“
Even on this most terrible days, even when the worst of us are all we can think of, I am proud to be a human.
”
”
Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1))
“
Snow in April is abominable," said Anne. "Like a slap in the face when you expected a kiss.
”
”
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Ingleside (Anne of Green Gables, #6))
“
The most insidious part of fame for April wasn't that other people dehumanized her; it was that she dehumanized herself. She came to see herself not as a person but as a tool.
”
”
Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1))
“
I don't think any of us are blameless when we all, more and more often, see ourselves not as members of a culture but as weapons in a war.
”
”
Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1))
“
Today has been a day dropped out of June into April.
”
”
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Windy Poplars (Anne of Green Gables, #4))
“
This is April," he said, holding up the chicken. "She's the only friend I have left. I saved her from an evil chef at Tavern on the Green, and we've pledged eternal friendship.
”
”
Kirsten Miller (The Empress's Tomb (Kiki Strike, #2))
“
A poor old Widow in her weeds
Sowed her garden with wild-flower seeds;
Not too shallow, and not too deep,
And down came April -- drip -- drip -- drip.
Up shone May, like gold, and soon
Green as an arbour grew leafy June.
And now all summer she sits and sews
Where willow herb, comfrey, bugloss blows,
Teasle and pansy, meadowsweet,
Campion, toadflax, and rough hawksbit;
Brown bee orchis, and Peals of Bells;
Clover, burnet, and thyme she smells;
Like Oberon's meadows her garden is
Drowsy from dawn to dusk with bees.
Weeps she never, but sometimes sighs,
And peeps at her garden with bright brown eyes;
And all she has is all she needs --
A poor Old Widow in her weeds.
”
”
Walter de la Mare (Peacock Pie)
“
Perhaps the hardest thing about losing a lover is
to watch the year repeat its days.
It is as if I could dip my hand down
into time and scoop up
blue and green lozenges of April heat
a year ago in another country.
I can feel that other day running underneath this one
like an old videotape
”
”
Anne Carson (Glass, Irony and God)
“
Bring People together and promote a simple change and a better world.
”
”
Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1))
“
The crow cawed again overhead, and a strong sea wind came in and burst through the trees, making the green pine needles shake themselves all over the place. That sound always gave me goose bumps, the good kind. It was the sound an orphan governess hears in a book,before a mad woman sets the bed curtains on fire.
”
”
April Genevieve Tucholke (Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (Between, #1))
“
I saw myself as a leader of the community, not a member. I had no idea what a messed-up perspective that was at the time.
”
”
Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1))
“
But one thing that I didn’t anticipate was that, in creating the April May brand, I was very much creating a new me. You can only do so much pretending before you become the thing you’re pretending to be.
”
”
Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1))
“
It's like this," Nana says. "All your life you're yellow. Then one day you brush up against something blue, the barest touch, and voila, the rest of your life you’re green.
”
”
Tess Callahan (April & Oliver)
“
A mark was on him from the day's delight, so that all his life, when April was a thin green and the flavor of rain was on his tongue, an old wound would throb and a nostalgia would fill him for something he could not quite remember.
”
”
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (The Yearling)
“
Sit down. Inhale. Exhale.
The gun will wait. The lake will wait.
The tall gall in the small seductive vial
will wait will wait:
will wait a week: will wait through April.
You do not have to die this certain day.
Death will abide, will pamper your postponement.
I assure you death will wait. Death has
a lot of time. Death can
attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is
just down the street; is most obliging neighbor;
can meet you any moment.
You need not die today.
Stay here–through pout or pain or peskyness.
Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow. Graves grow no green that you can use.
Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.
”
”
Gwendolyn Brooks
“
You say that, but have you played Cherry Blossom Fairy Five, April May? Have you?
”
”
Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1))
“
The most insidious party of fame for April wasn't that other people dehumanized her; it was that she dehumanized herself. She came to see herself not as a person but as a tool. And if that tool wasn't being used, sharpened, refined, or strengthened at every opportunity, then she was letting the world down.
”
”
Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1))
“
The clattering of humanity mixed in all its randomness was as relaxing to me as crickets chirping beside a rushing brook.
”
”
Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1))
“
We are irrational beings, easy to manipulate if you're willing to do whatever it takes. That's exactly how terrorists convince themselves that murder is worthwhile. And the wound it left, it was larger than those lives lost; it was a wound we would all have to live with forever. The purity of my feeling for Carl was gone and I would never get it back.
”
”
Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1))
“
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
”
”
John Keats (Ode on Melancholy)
“
But when you walked out of that building, you created a new history that we have to live in now." She did not say this as something I should be proud of, more something that I had to live with. The dart hit its mark.
”
”
Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1))
“
It's weird to talk about these things as if they are fact since they were in a dream, but the fact that everyone experienced it in precisely the same way made it feel concrete. What is reality except for the things that people universally experience the same way? The Dream, in that sense, was very, very real.
”
”
Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1))
“
It is dangerous to leave written that which is badly written.
A chance word, upon paper, may destroy the world. Watch carefully and erase, while the power is still yours, I say to myself, for all that is put down, once it escapes, may rot its way into a thousand minds, the corn become a black smut, and all libraries, of necessity, be burned to the ground as a consequence.
Only one answer: write carelessly so that nothing that is not green will survive.
― William Carlos Williams, Paterson. (New Directions; Revised Edition edition April 17, 1995) Originally published 1946.
”
”
William Carlos Williams (Paterson)
“
It was a bright blue day. The green leaves curled playfully into the sky, and daffodils burst out like exclamation points among the tombstones.
”
”
Alice Winn (In Memoriam)
“
Winter Liar" by Liam Doyle the Incubus
What come once here will never come again,
no matter monument nor memory;
all sunwarmed green succumbs to winter's wind.
And you, my love, were also my best friend,
and had your life to live. The tragedy
was not just my youth's recklessness, although
I trusted much to impulse, whim, freedom,
a destiny excluding doom. Frankly,
youth can be our insanity. But now I'm cured
of that fever, although the price was high;
and chilly April wind can only sigh
at my regrets, yet sun will brighten wind so,
one knows that soon green stirs, and wild bees hum.
And summer once more will make winter liar,
but I won't warm. You're all I'll ever desire.
”
”
Juliet Dark (The Demon Lover (Fairwick Chronicles, #1))
“
Spring had come once more to Green Gables-the beautiful, capricious Canadian spring, lingering along through April and may in a succession of sweet, fresh, chilly days, with pink sunsets and miracles of resurrection and growth. The maples in Lover's Lane were red-budded and little curly ferns pushed up around the Dryad's Bubble. Away in the barrens, behind Mr. Silas Sloane's place, the mayflowers blossomed out, pink and white stars of sweetness under their brown leaves. All the school girls and boys had one golden afternoon gathering them, coming home in the clear, echoing twilight with arms and baskets full of flowery spoil.
”
”
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1))
“
For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts to welcome such glad-hearted visitants.
”
”
Herman Melville
“
Just working through what other people had done gave me a feeling that this was all actually worth it. When you get stuck fighting small battles, it makes you small. Hopping from cable news show to cable news show to discuss controversy after controversy had made me small. I thought only about the fight, not why I was fighting.
”
”
Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1))
“
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.
”
”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“
MOTHER – By Ted Kooser
Mid April already, and the wild plums
bloom at the roadside, a lacy white
against the exuberant, jubilant green
of new grass and the dusty, fading black
of burned-out ditches. No leaves, not yet,
only the delicate, star-petaled
blossoms, sweet with their timeless perfume.
You have been gone a month today
and have missed three rains and one nightlong
watch for tornadoes. I sat in the cellar
from six to eight while fat spring clouds
went somersaulting, rumbling east. Then it poured,
a storm that walked on legs of lightning,
dragging its shaggy belly over the fields.
