Apple Polishing Quotes

Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base though.

You point your feet out too much when you walk,” Will went on. He was busy polishing an apple on his shirtfront, and appeared not to notice Tessa glaring at him. “Camille walks delicately. Like a faun in the woods. Not like a duck.” “I do not walk like a duck.” “I like ducks,” Jem observed diplomatically. “Especially the ones in Hyde Park.” He glanced sideways at Will; both boys were sitting on the edge of the high table, their legs dangling over the side. “Remember when you tried to convince me to feed poultry pie to the mallards in the park to see if you could breed a race of cannibal ducks?” “They ate it too,” Will reminisced. “Bloodthirsty little beasts. Never trust a duck.

You point your feet out too much when you walk,” Will went on. He was busy polishing an apple on his shirtfront, and appeared not to notice Tessa glaring at him. “Camille walks delicately. Like a faun in the woods. Not like a duck” “I do not walk like a duck.” “I like ducks,” Jem observed diplomatically. “Especially the ones in Hyde Park.

Finch kept his house militarily spotless, but books tended to pile up wherever he sat down, and because it was his habit to sit down anywhere he got ready, there were small stacks of books in odd places about the house that were a constant curse to his cleaning woman. He would not let her touch them, and he insisted on apple-pie neatness, so the poor creature was obliged to vacuum, dust, and polish around them. One unfortunate maid lost her head and lost his place in Tuckwell’s Pre-Tractarian Oxford, and Dr. Finch shook a broom at her.

I stared out the window the whole way, because it was raining, which is how I like the city best. It looks like it's been polished up. All the streets shine and lights from everywhere reflect off the black. It's like the whole place has been dipped in sugar syrup. Like the city is some kind of big candy apple.

As for working with a partner, he didn’t like that either. It cut the score right down the middle. It put an apple on your head, and handed the other guy a shotgun. Because grifters, it seemed, suffered an irresistible urge to beat their colleagues. There was little glory in whipping a fool—hell, fools were made to be whipped. But to take a professional, even if it cost you in the long run, ah, that was something to polish your pride.

She said the secret to long life is to never stop moving. The moment you stop, you’re dying.” He poked me in the arm and sat back. “That’s your lesson today. Expect a test tomorrow.” I giggled a little. “Always teaching?” “I don’t have to today,” he said. “That was just a bonus.” He polished off the last of the apple pie, licking the spoon like a lollipop. “Ready?” “For what?” “You’ll see.

The personality of man is not an apple that has to be polished, but a banana that has to be peeled. And the reason we remain so far from one another, the reason we neither communicate nor interact in any real way, is that most of us spend our lives in polishing rather than peeling... Almost everything in modern life is devoted to the polishing process, and little to the peeling process. It is the surface personality that we work on—the appearance, the clothes, the manners, the geniality. In short, the salesmanship: We are selling the package, not the product.

Oregon October, when the fields of timothy and rye-grass stubble are being burned, the sky itself catches fire. Flocks of wrens rush up from the red alder thickets like sparks kicked from a campfire, the salmon jumps again, and the river rolls molten and slow . . . Down river, from Andy’s Landing, a burned-off cedar snag held the sun spitted like an apple, hissing and dripping juices against a grill of Indian Summer clouds. All the hillside, all the drying Himalaya vine that lined the big river, and the sugar-maple trees farther up, burned a dark brick and over-lit red. The river split for the jump of a red-gilled silver salmon, then circled to mark the spot where it fell. Spoonbills shoveled at the crimson mud in the shallows, and dowitchers jumped from cattail to cattail, frantically crying “Kleek! Kleek!” as though the thin reeds were as hot as the pokers they resembled. Canvasback and brant flew south in small, fiery, faraway flocks. And in the shabby ruin of broken cornfields rooster ringnecks clashed together in battle so bright, so gleaming polished-copper bright, that the fields seemed to ring with their fighting. This is Hank’s bell.

Lucy preferred gin and tonics during the summer and switched over to whiskey sours in the winter. At dinner, a sit-down affair with the family, Lucy drank whatever the Temerlins drank, including expensive French wines. "She never gets obnoxious, even when smashed to the brink of unconsciousness," wrote Maurice, revealing more about the chimp's alcoholism than perhaps he intended. At one point, he tried to wean Lucy off the good stuff and onto Boone's Farm apple wine. Assuming she would delight in the fruity swill, he purchased a case and filled her glass one night at dinner. Lucy took a sip of the apple wine, noticed her parents were drinking something else, and put her glass down. She then graabbed Maurice's glass of Chablis and polished it off. She finished Jane's next. Not another sip of Boone's farm ever touched her lips.

