hallway. Violet didn’t try to pull away from that; in fact, she was dismayed to find herself leaning into him, craving more, and not caring—at least at that moment—who might see them together. Unfortunately that person turned out to be Chelsea. Chelsea, of all people, along with Claire, who happened to walk up at very inopportune instant. “Well, well, well,” Chelsea said in an oh-so-innocent voice. “Look what we have here, Claire-bear. It’s old Jay and Violet.” The unconcealed smile was embedded deep in her voice. “Only, and correct me if I’m wrong, this looks a little more than friendly, don’t you think?” “I never kiss my friends like that,” Claire replied, blank-faced and serious, oblivious to sarcasm. Jay’s answer was to pull Violet closer, wrapping his arm around her waist. Violet cringed. Chelsea cocked her head at Claire. “I was just trying to make a point.” Claire looked confused. “What point?” “Seriously, Claire? That Violet and Jay are dating now.” She glanced away from poor confused Claire and flashed a gloating look to the couple in front of her. “It’s about time, by the way. I think everyone will thank you for putting us all out of our misery. I, for one, was completely fed up with watching you two lovesick puppies pining over each other. Seriously, it was disgusting.” She grabbed Claire by the sleeve of her snug, body-hugging hoodie and led her down the hallway, toward their first-period class. Violet watched in stunned silence, processing everything that Chelsea had said to them, as Claire bounded along in Chelsea’s commanding wake. Jay decided that it was his turn to gloat. “You pined for me?” he asked, stupid grin and all. Violet hit him in the arm. “Shut up!” She shook her head. “I’m pretty sure she was talking about you anyway.

The act of consciously and purposefully paying attention to symptoms and their antecedents and consequences makes the symptoms more an objective target for thoughtful observation than an intolerable source of subjective anxiety, dysphoria, and frustration. In ACT, the act of accepting the symptoms as an expectable feature of a disorder or illness, has been shown to be associated with relief rather than increased distress (Hayes et al., 2006). From a traumatic stress perspective, any symptom can be reframed as an understandable, albeit unpleasant and difficult to cope with, reaction or survival skill (Ford, 2009b, 2009c). In this way, monitoring symptoms and their environmental or experiential/body state "triggers" can enhance client's willingness and ability to reflectively observe them without feeling overwhelmed, terrified, or powerless. This is not only beneficial for personal and life stabilization but is also essential to the successful processing of traumatic events and reactions that occur in the next phase of therapy (Ford & Russo, 2006).

Like Nycteris, she thought, and cringed. There was an old fairy tale called The History of Photogen and Nycteris that she still carried a copy of. The main character in it was a young woman who had been raised by a cruel witch, inside a cave beneath a castle. The girl had grown up knowing only darkness, which at the time hadn’t seemed much of an issue to child-Devon. But the general idea was that Nycteris’s world was narrow: she thought the lamp in her cave was a sun, and that the universe was just a tiny series of rooms. She knew nothing of society and had very few books. A relatable situation, for a book eater woman. One day, Nycteris escaped her cave by following a stray firefly. She ended up in the castle garden. But her reactions in the story were strange and unexpected. Upon espying the moon for the first time, Nycteris decided that it must be a giant lamp, akin to the one in her cave. She saw the sky, and likewise decided it must be another kind of roof. And when she looked at the horizon, she saw not a limitless world, but merely another room, albeit with distant walls. The concept of outside didn’t exist for one such as Nycteris, nor could it ever. Her upbringing had given her such a fixed perspective that, even when encountering something new, she could only process it along the lines already drawn for her. The story’s complexity had baffled Devon as a child, but she understood it well enough now. The truth was, Nycteris never really escaped. Oh, she got a prince and a castle and the cruel witch died at the end. But Nycteris could not ever leave the cave, because the cave was a place in her mind; it was the entire way she thought about reality. Princesses like that couldn’t be rescued.

As he turned back to her, Cassandra stood on her toes to kiss him. He claimed his reward immediately, fitting his mouth to hers and taking a long, ardent taste. Her head swam, and she welcomed the exploration of his tongue. He savored and consumed her, with a kiss more aggressive than any he'd given her before. It made her knees weak and turned her bones fluid. Her body listed toward his and was instantly gathered into the hard urgency of his embrace. Desire curled through her in hot tendrils that insinuated themselves in deep, private places. Her throat caught on a whimper of protest as his mouth lifted from hers. "We'd better start negotiating," he said raggedly. "The first issue is how much time you'll want to spend with me." "All of it," Cassandra said, and sought his lips again. Tom chuckled. "I would. I... oh, you're so sweet... no, I'm... God. It's time to stop. Really." He crushed his mouth against her hair to avoid her kisses. "You're about to be deflowered in the library." "Didn't that already happen?" she asked, and felt the shape of his smile. "No," he whispered, "you're still a virgin. Albeit slightly more experienced than two days ago." He brought his mouth closer to her ear. "Did you like what I did?" She nodded, her face turning so hot that she could feel her cheeks throb. "I wanted more." "I'd like to give you more. As soon as possible.