The meadowlarks are back, and the finches
are turning from green to gold. Those same
two geese have come to the pond again this year,
honking in over the trees and splashing down.
They never nest, but stay a week or two
then leave. The peonies are up, the red sprouts,
burning in circles like birthday candles,
for this is the month of my birth, as you know,
the best month to be born in, thanks to you,
everything ready to burst with living.
There will be no more new flannel nightshirts
sewn on your old black Singer, no birthday card
addressed in a shaky but businesslike hand.
You asked me if I would be sad when it happened
and I am sad. But the iris I moved from your house
now hold in the dusty dry fists of their roots
green knives and forks as if waiting for dinner,
as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that.
Were it not for the way you taught me to look
at the world, to see the life at play in everything,
I would have to be lonely forever.
”
”
Ted Kooser (Delights and Shadows)
“
April that year came sudden and still, and the green of the trees was a wild bright green. The pale wistarias bloomed all over town, and silently the blossoms shattered. There was something about the green trees and the flowers of April that made Frankie sad. She did not know why she was sad, but because of this peculiar sadness, she began to realize she ought to leave the town.
”
”
Carson McCullers (The Member of the Wedding)
“
It was sunny, a rarity for Indiana in April, and everyone at the farmers' market was wearing short sleeves even though the temperature didn't quite justify it. We Hoosiers are excessively optimistic about summer.
”
”
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
“
I still don't know a place with lovelier Aprils. The mornings and nights are fresh and cool, and the sun pours down like spilled honey, warm without the thick wet weight of the coming summer. The damp earth is as red as flesh, or blood, and so fecund that you can almost hear the thrumming, rustling push of growth up through it. The new foliage is a thousand different shades of pink, red, gold, and green. I could not seem to stay indoors at night in that first spring; I was enraptured with the startling, ghostly white showfalls of dogwood in dusk-green woods, and with streetlights shining through new leaves. Azaleas rolled like surf through the wooded hills of the northwest.
”
”
Anne Rivers Siddons (Down Town)
“
A Match
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
Blown fields or flowerful closes,
Green pasture or gray grief;
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf.
If I were what the words are,
And love were like the tune,
With double sound and single
Delight our lips would mingle,
With kisses glad as birds are
That get sweet rain at noon;
If I were what the words are,
And love were like the tune.
If you were life, my darling,
And I your love were death,
We'd shine and snow together
Ere March made sweet the weather
With daffodil and starling
And hours of fruitful breath;
If you were life, my darling,
And I your love were death.
If you were thrall to sorrow,
And I were page to joy,
We'd play for lives and seasons
With loving looks and treasons
And tears of night and morrow
And laughs of maid and boy;
If you were thrall to sorrow,
And I were page to joy.
If you were April's lady,
And I were lord in May,
We'd throw with leaves for hours
And draw for days with flowers,
Till day like night were shady
And night were bright like day;
If you were April's lady,
And I were lord in May.
If you were queen of pleasure,
And I were king of pain,
We'd hunt down love together,
Pluck out his flying-feather,
And teach his feet a measure,
And find his mouth a rein;
If you were queen of pleasure,
And I were king of pain.
”
”
Algernon Charles Swinburne
“
Does John Green have a Hollywood Star?
A John Green does but he is not me.
He was a composer who won five Academy Awards for scoring such movies as An American in Paris and West Side Story.
Although today he is mostly forgotten which is a nice reminder that no matter what you do the tides of time will wash away your sandcastles. So there's no sense in reaching for some
foolhardy notion of immortality when there is
real work to be done
with real people,
right now.
”
”
John Green
“
I will start with the tree. Because everything begins, and ends, with the tree. The tree is the tallest one. It was planted way before the others. I'm not sure how old it is, exactly. Perhaps three or four hundred years old. It is ancient and powerful. It has weathered terrible storms, braced against unbridled winds. It is not afraid.
The tree is not like the others. It has its own rhythm. Spring starts later for it, while all the others are already blossoming. Come late April, the new oval leaves sprout slowly, on the top and middle branches only. Otherwise, it looks dead. Gnarled, gray, and withered. It likes to pretend to be dead. That's how clever it is. Then, suddenly, like a huge explosion, all the buds flourish. The tree triumphs with its pale green crowns.
”
”
Tatiana de Rosnay (The Rain Watcher)
“
Sternly she tried to frown the unseemly sensation down. Burgeon, indeed. She had heard of dried staffs, pieces of mere dead wood, suddenly putting forth fresh leaves, but only in legend. She was not in legend. She knew perfectly what was due to herself. Dignity demanded that she should have nothing to do with fresh leaves at her age; and yet there it was--the feeling that presently, that at any moment now, she might crop out all green.
”
”
Elizabeth von Arnim (The Enchanted April)
“
When the storm is over, the new growth, tiny and light, timid-green, starts edging our on the buses and three limbs. Then Nature brings April rain. It whispers down soft and lonesome, making mists in the hollows and on the trails where you walk under the drippings from hanging branches of trees.
It's a good feeling, exciting--but sad too--in April rain. Granpa said he always got that kind of mixed-up feeling. He said it was exciting because something new was being born and it was sad, because you knowed you can't hold onto it. It will pass too quick.
April wind is soft and warm as a baby's crib. It breathes on the crab apple tree until white blossoms open out, smeared with pink. The smell is sweeter than honeysuckle and brings bees swarming over the blossoms. Mountain laurel with pink-white blooms and purple centers grow everywhere, from the hollows to the top of the mountain, alongside of the dogtooth violet...
Then, when April gets its warmest, all of a sudden the cold hits you. It stays cold for four or five days. This is to make the blackberries bloom and is called "blackberry winter." The blackberries will not bloom without it. That's why some years there are no blackberries. When it ends, that's when the dogwoods bloom out like snowballs over the mountainside in places you never suspicioned they grew: in a pine grove or stand of oak of a sudden there's a big burst of white.
”
”
Forrest Carter (The Education of Little Tree)
“
Loss is a part of life, that doesn't make it easy... that makes it inevitable...
”
”
Marcus Harrison Green (A Year Without April)
“
We would like to build the idea of April May to help people deal with the reality of Carl.
”
”
Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1))
“
via Ms. Vliegenthart this sixth of April, from
”
”
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
“
When bullying April bruised mine eyes
With sleet-bound appetites and crude
Experiments of green, I still was wise
And kissed the blossoming rod.
”
”
Cecil Day-Lewis (Transitional Poem)
“
And your eyes, they were green and grey Like an April day, But lit into amethyst When I stooped and kissed; And your mouth, it would never smile For a long, long while, Then it rippled all over with laughter Five minutes after. You were always afraid of a shower, Just like a flower: I remember you started and ran When the rain began. I remember I never could catch you, For no one could match you, You had wonderful, luminous, fleet, Little wings to your feet.
