Anyone Can Be Angry Quotes

Anyone can become angry —that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way —this is not easy. ARISTOTLE, The Nicomachean Ethics

If you have feelings for someone, let them know. It doesn’t matter if they can be in your life or not. Maybe, it is just enough for both of you to release the truth, so healing can occur. The opposite is true, as well. If you don’t have feelings for someone then never let another person suggest that you do. Protect your reputation and be responsible for the wrong information spread about you. Never allow anyone to live with a false belief or unfounded hope about you. An honorable person sets the record straight, so that person can move on with their life.

Anyone can get angry, but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy.

Hello? This is Clary Fairchild.” “Clary? It’s me, Emma.” “Oh, Emma, hi! I haven’t heard from you in ages. My mom says thanks for the wedding flowers, by the way. She wanted to send a note but Luke whisked her away on a honeymoon to Tahiti.” “Tahiti sounds nice.” “It probably is — Jace, what are you doing with that thing? There is no way it’ll fit.” “Is this a bad time?” “What? No! Jace is trying to drag a trebuchet into the training room. Alec, stop helping him.” “What’s a trebuchet?” “It’s a huge catapult.” “What are they going to use it for?” “I have no idea. Alec, you’re enabling! You’re an enabler!” “Maybe it is a bad time.” “I doubt there’ll be a better one. Is something wrong? Is there anything I can do?” “I think we have your cat.” “What?” “Your cat. Big fuzzy Blue Persian? Always looks angry? Julian says it’s your cat. He says he saw it at the New York Institute. Well, saw him. It’s a boy cat.” “Church? You have Church? But I thought — well, we knew he was gone. We thought Brother Zachariah took him. Isabelle was annoyed, but they seemed to know each other. I’ve never seen Church actually likeanyone like that.” “I don’t know if he likes anyone here. He bit Julian twice. Oh, wait. Julian says he likes Ty. He’s asleep on Ty’s bed.” “How did you wind up with him?” “Someone rang our front doorbell. Diana, she’s our tutor, went down to see what it was. Church was in a cage on the front step with a note tied to it. It said For Emma. This is Church, a longtime friend of the Carstairs. Take care of this cat and he will take care of you. —J.” “Brother Zachariah left you a cat.” “But I don’t even really know him. And he’s not a Silent Brother any more.” “You may not know him, but he clearly knows you.” “What do you think the J stands for?” “His real name. Look, Emma, if he wants you to have Church, and you want Church, you should keep him.” “Are you sure? The Lightwoods —“ ‘They’re both standing here nodding. Well, Alec is partially trapped under a trebuchet, but he seems to be nodding.” “Jules says we’d like to keep him. We used to have a cat named Oscar, but he died, and, well, Church seems to be good for Ty’s nightmares.” “Oh, honey. I think, really, he’s Brother Zachariah’s cat. And if he wants you to have him, then you should.” “Why does Brother Zachariah want to protect me? It’s like he knows me, but I don’t know why he knows me.” “I don’t exactly know … But I know Tessa. She’s his — well, girlfriend seems not the right word for it. They’ve known each other a long, long time. I have a feeling they’re both watching over you.” “That’s good. I have a feeling we’re going to need it.” “Emma — oh my God. The trebuchet just crashed through the floor. I have to go. Call me later.” “But we can keep the cat?” “You can keep the cat.

You can't fight hatred with hatred and expect anyone to listen to you. You can only try to lessen it with humor, wit, truth and commonsense. If that doesn't work run like hell, while they throw rocks at you.

In secret places we can think and imagine, we can feel angry or sad in peace. There is something to be said for just being, without worrying about offending anyone.

Anyone can become angry—that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way, this is not easy.

Gilan hesitated. "I wouldn't advise anyone to face a battleax with just two knives," he said carefully. So what should I do?" Will joined in. Gilan glared from one boy to the other. He had the feeling he was being set up. Shoot him," he said shortly. Will shook his head, grinning. Can't," he said. "My bowstring's broken." Then run and hide," said Gilan, between gritted teeth. But there's a cliff," Horace pointed out. "A sheer drop behind him and an angry axman coming at him." What do I do?" prompted Will. Gilan took a deep breath and lookd them both in the eye, one after the other. Jump off the cliff. It'll be less messy that way.

Couldn't the wrong sort of living turn anyone mean? I remembered very well that one day back in Yoroido, a boy pushed me into a thorn bush near the pond. By the time I clawed my way out I was mad enough to bite through wood. If a few minutes of suffering could make me so angry, what would years of it do? Even stone can be worn down with enough rain.

When Švejk subsequently described life in the lunatic asylum, he did so in exceptionally eulogistic terms: 'I really don't know why those loonies get so angry when they're kept there. You can crawl naked on the floor, howl like a jackal, rage and bite. If anyone did this anywhere on the promenade people would be astonished, but there it's the most common or garden thing to do. There's a freedom there which not even Socialists have ever dreamed of.

Cole,” I said, “do you think I’m lovable?” “As in ‘cuddly and’?” “As in ‘able to be loved,’” I said. Cole’s gaze was unwavering. Just for a moment, I had the strange idea that I could see exactly what he had looked like when he was younger, and exactly what he’d look like when he was older. It was piercing, a secret glimpse of his future. “Maybe,” he said. “But you won’t let anybody try.” I closed my eyes and swallowed. “I can’t tell the diference between not fighting,” I said,“and giving up.” Despite my eyelids being tightly shut, a single, hot tear ran out of my left eye. I was so angry that it had escaped. I was so angry. Beneath me, the bed tipped as Cole edged closer. I felt him lean over me. His breath, warm and measured, hit my cheek. Two breaths. Three. Four. I didn’t know what I wanted. Then I heard him stop breathing, and a second later, I felt his lips on my mouth. It wasn’t the sort of kiss I’d had with him before, hungry, wanting, desperate. It wasn’t the sort of kiss I’d had with anyone before. This kiss was so soft that it was like a memory of a kiss, so careful on my lips that it waslike a memory of a kiss, so careful on my lips that it was like someone running his fingers along them. My mouth parted and stilled; it was so quiet, a whisper, not a shout. Cole’s hand touched my neck, thumb pressed into the skin next to my jaw. It wasn’t a touch that said “I need more”. It was a touch that said “I want this.” It was all completely soundless. I didn’t think either of us was breathing. Cole sat back up, slowly, and I opened my eyes. His expression, as ever, was blank, the face he wore when something mattered. He said, “That’s how I would kiss you, if I loved you.

We wish you a merry Christmas” is the most demanding song ever. It starts off all nice and a second later you have an angry mob at your door scream-singing, “Now bring us some figgy pudding and bring it RIGHT HERE. WE WON’T GO UNTIL WE GET SOME SO BRING IT RIGHT HERE.” Also, they’re rhyming “here” with “here.” That’s just sloppy. I’m not rewarding unrequested, lazy singers with their aggressive pudding demands. There should be a remix of that song that homeowners can sing that’s all “I didn’t even ask for your shitty song, you filthy beggars. I’ve called the cops. Who is this even working on? Has anyone you’ve tried this on actually given you pudding? Fig-flavored pudding? Is that even a thing?” It doesn’t rhyme but it’s not like they’re trying either. And then the carolers would be like, “SO BRING US SOME GIN AND TONIC AND LET’S HAVE A BEER,” and then I’d be like, “Well, I guess that’s more reasonable. Fine. You can come in for one drink.” Technically that would be a good way to get free booze. Like trick-or-treat but for singy alcoholics. Oh my God, I finally understand caroling.

I wasn't kidding about the flying-kids part. Or the talking-dog part. Anyone who's up to speed on the Adventures of Amazing Max and Her Flying, Fun-Loving Cohorts, you can skip this next page or so. Those of you who picked up this book cold, even thought it's clearly part three of the series, well, get with the program, people! I can't take two days to get you caught up on everything! Here's the abbreviated version (which is pretty, I might add): A bunch of mad scientists (mad crazy not mad angry- though a lot of them seem to have anger-management issues, especially around me) have been playing around with recombinant life-forms, where they graft different species' DNA together.

May I be an enemy to no one and the friend of what abides eternally. May I never quarrel with those nearest me, and be reconciled quickly if I should. May I never plot evil against others, and if anyone plot evil against me, may I escape unharmed and without the need to hurt anyone else. May I love, seek and attain only what is good. May I desire happiness for all and harbor envy for none. May I never find joy in the misfortune of one who has wronged me. May I never wait for the rebuke of others, but always rebuke myself until I make reparation. May I gain no victory that harms me or my opponent. May I reconcile friends who are mad at each other. May I, insofar as I can, give all necessary help to my friends and to all who are in need. May I never fail a friend in trouble. May I be able to soften the pain of the grief stricken and give them comforting words. May I respect myself. May I always maintain control of my emotions. May I habituate myself to be gentle, and never angry with others because of circumstances. May I never discuss the wicked or what they have done, but know good people and follow in their footsteps. [Prayer to practice the Golden Rule]

You need to come with us right now," one of the queen's guards said. "If you resist, we'll take you by force." "Leave him alone!" I yelled, looking from face to face. That angry darkness exploded within me. How could they still not believe? Why were they still coming after him? "He hasn't done anything! Why can't you guys accept that he's really a dhampir now?" The man who'd spoken arched an eyebrow. "I wasn't talking to him." "You're...you're here for me?" I asked. I tried to think of any new spectacles I might have caused recently. I considered the crazy idea that the queen had found out I'd spent the night with Adrian and was pissed off about it. That was hardly enough to send the palace guard for me, though...or was it? Had I really gone too far with my antics? "What for?" demanded Dimitri. That tall, wonderful bod of his—the one that could be so sensual sometimes—was filled with tension and menace now. The man kept his gaze on me, ignoring Dimitri. "Don't make me repeat myself: Come with us quietly, or we will make you." The glimmer of handcuffs showed in his hands. My eyes went wide. "That's crazy! I'm not going anywhere until you tel me how the hell this—" That was the point at which they apparently decided I wasn't coming quietly. Two of the royal guardians lunged for me, and even though we technically worked for the same side, my instincts kicked in. I didn't understand anything here except that I would not be dragged away like some kind of master criminal. I shoved the chair I'd been sitting in earlier at the one of the guardians and aimed a punch at the other. It was a sloppy throw, made worse because he was taller than me. That height difference allowed me to dodge his next grab, and when I kicked hard at his legs, a grunt told me I'd hit home. [...] Meanwhile, other guardians were joining the fray. Although I got a couple of good punches in, I knew the numbers were too overwhelming. One guardian caught hold of my arm and began trying to put the cuffs on me. He stopped when another set of hands grabbed me from the other side and jerked me away. Dimitri. "Don't touch her," he growled. There was a note in his voice that would have scared me if it had been directed toward me. He shoved me behind him, putting his body protectively in front of mine with my back to the table. Guardians came at us from all directions, and Dimitri began dispatching them with the same deadly grace that had once made people call him a god. [...] The queen's guards might have been the best of the best, but Dimitri...well, my former lover and instructor was in a category all his own. His fighting skills were beyond anyone else's, and he was using them all in defense me. "Stay back," he ordered me. "They aren't laying a hand on you.

Maxon, I hope you find someone you can't love without. I really do. And I hope you never have to know what it's like to have to try and live without them." Maxon's face was a shallow echo of my own pain. He looked absolutely brokenhearted for me. More than that, he looked angry. "I'm sorry, America. I don't..." His face shifted a little. "Is this a good time to pat your shoulder?" His uncertainty made me smile. "Yes. Now would be a great time." He seemed as skeptically as he'd been the other day, but instead of just patting my shoulder, he leaned in and tentatively wrapped his arms around me. "I only really ever hug my mother. Is this okay?" he asked. I laughed. "It's hard to get a hug wrong." After a minute, I spoke again. "I know what you mean, though. I don't really hug anyone besides my family." I felt so drained after the long day of dressing and the Report and dinner and talking. It was nice to have Maxon just hold me, sometimes even patting my hair. He wasn't as lost as he seemed. He patiently waited for my breathing to slow, and when it did, he pulled back to look at me. "America, I promise you I'll keep you here until the last possible moment. I understand that they want me to narrow the Elite down to three and then choose. But I swear to you, I'll make it to two and keep you here until then. I won't make you leave a moment before I have to. Or the moment you're ready. Whichever comes first." I nodded. "I know we just met, but I think you're wonderful. And it bothers me to see you hurt. If he were here, I'd...I'd..." Maxon shook with frustration, then sighed. "I'm so sorry, America." He pulled me back in, and I rested my head on his broad shoulder. I knew Maxon would keep his promises. So I settled into perhaps the last place I ever thought I'd find genuine comfort.

When I feel angry, I want to say something mean, or yell, or hit. But feeling like I want to is not the same as doing it. Feeling can't hurt anyone or get me into trouble, but doing can." (Bunny from picture book)

I never feel anything,” I whisper. “But every time I remember how little you think of yourself, I feel angry. I feel like banishing anyone and everyone who ever made you believe you deserve to be alone. Because that kind of pain, it– it can ruin people, it can make them lose faith in everything, just like Hamlet did, but you? You look at me more than anyone ever has, and no one ever looks twice at me. I’m a skull in a graveyard. I’m empty.