Over the years I have read many, many books about the future, my ‘we’re all doomed’ books, as Connie liked to call them. ‘All the books you read are either about how grim the past was or how gruesome the future will be. It might not be that way, Douglas. Things might turn out all right.’ But these were well-researched, plausible studies, their conclusions highly persuasive, and I could become quite voluble on the subject. Take, for instance, the fate of the middle-class, into which Albie and I were born and to which Connie now belongs, albeit with some protest. In book after book I read that the middle-class are doomed. Globalisation and technology have already cut a swathe through previously secure professions, and 3D printing technology will soon wipe out the last of the manufacturing industries. The internet won’t replace those jobs, and what place for the middle-classes if twelve people can run a giant corporation? I’m no communist firebrand, but even the most rabid free-marketeer would concede that market-forces capitalism, instead of spreading wealth and security throughout the population, has grotesquely magnified the gulf between rich and poor, forcing a global workforce into dangerous, unregulated, insecure low-paid labour while rewarding only a tiny elite of businessmen and technocrats. So-called ‘secure’ professions seem less and less so; first it was the miners and the ship- and steel-workers, soon it will be the bank clerks, the librarians, the teachers, the shop-owners, the supermarket check-out staff. The scientists might survive if it’s the right type of science, but where do all the taxi-drivers in the world go when the taxis drive themselves? How do they feed their children or heat their homes and what happens when frustration turns to anger? Throw in terrorism, the seemingly insoluble problem of religious fundamentalism, the rise of the extreme right-wing, under-employed youth and the under-pensioned elderly, fragile and corrupt banking systems, the inadequacy of the health and care systems to cope with vast numbers of the sick and old, the environmental repercussions of unprecedented factory-farming, the battle for finite resources of food, water, gas and oil, the changing course of the Gulf Stream, destruction of the biosphere and the statistical probability of a global pandemic, and there really is no reason why anyone should sleep soundly ever again. By the time Albie is my age I will be long gone, or, best-case scenario, barricaded into my living module with enough rations to see out my days. But outside, I imagine vast, unregulated factories where workers count themselves lucky to toil through eighteen-hour days for less than a living wage before pulling on their gas masks to fight their way through the unemployed masses who are bartering with the mutated chickens and old tin-cans that they use for currency, those lucky workers returning to tiny, overcrowded shacks in a vast megalopolis where a tree is never seen, the air is thick with police drones, where car-bomb explosions, typhoons and freak hailstorms are so commonplace as to barely be remarked upon. Meanwhile, in literally gilded towers miles above the carcinogenic smog, the privileged 1 per cent of businessmen, celebrities and entrepreneurs look down through bullet-proof windows, accept cocktails in strange glasses from the robot waiters hovering nearby and laugh their tinkling laughs and somewhere, down there in that hellish, stewing mess of violence, poverty and desperation, is my son, Albie Petersen, a wandering minstrel with his guitar and his keen interest in photography, still refusing to wear a decent coat.

In 2003, Meryl Streep won a career achievement César Award, the French equivalent of an Oscar. Streep’s words (my translation) acknowledged the enduring interest of French audiences in women’s lives and women’s stories: "I have always wanted to present stories of women who are rather difficult. Difficult to love, difficult to understand, difficult to look at sometimes. I am very cognizant that the French public is receptive to these complex and contradictory women. As an actress I have understood for a long time that lies are simple, seductive and often easy to pass off. But the truth—the truth is always very very very complicated, often unpleasant, nuanced or difficult to accept." In France, an actress can work steadily from her teens through old age—she can start out in stories of youthful rebellion and end up, fifty years later, a screen matriarch. And in the process, her career will end up telling the story of a life—her own life, in a sense, with the films serving, as Valeria Bruni Tedeschi puts it, as a “journal intime,” or diary, of one woman’s emotions and growth. No wonder so many French actresses are beautiful. They’re radiant with living in a cinematic culture that values them, and values them as women. And they are radiant with living in a culture—albeit one with flaws of its own—in which women are half of who decides what gets valued in the first place. Their films transcend national and language barriers and are the best vehicles for conveying the depth and range of women’s experience in our era. The gift they give us, so absent in our own movies, is a vision of life that values emotional truth, personal freedom and dignity above all and that favors complexity over simplicity, the human over the machine, maturity over callowness, true mysteries over false explanations and an awareness of mortality over a life lived in denial. In the luminous humanity of their faces and in the illuminated humanity of their characters, we discover in these actresses something much more inspiring than the blank perfection and perfect blankness of the Hollywood starlet. We discover the beauty of the real.