”
”
Oscar Wilde (Selected Poems)
“
Spring is singing in my blood today, and the lure of April is abroad on the air. I'm seeing visions and dreaming dreams, Pris. That's because the wind is from the west. I do love the west wind. It sings of hope and gladness, doesn't it? When the east wind blows I always think of sorrowful rain on the eaves and sad waves on a gray shore. When I get old I shall have rheumatism when the wind is east." "And
”
”
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of the Island (Anne of Green Gables, #3))
“
So let’s talk a little about April May’s theory of tiered fame. Tier 1: Popularity You are a big deal in your high school or neighborhood. You have a peculiar vehicle that people around town recognize, you are a pastor at a medium-to-large church, you were once the star of the high school football team. Tier 2: Notoriety You are recognized and/or well-known within certain circles. Maybe you’re a preeminent lepidopterist whom all the other lepidopterists idolize. Or you could be the mayor or meteorologist in a medium-sized city. You might be one of the 1.1 million living people who has a Wikipedia page. Tier 3: Working-Class Fame A lot of people know who you are and they are distributed around the world. There’s a good chance that a stranger will approach you to say hi at the grocery store. You are a professional sports player, musician, author, actor, television host, or internet personality. You might still have to hustle to make a living, but your fame is your job. You’ll probably trend on Twitter if you die. Tier 4: True Fame You get recognized by fans enough that it is a legitimate burden. People take pictures of you without your permission, and no one would scoff if you called yourself a celebrity. When you start dating someone, you wouldn’t be surprised to read about it in magazines. You are a performer, politician, host, or actor whom the majority of people in your country would recognize. Your humanity is so degraded that people are legitimately surprised when they find out that you’re “just like them” because, sometimes, you buy food. You never have to worry about money again, but you do need a gate with an intercom on your driveway. Tier 5: Divinity You are known by every person in your world, and you are such a big deal that they no longer consider you a person. Your story is much larger than can be contained within any human lifetime, and your memory will continue long after your earthly form wastes away. You are a founding father of a nation, a creator of a religion, an emperor, or an idea. You are not currently alive.
”
”
Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1))
“
And while he waited in the castle court,
The voice of Enid, Yniol's daughter, rang
Clear through the open casement of the hall,
Singing; and as the sweet voice of a bird,
Heard by the lander in a lonely isle,
Moves him to think what kind of bird it is
That sings so delicately clear, and make
Conjecture of the plumage and the form;
So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint;
And made him like a man abroad at morn
When first the liquid note beloved of men
Comes flying over many a windy wave
To Britain, and in April suddenly
Breaks from a coppice gemmed with green and red,
And he suspends his converse with a friend,
Or it may be the labour of his hands,
To think or say, 'There is the nightingale;'
So fared it with Geraint, who thought and said,
'Here, by God's grace, is the one voice for me.
”
”
Alfred Tennyson (Idylls of the King)
“
I don't know how long is too long, but I do know that your struggles don't make you weak or abnormal. They make you human.
”
”
Marcus Harrison Green (A Year Without April)
“
The mindless April leaves heave sighs / And twirl in aimless sarabandes. / My fingers curl and clutch the skies; / Green blood flows in green-veined hands.
”
”
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
“
April came tiptoeing in beautifully that year with sunshine and soft winds for a few days; and then a driving northeast snowstorm dropped a white blanket over the world
”
”
L.M. Montgomery (The Complete Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1-8))
“
I will not tell my daughter that she can be anything she wants. I will tell her to be herself; and then anything she wants will float beautifully towards her.
”
”
April Green (Becoming a Wildflower: Poetry + Prose for Courage)
“
@AprilMaybeNot: Today I met a literal billionaire and he gave me a prompt and thorough critique of the way I introduced myself to him, so . . . fuck that guy.
”
”
Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1))
“
Well, this has been super fucking weird, April May, thank you for calling me out into the chill of the night to make a robot video with you.
”
”
Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1))
“
From above you could see the chaos of entangled plots on the other side of the road, and a couple of tough tethered goats, and the glint of a frozen pond somewhere in the trees. Above them the sun was shining vaguely through the milky November sky, old but strong. In April – between the thaw and the jungly green explosion of summer – or in raw mid-October, I bet the same view would have been barren and depressing. But when we stood there all the bits of old tractors and discarded refrigerators, the shoals of empty vodka bottles and dead animals that tend to litter the Russian countryside were invisible, smothered by the annual oblivion of the snow. The snow let you forget the scars and blemishes, like temporary amnesia for a bad conscience.
”
”
A.D. Miller
“
Outside the seasons passed: sun, snow, spring green, October storms . . . was this a vision of my future? When would the shunning hero come, to set the clock if my life in motion again? Would he come some morning, or in the night? In April or December? This year? Next year? I shuddered. No, I wouldn't just sit and wait. I wanted to go out.
Maybe there were new men out there, better men, men who'd just been waiting for me. Somewhere someone is always waiting for someone.
”
”
Eva Heller (Beim nächsten Mann wird alles anders)
“
I hope you don’t feel like you have to represent all black people with me,” I said. “I hope you’re not, like, careful all the time.” “No, April.” And then it was a long time before she continued. “I’m careful with you for different reasons.
”
”
Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls #1))
“
Ode to Love
Lin Huiyin
I think you are the April of this world,
Sure, you are the April of this world.
Your laughter has lit up all the wind,
So gently mingling with the spring.
You are the clouds in early spring,
The dusk wind blows up and down.
And the stars blink now and then,
Fine rain drops down amid the flowers.
So gentle and graceful,
You are crowned with garlands.
So sublime and innocent,
You are a full moon over each evening.
The snow melts, with that light yellow,
You look like the first budding green.
You are the soft joy of white lotus
Rising up in your fancy dreamland.
You’re the blooming flowers over the trees,
You’re a swallow twittering between the beams;
Full of love, full of warm hope,
You are the spring of this world!
”
”
Lin Huiyin (April on the World(the Selection of Lin Huiyin) (Chinese Edition))
“
Right now she must be moving as fast as she could through the woods, knowing that the only thing she had on her side was a little bit of time. Griffin felt a grudging respect. He stepped up on the toilet seat and grabbed the casement. He was just swinging his leg out when the faintest of sounds made him look toward the tub. Now that he was two feet off the ground, he could just see over the blue shower curtain with its faded green and yellow seahorses. And what he saw was Cheyenne, crouched in the tub. Hiding behind the shower curtain.
”
”
April Henry (Girl, Stolen (Girl, Stolen, #1))
“
You don't get to know where April and I went. I've had enough of that. We're just here on planet Earth with the rest of the humans. Did we make a couple of not-super-well-thought-out financial decisions? Yeah, but we had to make a comfortable life for ourselves and Paulette. Paulette is our monkey.
”
”
Hank Green (A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor (The Carls, #2))
“
The great chandeliers hang silent. The tables in the vast dining room overlooking the lake are spread with white cloth and silver as if for dinners before the war. At a little after 4, into the green room with the slow walk of aged people, the Nabokovs come. He wears a navy blue cardigan, a blue-checked shirt, gray slacks and a tie. His shoes have crepe soles. He is balding, with a fringe of gray hair. His hazel-green eyes are watering, oysterous, as he says. He is 75, born on the same day as Shakespeare, April 23. He is at the end of a great career, a career half-carved out of a language not his own.
”
”
James Salter
“
Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm him from his mood. For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such gladhearted visitants; so Ahab did, in the end, a little respond to the playful allurings of that girlish air. More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look, which, in any other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile.
”
”
Herman Melville (Moby Dick: or, the White Whale)
“
Poem: Roses And Rue (To L. L.) Could we dig up this long-buried treasure, Were it worth the pleasure, We never could learn love's song, We are parted too long. Could the passionate past that is fled Call back its dead, Could we live it all over again, Were it worth the pain! I remember we used to meet By an ivied seat, And you warbled each pretty word With the air of a bird; And your voice had a quaver in it, Just like a linnet, And shook, as the blackbird's throat With its last big note; And your eyes, they were green and grey Like an April day, But lit into amethyst When I stooped and kissed; And your mouth, it would never smile For a long, long while, Then it rippled all over with laughter Five minutes after. You were always afraid of a shower, Just like a flower: I remember you started and ran When the rain began. I remember I never could catch you, For no one could match you, You had wonderful, luminous, fleet, Little wings to your feet. I remember your hair - did I tie it? For it always ran riot - Like a tangled sunbeam of gold: These things are old. I remember so well the room, And the lilac bloom That beat at the dripping pane In the warm June rain; And the colour of your gown, It was amber-brown, And two yellow satin bows From your shoulders rose. And the handkerchief of French lace Which you held to your face - Had a small tear left a stain? Or was it the rain? On your hand as it waved adieu There were veins of blue; In your voice as it said good-bye Was a petulant cry, 'You have only wasted your life.' (Ah, that was the knife!) When I rushed through the garden gate It was all too late. Could we live it over again, Were it worth the pain, Could the passionate past that is fled Call back its dead! Well, if my heart must break, Dear love, for your sake, It will break in music, I know, Poets' hearts break so. But strange that I was not told That the brain can hold In a tiny ivory cell God's heaven and hell.