Adam Parrish was lonesome. There is no good word for the opposite of lonesome. One might be tempted to suggest togetherness or contentment, but the fact that these two other words bear definitions unrelated to each other perfectly displays why lonesome cannot be properly mirrored. It does not mean solitude, nor alone, nor lonely, although lonesome can contain all of those words in itself. Lonesome means a state of being apart. Of being other. Alone-some. Adam was not always alone, but he was always lonesome. Even in a group, he was slowly perfecting the skill of holding himself separate. It was easier than one might expect; the others allowed him to do it. He knew he was different since aligning himself more tightly with the ley line this summer. He was himself, but more powerful. Himself, but less human. If he were them, he would silently watch him draw away, too. It was better this way. He had not fought with anyone for so long. He had not been angry for weeks.

At certain times I have no race. I am me. I belong to no race or time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads. I do not weep at the world--I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife. I have a strong suspicion, but I can't be sure, that much that passes for constant love is a golded-up moment walking in its sleep. Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. Sometimes I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can anyone deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me. There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

It was this: Blue, teetering on the edge of offense, saying, I don’t understand why you keep saying such awful things about Koreans. About yourself. And Henry saying, I will do it before anyone else can. It is the only way to not be angry all of the time.

Sometimes it feels like I'm gonna explode, like everything I'm feeling is the first time anyone's felt it, ever, in the history of the universe, and then I get so angry when people don't understand that I'm walking around feeling like this and still doing everything I'm supposed to do and making As and getting into NYU and putting up with all of the Willowgrove bullshit. I—I can't even explain how I feel, and it feels wrong to say it without the right words, so I don't say it at all, but then nobody knows, and I'm mad that nobody knows, even though I don't even want them to know.

Imagine that the keeper of a huge, strong beast notices what makes it angry, what it desires, how it has to be approached and handled, the circumstances and the conditions under which it becomes particularly fierce or calm, what provokes its typical cries, and what tones of voice make it gentle or wild. Once he's spent enough time in the creature's company to acquire all this information, he calls it knowledge, forms it into a systematic branch of expertise, and starts to teach it, despite total ignorance, in fact, about which of the creature's attitudes and desires is commendable or deplorable, good or bad, moral or immoral. His usage of all these terms simply conforms to the great beast's attitudes, and he describes things as good or bad according to its likes and dislikes, and can't justify his usage of the terms any further, but describes as right and good the things which are merely indispensable, since he hasn't realised and can't explain to anyone else how vast a gulf there is between necessity and goodness.

Peter pushed off from the roof and stalked a few feet away, his back to her. “Please tell me this is all some kind of a sick joke.” “It’s the truth. All of it. That’s why hunters are after me.” “How did they find out?” Peter asked, swiveling toward her now. “I think Beck ratted me out. I went to his house this morning and told him what had happened. He was furious, Peter. I’ve never seen anyone that angry.” “Duh! Now there’s a surprise,” her friend replied sarcastically. “I saw the way he looked at you at your dad’s funeral. Of course he’d be mad. You’re about the only one on the planet who doesn’t realize how he feels about you.” “He never said anything,” she retorted. “Hey, we guys don’t blurt out that kind of stuff,” he replied. “It’s against the man code. Beck may never have said how he felt, but everything he did for you should have been a big clue. I mean, come on, how slow are you?” She glowered at her friend. “I figured he was doing it because of my father.” “Maybe, but the guy is really into you, Riley.” “No way. If he’d liked me, he wouldn’t have blown me off and—” “Ancient history, girl!” he countered. “You were, what, fifteen? Your dad would have torn him apart if he’d touched you. Beck had no other choice.” “He didn’t have to be so mean.” “God, will you listen to yourself?” Peter retorted. “You have no idea how much he hurt me,” she shot back. “Give it up, will you? You’re my best friend, but you can be a real self-centered asshat sometimes.

Williamson Starr doesn't use slang - if a rapper would say it, she doesn't say it, even if her white friends do. Slang makes them cool. Slang makes her "hood". Williamson Starr holds her tongue when people piss her off so nobody will think she's the "angry black girl". Williamson Starr is approachable. No stank-eyes, none of that. Williamson Starr is no confrontational. Basically, Williamson Starr doesn't give anyone a reason to call her ghetto. I can't stand myself for doing it, but I do it anyway.

You’re lying,” he said-not angry, not accusing. Just as if he was stating the facts, in a way that she wasn’t. “I am not-” “You can say it a million times, but that doesn’t make it any more true.” Peter smiled then, so guileless that Lacy felt it smart like a stripe from a whip. “You might be able to fool Dad, and the cops, and anyone else who’ll listen,” he said. “You just can’t fool another liar.

How strange! This bed on which I shall lie has been slept on by more than one dying man, but today it does not repel me! Who knows what corpses have lain on it and for how long? But is a corpse any worse than I? A corpse too knows nothing of its father, mother or sisters or Titus. Nor has a corpse a sweetheart. A corpse, too, is pale, like me. A corpse is cold, just as I am cold and indifferent to everything. A corpse has ceased to live, and I too have had enough of life…. Why do we live on through this wretched life which only devours us and serves to turn us into corpses? The clocks in the Stuttgart belfries strike the midnight hour. Oh how many people have become corpses at this moment! Mothers have been torn from their children, children from their mothers - how many plans have come to nothing, how much sorrow has sprung from these depths, and how much relief!… Virtue and vice have come in the end to the same thing! It seems that to die is man’s finest action - and what might be his worst? To be born, since that is the exact opposite of his best deed. It is therefore right of me to be angry that I was ever born into this world! Why was I not prevented from remaining in a world where I am utterly useless? What good can my existence bring to anyone? … But wait, wait! What’s this? Tears? How long it is since they flowed! How is this, seeing that an arid melancholy has held me for so long in its grip? How good it feels - and sorrowful. Sad but kindly tears! What a strange emotion! Sad but blessed. It is not good for one to be sad, and yet how pleasant it is - a strange state…

You were brave to do what you did," he said slowly. "And I know you did it out of live for our friends. But if you ever do something like this again, I can promise you that Ten Men and Executives are going to be the least of your worries- do you understand?" His espression was very severe, his jaw was set, and his words were clipped and terse as if spoken with much suppressed anger. Kate burst out laughing. "Milligan," she said, "I'll bet you scare the wits out of bad guys, but as a dad you don't scare anyone very much." "She's right." Constance said. "I can tell you aren't really angry." Milligan frowned and looked at Reynie, but Reynie averted his eyes to avoid disappointing him- for he, too, had been unfazed by Milligan's stern admonition. Only Sticky, furiously polishing his spectacles in the back seat, showed the effect Milligan had hoped for. But Sticky was easily unnerved and could hardly be used as a measure. "Well," Milligan said, his face relaxing. "At least I tried." "... Speaking of which, the boys weren't actually touching the breifcases in the trunk, I hope?" Wondering how Milligan knew, Kate stuck her head out the office door and gave Reynie and Sticky a warning look. They nodded and tried to close the trunk as quietly as possible. "They aren't now anyway." "Good," Milligan said, picking up his duffel bag. "I'd hate to have to speak sternly to them again. It embarasses me to be so ineffective.

are not accustomed to the emotional upheaval that accompanies a loss. People experience a wide array of emotions after a loss, from not caring to being on edge to feeling angry or sad about everything. We can go from feeling okay to feeling devastated in a minute without warning. We can have mood swings that are hard for anyone around us to comprehend, because even we don’t understand them.

Most abusive men put on a charming face for their communities, creating a sharp split between their public image and their private treatment of women and children. He may be: Enraged at home but calm and smiling outside Selfish and self-centered with you but generous and supportive with others Domineering at home but willing to negotiate and compromise outside Highly negative about females while on his own turf but a vocal supporter of equality when anyone else is listening Assaultive toward his partner or children but nonviolent and nonthreatening with everyone else Entitled at home but critical of other men who disrespect or assault women The pain of this contrast can eat away at a woman. In the morning her partner cuts her to the quick by calling her a “brainless fat cow,” but a few hours later she sees him laughing with the people next door and helping them fix their car. Later the neighbor says to her, “Your partner is so nice. You’re lucky to be with him—a lot of men wouldn’t do what he does.” She responds with a mumbled “Yeah,” feeling confused and tongue-tied. Back at home, she asks herself over and over again, “Why me?

a secondary effect of being angry, which was recently discovered by researchers, is that we become more certain of our judgments. When we’re angry, we know we’re right, as anyone who has been in a relationship can attest.

MADDY’S TRUTHS Make room for who you are by knowing who you’re not. Smile all the time, at everyone, without exception: when you’re happy it will be contagious, and when you’re angry it will drive the person you’re mad at bonkers. Blow-dry before lipstick. Counters before sweeping. Water before dinner. To hell with what everyone thinks about your life, but you should know what you think about it. Don’t stay out past one a.m.—nobody is proud of the stories born later than that. Plans contingent on perfection fail. It’s dangerous to fight who you are. The stupidest thing you can do is believe your own bullshit, but you probably will every once in a while. Flowery perfume smells like a cover-up. Don’t have a room your kids can’t play in or a couch your kids can’t sit on; it’s their house too. If you don’t know what to say, say, “I don’t know what to say.” If you mess up, say, “I messed up.” If you need help, say, “I need help.” Never count on any one thing. Don’t confuse wanting to have sex and rent movies with someone for wanting to marry him. Never buy button-fly jeans—they aren’t flattering on anyone ever.

I have become fundamentally and deeply skeptical that anyone who does not have this illness can truly understand it. And, ultimately, it is probably unreasonable to expect the kind of acceptance of it that one so desperately desires. It is not an illness that lends itself to easy empathy. Once a restless or frayed mood has turned to anger, or violence, or psychosis, Richard, like most, finds it very difficult to see it as illness, rather than as being willful, angry, irrational, or simply tiresome.

We’re all good when we want to be, otherwise we’re fucking animals. There’s no VIP room in reality, and there is no reality in this city. You can’t Google the answers. People talke about being on the ride of your life—THIS IS YOUR LIFE. Whatever you need to know, you already know. Imagine what it is to be in another country, another landscape—heat, insects, fear. Imagine watching someone right in front of you trip on a wire, step on a mine, blow their body to shreds, in mid-sentences, mid-cigarette. Imagine yourself splattered with human flesh. Imagine talking to that boy for the five minutes when he is profoundly conscious of the fact that he is not goingt to make it home. Imagine the difference between that and being in upstate New York, drinking beer, trying to get laid, and spending the summer as lifeguard at Lake George. Imagine zipping your friends into body bags. Tell me why anyone ever thought this was a good idea. How could anyone not be angry? You’d have to be insane.” --Nic Thompson

Fine!” I threw my hands up in the air. “Yes, you mean something to me. What you did for me on Thanksgiving—that made me…” My voice cracked. “That made me happy. You made me happy. And I still care about you. Okay? You mean something to me—something I can’t really even put into words because everything seems too lame in comparison. I’ve always wanted you, even when I hated you. I want you even though you drive me freaking insane. And I know I screwed everything up. Not just for you and me, but for Dee.” My breath caught on a sob. The words rushed from me, one after another. “And I never felt this way with anyone else. Like I’m falling every time I’m around you, like I can’t catch my breath, and I feel alive —not just standing around and letting my life walk past me. There’s been nothing like that with anyone else.” Tears pricked my eyes as I stepped back. My chest was swelling so fast it hurt. “But none of this matters, because I know you really hate me now . I understand that. I just wish I could go back and change everything! I—” Daemon was suddenly in front of me, clasping my cheeks in his warm hands. “I never hated you.” I blinked back the wetness gathering in my eyes. “But—” “I don’t hate you now , Kat.” He stared intently into my eyes. “I’m mad at you—at myself. I’m so angry, I can taste it. I want to find Blake and rearrange parts of his body. But do you know w hat I thought about all day yesterday? All night? The one single thought I couldn’t escape, no matter how pissed off I am at you?” “No,” I whispered. “That I’m lucky, because the person I can’t get out of my head, the person who means more to me than I can stand, is still alive. She’s still there. And that’s you.

Some people may feel that I am unrealistic to believe in a world that is free of abuse. But words like unrealistic, naive, and impractical come from voices of superiority who use them as put-downs to get people to stop thinking for themselves. Abuse does affect us all. If you haven’t been involved with an abusive partner yourself, even if no woman that you love has ever suffered chronic mistreatment, the quality of your life is still dragged down, your horizons still circumscribed, by the existence of abuse and the culture that drives it. The voice of abuse takes so many different forms. You can hear it each time a child’s dreams are shot down by an adult who thinks he or she knows it all. It rings in the ears of anyone who has ever been ridiculed for crying. It echoes through the mind of each person who has dared to put a name to his or her own mistreatment, or to the cruelty directed toward someone else, and then has been derided with stinging words such as sissy or mama’s boy or hysterical or thousands of others. If

I don't understand why you keep saying such awful things about Koreans. About yourself. I will do it before anyone else can. It is the only way to not be angry all of the time.

Anyone can become angry-- that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way-- this is not easy.