Oh, yes, Alice did know that she forgot things, but not how badly, or how often. When her mind started to dazzle and to puzzle, frantically trying to lay hold of something stable, then she always at once allowed herself -- as she did now -- to slide back into her childhood, where she dwelt pleasurably on some scene or other that she had smoothed and polished and painted over and over again with fresh colour until it was like walking into a story that began, 'Once upon a time there was a little girl called Alice, with her mother, Dorothy. One morning Alice was in the kitchen with Dorothy, who was making her favourite pudding, apple with cinnamon and brown sugar and sour cream, and little Alice said, 'Mummy, I am a good girl, aren't I?

Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base thought.

Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God’s approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That’s not morality, that’s just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or in the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base thought.

Once they were both naked and pressed together again, with Christian’s mouth on one of Max’s nipples and Max’s hands on Christian’s inner thighs, Christian was struck by how intense it was, how urgent and powerful and deep this wanting went. All his life he was raised to believe—wanted to believe—that desire was a superficial thing, something you worked through and, if you were disciplined and moral, ultimately put aside in favour of deeper, more important pursuits.

A chilled pea soup of insane simplicity, garnished with creme fraiche and celery leaves. Roasted beet salad with poached pears and goat cheese. Rack of lamb wrapped in crispy prosciutto, served over a celery root and horseradish puree, with sautéed spicy black kale. A thin-as-paper apple galette with fig glaze. Everything turned out brilliantly, including Patrick, who roused himself as I was pulling the lamb from the oven to rest before carving. He disappeared into the bathroom for ten minutes and came out shiny; green pallor and under-eye bags gone like magic. Pink with health and vitality, polished and ridiculously handsome, he looked as if he could run a marathon, and I was gobsmacked. He came up behind me just as I was finishing his port sauce for the lamb with a sprinkle of honey vinegar and a bit of butter, the only changes I made to any of his recipes, finding the sauce without them a bit one-dimensional and in need of edge smoothing.

Her smile was but a quizzical jerk of one eyebrow; and uncoiling herself from the sofa as she talked, she kept making spasmodic dashes at three ashtrays and the near fender (where lay the brown core of an apple); whereupon she would sink back again, one leg folded under her. She was, obviously, one of those women whose polished words may reflect a book club or bridge club, or any other deadly conventionality, but never her soul; women who are completely devoid of humor; women utterly indifferent at heart to the dozen or so possible subjects of a parlor conversation, but very particular about the rules of such conversations, through the sunny cellophane of which not very appetizing frustrations can be readily distinguished.

The Eliots found it a queer sort of evening - a transition evening. Hitherto the Herb of Grace had been to them a summer home; they had known it only permeated with sun and light, flower-scented, windows and doors open wide. But now doors were shut, curtains drawn to hide the sad, grey dusk. Instead of the lap of the water against the river wall they heard the whisper of the flames, and instead of the flowers in the garden they smelt the roasting chestnuts, burning apple logs, the oil lamps, polish - all the home smells. This intimacy with the house was deepening; when winter came it would be deeper still. Nadine glanced over her shoulder at the firelight gleaming upon the dark wood of the panelling, at the shadows gathering in the corners, and marvelled to see how the old place seemed to have shrunk in size with the shutting out of the daylight. It seemed gathering them in, holding them close.