”
”
Oscar Wilde (Selected Poems)
“
Wedding Superstitions
The Bridal Gown
White - You have chosen right.
Grey - You'll go far away.
Black - You'll wish yourself back.
Red - You'll wish yourself dead.
Green - Ashamed to be seen.
Blue - You'll always be true.
Pearl - You'll live in a whirl.
Peach - A love out of reach.
Yellow - Ashamed of your fellow.
Pink - Your Spirits will sink.
The Wedding Day
Monday for health, Tuesday for wealth,
Wednesday best of all,
Thursday for losses, Friday for crosses,
Saturday for no luck at all.
The Wedding Month
Marry in May, and you'll rue the day,
Marry in Lent, you'll live to repent.
Married when the year is new,
He'll be loving, kind and true.
When February birds do mate,
You wed nor dread your fate.
If you wed when March winds blow,
Joy and sorrow both you'll know.
Marry in April when you can,
Joy for maiden and the man.
Marry in the month of May,
And you'll surely rue the day.
Marry when the June roses grow,
Over land and sea you'll go.
Those who in July do wed,
Must labour for their daily bread.
Whoever wed in August be,
Many a change is sure to see.
Marry in September's shine,
Your living will be rich and fine.
If in October you do marry,
Love will come, but riches tarry.
If you wed in bleak November,
Only joys will come, remember,
When December's snows fall fast,
Marry and true love will last.
Married in January's roar and rime,
Widowed you'll be before your prime.
Married in February's sleepy weather,
Life you'll tread in time together.
Married when March winds shrill and roar,
Your home will lie on a distant shore.
Married 'neath April's changeful skies,
A checkered path before you lies.
Married when bees o'er May blossoms flit,
Strangers around your board will sit.
Married in month of roses June,
Life will be one long honeymoon.
Married in July with flowers ablaze,
Bitter-sweet memories in after days.
Married in August's heat and drowse,
Lover and friend in your chosen spouse.
Married in September's golden glow,
Smooth and serene your life will go.
Married when leaves in October thin,
Toil and hardships for you begin.
Married in veils of November mist,
Fortune your wedding ring has kissed.
Married in days of December's cheer,
Love's star shines brighter from year to year
”
”
New Zealand Proverb
“
Mrs. Garza made us read this poem in class that said “April is the cruelest month.” Everybody else thought that was stupid, how was a month going to be cruel? But to me it makes perfect sense. It’s cruel because the whole world turns pretty and green while everything in your life is going sour. And you can’t blame anybody but yourself.
”
”
Ashley Hope Pérez (What Can't Wait)
“
Few things are harder to visualise than that a cold snowbound landscape, so marrow-chillingly quiet and lifeless, will, within mere months, be green and lush and warm, quivering with all manner of life, from birds warbling and flying through the trees to swarms of insects hanging in scattered clusters in the air. Nothing in the winter landscape presages the scent of sun-warmed heather and moss, trees bursting with sap and thawed lakes ready for spring and summer, nothing presages the feeling of freedom that can come over you when the only white that can be seen is the clouds gliding across the blue sky above the blue water of the rivers gently flowing down to the sea, the perfect, smooth, cool surface, broken now and then by rocks, rapids and bathing bodies. It is not there, it does not exist, everything is white and still, and if the silence is broken it is by a cold wind or a lone crow caw-cawing. But it is coming ... it is coming... One evening in March the snow turns to rain, and the piles of snow collapse. One morning in April there are buds on the trees, and there is a trace of green in the yellow grass. Daffodils appear, white and blue anemones too. Then the warm air stands like a pillar among the trees on the slopes. On sunny inclines buds have burst, here and there cherry trees are in blossom. If you are sixteen years old all of this makes an impression, all of this leaves its mark, for this is the first spring you know is spring, with all your sense you know this is spring, and it is the last, for all coming springs pale in comparison with your first. If, moreover, you are in love, well, then ... then it is merely a question of holding on. Holding on to all the happiness, all the beauty, all the future that resides in everything.
”
”
Karl Ove Knausgård (Min kamp 2 (Min kamp, #2))
“
No, um... maybe it's a way of saying, a way to show, that we don't see how much we don't see? Um, just like the news, so many important things happen that, like, nothing seems important. Why do people even watch the news?'
That's an actual quote from an interview I did cable news. Direct quote. Great plan, April. I really knew what I was talking about.
”
”
Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1))
“
She buys "mixed salad greens" for seven dollars a bag, triple-washed with who knows what. And to get this stuff home, which is only two blocks away from the grocery store, Jennica throws all of it into plastic bags. There is a husk on her corn, corn that Jennica's store sells in April.. there is a rind on her grapefruit, grapefruit that gets flown in from Florida... but still, Jennica puts the corn and the citrus into plastic bags. Her supposedly organic red peppers, which cost six dollars a pound, come in a foam tray under shrink-wrap, but she puts them in a plastic bag. And then the checkout girl puts all of Jennica's little plastic parcels into two or three more big white plastic bags, and then Jennica walks the two blocks home, where she unpacks all the bags and then trows them in the same trash bin where her corn husks and citrus rinds go.
”
”
Rudolph Delson (Maynard and Jennica)
“
Her lily hand her rosy cheek lies under,
Cozening the pillow of a lawful kiss;
Who, therefore angry, seems to part in sunder,
Swelling on either side to want his bliss;
Between whose hills her head entombed is;
Where like a virtuous monument she lies,
To be admired of lewd unhallowed eyes.
Without the bed her other fair hand was,
On the green coverlet, whose perfect white
Showed like an April daisy on the grass,
With pearly sweat resembling dew of night.
Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheathed their light,
And canopied in darkness sweetly lay
Till they might open to adorn the day.
Her hair like golden threads played with her breath
O modest wantons, wanton modesty!
Showing life’s triumph in the map of death,
And death’s dim look in life’s mortality.
Each in her sleep themselves so beautify
As if between them twain there were no strife,
But that life lived in death, and death in life.
”
”
William Shakespeare (The Rape of Lucrece)
“
Sleep pressed upon him with an urgency that became resistless. And April Bell was calling to him. Her voice came clearly to him, above all the subdued murmur of traffic noises. It was a ringing golden chime, more penetrating than the occasional beep of a driver's horn or the far clamor of a streetcar. It shimmered out of the dark, in waves of pure light as green as her malachite eyes. Then he thought he could see her, somehow, far across the slumberous town. Only she wasn't a woman.
”
”
Jack Williamson (Darker Than You Think)
“
No, I . . . I don't know, April! It's exciting, but space aliens are a very specific explanation for a very broad circumstance. There's more to the universe than humans and aliens. Maybe they're made by humans but sent from the future. Maybe they are a kind of projection through space-time. Maybe they're proof that our universe is a simulation and someone is changing the code. Mostly, I don't pretend an explanation is correct just because I haven't thought of any others that fit with current data.