I just have to be normal Starr at normal Williamson and have a normal day. That means flipping the switch in my brain so I’m Williamson Starr. Williamson Starr doesn’t use slang—if a rapper would say it, she doesn’t say it, even if her white friends do. Slang makes them cool. Slang makes her “hood.” Williamson Starr holds her tongue when people piss her off so nobody will think she’s the “angry black girl.” Williamson Starr is approachable. No stank-eyes, side-eyes, none of that. Williamson Starr is nonconfrontational. Basically, Williamson Starr doesn’t give anyone a reason to call her ghetto. I can’t stand myself for doing it, but I do it anyway.

But I knew no one. I was alone. No one cared. You might as well have left me to die.” “You didn’t, did you?” “Die? No, I didn’t. No thanks to you. Now I know I can only depend on myself.” “Exactly.” Natasha shrugged. “You’re welcome.” Ava didn’t respond. Natasha sat down next to her. “Such Russian problems.” She settled her back against the wall. “I know you’re angry. Be as angry as you want. But no matter how you feel, we need to get out of here. Fair enough?” “Why should I do anything you say?” “Because you can trust me.” “Are you crazy? You’re the one person I can’t trust. You taught me not to trust you.” “No. I taught you not to trust anyone,” Natasha said. “And that’s something everyone has to learn. Especially every girl.” She sounded as stubborn as Ava felt.

The true evil is always in the reason and the excuse, not the act. I was fooled. I was angry. I wasn’t thinking. I had to do it, else worse things would have happened. It didn’t hurt anyone. It hurt less people than it would have if I hadn’t. It was to protect myself. It was to protect others. It was in my nature. It was necessary. It was right. We have both been alive long enough to know that evil only wins when it spreads. It can cause destruction, it can cause death—but those are consequences of its nature, not its victory. Not its goal. The danger of evil, the purpose of evil, is that it causes those who would oppose it to become evil also. And that, my friend, is what happened to you.

Anyone can become angry — that’s easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not easy,” taught Aristotle.

No one could simply overturn the tide. Thanks to that, even if someone had their misgivings, they wouldn’t do anything about it. You can’t overturn popular opinion. There are times when you have no choice but to act against your true feelings. Because “everyone” said so, “everyone” was doing it, so if you didn’t do it too, you wouldn’t be one of “everyone” anymore. But no one person is “everyone”. They don’t speak and they don’t beat you up. They don’t get angry and they don’t laugh. “Everyone” is an illusion created by the magic of group-think. It is an apparition born without anyone’s knowledge. It is a ghostly spirit created for the sake of shrouding the individual’s miniscule evils. Through a monstrous transformation, it would devour anyone outside their circle of friends and even scatter curses on its own friends. Former members would also become obstacles to it. That’s why I despise it. I despise a world that emphasizes “everyone”. I despise the vulgar peace built upon the backs of scapegoats. I despise the empty ideas created solely through lies, blotting away even kindness and justice, making them out to be mere opportunism, a thorn in your side with the passing of time. You cannot change the past nor the world. You cannot change what has happened, nor can you change “everyone”. But like I said before, it’s not as if you are obligated to enslave yourself to the system.

I know you're scared. And maybe you really meant all those things you said about our friendship, just wanting to be friends, and if you did, I'll accept that. But I feel maybe it's possible you said those things, at least in some way, because you wanted me to make the other case. As if I would come out and say, please, Eileen, don't do this to me, I've been in love with you all along, I don't know how to live without you. Or whatever, whatever you wanted me to say. Not that it's not true, of course it's true. And maybe even when you're getting angry at Alice, saying that she doesn't care about you — I don't know, maybe it's the same idea. At some level you want her to say, oh but Eileen, I love you very much, you're my best friend. But the problem is that you seem to be drawn to people who aren't very good at giving you those responses. I mean, anyone could have told you — certainly Felix and myself both knew — that Alice was never going to react that way just now. And maybe it's the same with me, in a way. If you tell me you don't want to be with me, I might feel very hurt and humiliated, but I'm not going to start begging and pleading with you. At some level, I actually think you know I won't. But then you get left with the impression that I don't love you, or I don't want you, because you're not getting this response from me — this response that you basically know you won't get, because I'm not the type of person who can give it to you.

Are you extremely furious or just angry?” “Both.” Another step closer. “I hope you don’t blame anyone else. Brother Thistle didn’t know about my little game.” “Oh, I know! He would never do anything so idiotic. Pretending to be a monk so you can surprise me with a kiss!” He raised his head and glared. “When I’ve ridden here half-mad with worry, all the while wondering whether I’d make it in time.

It takes courage to keep love at the center when you know just as well as anyone else the real state of things! It’s easy to get angry, anyone can do that. It’s making good that’s the hard part, it’s staying hopeful that’s the hard part! It’s staying in love that’s the hard part.

I wish I could tell you this was all just because I’m desperate and horny, making up for lost time after being locked up.” He slid his palm under the hem of her T-shirt, groaning at the feel of warm, smooth skin. “It would be so much easier if that was all this was.” He cupped a breast and flicked a nipple through the silk of her bra, loving the way it jumped to immediate attention against the pad of his thumb. “There hasn’t been anyone,” he said between kisses. “I haven’t wanted anyone. I’ve been walking around like I’m dead inside and then you show up.” He couldn’t keep the edge out of his voice, angry at his own lack of control. Like she needed anything more on him, but he couldn’t keep himself from spilling his guts. “All of a sudden all I can think about is how you smell, how you might taste.” He sucked her tongue into his mouth for emphasis. “How soft your skin would feel.” He whipped her shirt over her head and slid his hands down the smooth line of her back, down the curve of her waist and hip.

I can tolerate amazing amounts of stress and ridicule. By God’s grace, it still doesn’t require any effort to shake off unpleasant, irritating things. God has helped me to conquer my terrible temper, once and forever. During those hours in the bathroom I also came to realize that if people could make me angry they could control me. Why should I give someone else such power over my life? Over the years I’ve chuckled at people who deliberately did things they thought would make me angry. I’m no better than anyone else, but I laugh inside at how foolish people can be, trying to make me angry.

I can teach them little things that may not be in any of the great books on writing. For instance, I’m not sure if anyone else has mentioned that December is traditionally a bad month for writing. It is a month of Mondays. Mondays are not good writing days. One has had all that freedom over the weekend, all that authenticity, all those dreamy dreams, and then your angry mute Slavic Uncle Monday arrives, and it is time to sit down at your desk.

Well it seems to me that there are books that tell stories, and then there are books that tell truths...," I began. "Go on," she said "The first kind, they show you life like you want it to be. With villains getting what they deserve and the hero seeing what a fool he's been and marrying the heroine and happy ending and all that. Like Sense and Sensibility or Persuasion. But the second kind, they show you life more like it is. Like in Huckleberry Finn where Huck's pa is a no-good drunk and Jim suffers so. The first kind makes you cheerful and contented, but the second kind shakes you up." "People like happy ending, Mattie. They don't want to be shaken up." "I guess not, ma'am. It's just that there are no Captain Wentworths, are there? But there are plenty of Pap Finns. And things go well for Anne Elliot in the end, but they don't go well for most people." My voice trembled as I spoke, as it did whenever I was angry. "I feel let down sometimes. The people in the books-the heroes- they're always so...heroic. And I try to be, but..." "...you're not," Lou said, licking deviled ham off her fingers. "...no, I'm not. People in books are good and noble and unselfish, and people aren't that way... and I feel, well... hornswoggled sometimes. By Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and Louisa May Alcott. Why do writers make things sugary when life isn't that way?" I asked too loudly. "Why don't they tell the truth? Why don't they tell how a pigpen looks after the sow's eaten her children? Or how it is for a girl when her baby won't come out? Or that cancer has a smell to it? All those books, Miss Wilcox," I said, pointing at a pile of them," and I bet not one of them will tell you what cancer smells like. I can, though. It stinks. Like meat gone bad and dirty clothes and bog water all mixed together. Why doesn't anyone tell you that?" No one spoke for a few seconds. I could hear the clock ticking and the sound of my own breathing. Then Lou quietly said, "Cripes, Mattie. You oughtn't to talk like that." I realized then that Miss Wilcox had stopped smiling. Her eyes were fixed om me, and I was certain she'd decided I was morbid and dispiriting like Miss Parrish had said and that I should leave then and there. "I'm sorry, Miss Wilcox," I said, looking at the floor. "I don't mean to be coarse. I just... I don't know why I should care what happens to people in a drawing room in London or Paris or anywhere else when no one in those places cares what happens to people in Eagle Bay." Miss Wilcox's eyes were still fixed on me, only now they were shiny. Like they were the day I got my letter from Barnard. "Make them care, Mattie," she said softly. "And don't you ever be sorry.

If he wasn't angry, he certainly did a good imitation. His voice was clipped and as hard as stone. She wrung her hands together. "I love you. Clay." "No, you don't." Meg felt as though he'd just slapped her. "Yes, I do. When you leave this town, I'll go with you." Narrowing his eyes, he studied her. "Will you marry me?" "Yes." "Will you give me children?" "If I can. Kirk and I were never able to conceive, but if I can have children, I want to have yours." "In this town that we move to, wherever it is, will you walk down the street with me?" "Of course." "Holding my hand?" "Yes." "And the hands of my children?" "Yes." He unfolded his arms and took a step toward her. She wanted to fling herself into his embrace, but something hard in his eyes stopped her. "And what happens, Mrs. Warner, when someone you know rides through town and points at me and calls me a yellow-bellied coward? What will you do then? Will you let go of my hand and take my children to the other side of the street? Will you pretend that you haven't kissed me, that you haven't lain with me beneath the stars?" With disgust marring his features, he turned away. "You think I'm a coward. Go home." "I don't think that. I love you." He spun around. "You don't believe in that love, you don't believe in me." "Yes, I do." He stalked toward her. She backed into the corner and bent her head to meet his infuriated gaze. "How strongly do you believe in our love?" he asked, his voice ominously low. "If they threatened to strip off your clothes unless you denied our love, would you deny our love?" He gave her no chance to respond, but continued on, his voice growing deeper and more ragged, as though he were dredging up events from the past. "If they wouldn't let you sleep until you denied our love, would you deny our love so you could lay your head on a pillow? "If they stabbed a bayonet into your backside every time your eyes drifted closed, would you deny our love so your flesh wouldn't be pierced? "If they applied a hot brand to your flesh until you screamed in agony, would you deny our love so they'd take away the iron? "If they placed you before a firing squad, would you say you didn't love me so they wouldn't shoot you?" He stepped back and plowed his hands through his hair. "You think I'm a coward. You don't think I have the courage to stand beside you and risk the anger of your father. I'd die before I turned away from anyone or anything I believed in. You won't even walk by my side." He looked the way she imagined soldiers who had lost a battle probably looked: weary, tired of the fight, disillusioned. "You don't believe in me," he said quietly. "How can you believe in our love?

Many well-meaning Americans have bought into the PC speech code, thinking that by being extra careful not to offend anyone we will achieve unity. What they fail to realize is that this is a false unity that prevents us from talking about important issues and is a Far Left strategy to paralyze us while they change our nation. People have been led to become so sensitive that fault can be found in almost anything anyone says because somewhere, somehow, someone will be offended by it. To stop this, Americans need to recognize what is happening, speak up courageously, avoid fearful or angry responses, and ignore the barking and snarling as we put political correctness to bed forever.

You don’t know how it is. It’s like I’ve got this angry little person inside me, and I can feel him trying to get out. He’s running out of room because he’s growing bigger and bigger, and so he starts rising up, into my lungs, chest, throat, and I just push him right back down. I don’t want him to come out. I can’t let him out because i hate him, because he's not me, but he's in there and he won't leave me alone, and all I can think is that I want to go up to someone, anyone, and just knock them into space because I'm angry at all of them.

But it’s up to me right now to decide whether I believe him when he says he’s sorry. And I do. Because I know better than anyone the power of second chances. If that makes me an idealist, I’ll admit to that. It’s not that I’m not angry with him anymore. But at the same time, even more than the anger I feel is the desire that I have to do whatever I can to take away his pain.