Yet in 2012, he returned. Plenty of the speechwriters were livid. The club was the embodiment of everything we had promised to change. Was it really necessary to flatter these people, just because they were powerful and rich? In a word, yes. In fact, thanks to the Supreme Court, the rich were more powerful than ever. In 2010, the court’s five conservative justices gutted America’s campaign finance laws in the decision known as Citizens United. With no more limits to the number of attack ads they could purchase, campaigns had become another hobby for the ultrawealthy. Tired of breeding racehorses or bidding on rare wines at auction? Buy a candidate instead! I should make it clear that no one explicitly laid out a strategy regarding the dinner. I never asked point-blank if we hoped to charm billionaires into spending their billions on something other than Mitt Romney’s campaign. That said, I knew it couldn’t hurt. Hoping to mollify the one-percenters in the audience, I kept the script embarrassingly tame. I’ve got about forty-five more minutes on the State of the Union that I’d like to deliver tonight. I am eager to work with members of Congress to be entertaining tonight. But if Congress is unwilling to cooperate, I will be funny without them. Even for a politician, this was weak. But it apparently struck the right tone. POTUS barely edited the speech. A few days later, as a reward for a job well done, Favs invited me to tag along to a speechwriting-team meeting with the president. I had not set foot in the Oval Office since my performance of the Golden Girls theme song. On that occasion, President Obama remained behind his desk. For larger gatherings like this one, however, he crossed the room to a brown leather armchair, and the rest of us filled the two beige sofas on either side. Between the sofas was a coffee table. On the coffee table sat a bowl, which under George W. Bush had contained candy but under Obama was full of apples instead. Hence the ultimate Oval Office power move: grab an apple at the end of a meeting, polish it on your suit, and take a casual chomp on your way out the door. I would have sooner stuck my finger in an electrical socket. Desperate not to call attention to myself, I took the seat farthest away and kept my eyes glued to my laptop. I allowed myself just one indulgence: a quick peek at the Emancipation Proclamation. That’s right, buddy. Look who’s still here. It was only at the very end of the meeting, as we rose from the surprisingly comfy couches, that Favs brought up the Alfalfa dinner. The right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham had been in the audience, and she was struck by the president’s poise. “She was talking about it this morning,” Favs told POTUS. “She said, ‘I don’t know if Mitt Romney can beat him.

Polish the young woman’s ego like wax on a wood floor, Shinola on shoes, spit on an apple.

In our family, we live by the Hard Thing Rule. It has three parts. The first is that everyone—including Mom and Dad—has to do a hard thing. A hard thing is something that requires daily deliberate practice. I’ve told my kids that psychological research is my hard thing, but I also practice yoga. Dad tries to get better and better at being a real estate developer; he does the same with running. My oldest daughter, Amanda, has chosen playing the piano as her hard thing. She did ballet for years, but later quit. So did Lucy. This brings me to the second part of the Hard Thing Rule: You can quit. But you can’t quit until the season is over, the tuition payment is up, or some other “natural” stopping point has arrived. You must, at least for the interval to which you’ve committed yourself, finish whatever you begin. In other words, you can’t quit on a day when your teacher yells at you, or you lose a race, or you have to miss a sleepover because of a recital the next morning. You can’t quit on a bad day. And, finally, the Hard Thing Rule states that you get to pick your hard thing. Nobody picks it for you because, after all, it would make no sense to do a hard thing you’re not even vaguely interested in. Even the decision to try ballet came after a discussion of various other classes my daughters could have chosen instead. Lucy, in fact, cycled through a half-dozen hard things. She started each with enthusiasm but eventually discovered that she didn’t want to keep going with ballet, gymnastics, track, handicrafts, or piano. In the end, she landed on viola. She’s been at it for three years, during which time her interest has waxed rather than waned. Last year, she joined the school and all-city orchestras, and when I asked her recently if she wanted to switch her hard thing to something else, she looked at me like I was crazy. Next year, Amanda will be in high school. Her sister will follow the year after. At that point, the Hard Thing Rule will change. A fourth requirement will be added: each girl must commit to at least one activity, either something new or the piano and viola they’ve already started, for at least two years. Tyrannical? I don’t believe it is. And if Lucy’s and Amanda’s recent comments on the topic aren’t disguised apple-polishing, neither do my daughters. They’d like to grow grittier as they get older, and, like any skill, they know grit takes practice. They know they’re fortunate to have the opportunity to do so. For parents who would like to encourage grit without obliterating their children’s capacity to choose their own path, I recommend the Hard Thing Rule.

The undulating terrain was cloaked in lush abundance, the vineyards like garlands of deep green and yellow, orchards and farms sprouting here and there, hillocks of dry golden grass crowned by beautiful sun-gilt houses, barns and silos. And overhead was the bluest sky she'd ever seen, as bright and hard polished as marble. There was something about the landscape that caught at her emotions. It was both lush and intimidating, its beauty so abundant. Far from the bustle of the city, she was a complete stranger here, like Dorothy stepping out of her whirling house into the land of Oz. Farm stands overflowing with local produce marked the long driveways into farms with whimsical names- Almost Paradise, One Bad Apple, Toad Hollow. Boxes and bushels were displayed on long, weathered tables. Between the farms, brushy tangles of berries and towering old oak trees lined the roadway.