”
”
Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1))
“
A Storm In April"
Some winters, taking leave,
Deal us a last, hard blow,
Salting the ground like Carthage
Before they will go.
But the bright, milling snow
Which throngs the air today—
It is a way of leaving
So as to stay.
The light flakes do not weigh
The willows down, but sift
Through the white catkins, loose
As petal-drift
Or in an up-draft lift
And glitter at a height,
Dazzling as summer’s leaf-stir
Chinked with light.
This storm, if I am right,
Will not be wholly over
Till green fields, here and there,
Turn white with clover,
And through chill air the puffs of milkweed hover.
”
”
Richard Wilbur
“
It was the afternoon of an April day in that same year, and the sky was blue above, with little sailing white clouds catching the pleasant sunlight. The earth in that northern country had scarcely yet put on her robe of green. The few trees grew near brooks running down from the moors and the higher ground. The air was full of pleasant sounds prophesying of the coming summer. The rush, and murmur, and tinkle of the hidden watercourses; the song of the lark poised high up in the sunny air; the bleat of the lambs calling to their mothers—everything inanimate was full of hope and gladness.
”
”
Elizabeth Gaskell (Sylvia's Lovers)
“
A month from now, in early April, at the time when far away, outside the city, the water hyacinths would be covering every inch of bayou, lagoon, creek, and backwater with a spiritual-mauve to obscene-purple, violent, vulgar, fleshy, solid, throttling mass of bloom over the black water, and the first heartbreaking, misty green, like girlhood dreams, on the old cypresses would have settled down to be leaf and not a damned thing else, and the arm-thick, mud-colored, slime-slick mocassins would heave out of the swamp and try to cross the highway and your front tire hitting one would give a slight bump and make a sound like kerwhush and a tinny thump when he slapped heavily up against the underside of the fender, and the insects would come boiling out of the swamps and day and night the whole air would vibrate with them with a sound like an electric fan, and if it was night the owls back in the swamps would be whoo-ing and moaning like love and death and damnation, or one would sail out of the pitch dark into the rays of your headlights and plunge against the radiator to explode like a ripped feather bolster, and the fields would be deep in that rank, hairy or slick, juicy, sticky grass which the cattle gorge on and never get flesh over their ribs for that grass is in that black soil and no matter how far the roots could ever go, if the roots were God knows how deep, there would never be anything but that black, grease-clotted soil and no stone down there to put calcium into that grass—well, a month from now, in early April, when all those things would be happening beyond the suburbs, the husks of the old houses in the street where Anne Stanton and I were walking would, if it were evening, crack and spill out onto the stoops and into the street all that life which was now sealed up within.
”
”
Robert Penn Warren (All The King's Men)
“
Sunday Morning
I
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.
II
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.
III
Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.
IV
She says, "I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?"
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings
”
”
Wallace Stevens
“
He lifted one bottle into the light.
" 'GREEN DUSK FOR DREAMING BRAND PUREE NORTHERN AIR,' " he read. " 'Derived from the atmosphere of the white Arctic in the spring of 1900, and mixed with the wind from the upper Hudson Valley in the month of April, 1910, and containing particles of dust seen shining in the sunset of one day in the meadows around Grinnell, Iowa, when a cool air rose to be captured from a lake and a little creek and a natural spring.'
"Now the small print," he said. He squinted. " 'Also containing molecules of vapor from menthol, lime, papaya, and watermelon and all other water-smelling, cool-savored fruits and trees like camphor and herbs like wintergreen and the breath of a rising wind from the Des Plaines River itself. Guaranteed most refreshing and cool. To be taken on summer nights when the heat passes ninety.' "
He picked up the other bottle.
"This one the same, save I've collected a wind from the Aran Isles and one from off Dublin Bay with salt on it and a strip of flannel fog from the coast of Iceland."
He put the two bottles on the bed.
"One last direction." He stood by the cot and leaned over and spoke quietly. "When you're drinking these, remember: It was bottled by a friend. The S.J. Jonas Bottling Company, Green Town, Illinois- August, 1928. A vintage year, boy... a vintage year.
”
”
Ray Bradbury (Dandelion Wine)
“
I think the reason lay partly in his idea of immortality, but I think too it belonged to his war against the Inland Revenue. He was a great believer in delaying tactics. “Never answer all their questions,” he would say. “Make them write again. And be ambiguous. You can always decide what you mean later according to circumstances. The bigger the file the bigger the work. Personnel frequently change. A newcomer has to start looking at the file from the beginning. Office space is limited. In the end it’s easier for them to give in.” Sometimes, if the inspector was pressing very hard, he told me that it was time to fling in a reference to a non-existing letter. He would write sharply, “You seem to have paid no attention to my letter of April 6, 1963.” A whole month might pass before the inspector admitted he could find no trace of it. Mr Pottifer would send in a carbon copy of the letter containing a reference which again the inspector would be unable to trace. If he was a newcomer to the district, of course he blamed his predecessor; otherwise, after a few years of Mr Pottifer, he was quite liable to have a nervous breakdown. I think when Mr Pottifer planned to carry on after death (of course there was no notice in the papers and the funeral was very quiet) he had these delaying tactics in mind. He didn’t think of the inconvenience to his clients, only of the inconvenience to the inspector.’ Aunt Augusta
”
”
Graham Greene (Travels With My Aunt)
“
Ursula, in a garden, found
A bed of radishes.
She kneeled upon the ground
And gathered them,
With flowers around,
Blue, gold, pink, and green.
She dressed in red and gold brocade
And in the grass an offering made
Of radishes and flowers.
She said, "My dear,
Upon your altars,
I have placed
The marguerite and coquelicot,
And roses
Frail as April snow;
But here," she said,
"Where none can see,
I make an offering, in the grass,
Of radishes and flowers."
And then she wept
For fear the Lord would not accept.
The good Lord in His garden sought
New leaf and shadowy tinct,
And they were all His thought.
He heard her low accord,
Half prayer and half ditty,
And He felt a subtle quiver,
That was not heavenly love,
Or pity.
This is not writ
”
”
Wallace Stevens
“
One legacy of John Winthrop, John Cotton, and other Bay Colony founders is the myth of America as a land specially favored by God, a myth we still live with today regardless of political ideology. In the spring of 1686, to preserve the spirit of that America in the face of its dying, Samuel Sewall paid the printer Samuel Green to produce hundreds of copies of a pamphlet containing the farewell sermon that John Cotton delivered on the docks in Southampton, England, in April 1630 before Winthrop’s fleet set sail. The Scripture was 2 Samuel 7:10: “I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no more; neither shall the children of wickedness afflict them any more….” By August of 1686 Samuel had donated copies of God’s Promise to His Plantation to every magistrate of the new provincial court and to every member of the local militia. Not long after arranging
”
”
Eve LaPlante (Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall)
“
April 29 MORNING “Thou art my hope in the day of evil.” — Jeremiah 17:17 THE path of the Christian is not always bright with sunshine; he has his seasons of darkness and of storm. True, it is written in God’s Word, “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace;” and it is a great truth, that religion is calculated to give a man happiness below as well as bliss above; but experience tells us that if the course of the just be “As the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day,” yet sometimes that light is eclipsed. At certain periods clouds cover the believer’s sun, and he walks in darkness and sees no light. There are many who have rejoiced in the presence of God for a season; they have basked in the sunshine in the earlier stages of their Christian career; they have walked along the “green pastures” by the side of the “still waters,” but suddenly they find the glorious sky is clouded; instead of the Land of Goshen they have to tread the sandy desert; in the place of sweet waters, they find troubled streams, bitter to their taste, and they say, “Surely, if I were a child of God, this would not happen.” Oh! say not so, thou who art walking in darkness. The best of God’s saints must drink the wormwood; the dearest of His children must bear the cross. No Christian has enjoyed perpetual prosperity; no believer can always keep his harp from the willows. Perhaps the Lord allotted you at first a smooth and unclouded path, because you were weak and timid. He tempered the wind to the shorn lamb, but now that you are stronger in the spiritual life, you must enter upon the riper and rougher experience of God’s full-grown children. We need winds and tempests to exercise our faith, to tear off the rotten bough of self-dependence, and to root us more firmly in Christ. The day of evil reveals to us the value of our glorious hope.
