B Scott Quotes

L.G.B.T.Q.I.P.O.Z.A.A.C.V………….” 

I want to be a society vampire, you see.

I’m so damn glad I love you – I wouldn’t love any other man on earth – I b’lieve if I had deliberately decided on a sweetheart, he’d have been you.

By doing one wrong thing, I thought I could make everything right.

Things to worry about: Worry about courage Worry about cleanliness Worry about efficiency Worry about horsemanship Things not to worry about: Don’t worry about popular opinion Don’t worry about dolls Don’t worry about the past Don’t worry about the future Don’t worry about growing up Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you Don’t worry about triumph Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault Don’t worry about mosquitoes Don’t worry about flies Don’t worry about insects in general Don’t worry about parents Don’t worry about boys Don’t worry about disappointments Don’t worry about pleasures Don’t worry about satisfactions Things to think about: What am I really aiming at? How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to: (a) Scholarship (b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them? (c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it? With dearest love, Daddy

Research had given him the basics, Tab A into Slot B using Product C after ensuring Product D is firmly in place. The mechanics of it were simple. The prospect, however, of having an A that big anywhere near his B was mildly worrying

I didn't feel evil. I felt nervous, scared, nothing more.

The whole universe is one bright pearl, and there is no need to understand it.

I do not know why I shot the bird. At the moment I squeezed the trigger it seemed that the only two things in the world were the crow and myself. And now there is just me.

The past should remain firmly behind one. The present holds enough obstacles.

Maybe there isn’t a way,” he said. “Maybe all we can do is wait and hope and endure for as long as we’re able. The food will run out. Our bodies will fail. And the vine will do whatever it’s going to do.

Option A: Spend your life trying to get others to accept you. Option B: Accept yourself, and spend your life with others who recognize what a beauty you are.

I do not believe there is any such thing as a “B-player” or a mediocre human being. Everyone can be excellent at something.

Stacy wasn't certain; she'd never bothered to pay attention to details like that, and was always regretting it, the half knowing, which felt worse than not knowing at all, the constant sense that she had things partly right, but not right enough to make a difference.

I wish I was older. And that I knew more than I do.

All I know is that I do not believe in anything anymore and that I must find something to believe in or I will cease to be.

To believe you know where you are headed is not to understand where one is at the moment.

It waits till we’re weak before it reveals its strength.

The ultimate downfall of the computerized holographic receptionist was that there was no amount of flattery, flirtation or chocolate that could convince one to lie for you.

Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery Can leave the mother, murdered at her door, To crawl in her own blood, and go scott-free; The night can sweat with terror as before We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, And planned to bring the world under rule, Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." –F. Scott Fitzgerald

I do not believe in goodness in the world anymore. What is good either dies or is killed.

The only way love ever affected death was in making it more painful.

F***ing triffids.

My experience of the past several years does not lend itself to the belief that good can or will defeat evil. This is not a pessimistic view, but simply an observation of facts as I have experienced them.

By the standards of a tourist strolling past looking for a quick lunch, the place was a dive. The sign on the window was small and easy to miss, and the antique feel of the place wasn't the prepackaged, old-shit-on-the-wall nostalgia that came with so many chain restaurants. The cafe was just old, and everything about it said old. But Jon liked it that way, if only because it kept the tourists away and spared him from hearing imported ignorance when there was plenty of local ignorance to go around.

Life maybe better after death, but don't count on it!

Injustice, large and small, was like sour, moldy bread. Consumed often enough, it brought on hunger for the meat of revenge.

You’re the first bangin’ *ss hot b*tch I ever met that’s got her sh*t together. Most hot b*tches are dumb as fuck.

She was a tornado in a skirt.

Trying to remember things.” It was what people did, Amy had decided, as they waited for death; they lay there struggling to remember the details of their lives, all the events that had seemed so impossible to forget while they were being suffered through, the things tasted and smelled and heard, the thoughts that had felt like revelations, and now Jeff was doing this, too. He’d given up. They weren’t going to survive this place; they were going to end just like Henrich, shot full of arrows, the vines coiling and flowering around their bones.