When I started sixth grade, the other kids made fun of Brian and me because we were so skinny. They called me spider legs, skeleton girl, pipe cleaner, two-by-four, bony butt, stick woman, bean pole, and giraffe, and they said I could stay dry in the rain by standing under a telephone wire. At lunchtime, when other kids unwrapped their sandwiches or bought their hot meals, Brian and I would get out books and read. Brian told everyone he had to keep his weight down because he wanted to join the wrestling team when he got to high school. I told people that I had forgotten to bring my lunch. No one believed me, so I started hiding in the bathroom during lunch hour. I’d stay in one of the stalls with the door locked and my feet propped up so that no one would recognize my shoes. When other girls came in and threw away their lunch bags in the garbage pails, I’d go retrieve them. I couldn’t get over the way kids tossed out all this perfectly good food: apples, hard-boiled eggs, packages of peanut-butter crackers, sliced pickles, half-pint cartons of milk, cheese sandwiches with just one bite taken out because the kid didn’t like the pimentos in the cheese. I’d return to the stall and polish off my tasty finds. There was, at times, more food in the wastebasket than I could eat. The first time I found extra food—a bologna-and-cheese sandwich—I stuffed it into my purse to take home for Brian. Back in the classroom, I started worrying about how I’d explain to Brian where it came from. I was pretty sure he was rooting through the trash, too, but we never talked about it. As I sat there trying to come up with ways to justify it to Brian, I began smelling the bologna. It seemed to fill the whole room. I became terrified that the other kids could smell it, too, and that they’d turn and see my overstuffed purse, and since they all knew I never ate lunch, they’d figure out that I had pinched it from the trash. As soon as class was over, I ran to the bathroom and shoved the sandwich back in the garbage can.

Joanna Stern was blunt: “I don’t love Apple Music.” She said it “lacks polish and simplicity” and compared its lists and menus to Russian nesting dolls.

From Microsoft OneNote, Google Keep, and Apple Notes to Notion and Evernote, digital notes apps have four powerful characteristics that make them ideal for building a Second Brain. They are: Multimedia: Just like a paper notebook might contain drawings and sketches, quotes and ideas, and even a pasted photo or Post-it, a notes app can store a wide variety of different kinds of content in one place, so you never need to wonder where to put something. Informal: Notes are inherently messy, so there’s no need for perfect spelling or polished presentation. This makes it as easy and frictionless as possible to jot things down as soon as they occur to you, which is essential to allow nascent ideas to grow. Open-ended: Taking notes is a continuous process that never really ends, and you don’t always know where it might lead. Unlike more specialized kinds of software that are designed to produce a specific kind of output (such as slide decks, spreadsheets, graphics, or videos), notes are ideal for free-form exploration before you have a goal in mind. Action-oriented: Unlike a library or research database, personal notes don’t need to be comprehensive or precise. They are designed to help you quickly capture stray thoughts so you can remain focused on the task at hand.

The brilliance of “Think Different” is that it celebrated a counterculture philosophy in a way that allowed almost everyone to feel part of the celebration. Its message was the advertising equivalent of an ideal Apple product—bold and aspirational and accessible all at the same time. It was heartfelt. The language, which Steve worked on along with Clow and others at TBWA\Chiat\Day, focused outward, defining the quality of an Apple buyer, rather than of a particular machine itself. There’s no computer mentioned, in fact. Just “tools,” created for the creative. The campaign’s clarity and simplicity stood out prominently from the morass of other computer advertising and reminded people of the fresh spirit so many had once loved about Apple. The $100 million campaign began the polishing up of Apple’s image, a necessary task that would take years.