”
”
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Morning and Evening—Classic KJV Edition: A Devotional Classic for Daily Encouragement)
“
• “It was the rose hour, just before dawn.” 35
“I can feed him the plot of it, bit by bit. Keep him alive in this cage of boredom with morsels of Robert Louis Stevenson.” 70
“Sorry her lot who loves too well, Heavy the heart that hopes but vainly…Dark is the night to earth’s poor daughters. Heavy the sorrow that bows the head When love is alive and hope is dead! When love is alive and hope is dead.” 101
“April! Her dear author friend had planned this moment before Kaiulani had even left Hawaii! In that instant she prayed for him, prayed that anticipating the surprise had given him as much pleasure as she had received from it.”131
“Her holiday wardrobe was a flower garden of velvets and silks.” 169
“Color seeped through the predawn mist. Daybreak, like a flame on the wick of a candle, danced on a jagged peak. Light flowed like water down the verdant green folds of the pali. Foamy breakers, churning in the shadow at the base of the rocky cliffs, glowed with rose and gold and violet reflections of the sky.” 287
”
”
Bodie Thoene (Love Finds You in Lahaina, Hawaii)
“
We'd reached the parking lot. Alex stopped.
"You drive to school?" I demanded.
He gestured me ahead of him through the break in the chain fence. "We don't all live five blocks away," he shot back.
"It's eight, actually."
"Fine,eight. And sometimes I walk."
I pictured the stretch between Willing and Society Hill, where I knew he lived somewhere near Sadie. It was quite a distance, and not a particularly scenic one, especially at seven thirty in the morning. "Yeah? When was the last time?"
He didn't answer immediately, leading the way now between the parked cars. He passed a big Jeep that still had its dealer plates, a low-slung-two-door Lexus, and a sick black BMW that all looked like just the sort of cars he would own. "April of last year," he admitted finally. "But it pissed rain on me the whole time, so that's gotta count for something." He stopped by the dented passenger door of an old green Mustang. "Your carriage, my lady."
"Really? This is your car?"
The door made a very scary sound when he opened it. "It's clean," he snapped, and I realized he'd totally missed my point.
"It's amazing.
”
”
Melissa Jensen (The Fine Art of Truth or Dare)
“
For about 48 weeks of the year an asparagus plant is unrecognizable to anyone except an asparagus grower. Plenty of summer visitors to our garden have stood in the middle of the bed and asked, 'What is this stuff? It's beautiful!' We tell them its the asparagus patch, and they reply, 'No this, these feathery little trees.' An asparagus spear only looks like its picture for one day of its life, usually in April, give or take a month as you travel from the Mason-Dixon Line. The shoot emerges from the ground like a snub nose green snake headed for sunshine, rising so rapidly you can just about see it grow. If it doesn't get it's neck cut off at ground level as it emerges, it will keep growing. Each triangular scale on the spear rolls out into a branch until the snake becomes a four foot tree with delicate needles. Contrary to lore, fat spears are no more tender or mature than thin ones. Each shoot begins life with its own particular girth. In the hours after emergence, it lengthens but does not appreciably fatten. To step into another raging asparagus controversy, white spears are botanically no different from their green colleagues. White shoots have been deprived of sunlight by a heavy mulch pulled up over the plant's crown. European growers go to this trouble for consumers who prefer the stalks before they've had their first blush of photosynthesis. Most Americans prefer the more developed taste of green. Uncharacteristically, we're opting for the better nutritional deal here also. The same plant could produce white or green spears in alternate years, depending on how it is treated. If the spears are allowed to proceed beyond their first exploratory six inches, they'll green out and grow tall and feathery like the house plant known as asparagus fern, which is the next of kin. Older, healthier asparagus plants produce chunkier, more multiple shoots. Underneath lies an octopus-shaped affair of chubby roots called a crown that stores enough starch through the winter to arrange the phallic send-up when winter starts to break. The effect is rather sexy, if you're the type to see things that way. Europeans of the Renaissance swore by it as an aphrodisiac and the church banned it from nunneries.
”
”
Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life)
“
In the Japanese vision of winter, in Japanese poetry, and Japanese prints have an imagery of the “floating world,” where there is no notion that winter has in any way fallen from the hand of God, or is in any way evidence of cosmic organization. The Japanese idea of winter simply speaks of winter as simultaneously empty and full; the emptying out of nature by cold, and it’s also the filling up of the world by wind and snow… the Japanese idea of winter marked the final transformation of winter, and the idea of winter in Europe in the nineteenth century…Monet gets from the Japanese wood block prints a new infatuation with pure white-not a white that’s laid down unvaryingly with a single brushstroke, but instead a white that is made up kaleidoscopically with tiny touches of prismatic color. This is sweet winter at its sweetest, a winter so sweet that it loses the tang of the picturesque and becomes entirely exquisite- not pretty but deeply, renewingly lovely…winter becomes another kind of spring, a spring for aesthetes who find April’s green too common, but providing the same emotional lift of hope, the same pleasure of serene, unfolding slowness; the slow weight of frost, the chromatic varnishing of snow on the boughs of the chestnut tree, the still dawn scene, the semi-frozen river.
”
”
Adam Gopnik (Winter: Five Windows on the Season (The CBC Massey Lectures))
“
In the water-thickets, the path wound tortuously between umber iron-bogs, albescent quicksands of aluminum and magnesium oxides, and sumps of cuprous blue or permanganate mauve fed by slow, gelid streams and fringed by silver reeds and tall black grasses. The twisted, smooth-barked boles of the trees were yellow-ochre and burnt orange; through their tightly woven foliage filtered a gloomy, tinted light. At their roots grew great clumps of multifaceted translucent crystal like alien fungi.
Charcoal grey frogs with viridescent eyes croaked as the column floundered between the pools. Beneath the greasy surface of the water unidentifiable reptiles moved slowly and sinuously. Dragonflies whose webby wings spanned a foot or more hummed and hovered between the sedges: their long, wicked bodies glittered bold green and ultramarine; they took their prey on the wing, pouncing with an audible snap of jaws on whining, ephemeral mosquitoes and fluttering moths of april blue and chevrolet cerise.
Over everything hung the heavy, oppressive stench of rotting metal. After an hour, Cromis’ mouth was coated with a bitter deposit, and he tasted acids. He found it difficult to speak. While his horse stumbled and slithered beneath him, he gazed about in wonder, and poetry moved in his skull, swift as the jewelled mosquito-hawks over a dark slow current of ancient decay.
”
”
M. John Harrison (The Pastel City (Viriconium #1))
“
If a leaden bullet is composed of electric charges, may not a human spirit be composed of something equally intangible—or tangible? I found myself as Carlyle put it, "standing on the bosom of nothing." That was in 1920, when I was just turned sixty-nine. In the following year, on the 19th of December, 1 9 2 1, my wife died. The dear girl had a happy death. She never knew she was dying and she had no pain. She just fell asleep. The last time I saw her she was sleeping quietly, and she looked like a pretty child. There was a slight flush on her cheeks and one little white hand lay out on the green counterpane: "like an April daisy on the grass." That was at midnight, and she died at six the next morning. I had gone to bed, for I was exhausted with watching. For the last week or more she would not let me out of her room by night or day.