I would expect such behavior from the children,not from their mother." She tsked at him, not even a little daunted. "Aren't you the least bit curious?" "Certainly,but I can wait until-" "But I can't wait," she cut in passionately. "Come with me, Warren. I'll be careful with it. And if it's nothing more'n a simple gift, albeit a mysterious one, then I'll have the box wrapped up again perfectly, so no one will know we tampered with it." "You're serious about this?" he asked. "You're actually going to sneak downstairs in the middle of the night like an errant schoolgirl-" "No,no,we are, like two perfectly sensible adults making a reasonable effort to solve a mystery that has been around far too long." He chuckled at that point, used to his wife's strange logic, and used to her ignoring any of his attempts at sternness.But then that was the magic of Amy.She was unlike any other woman he'd ever known. He gave in gracefully with a smile. "Very well,fetch our robes and some shoes.I would imagine the fire has been banked in the parlor, so it will be a mite chilly." It wasn't that long before they were standing next to The Present, Warren merely curious, Amy finding it hard to contain her excitement, considering what she expected to find beneath the pretty cloth wrapping.The parlor wasn't chilly at all,since whoever had lef the room last had closed the doors to contain the earlier warmth, and Warren had closed them again before he lit several of the lamps. But the doors opened once more, giving Amy quite a start since she was just reaching for The Present when it happened, and Jeremy said as he entered the room, "Caught in the act,eh? Amy,for shame." Amy,noticeably embarrassed despite the fact that Jeremy wasn't just her cousin, but one of her closest friends, said stiffly, "And what,pray tell, are you doing down here at this hour?" He winked at her and said dryly, "Same thing you are, I would imagine." She chuckled then. "Scamp. Close the door while you're at it." He started to,but stepped out of the way instead as Reggie sauntered in, barefoot and still in the process of tying her bed robe. When everyone else there just stared at her, she huffed indignantly, "I did not come down here to open The Present-well, maybe I did, but I would have chickened out before actually doing so." "What a whopper, Reggie," Derek said as he came in right behind her. "Nice try, though. Mind if I borrow that lame excuse? Better than having none a'tall.

Darwin’s Bestiary PROLOGUE Animals tame and animals feral prowled the Dark Ages in search of a moral: the canine was Loyal, the lion was Virile, rabbits were Potent and gryphons were Sterile. Sloth, Envy, Gluttony, Pride—every peril was fleshed into something phantasmic and rural, while Courage, Devotion, Thrift—every bright laurel crowned a creature in some mythological mural. Scientists think there is something immoral in singular brutes having meat that is plural: beasts are mere beasts, just as flowers are floral. Yet between the lines there’s an implicit demurral; the habit stays with us, albeit it’s puerile: when Darwin saw squirrels, he saw more than Squirrel. 1. THE ANT The ant, Darwin reminded us, defies all simple-mindedness: Take nothing (says the ant) on faith, and never trust a simple truth. The PR men of bestiaries eulogized for centuries this busy little paragon, nature’s proletarian— but look here, Darwin said: some ants make slaves of smaller ants, and end exploiting in their peonages the sweating brows of their tiny drudges. Thus the ant speaks out of both sides of its mealy little mouth: its example is extolled to the workers of the world, but its habits also preach the virtues of the idle rich. 2. THE WORM Eyeless in Gaza, earless in Britain, lower than a rattlesnake’s belly-button, deaf as a judge and dumb as an audit: nobody gave the worm much credit till Darwin looked a little closer at this spaghetti-torsoed loser. Look, he said, a worm can feel and taste and touch and learn and smell; and ounce for ounce, they’re tough as wrestlers, and love can turn them into hustlers, and as to work, their labors are mythic, small devotees of the Protestant Ethic: they’ll go anywhere, to mountains or grassland, south to the rain forests, north to Iceland, fifty thousand to every acre guzzling earth like a drunk on liquor, churning the soil and making it fertile, earning the thanks of every mortal: proud Homo sapiens, with legs and arms— his whole existence depends on worms. So, History, no longer let the worm’s be an ignoble lot unwept, unhonored, and unsung. Moral: even a worm can turn. 3. THE RABBIT a. Except in distress, the rabbit is silent, but social as teacups: no hare is an island. (Moral: silence is golden—or anyway harmless; rabbits may run, but never for Congress.) b. When a rabbit gets miffed, he bounds in an orbit, kicking and scratching like—well, like a rabbit. (Moral: to thine own self be true—or as true as you can; a wolf in sheep’s clothing fleeces his skin.) c. He populates prairies and mountains and moors, but in Sweden the rabbit can’t live out of doors. (Moral: to know your own strength, take a tug at your shackles; to understand purity, ponder your freckles.) d. Survival developed these small furry tutors; the morals of rabbits outnumber their litters. (Conclusion: you needn’t be brainy, benign, or bizarre to be thought a great prophet. Endure. Just endure.) 4. THE GOSSAMER Sixty miles from land the gentle trades that silk the Yankee clippers to Cathay sift a million gossamers, like tides of fluff above the menace of the sea. These tiny spiders spin their bits of webbing and ride the air as schooners ride the ocean; the Beagle trapped a thousand in its rigging, small aeronauts on some elusive mission. The Megatherium, done to extinction by its own bigness, makes a counterpoint to gossamers, who breathe us this small lesson: for survival, it’s the little things that count.