Polish pamphlet called The Perfect Distiller and Brewer, published in 1809, described the process of distilling vodka from potatoes, with the warning that it was the worst kind of vodka, behind vodka made from sugar beets, grains, apples, grapes, and acorns. In fact, potatoes only became a common ingredient in Polish vodka because they were cheap and abundant, not because they made a high-quality spirit. They tended to turn into a thick, sticky paste in the fermentation tank, the starch was not easy to convert to sugar, and they produced higher levels of toxic methanol and fusel oils. Russian vodka makers looked down on cheap Polish potato vodkas; to this day, they insist that the best vodka is made from rye or wheat instead.

off, she staggered to the bathroom, through three sets of doors and two stairwells and thinking she must have gone wrong because next she was stumbling down a passage, the walls polished and glossy as apples, and heading for a single narrow door at the end. When she opened it, the whole of the Vegas Strip ran out before her, thousands of feet below. The room was huge and square, black as the sea at night. Its floor was transparent glass: nothing between her and the distant ground. At its centre was a lone porcelain commode, which she headed for, walking on air, flying through drunkenness, and sat on it, fully clothed, to pull herself together. Sitting on the sky with Vegas spread beneath her was as surreal as it was trippy. Only in Vegas could you go to the bathroom and feel like a god. Music pumped into the room. Robin closed her eyes. A familiar refrain started up: the charity single she had done with Puff City and the Olympians. The time she had sung with Leon... Just thinking his name was a knife through her heart. She had to let him go but she couldn’t. She wanted to know if he was OK. She thought about him all the time. She dreamed about him. He was the first thing she thought about in the morning and the last thing she thought about at night. She longed for him and ached for him. She remembered almost telling him her fears that night on the beach; how she hadn’t because she was too damn stubborn and stupid and hadn’t wanted to let him in. She wished she had. She wanted his arms around her now more than she had ever wanted anything. Leon might be lost to her, but Robin vowed that as soon as the tour was done she would go to the police and tell them what she knew about Puff City. She couldn’t be sure, and she’d lied to Shawnella

As the buckboard gathered speed, she devoured the second piece of chicken, polished the apple on the sleeve of her jacket, and took a bite, enjoying the satisfying and decidedly unladylike crunch. “You are hungry!” Wyatt said. “Hollow all the way to your toes.” Ada blushed and then chided herself for caring what he thought. “That’s all right,” he added. “I like a woman with an appetite.

As I’ve explained, selling OSes for money is a basically untenable position, and the only way Apple and Microsoft can get away with it is by pursuing technological advancements as aggressively as they can, and by getting people to believe in, and to pay for, a particular image: in the case of Apple, that of the creative free thinker, and in the case of Microsoft, that of the respectable techno-bourgeois. Just like Disney, they’re making money from selling an interface, a magic mirror. It has to be polished and seamless, or else the whole illusion is ruined and the business plan vanishes like a mirage.