When I got up on the morning of her death I found to my surprise that I did not believe she was dead. My materialism notwithstanding, I felt that my wife was alive. My daughters, who held the same materialistic views, shared my feeling. We could not believe that she was not. Perhaps it was because we had been so devoted to her, because she had so filled our lives. I began to ask myself if perhaps the spiritualists were right. I did what Lady Warwick did when the Socialist idea came to her. I read all the best spiritualist books I could get hold of. I read and thought steadily for a couple of years and then I wrote some articles in the Sunday Chronicle protesting against the harsh criticism and cheap ridicule to which spiritualists were subjected. Still, I was not convinced. I was only puzzled. The books had affected me as W. T. Stead's talk had affected me. I told myself that all those gifted and honourable men and women could not be dupes or knaves. And—if they were right?
”
”
Robert Blatchford (My Eighty Years)
“
There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance. Not a word he spoke; nor did his officers say aught to him; though by all their minutest gestures and expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not painful, consciousness of being under a troubled master-eye. And not only that, but moody stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his face; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe. Ere long, from his first visit in the air, he withdrew into his cabin. But after that morning, he was every day visible to the crew; either standing in his pivot-hole, or seated upon an ivory stool he had; or heavily walking the deck. As the sky grew less gloomy; indeed, began to grow a little genial, he became still less and less a recluse; as if, when the ship had sailed from home, nothing but the dead wintry bleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded. And, by and by, it came to pass, that he was almost continually in the air; but, as yet, for all that he said, or perceptibly did, on the at last sunny deck, he seemed as unnecessary there as another mast. But the Pequod was only making a passage now; not regularly cruising; nearly all whaling preparatives needing supervision the mates were fully competent to, so that there was little or nothing, out of himself, to employ or excite Ahab, now; and thus chase away, for that one interval, the clouds that layer upon layer were piled upon his brow, as ever all clouds choose the loftiest peaks to pile themselves upon. Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm him from his mood. For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants; so Ahab did, in the end, a little respond to the playful allurings of that girlish air. More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look, which, in any other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile.
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Herman Melville (Moby-Dick or, The Whale)
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One evening in April a thirty-two-year-old woman, unconscious and severely injured, was admitted to the hospital in a provincial town south of Copenhagen. She had a concussion and internal bleeding, her legs and arms were broken in several places, and she had deep lesions in her face. A gas station attendant in a neighboring village, beside the bridge over the highway to Copenhagen, had seen her go the wrong way up the exit and drive at high speed into the oncoming traffic. The first three approaching cars managed to maneuver around her, but about 200 meters after the junction she collided head-on with a truck. The Dutch driver was admitted for observation but released the next day. According to his statement he started to brake a good 100 meters before the crash, while the car seemed to actually increase its speed over the last stretch. The front of the vehicle was totally crushed, part of the radiator was stuck between the road and the truck's bumper, and the woman had to be cut free. The spokesman for emergency services said it was a miracle she had survived. On arrival at the hospital the woman was in very critical condition, and it was twenty-four hours before she was out of serious danger. Her eyes were so badly damaged that she lost her sight. Her name was Lucca. Lucca Montale. Despite the name there was nothing particularly Italian about her appearance. She had auburn hair and green eyes in a narrow face with high cheek-bones. She was slim and fairly tall. It turned out she was Danish, born in Copenhagen. Her husband, Andreas Bark, arrived with their small son while she was still on the operating table. The couple's home was an isolated old farmhouse in the woods seven kilometers from the site of the accident. Andreas Bark told the police he had tried to stop his wife from driving. He thought she had just gone out for a breath of air when he heard the car start. By the time he got outside he saw it disappearing along the road. She had been drinking a lot. They had had a marital disagreement. Those were the words he used; he was not questioned further on that point. Early in the morning, when Lucca Montale was moved from the operating room into intensive care, her husband was still in the waiting room with the sleeping boy's head on his lap. He was looking out at the sky and the dark trees when Robert sat down next to him. Andreas Bark went on staring into the gray morning light with an exhausted, absent gaze. He seemed slightly younger than Robert, in his late thirties. He had dark, wavy hair and a prominent chin, his eyes were narrow and deep-set, and he was wearing a shabby leather jacket. Robert rested his hands on his knees in the green cotton trousers and looked down at the perforations in the leather uppers of his white clogs. He realized he had forgotten to take off his plastic cap after the operation. The thin plastic crackled between his hands. Andreas looked at him and Robert straightened up to meet his gaze. The boy woke.
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Jens Christian Grøndahl (Lucca)
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How Google Works (Schmidt, Eric) - Your Highlight on Location 3124-3150 | Added on Sunday, April 5, 2015 10:35:40 AM In late 1999, John Doerr gave a presentation at Google that changed the company, because it created a simple tool that let the founders institutionalize their “think big” ethos. John sat on our board, and his firm, Kleiner Perkins, had recently invested in the company. The topic was a form of management by objectives called OKRs (to which we referred in the previous chapter), which John had learned from former Intel CEO Andy Grove.173 There are several characteristics that set OKRs apart from their typical underpromise-and-overdeliver corporate-objective brethren. First, a good OKR marries the big-picture objective with a highly measurable key result. It’s easy to set some amorphous strategic goal (make usability better … improve team morale … get in better shape) as an objective and then, at quarter end, declare victory. But when the strategic goal is measured against a concrete goal (increase usage of features by X percent … raise employee satisfaction scores by Y percent … run a half marathon in under two hours), then things get interesting. For example, one of our platform team’s recent OKRs was to have “new WW systems serving significant traffic for XX large services with latency < YY microseconds @ ZZ% on Jupiter.”174 (Jupiter is a code name, not the location of Google’s newest data center.) There is no ambiguity with this OKR; it is very easy to measure whether or not it is accomplished. Other OKRs will call for rolling out a product across a specific number of countries, or set objectives for usage (e.g., one of the Google+ team’s recent OKRs was about the daily number of messages users would post in hangouts) or performance (e.g., median watch latency on YouTube videos). Second—and here is where thinking big comes in—a good OKR should be a stretch to achieve, and hitting 100 percent on all OKRs should be practically unattainable. If your OKRs are all green, you aren’t setting them high enough. The best OKRs are aggressive, but realistic. Under this strange arithmetic, a score of 70 percent on a well-constructed OKR is often better than 100 percent on a lesser one. Third, most everyone does them. Remember, you need everyone thinking in your venture, regardless of their position. Fourth, they are scored, but this scoring isn’t used for anything and isn’t even tracked. This lets people judge their performance honestly. Fifth, OKRs are not comprehensive; they are reserved for areas that need special focus and objectives that won’t be reached without some extra oomph. Business-as-usual stuff doesn’t need OKRs. As your venture grows, the most important OKRs shift from individuals to teams. In a small company, an individual can achieve incredible things on her own, but as the company grows it becomes harder to accomplish stretch goals without teammates. This doesn’t mean that individuals should stop doing OKRs, but rather that team OKRs become the more important means to maintain focus on the big tasks. And there’s one final benefit of an OKR-driven culture: It helps keep people from chasing competitors. Competitors are everywhere in the Internet Century, and chasing them (as we noted earlier) is the fastest path to mediocrity. If employees are focused on a well-conceived set of OKRs, then this isn’t a problem. They know where they need to go and don’t have time to worry about the competition. ==========
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Anonymous
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Strangely enough, the Japanese base most of their traditional desserts on beans. Called an, this smooth chocolatey-looking paste is made from azuki beans boiled in sugar and water. I encountered it for the first time one afternoon when I helped myself to a traditional Kyoto sweet resembling a triangular ravioli stuffed with fudge. What a shock to find a center made from azuki beans, instead of cocoa beans!