Welcome the disagreement. Remember the slogan, ‘When two partners always agree, one of them is not necessary.’ If there is some point you haven’t thought about, be thankful if it is brought to your attention. Perhaps this disagreement is your opportunity to be corrected before you make a serious mistake. Distrust your first instinctive impression. Our first natural reaction in a disagreeable situation is to be defensive. Be careful. Keep calm and watch out for your first reaction. It may be you at your worst, not your best. Control your temper. Remember, you can measure the size of a person by what makes him or her angry. Listen first. Give your opponents a chance to talk. Let them finish. Do not resist, defend or debate. This only raises barriers. Try to build bridges of understanding. Don’t build higher barriers of misunderstanding. Look for areas of agreement. When you have heard your opponents out, dwell first on the points and areas on which you agree. Be honest. Look for areas where you can admit error and say so. Apologize for your mistakes. It will help disarm your opponents and reduce defensiveness. Promise to think over your opponents’ ideas and study them carefully. And mean it. Your opponents may be right. It is a lot easier at this stage to agree to think about their points than to move rapidly ahead and find yourself in a position where your opponents can say: ‘We tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen.’ Thank your opponents sincerely for their interest. Anyone who takes the time to disagree with you is interested in the same things you are. Think of them as people who really want to help you, and you may turn your opponents into friends. Postpone action to give both sides time to think through the problem. Suggest that a new meeting be held later that day or the next day, when all the facts may be brought to bear. In preparation for this meeting, ask yourself some hard questions:

He can pretend convincingly, but is never an actual friend to anyone and cannot feel even a small amount of genuine concern for his fellow human beings. He cannot love or feel authentic concern for his family members, though he may claim to have these feelings. He has no real interest in bonding with a mate; if he marries, the union will be loveless, one-sided, and almost certainly short-term. If his spouse has any value to him, it will be because he views her as a possession, one he may feel angry to lose, but never genuinely sad. Should he become a father, he will not be able to love even his children.

what I want to show in my books and in my life is that you don't have to be like the miserable, angry people who hurt you. You can survive and, most of all, you can thrive. Yes, those demons will always be there, and you will hear and, worst of all, feel their cruelty long after they're gone, but you don't have to let them own your future the way they held your past. You don't have to become like them. You can pull it together, hold your head high, and be the person you want to be in spite of their vicious cruelty. They say that there's a reason to everything. I'm not sure I believe that. It's human nature to try and make order out of chaos. The "sometimes things have to go wrong in order to go right" is my own search for understanding why cruelty takes place. I don't understand how anyone can intentionally hurt another person, never mind a child. But I want to help others find the rainbow through the storms. To know that tomorrow is another day and that sooner or later, life will get better. And so will we.

The Drunken Gnat You are the soul of the soul, a door that opens into existence. When separation makes us angry, you strike with a sword. When union becomes vague, you feed it with a vast nothing. Old civilizations start to flourish again. The March sun warms the world with singing. Tambourine and harp, branches covered with buds. Is anyone sober enough to speak with the king? No one. All right. Remember how a gnat once got drunk and walked into the ear of a terrible tyrant, then from there into his brain and killed him? Grape-wine can do that to a gnat. What will the wine of infinity do for us? A cave dog watched over the sleepers. If a dog can be a shepherd, what could the spirit-lion of a human being become? Sparks from a fire lift in the sky and turn to stars. Shams is now a depth of truth that rises every morning in the east.

Everybody has got to live for something, but Jesus is arguing that, if he is not that thing, it will fail you. First, it will enslave you. Whatever that thing is, you will tell yourself that you have to have it or there is no tomorrow. That means that if anything threatens it, you will become inordinately scared; if anyone blocks it, you will become inordinately angry; and if you fail to achieve it, you will never be able to forgive yourself. But second, if you do achieve it, it will fail to deliver the fulfillment you expected. Let me give you an eloquent contemporary expression of what Jesus is saying. Nobody put this better than the American writer David Foster Wallace. He got to the top of his profession. He was an award-winning, bestselling postmodern novelist known around the world for his boundary-pushing storytelling. He once wrote a sentence that was more than a thousand words long. A few years before the end of his life, he gave a now-famous commencement speech at Kenyon College. He said to the graduating class, Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god . . . to worship . . . is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before [your loved ones] finally plant you. . . . Worship power, and you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they are evil or sinful; it is that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.4 Wallace was by no means a religious person, but he understood that everyone worships, everyone trusts in something for their salvation, everyone bases their lives on something that requires faith. A couple of years after giving that speech, Wallace killed himself. And this nonreligious man’s parting words to us are pretty terrifying: “Something will eat you alive.” Because even though you might never call it worship, you can be absolutely sure you are worshipping and you are seeking. And Jesus says, “Unless you’re worshipping me, unless I’m the center of your life, unless you’re trying to get your spiritual thirst quenched through me and not through these other things, unless you see that the solution must come inside rather than just pass by outside, then whatever you worship will abandon you in the end.

Fear is a great intoxicant in its own way. Anyone hooked on its adrenaline can tell you that. But in taking this risk, this angry set of words, one sentence, I had lost control of my own narrative. Now he owned the power. I was at his mercy.

I found myself wondering if she'd started life much as I had. It made no difference that she was a mean old woman and I was just a struggling little girl. Couldn't the wrong sort of living turn anyone mean? I remembered very well that one day back in Yoroido, a boy pushed me into a thorn bush near the pond. By the time I clawed my way out I was mad enough to bite through wood. If a few minutes of suffering could make me so angry, what would years of it do? Even stone can be worn down with enough rain.

Telltale Signs That You Grew Up as a “Little Adult” It’s often so difficult for adult daughters to step back and see how they were put into the adult helper role. To help you recognize if this dynamic echoes your experience, I’ve created a pair of checklists to help you identify how mothering your mother shaped and influenced a significant part of your life. When you were a child did you: • Believe that your most important job in life was to solve your mother’s problems or ease her pain—no matter what the cost to you? • Ignore your own feelings and pay attention only to what she wanted and how she felt? • Protect her from the consequences of her behavior? • Lie or cover up for her? • Defend her when anyone said anything bad about her? • Think that your good feelings about yourself depended on her approval? • Have to keep her behavior secret from your friends? As an adult, do these statements ring true for you: • I will do anything to avoid upsetting my mother, and the other adults in my life. • I can’t stand it if I feel I’ve let anyone down. • I am a perfectionist, and I blame myself for everything that goes wrong. • I’m the only person I can really count on. I have to do things myself. • People like me not for myself but for what I can do for them. • I have to be strong all the time. If I need anything or ask for help, it means I’m weak. • I should be able to solve every problem. • When everyone else is taken care of, I can finally have what I want. • I feel angry, unappreciated, and used much of the time, but I push these feelings deep inside myself.

We don’t even know what’s going on in the rest of the world. All we can do is-is play Scooby-Doo in the cellar.” “That’s not all we can do, Sophie,” Archer said. Whenever Archer used my first name, I knew he was serious. “What do you mean?” He backed up a few steps. “Look, you want the Casnoffs gone and these kids saved, or at least…well, put out of their misery, I guess. You don’t want anyone to raise demons ever again. There are other people who want those things, too.” “Please tell me you are not talking about The Eye.” He looked away and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’m just saying that you and The Eye have a common goal here.” I wasn’t sure if I was stunned, or angry, or disgusted. It was kind of a mixture of all three. “Okay, is there a gas leak down here? Or did you hit your head on the tunnel? Because that’s really the only excuse for you saying something so freaking stupid.” “Oh, you’re right, Mercer,” he said. “The idea of a trying to fight an army of demons with a bunch of trained soldiers is beyond ridiculous. Maybe we can go get Nausicaa and see if she’ll give us some faerie dust to make the problem go away.” “Don’t be a jackass,” I snapped. “Then don’t be naïve,” he retorted. “This is too big for us to handle, Sophie. This is too big for Prodigium to deal with on their own. But if we could all work together, there’s a chance that-“ “What do you think, Cross? That we’ll ask The Eye to help us, and they’ll be all, ‘Sure, no problem! And once we’re done wiping out the demons, we certainly won’t kill the rest of you, even though that’s like, our mission in life!

What had happened in these ten years for there suddenly be so much to say — so much so pressing that it couldn’t wait to be said? Everywhere I walked, somebody was approaching me talking on a phone and someone was behind me talking on a phone. Inside the cars, the drivers were on the phone. When I took a taxi, the cabbie was on the phone. For one who frequently went without talking to anyone for days at a time, I had to wonder what that had previously held them up had collapsed in people to make incessant talking into a telephone preferable to walking about under no one’s surveillance, momentarily solitary, assimilating the streets through one’s animal senses and thinking the myriad thoughts that the activities of a city inspire. For me it made the streets appear comic and the people ridiculous. And yet it seemed like a real tragedy, too. To eradicate the experience of separation must inevitably have a dramatic effect. What will the consequence be? You know you can reach the other person anytime, and if you can't, you get impatient—impatient and angry like a stupid little god.

This place where she worked certainly didn't make it look as if she continued to believe her calling was to change the course of American history. The building's rusted fire escape would just come down, just come loose from its moorings and crash onto the street, if anyone stepped on it - a fire escape whose function was not to save lives in the event of a fire but to uselessly hang there testifying to the immense loneliness inherent to living. For him it was stripped of any other meaning - no meaning could make better use of that building. Yes, alone we are, deeply alone, and always, in store for us, a layer of loneliness even deeper. There is nothing we can do to dispose of that. No, loneliness shouldn't surprise us, as astonishing to experience it as it may be. You can try turning yourself inside out, but all you are then is inside out and lonely instead of inside in and lonely. My stupid, stupid Merry dear, stupider even than your stupid father, not even blowing up buildings helps. It's lonely if there are buildings and it's lonely if there are no buildings. There is no protest to be lodged against loneliness - not all the bombing campaigns in history have made a dent in it. The most lethat of manmade explosives can't touch it. Stand in awe not of Communism, my idiot child, but of ordinary, everyday loneliness. On May Day go out and march with your friends to its greater glory, the superpower of superpowers, the force that overwhelms all. Put your money on it, bet on it, worship it - bow down in submission not to Karl Marx, my stuttering, angry, idiot child, not to Ho Chi-Minh and Mao Tse-tung - bow down to the great god of Loneliness!

What I lived through is probably more than most people will ever have to endure, but anyone can apply those same instincts I relied on to problems confronting them. Always keep your mind active; don't be afraid to try something just because it might not work; never abandon faith in your fellow man. Be thankful for the good things in your life just in case they're snatched from your grasp and be sure to tell those you care about how you feel. It's no good wasting your energy on angry thoughts, you're better off dealing with the situation and planning ahead. Being afraid doesn't get you anywhere. As the old saying goes, whatever doesn't kill you can only make you stronger. Always remember that life is worth living and be prepared to fight for it with every ounce of your soul. You just never know what tomorrow might bring.

Anger demands you DO and sadness requires you be. For all my inherited comfort with anger, I find sitting in sadness to be excruciating. Anger is so much easier! It’s a quick release and it feels good in the moment, but it can really hurt people, which also hurts me. But if I can manage to sit in the uncomfortable feelings that lie beneath, even for a millisecond, I am offered a tiny gift. The gift of a pause. And in that pause a crack of light comes in and I’m able to see things a little more clearly. I know to immediately turn my phone off or, if I’m driving, pull over and put it in the trunk both for its own safety and so I don’t call anyone. And if I’m still mad after a few hours, great. I now know it’s something worth being angry about. But the pause allowed me to gather myself and harness my anger so I can now aim it in an appropriate

He turned his hollow gray eyes on her. "I'm angry," he said. "I am still so angry." Surprised, charlie started to open her mouth and then closed it again. "Last night, after you fell asleep, I couldn't stop looking at the swell of your cheek. The snarl of your dark hair. The shipped black nail polish on your toes, curled up against whatever dream you were having. The way you pulled loose the bottom sheet with the violence of sleeping. I looked at you and had a feeling so intense that it made me dizzy and a little sick." His gaze was on the silvery grass of the lawn. "It's no good to feel this way." Charlie's heart hammered. He had never spoken to her like that. She didn't think anyone had spoken to her like that. "Vince?" "When I saw you tonight - what he'd done, what he was doing, I wanted to kill him. I was furious and I haven't stopped being furious. I don't feel guilty. I wish he was alive so I could kill him again." Astonishment robbed her of breath. Vince didn't get angry. He didn't talk about his feelings. He didn't sit alone in the dark, talking about shadows and stars. He turned to her. "Pretend I didn't say any of that. If you can, pretend tonight never happened, Charlie.

give compassion to the part of you that feels angry, guilty, or resistant, even if you cannot define what that part is, or what the aversion is about. Give it permission to move out of it. Say to yourself: “It’s okay to feel resistance. I understand it. Thanks for the warning. It’s okay to leave. It’s okay to follow my own heart, and to be me.” Embrace your feelings with compassion, and choose NOW to express your joy, vision, and dreams without guilt, anger or other negative emotions. Your life belongs to you and to you only. You are not accountable to anyone for your values or the choices of your heart.