I missed the rest of the conversation because, while the good actor was carefully cooking his sentences with criticisms spiced with kindness, another member of the group, a young man who looked Chinese, with a face like raspberry jelly, stumbled up to me. His naturally yellow complexion was complemented by bright threads of broken veins, more purple than red. He had thick hair, a receding brow, jutting cheekbones, narrow eyes whose dark pupils seemed more polished than alive, a barely visible moustache the color of dead leaves, a little salt and pepper beard that was worn out like an old carpet, a long neck with an Adam’s apple stuck in it like a huge walnut, and shoulders like a scrawny old horse which did not fit with his thick, short chest and his pot belly. He was knock-kneed and bowed legged, with kneecaps shaped like coconuts. He also borrowed Doctor Magne’s chair, blew cigarette smoke out his nose, and took his turn to tackle me. His language was less elegant than the other two; it was hard for him to speak, which you could put down to shyness. He was dull and awkward. He seemed horribly unhappy and sorry to have come over, but there he was. He had to march on—and he did so heroically!—death in his soul. “Monsieur—finally yes!... Monsieur… I don’t like to jaw about brothers… absolutely not! But I have to tell you that Desbosquets is a lot more… absolutely… oh, I’ll blurt it out… a lot more… absolutely cracked than our friend Magne. Absolutely yes!” He wanted to be frank, to open up, which he constantly regretted, because he knew that he would be clumsy and mocked; he felt ridiculous and it was killing him. But his need for some honest self-indulgence gnawed at him, and he spit out his slang and his absolutelys—‘absolutely yes!’ and ‘absolutely no!’— which made him think he was revealing the deepest depths of his soul. He continued. “Maybe they told you about me—yes! I know: bing, bang —mechanics! Absolutely yes! A hack, they must have told you…” (Aha! I thought. So it’s my colleague the poet!) “…and the worst trouble, right? That’s Leonard—yes! Ah! When I’m a little…bing, bang…mechanics! I guess—grumpy—I don’t say… but there’s not an ounce of meanness in me! Disgusting, this awful problem with talking, but the mechanics, you know—because it’s the mechanics—no way! Do you want me to tell you my name? Ah! Totally unknown, my name, but don’t want them to mangle it mechanically when quoting it to you: Oswald Norbert Nigeot. Don’t say Numskull—no!—Although my verses!... Ah! Damned mechanics!... A bonehead, a stupid bonehead, bitten by the morbid mania to write—and the slander of the old students of the Polytechnic! Oh! To write! Terrible trade for the poorly gifted like me who are… bing, bang, not mechanics! And angry at the mechanics of words. Polytechnic pigs manufacture words; so, poor hacks can’t use them. Ah! Even this is mechanics!... And drunk on it, Desbosquets too, very drunk! Obviously you see it: Cusenier, Noilly-Prat, why not Pernod? It’s awful for people like him and me! See, you know— liquids are scarce—but thanks to the guards’ hatred of Bid’homme… and thanks to old Froin, too good, don’t believe in any bad—but can you call that bad? He lives with the Heaven of…mechanics…of…bang…of derangements, no! I want arrangements, not derangements!” Mr. Nigeot seemed very proud of having successfully (?) completed such a long sentence propped up by only one “bang” and one “mechanics,” but in spite of his satisfaction, he was scared of continuing less elegantly and he got all tangled up in a run of bizarre expressions in which the hated Polytechnicians and the bings and bangs (not to mention the absolutelys) got so out of hand that I could not understand a word of what he said.

techniques for polishing the surface don’t work without a strong underlying substance. Apple has a complex suite of proprietary technologies, both in hardware (like superior touchscreen materials) and software (like touchscreen interfaces purpose-designed for specific materials).

The dormouse polished an apple on his jerkin. “D’you like my stories, Burrem?” The little fellow smiled. “Burr aye, oi serpintly do, zurr!” His friend settled down comfortably on the grass, propping his back against the log. “Right then, it’s a good long one. We’ll have to break off for lunch and tea, supper, too, maybe. Ah well, here goes. Once upon a time . . .

We lived up to now in a solid universe whose generations had deposited stratifications, one after the other. All was clear: the father was the father; the law was the law; the foreigner was the foreigner. One had the right to say that the law was hard, but it was the law. Today these sure bases of political life are anathema: for these truths constitute the program of a racist party condemned at the court of humanity. In exchange, the foreigner recommends to us a universe according to his dreams. There are no more borders, there are no more cities. From one end to the other of the continent the laws are the same, and also the passports, and also the judges, and also the currencies. Only one police force and only one brain: the senator from Milwaukee inspects and decides. In return for which, trade is free; at last trade is free. We plant some carrots which by chance never sell well, and we buy some hoeing machines which always happen to be very expensive. And we are free to protest, free, infinitely free to write, to vote, to speak in public, provided that we never take measures which can change all that. We are free to get upset and to fight in a universe of wadding. One does not know very well where our freedom ends, where our nationality ends, one does not know very well where what is permitted ends. It is an elastic universe. One does not know any more where one’s feet are set; one does not even know any more if one has feet; one feels very light, as if one’s body had been lost. But for those who grant us this simple ablation what infinite rewards, what a multitude of tips! This universe which they polish up and try to make look good to us is similar to some palace in Atlantis. There are everywhere small glasswares, columns of false marble, inscriptions, magic fruits. By entering this palace you abdicate your power, in exchange you have the right to touch the golden apples and to read the inscriptions. You are nothing any more; you do not feel any more the weight of your body; you have ceased being a man: you are one of the faithful of the religion of Humanity. At the bottom of the sanctuary there sits a Negro god. You have all the rights, except to speak evil of the god.