Sometimes sweet makers choose chestnuts or white kidney beans to make the an, which they craft into dainty flowers, leaves, and fruits that look just like marzipan. Using special tools and food coloring, they fashion such masterpieces as prickly green-jacketed chestnuts with dark brown centers, winter white camellias with red stamens, and pale pink cherry blossoms with mint-colored leaves to commemorate the flower's arrival in April.
The bean fudge also fills and frosts other confections, including pounded glutinous rice taffy called mochi and bite-size cakes, made from flour, water, and eggs that are baked until golden. These moist confections go by the name of namagashi and are always served before the thick whipped green tea at the tea ceremony.
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Victoria Abbott Riccardi (Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto)
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The color of the ocean certainly looked different as we steamed north, using the Gulf Stream to give us an additional 3 knots of headway. The beautiful green sea gave way to a steel-colored blue-gray frigid foam. It was early spring now and although the weather in New England still had the feeling of winter, the migratory birds knew better. The cold wind hummed as it blew through the ships rigging and with every turn of the screw, we relentlessly inched farther North. After three months of tropical weather, we now welcomed the dryer frosty air. We represented Maine, this was our environment, and this year, March did not disappoint us. We knew enough to expect that in this changeable weather it could snow well into April. In fact the farmers in the Northeast call a late snow “Poor man’s fertilizer.
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Hank Bracker
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But the fact was Millat didn’t need to go back home: he stood schizophrenic, one foot in Bengal and one in Willesden. In his mind he was as much there as he was here. He did not require a passport to live in two places at once, he needed no visa to live his brother’s life and his own (he was a twin, after all). Alsana was the first to spot it. She confided to Clara: By God, they’re tied together like a cat’s cradle, connected like a see-saw, push one end, other goes up, whatever Millat sees, Magid saw and vice versa! And Alsana only knew the incidentals: similar illnesses, simultaneous accidents, pets dying continents apart. She did not know that while Magid watched the 1985 cyclone shake things from high places, Millat was pushing his luck along the towering wall of the cemetery in Fortune Green; that on February 10, 1988, as Magid worked his way through the violent crowds of Dhaka, ducking the random blows of those busy settling an election with knives and fists, Millat held his own against three sotted, furious, quick-footed Irishmen outside Biddy Mulligan’s notorious Kilburn public house. Ah, but you are not convinced by coincidence? You want fact fact fact? You want brushes with the Big Man with black hood and scythe? OK: on April 28, 1989, a tornado whisked the Chittagong kitchen up into the sky, taking everything with it except Magid, left miraculously curled up in a ball on the floor. Now, segue to Millat, five thousand miles away, lowering himself down upon legendary sixth-former Natalia Cavendish (whose body is keeping a dark secret from her); the condoms are unopened in a box in his back pocket; but somehow he will not catch it; even though he is moving rhythmically now, up and in, deeper and sideways, dancing with death
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Zadie Smith
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Hey,” I say. He shifts his eyes to me, then back to the ceiling. “Terry,” he says. “You are not who I expected to see.” “Yeah, I know.” I sit down with my back to him, on the edge of the bed. Thunder rumbles in the distance. It’s been threatening rain all morning, but the streets are still dry. “So,” I say. “Charity seems nice. How did she wind up falling into your orbit?” Anders sighs. “She works at the Green Goose.
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Edward Ashton (Three Days in April)
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when the Americans liberated Ohrdruf, one of Buchenwald’s sub-camps. Ohrdruf is particularly important because General Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, visited it on 12 April, just a week after it had been discovered. He brought with him Generals Omar Bradley and George Patton, and insisted on seeing ‘every nook and cranny’ of the camp, ‘because I felt it my duty to be in a position from then on to testify at first hand about these things in case there ever grew up at home the belief or assumption that the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda’.23 Here they observed torture devices, a butcher’s block used to smash the gold fillings from the mouths of the dead, a room piled to the ceiling with corpses, and the remains of hundreds of bodies that had been burned in a huge pit, as if on ‘some gigantic cannibalistic barbecue’.24 Patton, a man well used to the horrors of the battlefield, took one look at the ‘arms and legs and portions of bodies sticking out of the green water’ in the pit, and was obliged to retire behind a shed to throw up.25
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Keith Lowe (Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II)
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Col. James N. Rowe, a United States Army officer who spent five years as a prisoner in Vietnam before escaping in 1968, was shot to death yesterday (April 21, 1989) by gunmen near Manila, where he was a military adviser to the Philippine armed forces. He was 51 years old. Colonel Rowe was being driven to work at the Joint United States Military Advisory Group headquarters in Quezon City, a suburb of Manila, shortly after 7 A.M. when at least two hooded gunmen in a stolen car fired more than 20 bullets into his vehicle.
His driver, Joaquin Vinua, was wounded but was reported out of danger. Colonel Rowe was pronounced dead at a nearby military hospital. Communist Rebels Suspected
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but Philippine officials said they believed the killers were Communist rebels. The rebels have threatened to attack American targets unless the United States closes its military bases in the Philippines and ends its support of the Philippine military's fight against the insurgency.
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Hank Bracker
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jpinstitute
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At weekends we went to Jewish parties, where Jewish teenagers shuffled past Jewish bouncers and drank Jewish fizzy drinks and danced to drum ’n’ bass, waiting for the drop like accountants waiting for April.
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Matt Greene (Jew[ish])
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I needed to make sure you were okay.”
“And if I had not been…?”
“I would have done what was required to save you.”
Tears entered her eyes, putting a gloss over her vision that blurred him and the meadow. “Why,” she breathed. An eternity of silence stretched out between them. And then he reached out and brushed her cheek. When he dropped his hand, she smelled the scent—and could not understand it. Why would the perfume of fresh flowers be out— Rahvyn gasped. Looking down at their feet, she saw violets spring up from the scruffy ground, the fragile purple blooms unfurling, little flags upon green nests. And among them sprouted also daisies and dandelions, then other colorful blooms, all of the heads lifting free of the soil, maturing as if it were July, not April, as if the air were warm, not chilled. The rush of wild flowers swirled around them both, encompassing their vicinity in the meadow, bringing daylight unto the night—and Rahvyn was so o’ercome, she let out a sound of delight and swept her hands to the sky. In a twirl, she imagined that she could gather them up in her arms, a sight for sore eyes, a lift for a heavy heart, a sniff into a grateful, astounded nose. And then she stilled. Lowering her arms, she saw that he remained grim. “Are you leaving right the now?”
He took a step back. “I just wanted to give you something beautiful, so you can feel even a little of the wonder I have whenever I look into your eyes.
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J.R. Ward (Lover Arisen (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #20))
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The most insidious part of fame for April wasn’t that other people dehumanized her; it was that she dehumanized herself.
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Hank Green (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1))
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In the fields, cattle, memories dissolved by so many liquid mornings, noons and nights, had forgotten they dreamed of April grass and, by a clemency reserved for those who live placid in a perpetual now, standing in a green sweetness forgot the cold muck-grazing of February. On
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Niall Williams (This Is Happiness)
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Snow in April is an abomination.
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L.M. Montgomery (Anne's House of Dreams (Anne of Green Gables, #5))
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Vester died in dogwood winter. April, the month of the whole sorry world praying for deliverance, with dogwoods and redbuds all pretty on the roadsides and new green leaves lighting up the mountains. Then comes a late freeze to turn it all black, every fruit of the year killed in the bud. It’s a fitting time to die, I reckon. If you’re past believing in deliverance.
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Barbara Kingsolver (Demon Copperhead)