Stop Looking for Occasions to Be Offended When you live at or below ordinary levels of awareness, you spend a great deal of time and energy finding opportunities to be offended. Today we’re going to examine how you can stop allowing yourself to be offended by others and instead respond positively with love and forgiveness. A news report, an economic downturn, a rude stranger, a fashion miscue, someone cursing, a sneeze, a black cloud, any cloud, an absence of clouds—just about anything will do if you’re looking for an occasion to be offended. Along the extra mile, you’ll never find anyone engaging in such absurdities. Become a person who refuses to be offended by anyone, any thing, or any set of circumstances. If something takes place and you disapprove, by all means state what you feel from your heart; and if possible, work to eliminate it and then let it go. Most people operate from the ego and really need to be right. So, when you encounter someone saying things that you find inappropriate, or when you know they’re wrong, wrong, wrong, forget your need to be right and instead say, “You’re right about that!” Those words will end potential conflict and free you from being offended. Your desire is to be peaceful—not to be right, hurt, angry, or resentful. If you have enough faith in your own beliefs, you’ll find that it’s impossible to be offended by the beliefs and conduct of others. Not being offended is a way of saying, “I have control over how I’m going to feel, and I choose to feel peaceful regardless of what I observe going

One of the many real-life examples comes from Charlie Jones, a well-respected broadcaster for NBC-TV, who revealed that hearing the story of Who Moved My Cheese? saved his career. His job as a broadcaster is unique, but the principles he learned can be used by anyone. Here’s what happened: Charlie had worked hard and had done a great job of broadcasting Track and Field events at an earlier Olympic Games, so he was surprised and upset when his boss told him he’d been removed from these showcase events for the next Olympics and assigned to Swimming and Diving. Not knowing these sports as well, he was frustrated. He felt unappreciated and he became angry. He said he felt it wasn’t fair! His anger began to affect everything he did. Then, he heard the story of Who Moved My Cheese? After that he said he laughed at himself and changed his attitude. He realized his boss had just “moved his Cheese.” So he adapted. He learned the two new sports, and in the process, found that doing something new made him feel young. It wasn’t long before his boss recognized his new attitude and energy, and he soon got better assignments. He went on to enjoy more success than ever and was later inducted into Pro Football’s Hall of Fame—Broadcasters’ Alley. That’s

Have you hidden who you really are from those around you? Have you hidden how you are changing or aging from those around you? Have you hidden your needs and then become angry because they were not being met? “I hid myself.” You can’t have genuine friendships if you hide your true self. If you hide, then your friends will love what you do and not who you are! Suppose that for some reason you can no longer “do what you do.” Does anyone love you just because you are you? Have you revealed the “real you” to anyone else? True friendship and intimacy are achieved when you feel so comfortable around others that you can be yourself. Stop hiding yourself. If you don’t, you may lose your true self and become the lie you pretend to be!

You can’t just check out and think it will all be over. It won’t be over for anyone who loves you. You’ll only leave them to run after the pieces that scatter in the angry wind. You’ll leave them desperately trying to solve the problems you wouldn’t . . . all while plugging their own wounds. Even if you’re like me, single without children, you could impact generations.

I’d seen what evil could do. Evil never gave itself for anyone. It takes what it doesn’t own. Holds your head under the water. Rips your head off your neck and dangles it from the city wall. Evil dominates. Controls. Eradicates. Evil is a sniveling punk, and if you let it inside you then you spew hatred, which is just another name for the poison we drink hoping it’ll hurt someone else.” I glanced around the courtroom at Allie, Catalina, Gabby, Suzy, and finally at the cameras. “But not love. Love rushes in where others won’t. Where the bullets are flying. It stands between. Pours out. Empties itself. It scours the wasteland, returns the pieces that were lost, and it never counts the cost.” Despite a packed house, the room was silent. After a minute, I continued, “Love walks into hell, where I sit in chains, where the verdict is guilty, grabs you by the heart, and says to the warden, ‘Me for him.’” I turned and glanced at my brother. “Sir, we live in an angry, evil world. Where stuff doesn’t always make sense. Where hope seems like something we did when we were kids and the love we cling to slips through our fingers like cold water, but”—I tapped my chest—“nothing that happens here today changes the fact that love heals the shattered places.” I shook my head once. “It’s the only thing that can—” The faces in the courtroom held steady on mine. “It’s the only thing worth fighting for,” I finished, then turned to Bobby. I’d like to think my eyes smiled. “So, no, sir, I don’t hate my brother.

New Rule: Americans must realize what makes NFL football so great: socialism. That's right, the NFL takes money from the rich teams and gives it to the poorer one...just like President Obama wants to do with his secret army of ACORN volunteers. Green Bay, Wisconsin, has a population of one hundred thousand. Yet this sleepy little town on the banks of the Fuck-if-I-know River has just as much of a chance of making it to the Super Bowl as the New York Jets--who next year need to just shut the hell up and play. Now, me personally, I haven't watched a Super Bowl since 2004, when Janet Jackson's nipple popped out during halftime. and that split-second glimpse of an unrestrained black titty burned by eyes and offended me as a Christian. But I get it--who doesn't love the spectacle of juiced-up millionaires giving one another brain damage on a giant flatscreen TV with a picture so real it feels like Ben Roethlisberger is in your living room, grabbing your sister? It's no surprise that some one hundred million Americans will watch the Super Bowl--that's forty million more than go to church on Christmas--suck on that, Jesus! It's also eighty-five million more than watched the last game of the World Series, and in that is an economic lesson for America. Because football is built on an economic model of fairness and opportunity, and baseball is built on a model where the rich almost always win and the poor usually have no chance. The World Series is like The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. You have to be a rich bitch just to play. The Super Bowl is like Tila Tequila. Anyone can get in. Or to put it another way, football is more like the Democratic philosophy. Democrats don't want to eliminate capitalism or competition, but they'd like it if some kids didn't have to go to a crummy school in a rotten neighborhood while others get to go to a great school and their dad gets them into Harvard. Because when that happens, "achieving the American dream" is easy for some and just a fantasy for others. That's why the NFL literally shares the wealth--TV is their biggest source of revenue, and they put all of it in a big commie pot and split it thirty-two ways. Because they don't want anyone to fall too far behind. That's why the team that wins the Super Bowl picks last in the next draft. Or what the Republicans would call "punishing success." Baseball, on the other hand, is exactly like the Republicans, and I don't just mean it's incredibly boring. I mean their economic theory is every man for himself. The small-market Pittsburgh Steelers go to the Super Bowl more than anybody--but the Pittsburgh Pirates? Levi Johnston has sperm that will not grow and live long enough to see the Pirates in a World Series. Their payroll is $40 million; the Yankees' is $206 million. The Pirates have about as much chance as getting in the playoffs as a poor black teenager from Newark has of becoming the CEO of Halliburton. So you kind of have to laugh--the same angry white males who hate Obama because he's "redistributing wealth" just love football, a sport that succeeds economically because it does just that. To them, the NFL is as American as hot dogs, Chevrolet, apple pie, and a second, giant helping of apple pie.

Every single parent is doing the best he or she can. Never judge an angry parent who screams at their child, or judge any parent for any behavior. You don’t know them, you don’t know their story, you don’t know about their silent struggles or childhood traumas, you don’t know how hard it is for them, you don’t know anything about anyone. you don’t know what you would do if you were in their shoes. Viktor Frankl said, “No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether, in a similar situation, he might not have done the same.” We all do the best we can. It is hands down the hardest never-ending but fulfilling job on this planet. It isn’t easy to create, shape, and raise another human being when most of us aren’t raised, shaped, or grown up. So, one of the biggest lessons I also learned is to stay in my lane, don’t judge any parent, to never say never, and be compassionate toward myself and others. Of course, if you see a parent spanking a child, you have to stop them, if you know a child is in an unsafe environment, you have to change it and help any child in need, but try as hard as you can not to judge them and just let go of your thoughts when they arise. At the end of the day, we all do the best we can with the tools we have.

What about an axman?" he said. Gilan looked at him, nonplussed for a moment. "An axman?" he asked. "Yes," said Horace, warming to his theme. "What about if you're facing an enemy with a battleax? Do your knives work then?" Gilan hesitated. "I wouldn't advise anyone face a battleax with just two knives," he said carefully. "So what should I do?" Will joined in. Gilan glared from one boy to the other. He had the feeling he was being set up. "Shoot him," he said shortly. Will shook his head, grinning. "Can't," he said. "My bowstring's broken." "Then run and hide," said Gilan, between gritted teeth. "But there's a cliff," Horace pointed out. "A sheer drop behind him and an angry axman coming at him." "What do I do?" prompted Will. Gilan took a deep breath and looked them both in the eye, one after the other. "Jump off the cliff. It'll be less messy that way.

Thanks for getting me out of there,” I murmur, lacing my fingers around my knees, and looking up at him on his step. “Yeah. You looked a little green. “ “I don’t handle crowds too well. I’ve always been that way, I guess.” “You might get in trouble,” he warns, staring at me in that strange, hungry way that unravels me. He strokes his bottom lip with a finger. For a flash of a second, his eyes look strange. Different. All glowing irises and thin dark pupils. Almost drake-like. I blink to clear my vision. His eyes are normal again. Just my imagination in overdrive. I’m probably projecting missing home and Az—everything--onto him. “Pep rallies are mandatory,” he continues. “A lot of people saw you leave. Teachers included.” “They saw you leave, too,” I point out. He leans to the side, propping an elbow on one of the steps behind him. “I’m not worried about that. I’ve been in trouble before.” He smiles a crooked grin and holds up crossed fingers. “The principal and I are like this. The guy loves me. Really.” Laughter spills from me, rusty and hoarse. His grin makes me feel good. Free. Like I’m not running from anything. Like I could stay here in this world, if only I have him. The thought unsettles me. Sinks heavily in my chest. Because I can’t have him. Not really. All he can ever be for me is a temporary fix. “But you’re worried I’ll get in trouble?” I try not to show how much this pleases me. I’ve managed to ignore him for days now and here I sit. Lapping up his attention like a neglected puppy. My voice takes on an edge. “Why do you care? I’ve ignored you for days.” His smile fades. He looks serious, mockingly so. “Yeah. You got to stop that.” I swallow back a laugh. “I can’t.” “Why?” There’s no humor in his eyes now, no mockery. “You like me. You want to be with me.” “I never said—” “You didn’t have to.” I inhale sharply. “Don’t do this.” He looks at me so fiercely, so intently. Angry again. “I don’t have friends. Do you see me hang with anyone besides my jerk cousins? That’s for a reason. I keep people away on purpose,” he growls. “But then you came along . . .” I frown and shake my head. His expression softens then , pulls at some part of me. His gaze travels my face, warming the core of me. “Whoever you are, Jacinda, you’re someone I have to let in.

I was pregnant, and then I wasn’t,” she said softly. “I was in love, and then I wasn’t. You did that. You took those things from me. My family was collateral damage in a drive-by ordered by you.” “I’ve hated you longer than I’ve done much of anything else. No one hired me. I’m here because it’s the only way I’m still a mother to her. I can still be an angry mother even though she’s not here. But I’m not even doing that right.” Eve hung her head in defeat. She felt the numbness crawl over her again. Claim me. I have nothing left. Beckett dropped his arms and turned to face her. “Eve.” The odd sound of her name on his lips brought her eyes to his face. He was devastated. “What’s her name?” Beckett asked in an unsteady voice. Eve bit her lip. She’d never told anyone. “Anna.” Eve’s long-dry eyes filled with tears. Beckett made no move to cover himself or call for help. “That’s a beautiful name. Anna’s very lucky to have such a dedicated mother. Once you’re a mom, that title’s yours for-fucking-ever—like a president.” He reached over and chose the quietest pistol from the wall. He held it out to her. “No one will hear this one, so you should be able to get out of here. I’m so sorry. I caused you the most unimaginable pain. It would be my honor to die at your hand, if it gives you even a moment’s peace.” Eve stared at the gun for a long while. “That’s the worst part,” she whispered, her voice soaked with defeat. “I’m not strong enough. I’ve killed so many. I can kill anyone. But I can’t kill you.

Others may not notice it, because an angry Toraf is truly a rare thing to behold, but Galen can practically feel the animosity emanating from his friend. Which is why he casually bumps into him, taking care to be overly apologetic. “Oh, sorry about that, minnow. I didn’t even see you there.” Galen mimics Toraf’s demeanor, crossing his arms and staring ahead of them. What they’re supposed to be staring at, he’s not sure. His effort is rewarded with a slight upward curve of his friend’s mouth. “Oh, don’t think twice about it, tadpole. I know it must be difficult to swim straight with a whale’s tail.” Galen scowls, taking care not to glance down at his fin. Ever since they went to retrieve Grom, he’s been sore all below the waist, but he’d just attributed it to tension from finding Nalia, and then the whole tribunal mess-not to mention, hovering in place for hours at a time. Still, he did examine his fin the evening before, hoping to massage out any knots he found, but was a bit shocked to see that his fin span seemed to have widened. He decided that he was letting his imagination get the better of him. Now he’s not so sure. “What do you mean?” he says lightly. Toraf nods down toward the sand. “You know what I mean. Looks like you have the red fever.” “The red fever bloats you all over, idiot. Right before it kills you. It doesn’t make your fin grow wider. Besides, the red tide hasn’t been bad for years now.” But Toraf already knows what the red fever looks like. Not long after he first became a Tracker, Toraf was commissioned to find an older Syrena who had gone off on his own to die after he’d been caught in what the humans call the red tide. Toraf was forced to tie seaweed around the old one’s fin and pull his body to the Cave of Memories. No, he doesn’t think I have the red fever. Toraf allows himself a long look at Galen’s fin. If it were anyone else, Galen would consider it rude. “Does it hurt?” “It’s sore.” “Have you asked anyone about it?” “I’ve had other things on my mind.” Which is the truth. Galen really hadn’t given it much thought until right now. Now that it has been noticed by someone else. Toraf pulls his own fin around and after a few seconds of twisting and bending, he’s able to measure it against his torso. It spans from his neck to where his waist turns into velvety tail. He nods to Galen to do the same. Galen is horrified to find that his fin now spans from the top of his head to well below his waist. It really does look like a whale tail. “I don’t know how I feel about that,” Toraf says, thoughtful. “I’ve gotten used to having the most impressive fin out of the two of us.” Galen grins, letting his tail fall. “For a minute there I thought you really cared.” Toraf shrugs. “Being self-conscious doesn’t suit you.” Galen follows his gaze back out into the sea ahead of them. “So what do you think about yesterday’s tribunal?” “I think I know where Nalia and Emma get their temper.” Galen laughs. “I thought Jagen was going to pass out when Antonis grabbed him.” “He’s not very good at interacting with others anymore, is he?” “I wonder if he ever was. I told you how crazy Nalia always acted. Could be a family trait.” It looks like Toraf might actually smile but instead his gaze jerks back out to sea, a new scowl on his face. “Oh, no,” Galen groans. “What is it?” Please don’t say Emma. Please don’t say Emma. “Rayna,” Toraf says through clenched teeth. “She’s heading straight for us.” That’s almost as bad.