Material objects are transitory. The joy they bring is momentary and hollow . . . Strangely, my mantra wasn’t working right then. So, you’ve probably already guessed my secret. I had an addiction . . . or maybe a compulsion was the better word. I was a thief. A shoplifter. And the mere sight of consumer items small enough to conceal within the confines of a purse or a coat pocket gave me twitchy fingers like you wouldn’t believe. It was abhorrent, I knew that, and I struggled daily with my guilt. In fact, I’d been doing so well in my attempts to quit. To be a better person. Six months ago I’d moved to New York to begin a new job as a celebrity photographer/blogger/YouTuber, and I resolved to stop. It was my chance for a fresh start. I hadn’t stolen a single thing in all that time. Yes, the Big Apple remained untouched by my habit for five-finger discounts. And yet, there I stood, just itching to steal that flipping ridiculous bottle of nail polish. I knew the reason why, and her name began with a J. That would be Jackie Fitzpatrick, my mother, and provider of inferiority complexes everywhere. It was summer and I’d come home to Dublin for a visit, see my brother and his fiancée, meet up with some friends. The problem was, I’d committed to staying at Mam’s for the duration. I was only back a day before she started in with the usual comments. When are you ever going to meet a man and settle down? Those baggy jeans do nothing for your figure.

To our surprise and delight, dinner was stupendous. Served in our room at the low polished wood table, it exuded a freshness and artistry we had not seen since leaving Kyoto. The sashimi- sea bream, squid, and skipjack- tasted as clean as a freshly sliced apple. Rusty-red miso soup had a meaty fortifying flavor enhanced with cubes of tofu and slithery ribbons of seaweed. The tempura, served in a basket of woven bamboo, shattered to pieces like a well-made croissant. Hiding inside the golden shell was a slice of Japanese pumpkin, a chunk of tender white fish, an okra pod, a shiitake mushroom cap, and a zingy shiso leaf. Pale yellow chawan-mushi also appeared in a lidded glass custard cup. With a tiny wooden spoon we scooped up the ethereal egg and dashi custard cradling chunks of shrimp, sweet lily buds, and waxy-green ginkgo nuts. In a black lacquer bowl came a superb seafood consommé, along with a knuckle of white fish, tuft of spinach, mushroom cap, and a tiny yellow diamond of yuzu zest. A small lacquer bucket held several servings of sticky white rice to eat with crunchy radish pickles and shredded pressed cabbage. A small wedge of honeydew melon concluded the meal.

Angela had presented an insurmountable obstacle. Angela would have been able to mentally and, apparently, physically torture her, without redress, as long as Carol had stayed at that office. Sure, people were a little suspicious of Angela after this incident. Maybe Angela would think twice before forcing out the next employee she didn’t like. Maybe there’d been a little polish off that apple, but nothing fatal. Angela was a good worker, after all, and strange things happen. People would forget about it in a year or so. Just an unusually vicious co-worker spat. Carol knew that. But she’d done something, at least. Life could be inscrutable, it could be horrendously unfair. But you make do, as Angela said, with what you have, the best you can.

Halloween by Maisie Aletha Smikle Halloween Halloween Fun for the teen and preteen Fun for the queen And those in between Halloween Halloween Don't be mean A treat for you And your friends too We are not naughty We are nice We like candied apples With lots of spice Decked in costumes out we go Two dressed as bushy tail foxes in frocks One dressed in a hat with beard and locks Singing reggae to the tune of the blues Knock knock Give us treats we don’t like tricks Give us chocolate and candy That's so sweet fine and dandy We’ll take our sweets to the prairie And trade them with a fairy call Mary Who is very cheery And not at all contrary Fairy Mary return all teeth Fallen out from eating too much sweets Polished and bright to chew just right We’ll eat more fruits noon or night

I knew a person whose “launch and iterate” approach made him enormously successful at Google. Google’s culture was all about experimentation. When he got to Apple, which had a culture of perfecting and polishing ideas before launching them, he tried the same thing, and it killed his credibility. There was nothing wrong with the person or with Apple—it was just a bad fit.

Convergence was the term we used to describe the final phase of making an Apple product, after the features had been locked down and the programming and design teams spent the last three or four months fixing bugs and polishing details.

Parenting the outside of the child is as useless as polishing a rotten apple.

This doctor was a distinguished-looking man, with splendid coal-black whiskers, and a bonny, fresh-complexioned wife; he ate fresh apples in the morning and kept his mouth remarkably clean, gargling for almost three quarters of an hour every morning and polishing his teeth with five different types of toothbrush.