Eider nodded slowly, her eyes never leaving Glokta's face. 'That must have been hard. To come back, after all that time in the darkness, and to find that your friends had no use for you. To see in their faces only guilt, and pity, and disgust. To find yourself alone.' Glokta's eyelid was twitching, and he rubbed at it gently. He had never discussed such things with anyone before. And now here I am, discussing them with a stranger. 'There can be no doubt that I'm a tragic figure. I used to be a shit of a man, now I'm a husk of one. Take your pick.' 'I imagine it makes you sick, to be treated that way. Very sick, and very angry.' If only you knew. 'It still seems a strange decision, though, for the tortured to turn torturer.' 'On the contrary, nothing could be more natural. In my experience, people do as they are done to. You were sold by your father and bought by your husband, and yet you choose to buy and sell.' Eider frowned. Something for her to think about, perhaps? 'I would have thought your pain would give you empathy.' 'Empathy? What's that?' Glokta winced as he rubbed at his aching leg. 'It's a sad fact, but pain only makes you sorry for yourself.

But you're worried I'll get in trouble?" I try not to show how much this pleases me. I've managed to ignore him for days now and here I sit. Lapping up his attention like a neglected puppy. My voice takes on an edge. "Why do you care? I've ignored you for days." His smile fades. He looks serious, mockingly so. "Yeah. You got to stop that." I swallow back a laugh. "I can't." "Why?" There's no humor in his eyes now, no mockery. "You like me. You want to be with me." "I never said-" "You didn't have to." I inhale sharply. "Don't do this." He looks at me so fiercely, so intently. Angry again. "I don't have friends. Do you see my hang with anyone besides my jerk cousins? That's for a reason. I keep people away on purpose," he growls. "But then you came along..." I frown and shake my head. His expression softens then, pulls at some part of me. His gaze travels my face, warming the core of me. "Whoever you are, Jacinda, you're someone I have to let in." He doesn't say anything for a while, just studies me in that intense way. His nostrils flare, and again it's like he's taking in my scent or something. He continues, "Somehow, I think I know you. From the first moment I saw you, I felt that I knew you." The words run through me, reminding me of when he let me escape in the mountains. He's good. Protective. I have nothing to fear from him, but everything to fear from his family. I scoot closer, the draw of him too great. My warming core, the vibrations inside my chest feel so natural, so effortless around him. I know I need to be careful, exercise restraint, but it feels too good. The pulse at his neck skips against his flesh. "Jacinda." My skin ripples at his hoarse whisper. I stare up at him, waiting. He slides down to land solidly on my step. He brings his face close to mine, angles his head. His breath is hard. Fast. Fills the space, the inch separating us. I touch his cheek, see my hand shake, and quickly pull it back. He grabs my wrist, places my palm back against his cheek, and closes his eyes like he's in agony. Or bliss. Or maybe both. Like he's never been touched before. My heart squeezes. Like I've never touched anyone before. "Don't stay away from me anymore." I stop myself, just barely, from telling him I won't. I can't promise that. Can't lie. He opens his eyes. Stares starkly, bleakly. "I need you." He says this like it doesn't make sense to him. Like it's the worst possible thing. A misery he must endure. I smile, understanding. Because it's the same for me. "I know." Then he kisses me.

Pay attention to everything the dying person says. You might want to keep pens and a spiral notebook beside the bed so that anyone can jot down notes about gestures, conversations, or anything out of the ordinary said by the dying person. Talk with one another about these comments and gestures. • Remember that there may be important messages in any communication, however vague or garbled. Not every statement made by a dying person has significance, but heed them all so as not to miss the ones that do. • Watch for key signs: a glassy-eyed look; the appearance of staring through you; distractedness or secretiveness; seemingly inappropriate smiles or gestures, such as pointing, reaching toward someone or something unseen, or waving when no one is there; efforts to pick at the covers or get out of bed for no apparent reason; agitation or distress at your inability to comprehend something the dying person has tried to say. • Respond to anything you don’t understand with gentle inquiries. “Can you tell me what’s happening?” is sometimes a helpful way to initiate this kind of conversation. You might also try saying, “You seem different today. Can you tell me why?” • Pose questions in open-ended, encouraging terms. For example, if a dying person whose mother is long dead says, “My mother’s waiting for me,” turn that comment into a question: “Mother’s waiting for you?” or “I’m so glad she’s close to you. Can you tell me about it?” • Accept and validate what the dying person tells you. If he says, “I see a beautiful place!” say, “That’s wonderful! Can you tell me more about it?” or “I’m so pleased. I can see that it makes you happy,” or “I’m so glad you’re telling me this. I really want to understand what’s happening to you. Can you tell me more?” • Don’t argue or challenge. By saying something like “You couldn’t possibly have seen Mother, she’s been dead for ten years,” you could increase the dying person’s frustration and isolation, and run the risk of putting an end to further attempts at communicating. • Remember that a dying person may employ images from life experiences like work or hobbies. A pilot may talk about getting ready to go for a flight; carry the metaphor forward: “Do you know when it leaves?” or “Is there anyone on the plane you know?” or “Is there anything I can do to help you get ready for takeoff?” • Be honest about having trouble understanding. One way is to say, “I think you’re trying to tell me something important and I’m trying very hard, but I’m just not getting it. I’ll keep on trying. Please don’t give up on me.” • Don’t push. Let the dying control the breadth and depth of the conversation—they may not be able to put their experiences into words; insisting on more talk may frustrate or overwhelm them. • Avoid instilling a sense of failure in the dying person. If the information is garbled or the delivery impossibly vague, show that you appreciate the effort by saying, “I can see that this is hard for you; I appreciate your trying to share it with me,” or “I can see you’re getting tired/angry/frustrated. Would it be easier if we talked about this later?” or “Don’t worry. We’ll keep trying and maybe it will come.” • If you don’t know what to say, don’t say anything. Sometimes the best response is simply to touch the dying person’s hand, or smile and stroke his or her forehead. Touching gives the very important message “I’m with you.” Or you could say, “That’s interesting, let me think about it.” • Remember that sometimes the one dying picks an unlikely confidant. Dying people often try to communicate important information to someone who makes them feel safe—who won’t get upset or be taken aback by such confidences. If you’re an outsider chosen for this role, share the information as gently and completely as possible with the appropriate family members or friends. They may be more familiar with innuendos in a message because they know the person well.

Or I can stay with Colby when he comes back,” she added deliberately. She even smiled. “He’ll take care of me.” His black eyes narrowed. “He can barely take care of himself,” he said flatly. “He’s a lost soul. He can’t escape the past or face the future without Maureen. He isn’t ready for a relationship with anyone else, even if he thinks he is” She didn’t rise to the bait. “I can count on Colby. He’ll help me if I need it.” He looked frustrated. “But you won’t let me help you.” “Colby isn’t involved with anyone who’d be jealous of the time he spent looking out for me. That’s the difference.” He let out an angry breath and his eyes began to glitter. “You have to beat the subject to death, I guess.” She managed to look indifferent. “You have your own life to live, Tate. I’m not part of it anymore. You’ve made that quite clear.” His teeth clenched. “Is it really that easy for you to throw the past away?” he asked. “That’s what you want,” she reminded him. There was a perverse pleasure in watching his eyes narrow. “You said you’d never forget or forgive me,” she added evenly. “I took you at your word. I’ll always have fond memories of you and Leta. But I’m a grown woman. I have a career, a future. I’ve dragged you down financially for years, without knowing it. Now that I do…” “For God’s sake!” he burst out, rising to pace with his hands clenched in his pockets. “I could have sent you to Harvard if you’d wanted to go there, and never felt the cost! “You’re missing the point,” she said, feeling nausea rise in her throat and praying it wouldn’t overflow. “I could have worked my way through school, paid for my own apartment and expenses. I wouldn’t have minded. But you made me beholden to you in a way I can never repay.” He stopped pacing and glared at her. “Have I asked for repayment?” She smiled in spite of herself. “You look just like Matt when you glower that way.” The glare got worse. She held up a hand. “I know. You don’t want to talk about that. Sorry.” “Everyone else wants to talk about it,” he said irritably. “I’ve done nothing but dodge reporters ever since the story broke. What a hell of a way to do it, on national television!

And once we get hold of it, how do you destroy a Horcrux?” asked Ron. “Well,” said Hermione, “I’ve been researching that.” “How?” asked Harry. “I didn’t think there were any books on Horcruxes in the library?” “There weren’t,” said Hermione, who had turned pink. “Dumbledore removed them all, but he--he didn’t destroy them.” Ron sat up straight, wide-eyed. “How in the name of Merlin’s pants have you managed to get your hands on those Horcrux books?” “It--it wasn’t stealing!” said Hermione, looking from Harry to Ron with a kind of desperation. “They were still library books, even if Dumbledore had taken them off the shelves. Anyway, if he really didn’t want anyone to get at them, I’m sure he would have made it much harder to--” “Get to the point!” said Ron. “Well…it was easy,” said Hermione in a small voice. “I just did a Summoning Charm. You know--Accio. And--they zoomed out of Dumbledore’s study window right into the girls’ dormitory.” “But when did you do this?” Harry asked, regarding Hermione with a mixture of admiration and incredulity. “Just after his--Dumbledore’s--funeral,” said Hermione in an even smaller voice. “Right after we agreed we’d leave school and go and look for the Horcruxes. When I went back upstairs to get my things it--it just occurred to me that the more we knew about them, the better it would be…and I was alone in there…so I tried…and it worked. They flew straight in through the open window and I--I packed them.” She swallowed and then said imploringly, “I can’t believe Dumbledore would have been angry, it’s not as though we’re going to use the information to make a Horcrux, is it?” “Can you hear us complaining?” said Ron.

You can’t be in here.” Ian stated it as a fact. Sam sank back onto the bed. He was definitely growing stronger, but standing could be troublesome on shaky legs. The pain of his wound had definitely receded. “Why not?” he asked a little belligerently. “She can’t; it’s impossible. I was standing guard at her door.” Ian’s gaze met Azami’s. “To protect you of course.” “Of course, because there are so many enemies creeping around your halls,” Azami said, her voice soft and pleasant, a musical quality lending innocence and sweetness. Ian’s frown deepened as if he was puzzled. She certainly couldn’t have meant that the way it came out, anyone listening would be certain of it. “Just what are you two doing in here anyway?” he asked, suspicion lending his tone a dark melodrama. He even wiggled his eyebrows like a villain. Sam kept a straight face with difficulty. Ian was a large man with red hair and freckles. He didn’t look in the least bit mean or threatening, even when he tried. “Azami was just telling me how when she left her room to inquire after my health, there was a giant man with carroty hair snoring in the hallway beside her door.” “There was no way to get past me,” Ian insisted. Sam grinned at him. “Are you saying you did fall asleep on the job, then?” “Hell no.” Ian scowled at him. “I was wide awake and she didn’t slap past me.” “You say,” Sam pointed out, his tone mocking as he folded his arms across his chest and leaned back casually, pleased he could tease his friend. “Still, she’s here and that proves you were looking the other way or sleeping, just like that time in Indonesia when we parachuted in and you fell asleep on the way down. I believe that time you got tangled in a very large tree right in the center of the enemies’ camp.” Azami’s lashes fluttered, drawing Sam’s attention. He almost reached out to her, wanting to hold her hand, but she’d mentioned a couple of times she didn’t show affection in public. “You fell asleep while parachuting?” she asked, clearly uncertain whether or not they were joking. Ian shook his head. “I did not. A gust of heavy wind came along and pushed me right into that tree. Gator told everyone I was snoring when he shoved me out of the plane. The entire episode is all vicious fabrication. On the other hand, Sam here, actually did fall asleep while he was driving as we were escaping a very angry drug lord in Brazil.” Azami raised her eyebrow as she turned to Sam for an explanation. Her eyes laughed at him and again he had a wild urge to pull her to him and hold her tight. Primitive urges had never been a part of his makeup until she’d come along; now he figured he was becoming a caveman. Her gaze slid to his face as if she knew what he was thinking—which was probably the case. He flashed a grin at her.

I’d like you to come to Kauai with me,” I say. “And Scottie. I think it would be good to get her away from the hospital for a day. We can leave in the morning, find him, and be home tomorrow night. If it takes us a day longer, that’s fine, but we won’t stay more than two nights. That’s our deadline. If we don’t find him, then at least we know we tried.” “And this will make you feel better somehow?” “It’s for her,” I say. “Not for him or me.” “What if he’s a wreck? What if he loses his shit?” “Then I’ll take care of him.” I imagine Brian Speer wailing on my shoulder. I imagine him and my daughters by Joanie’s bed, her lover and his loud sobs shaming us. “Just so you know, I am angry. I’m not this pure and noble guy. I want to do this for her, but I also want to see who he is. I want to ask him a few things.” “Just call him. Tell his office it’s an emergency. They’ll have him call you.” “I want to tell him in person. I haven’t told anyone over the phone, and I don’t want to start now.” “You told Troy.” “Troy doesn’t count. I just need to do this. On the phone he can escape. If I see him in person, he’ll have nowhere to go.” We both look away when our eyes meet. She hasn’t crossed the border into my room. She never does during her nighttime doorway chats. “Were you guys having trouble?” Alex asks. “Is that why she cheated?” “I didn’t think we were having trouble,” I say. “I mean, it was the same as always.” This was the problem, that our marriage was the same as always. Joanie needed bumps. She needed rough terrain. It’s funny that I can get lost in thoughts about her, but when she was right in front of me, I didn’t think much about her at all. “I wasn’t the best husband,” I say. Alex looks out the window to avoid my confession. “If we go on this trip, what will we tell Scottie?” “She’ll think we’re going on a trip of some sort. I want to get her away from here.

Wait in the car." He opened the door and started to climb out. "Hold on! How long should I give you? What if you don't come back in a certain number of minutes? Should I call the cops?" "Don't do anything. Don't call anyone. I'll be fine." "But what if you're not?" "Then go home." And with that, he got out and jogged down the street, like if I heard screams or gunshots or whatever I would just drive on home like nothing happened. Well, good for you, I thought, watching him climb a short cement staircase and put a key in the door. You don't need anyone. Fine. I watched the clock. Three minutes went by, four. I thought about knocking on the door, having of course no idea what I would actually do once I got there. Maybe I'd have to break the door down, wrestle Cameron away from the bad men, and then carry him out the way you hear people when they get a huge burst of adrenaline. Except the person I pictured rescuing was little Cameron, in shorts and a striped T-shirt, his arms wrapped around my neck. Then there he was, bursting out of the apartment door and bounding down the steps, a big garbage bag in hand. He ran to the car, fast. I reached over and opened the passenger door and he jumped in. "Go." You can't exactly peel out in a '94 Escort, but I did my best. Cameron breathed hard, clutching the garbage bag to his chest. "What happened?" I drove a good fifteen miles per hour over the speed limit, convinced we were being chased by angry roommates with guns. "Nothing. You can slow down." I didn't. "Nothing? Nothing happened?" "They weren't even there." Then I did slow down. "No one was there? At all?" "Right." His breathing had returned to almost normal. "Then what's the deal with freaking me out like that?" My voice came out high and hysterical and I realized how nervous I'd been, imagining some dangerous scenario from which Cameron had barely escaped, an echo of that day at his house. "I don't know. I started to picture one of them pulling up and finding me there and...I panicked.

I'm angry at the lies that hide behind my eyes But untangling them scares me, so I keep them alive. I'm angry at the chip in my tooth and the crick in my back, And the fact that it's too late to change my track. I'm angry that my heart beat is a stutter and my mouth follows suit And that the rain seeps in through the holes in my boots I'm angry that not one of you will know what I mean Even if I break it into syllables and put it on a screen I'm angry that the world keeps its answers under lock and key If it's revealing them to anyone, it sure isn't me I'm angry that there's more of us on Earth than there has been before And though it's doubtful we can take it, people still want more I'm angry at the idleness that you call industry Call it caution, call it planning, but it looks like lethargy I'm angry that my friends are strangers, even after we meet As though we know we'll never ever see the other one's street I'm angry that we hide behind the media-sphere Though all of us are present, there is nobody here I'm angry that the world demands I stay on the ball I'm angry that I'm not angry-- at all.

He turned his hollow gray eyes on her. "I'm Angry," he said. "I am still so angry." Surprised, charlie started to open her mouth and then closed it again. "Last night, after you fell asleep, I couldn't stop looking at the swell of your cheek. The snarl of your dark hair. The shipped black nail polish on your toes, curled up against whatever dream you were having. The way you pulled loose the bottom sheet with the violence of sleeping. I looked at you and had a feeling so intense that it made me dizzy and a little sick." His gaze was on the silvery grass of the lawn. "It's no good to feel this way." Charlie's heart hammered. He had never spoken to her like that. She didn't think anyone had spoken to her like that. "Vince?" "When I saw you tonight - what he'd done, what he was doing, I wanted to kill him. I was furious and I haven't stopped being furious. I don't feel guilty. I wish he was alive so I could kill him again." Astonishment robbed her of breath. Vince didn't get angry. He didn't talk about his feelings. He didn't sit alone in the dark, talking about shadows and stars. He turned to her. "Pretend I didn't say any of that. If you can, pretend tonight never happened, Charlie.

Apply humor. Lightening up lends perspective to any situation. The following story, sent to me on the Internet, provides a good example of humor diffusing a tense situation: An irate crowd of air travelers stood in a long line at a United Airlines ticket counter after their flight had been canceled, when an angry man walked to the front of the line, threw his ticket on the counter, and yelled, “I want a first-class seat on the next flight out, now!” The harried ticket agent, brushing back a lock of hair, replied, “I'll be glad to help you, sir, as soon as I take care of the people in line.” “You want me to wait in line?“ he yelled even louder. “Do you know who I am?“ The ticket agent hesitated only a moment before picking up the microphone, turning up the PA system, and announcing to the waiting area, “Ladies and gentlemen, there is a man at gate seventeen who does not know who he is. If anyone can help him find his identity—” “Screw you, lady!” the man yelled, storming off. In a parting shot she added, “Sir, I'm afraid you'll have to wait in line for that, too.” Her humor didn't help improve his emotions, but it helped hers. And the previously irate people waiting in the line were now smiling or laughing. No one else complained.

That’s your ghoul, isn’t it?” asked Harry, who had never actually met the creature that sometimes disrupted the nightly silence. “Yeah, it is,” said Ron, climbing the ladder. “Come and have a look at him.” Harry followed Ron up the few short steps into the tiny attic space. His head and shoulders were in the room before he caught sight of the creature curled up a few feet from him, fast asleep in the gloom with its large mouth wide open. “But it . . . it looks . . . do ghouls normally wear pajamas?” “No,” said Ron. “Nor have they usually got red hair or that number of pustules.” Harry contemplated the thing, slightly revolted. It was human in shape and size, and was wearing what, now that Harry’s eyes became used to the darkness, was clearly an old pair of Ron’s pajamas. He was also sure that ghouls were generally rather slimy and bald, rather than distinctly hairy and covered in angry purple blisters. “He’s me, see?” said Ron. “No,” said Harry. “I don’t.” “I’ll explain it back in my room, the smell’s getting to me,” said Ron. They climbed back down the ladder, which Ron returned to the ceiling, and rejoined Hermione, who was still sorting books. “Once we’ve left, the ghoul’s going to come and live down here in my room,” said Ron. “I think he’s really looking forward to it—well, it’s hard to tell, because all he can do is moan and drool—but he nods a lot when you mention it. Anyway, he’s going to be me with spattergroit. Good, eh?” Harry merely looked his confusion. “It is!” said Ron, clearly frustrated that Harry had not grasped the brilliance of the plan. “Look, when we three don’t turn up at Hogwarts again, everyone’s going to think Hermione and I must be with you, right? Which means the Death Eaters will go straight for our families to see if they’ve got information on where you are.” “But hopefully it’ll look like I’ve gone away with Mum and Dad; a lot of Muggle-borns are talking about going into hiding at the moment,” said Hermione. “We can’t hide my whole family, it’ll look too fishy and they can’t all leave their jobs,” said Ron. “So we’re going to put out the story that I’m seriously ill with spattergroit, which is why I can’t go back to school. If anyone comes calling to investigate, Mum or Dad can show them the ghoul in my bed, covered in pustules. Spattergroit’s really contagious, so they’re not going to want to go near him. It won’t matter that he can’t say anything, either, because apparently you can’t once the fungus has spread to your uvula.

Dear Mr. Beard, On the radio last spring, President Roosevelt said that each and every one of us here on the home front has a battle to fight; We must keep our spirits up. I am doing my best, but in my opinion Liver Gems are a lost cause, because they would take the spirit right out of anyone. So when Mother says it is wrong for us to eat better than our brave men overseas, I tell her that I don't see how eating disgusting stuff helps them in the least. But, Mr. Beard, it is very hard to cook good food when you're only a beginner! When Mother decided it was her patriotic duty to work at the airplane factory, she should have warned me about the recipes. You just can't trust them! Prudence Penny's are so revolting. I want to throw them right into the garbage. Mrs. Davis from next door lent me one of her wartime recipe pamphlets, and I read about liver salmi, which sounded so romantic. But by the time I had cooked the liver for twenty minutes in hot water, cut it into little cubes, rolled them in flour, and sautéed them in fat, I'd made flour footprints all over the kitchen floor. The consommé and cream both hissed like angry cats when I added them. Then I was supposed to add stoned olives and taste for seasoning. I spit it right into the sink.

(a) A writer always wears glasses and never combs his hair. Half the time he feels angry about everything and the other half depressed. He spends most of his life in bars, arguing with other dishevelled, bespectacled writers. He says very ‘deep’ things. He always has amazing ideas for the plot of his next novel, and hates the one he has just published. (b) A writer has a duty and an obligation never to be understood by his own generation; convinced, as he is, that he has been born into an age of mediocrity, he believes that being understood would mean losing his chance of ever being considered a genius. A writer revises and rewrites each sentence many times. The vocabulary of the average man is made up of 3,000 words; a real writer never uses any of these, because there are another 189,000 in the dictionary, and he is not the average man. (c) Only other writers can understand what a writer is trying to say. Even so, he secretly hates all other writers, because they are always jockeying for the same vacancies left by the history of literature over the centuries. And so the writer and his peers compete for the prize of ‘most complicated book’: the one who wins will be the one who has succeeded in being the most difficult to read. (d) A writer understands about things with alarming names, like semiotics, epistemology, neoconcretism. When he wants to shock someone, he says things like: ‘Einstein is a fool’, or ‘Tolstoy was the clown of the bourgeoisie.’ Everyone is scandalized, but they nevertheless go and tell other people that the theory of relativity is bunk, and that Tolstoy was a defender of the Russian aristocracy. (e) When trying to seduce a woman, a writer says: ‘I’m a writer’, and scribbles a poem on a napkin. It always works. (f) Given his vast culture, a writer can always get work as a literary critic. In that role, he can show his generosity by writing about his friends’ books. Half of any such reviews are made up of quotations from foreign authors and the other half of analyses of sentences, always using expressions such as ‘the epistemological cut’, or ‘an integrated bi-dimensional vision of life’. Anyone reading the review will say: ‘What a cultivated person’, but he won’t buy the book because he’ll be afraid he might not know how to continue reading when the epistemological cut appears. (g) When invited to say what he is reading at the moment, a writer always mentions a book no one has ever heard of. (h) There is only one book that arouses the unanimous admiration of the writer and his peers: Ulysses by James Joyce. No writer will ever speak ill of this book, but when someone asks him what it’s about, he can’t quite explain, making one doubt that he has actually read it.

The pathway is smooth. Why do you throw rocks before you?’ Using the Pain-to-Power Chart to help, you can begin to clear the rocks in front of you. These steps will help you clear the way: 1. Draw a large copy of the Pain-to-Power Chart and stick it on your wall. Just the simple act of making it larger will make you feel a little more powerful. You are already taking action! Remember that much of the trick of moving from pain to power is taking action – action is very powerful! Once the chart is on your wall it will always remind you of where you want to go in life – from pain to power. Awareness, knowledge, is half the battle. Having the chart on your wall will also help you to keep moving forward. 2. Put a pin at the place on the chart where you see yourself at this moment in your life. Are you in the middle, where you sometimes feel depressed and stuck, and at other times more in control? Or do you find yourself on the far left side, where there is little you are able to do to pull yourself out of the rut? Or perhaps you are already on the right side, where you feel you are really moving ahead with your life, with only a few areas that need to be worked on. I doubt that anyone reading this book has reached their goal of gaining total power over the self. Even the Buddhas don’t have power over their selves all the time! There are always new events that challenge a sense of personal power. 3. Each day look at the chart and ask yourself, ‘Do I see myself at the same place, or have I moved?’ Move the pin if you have moved. 4. If you keep in mind the way you want to go, it will help you make choices about what you are doing in your life. Before you take any action in life, ask yourself: ‘Is this action moving me to a more powerful place?’ If it isn’t, think again about doing it. A word of warning – if you go ahead anyway, knowing the action will keep you in a place of pain, don’t get angry with yourself about it. Use your mistakes to learn more about yourself. 5. Make your use of the chart fun. Having it as a game keeps you relaxed about how you are getting on. If you have children, they can create their own charts, and you can make a family game out of the fun of growing. 6. You might want to make different charts for different areas of your life. To be really powerful, you need to be in charge of all aspects of your life – your work, relationships, home, body, and so on. Often people are very powerful in some parts of their lives and very weak in others. For example, I am very powerful in terms of my career, but need to work on the area of exercise. To help you on your Pain-to-Power path, it’s important that you begin to develop Pain-to-Power words. The way you use words has a huge impact on the quality of your life. Certain words make you weaker; others make you powerful. Choose to move to Pain-to-Power Words as follows: PAIN-TO-POWER VOCABULARY • ‘I can’t’ suggests you have no control over your life, but ‘I won’t’ puts an issue in the area of choice. From this moment on, stop saying, ‘I can’t’.

Christina walks out, bumping me with her shoulder as she leaves. Tris lifts her eyes to mine. “We should talk,” I say. “Fine,” she says, and I follow her into the hallway. We stand next to the door until everyone else leaves. Her shoulders are drawn in like she’s trying to make herself even smaller, trying to evaporate on the spot, and we stand too far apart, the entire width of the hallway between us. I try to remember the last time I kissed her and I can’t. Finally we’re alone, and the hallway is quiet. My hands start to tingle and go numb, the way they always do when I panic. “Do you think you’ll ever forgive me?” I say. She shakes her head, but says, “I don’t know. I think that’s what I need to figure out.” “You know…you know I never wanted Uriah to get hurt, right?” I look at the stitches crossing her forehead and I add, “Or you. I never wanted you to get hurt either.” She’s tapping her foot, her body shifting with the movement. She nods. “I know that.” “I had to do something,” I say. “I had to.” “A lot of people got hurt,” she says. “All because you dismissed what I said, because--and this is the worst part, Tobias--because you thought I was being petty and jealous. Just some silly sixteen-year-old girl, right?” She shakes her head. “I would never call you silly or petty,” I say sternly. “I thought your judgment was clouded, yes. But that’s all.” “That’s enough.” Her fingers slide through her hair and wrap around it. “It’s just the same thing all over again, isn’t it? You don’t respect me as much as you say you do. When it comes down to it, you still believe I can’t think rationally--” “That is not what’s happening!” I say hotly. “I respect you more than anyone. But right now I’m wondering what bothers you more, that I made a stupid decision or that I didn’t make your decision.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” “It means,” I say, “that you may have said you just wanted us to be honest with each other, but I think you really wanted me to always agree with you.” “I can’t believe you would say that! You were wrong--” “Yeah, I was wrong!” I’m shouting now, and I don’t know where the anger came from, except that I can feel it swirling around inside me, violent and vicious and the strongest I have felt in days. “I was wrong, I made a huge mistake! My best friend’s brother is as good as dead! And now you’re acting like a parent, punishing me for it because I didn’t do as I was told. Well, you are not my parent, Tris, and you don’t get to tell me what to do, what to choose--!” “Stop yelling at me,” she says quietly, and she finally looks at me. I used to see all kinds of things in her eyes, love and longing and curiosity, but now all I see is anger. “Just stop.” Her quiet voice stalls the anger inside me, and I relax into the wall behind me, shoving my hands into my pockets. I didn’t mean to yell at her. I didn’t mean to get angry at all. I stare, shocked, as tears touch her cheeks. I haven’t seen her cry in a long time. She sniffs, and gulps, and tries to sound normal, but she doesn’t. “I just need some time,” she says, choking on each word. “Okay?” “Okay,” I say. She wipes her cheeks with her palms and walks down the hallway. I watch her blond head until it disappears around the bend, and I feel bare, like there’s nothing left to protect me against pain. Her absence stings worst of all.

Toward an Organic Philosophy SPRING, COAST RANGE The glow of my campfire is dark red and flameless, The circle of white ash widens around it. I get up and walk off in the moonlight and each time I look back the red is deeper and the light smaller. Scorpio rises late with Mars caught in his claw; The moon has come before them, the light Like a choir of children in the young laurel trees. It is April; the shad, the hot headed fish, Climbs the rivers; there is trillium in the damp canyons; The foetid adder’s tongue lolls by the waterfall. There was a farm at this campsite once, it is almost gone now. There were sheep here after the farm, and fire Long ago burned the redwoods out of the gulch, The Douglas fir off the ridge; today the soil Is stony and incoherent, the small stones lie flat And plate the surface like scales. Twenty years ago the spreading gully Toppled the big oak over onto the house. Now there is nothing left but the foundations Hidden in poison oak, and above on the ridge, Six lonely, ominous fenceposts; The redwood beams of the barn make a footbridge Over the deep waterless creek bed; The hills are covered with wild oats Dry and white by midsummer. I walk in the random survivals of the orchard. In a patch of moonlight a mole Shakes his tunnel like an angry vein; Orion walks waist deep in the fog coming in from the ocean; Leo crouches under the zenith. There are tiny hard fruits already on the plum trees. The purity of the apple blossoms is incredible. As the wind dies down their fragrance Clusters around them like thick smoke. All the day they roared with bees, in the moonlight They are silent and immaculate. SPRING, SIERRA NEVADA Once more golden Scorpio glows over the col Above Deadman Canyon, orderly and brilliant, Like an inspiration in the brain of Archimedes. I have seen its light over the warm sea, Over the coconut beaches, phosphorescent and pulsing; And the living light in the water Shivering away from the swimming hand, Creeping against the lips, filling the floating hair. Here where the glaciers have been and the snow stays late, The stone is clean as light, the light steady as stone. The relationship of stone, ice and stars is systematic and enduring: Novelty emerges after centuries, a rock spalls from the cliffs, The glacier contracts and turns grayer, The stream cuts new sinuosities in the meadow, The sun moves through space and the earth with it, The stars change places. The snow has lasted longer this year, Than anyone can remember. The lowest meadow is a lake, The next two are snowfields, the pass is covered with snow, Only the steepest rocks are bare. Between the pass And the last meadow the snowfield gapes for a hundred feet, In a narrow blue chasm through which a waterfall drops, Spangled with sunset at the top, black and muscular Where it disappears again in the snow. The world is filled with hidden running water That pounds in the ears like ether; The granite needles rise from the snow, pale as steel; Above the copper mine the cliff is blood red, The white snow breaks at the edge of it; The sky comes close to my eyes like the blue eyes Of someone kissed in sleep. I descend to camp, To the young, sticky, wrinkled aspen leaves, To the first violets and wild cyclamen, And cook supper in the blue twilight. All night deer pass over the snow on sharp hooves, In the darkness their cold muzzles find the new grass At the edge of the snow.

Creating “Correct” Children in the Classroom One of the most popular discipline programs in American schools is called Assertive Discipline. It teaches teachers to inflict the old “obey or suffer” method of control on students. Here you disguise the threat of punishment by calling it a choice the child is making. As in, “You have a choice, you can either finish your homework or miss the outing this weekend.” Then when the child chooses to try to protect his dignity against this form of terrorism, by refusing to do his homework, you tell him he has chosen his logical, natural consequence of being excluded from the outing. Putting it this way helps the parent or teacher mitigate against the bad feelings and guilt that would otherwise arise to tell the adult that they are operating outside the principles of compassionate relating. This insidious method is even worse than outand-out punishing, where you can at least rebel against your punisher. The use of this mind game teaches the child the false, crazy-making belief that they wanted something bad or painful to happen to them. These programs also have the stated intention of getting the child to be angry with himself for making a poor choice. In this smoke and mirrors game, the children are “causing” everything to happen and the teachers are the puppets of the children’s choices. The only ones who are not taking responsibility for their actions are the adults. Another popular coercive strategy is to use “peer pressure” to create compliance. For instance, a teacher tells her class that if anyone misbehaves then they all won’t get their pizza party. What a great way to turn children against each other. All this is done to help (translation: compel) children to behave themselves. But of course they are not behaving themselves: they are being “behaved” by the adults. Well-meaning teachers and parents try to teach children to be motivated (translation: do boring or aversive stuff without questioning why), responsible (translation: thoughtless conformity to the house rules) people. When surveys are conducted in which fourth-graders are asked what being good means, over 90% answer “being quiet.” And when teachers are asked what happens in a successful classroom, the answer is, “the teacher is able to keep the students on task” (translation: in line, doing what they are told). Consulting firms measuring teacher competence consider this a major criterion of teacher effectiveness. In other words if the students are quietly doing what they were told the teacher is evaluated as good. However my understanding of ‘real learning’ with twenty to forty children is that it is quite naturally a bit noisy and messy. Otherwise children are just playing a nice game of school, based on indoctrination and little integrated retained education. Both punishments and rewards foster a preoccupation with a narrow egocentric self-interest that undermines good values. All little Johnny is thinking about is “How much will you give me if I do X? How can I avoid getting punished if I do Y? What do they want me to do and what happens to me if I don’t do it?” Instead we could teach him to ask, “What kind of person do I want to be and what kind of community do I want to help make?” And Mom is thinking “You didn’t do what I wanted, so now I’m going to make something unpleasant happen to you, for your own good to help you fit into our (dominance/submission based) society.” This contributes to a culture of coercion and prevents a community of compassion. And as we are learning on the global level with our war on terrorism, as you use your energy and resources to punish people you run out of energy and resources to protect people. And even if children look well-behaved, they are not behaving themselves They are being behaved by controlling parents and teachers.

have the right to approach anyone I want to start a conversation with. I have the right to change the subject or end the conversation whenever I would like. I have the right to insert myself into a conversation and interrupt someone who’s speaking. I have the right to say “no” to anything I don’t want to do, for any reason, without needing to justify it or give an excuse. I have the right to ask for what I want. I have the right to ask why and negotiate if someone initially says “no.” I have the right to offer anything to anyone, any number of times (and they have the right to say no). I have the right to change my mind; I do not always need to be logical and consistent. I have the right to ask questions whenever I’d like to know something. I have the right to disagree with others (even if they know more about the subject than I do). I have the right to share my perspective, even if someone might disagree or temporarily be uncomfortable. I have the right to make mistakes, mess up, or otherwise not be perfect. I have the right to not be responsible for others, including their feelings and problems. I have the right to take time and space to be by myself, even if others would prefer my company. I have the right not to have to anticipate others’ needs and wishes. If they have them, they can express them. I have the right to say yes to having sex, to enjoy sex, and to pause during sex to have a conversation. I have the right to be treated with respect. I have the right to expect honesty and integrity from others. I have the right to feel all of my feelings, including anger, grief, sadness, and fear. I have the right to feel grief about something for as long as that grief persists. I have the right to feel something or do something without needing to justify myself to others. I have the right to feel angry at those I love, and to express it in a responsible manner. I have the right to express my feelings assertively while respecting others. I have the right to choose how much I want to see a friend or someone I’m dating, and end the relationship if it does not feel desirable to me.

It’s more an affliction than the expression of any high-minded ideals. I watch Mark Bittman enjoy a perfectly and authentically prepared Spanish paella on TV, after which he demonstrates how his viewers can do it at home—in an aluminum saucepot—and I want to shove my head through the glass of my TV screen and take a giant bite out of his skull, scoop the soft, slurry-like material inside into my paw, and then throw it right back into his smug, fireplug face. The notion that anyone would believe Catherine Zeta-Jones as an obsessively perfectionist chef (particularly given the ridiculously clumsy, 1980s-looking food) in the wretched film No Reservations made me want to vomit blood, hunt down the producers, and kick them slowly to death. (Worse was the fact that the damn thing was a remake of the unusually excellent German chef flick Mostly Martha.) On Hell’s Kitchen, when Gordon Ramsay pretends that the criminally inept, desperately unhealthy gland case in front of him could ever stand a chance in hell of surviving even three minutes as “executive chef of the new Gordon Ramsay restaurant” (the putative grand prize for the finalist), I’m inexplicably actually angry on Gordon’s behalf. And he’s the one making a quarter-million dollars an episode—very contentedly, too, from all reports. The eye-searing “Kwanzaa Cake” clip on YouTube, of Sandra Lee doing things with store-bought angel food cake, canned frosting, and corn nuts, instead of being simply the unintentionally hilarious viral video it should be, makes me mad for all humanity. I. Just. Can’t. Help it. I wish, really, that I was so far up my own ass that I could somehow believe myself to be some kind of standard-bearer for good eating—or ombudsman, or even the deliverer of thoughtful critique. But that wouldn’t be true, would it? I’m just a cranky old fuck with what, I guess, could charitably be called “issues.” And I’m still angry. But eat the fucking fish on Monday already. Okay? I wrote those immortal words about not going for the Monday fish, the ones that’ll haunt me long after I’m crumbs in a can, knowing nothing other than New York City. And times, to be fair, have changed. Okay, I still would advise against the fish special at T.G.I. McSweenigan’s, “A Place for Beer,” on a Monday. Fresh fish, I’d guess, is probably not the main thrust of their business. But things are different now for chefs and cooks. The odds are better than ever that the guy slinging fish and chips back there in the kitchen actually gives a shit about what he’s doing. And even if he doesn’t, these days he has to figure that you might actually know the difference. Back when I wrote the book that changed my life, I was angriest—like a lot of chefs and cooks of my middling abilities—at my customers. They’ve changed. I’ve changed. About them, I’m not angry anymore.