That was what they were so clearly doing here: they were waiting. And not in any suspense, either, not in any anxiety as to the outcome of their vigil. They were waiting with no apparent emotion at all, as one might sit over the course of an evening, watching a candle methodically burn itself into darkness, never less than certain of the outcome, confident that the only thing standing between now and the end of waiting was time itself.

In 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney handed down the Dred Scott decision upholding and extending slavery. Taney’s opinion was, it is generally agreed, “the worst constitutional decision of the 19th century” (the words are Robert Bork’s). Yet there is a curious and little known fact about Judge Taney. More than 30 years earlier he had freed his own slaves. Today, therefore, we would say that while he was “personally” opposed to slavery he did not want to “impose” his views on others.

Playlist 1. Wild Honey - U2 2. Like Real People Do - Hozier 3. Colorblind - Counting Crows 4. Oh Darling - Gossling 5. Breathing Underwater - Metric 6. Let It Die - Foo Fighters 7. I’m Sorry - Imagine Dragons 8. Fools - Troye Sivan 9. Don’t Mess Me Around - Clare Maguire 10. Heal - Tom Odell 11. Unbreakable - Jamie Scott 12. I’m The Man Who Loves You - Wilco 13. Creep - Radiohead

all the lies people utter around death in order to comfort themselves, to bury their grief with the body, but here, suddenly, they were true. Die, Eric said in his head. Do it now, just die. And all the while—yes, implacably, inexorably—the Greek’s breathing continued its ragged course.

Stacy waited till she was certain he’d fallen asleep, then slipped free of his grasp, edging backward, leaving his hand lying open on the tent’s floor, palm up, slightly cupped, like a beggar’s. She imagined dropping a coin into it, late at night on some dark city street; she pictured herself hurrying off, never to see him again.

Wanting something to be different will not make it so.

liar’s smile

Are Cops Now America’s Most Dangerous Domestic Terrorists?

Everything life throws at you can only make you stronger...

Humanity thrown together in the equivalent of a Petri dish under a microscope bred malignant organisms as often as benign.

He wore his personality like a suit that was too tight.

I am sure of nothing except that to believe you know where you are headed is not to understand where one is at the moment.

Nothing helps your partner keep his mind on Jesus more than having a sign of His love tanned on your primary erogenous zones.

You gotta weather a few storms if you want to drop anchor in paradise.

You know you're in a bureaucracy when a hundred people who think 'A' get together and compromise on 'B.

Kimberlé Crenshaw’s “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color”; Jennifer L. Morgan’s Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery; All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave, edited by Akasha Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott, and Barbara Smith; bell hooks’s Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism; and Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens are all like scripture to me. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God was my first introduction (on the page) to a Black feminist heroine as well as to the African American southern vernacular that my mother’s family spoke.

The mansion stood proudly at the end of the new driveway, on the other side of the iron gates that the woman had come to know so well. A house once much loved, it had been abandoned and cursed, as a corpse buried in unholy ground.

All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo Big Nate series by Lincoln Peirce The Black Cauldron (The Chronicles of Prydain) by Lloyd Alexander The Book Thief  by Markus Zusak Brian’s Hunt by Gary Paulsen Brian’s Winter by Gary Paulsen Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis The Call of the Wild by Jack London The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White The Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury The Giver by Lois Lowry Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling Hatchet by Gary Paulsen The High King (The Chronicles of Prydain) by Lloyd Alexander The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien Holes by Louis Sachar The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins I Am LeBron James by Grace Norwich I Am Stephen Curry by Jon Fishman Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell Johnny Tremain by Esther Hoskins Forbes Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson LeBron’s Dream Team: How Five Friends Made History by LeBron James and Buzz Bissinger The Lightning Thief  (Percy Jackson and the Olympians) by Rick Riordan A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle Number the Stars by Lois Lowry The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton The River by Gary Paulsen The Sailor Dog by Margaret Wise Brown Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury Star Wars Expanded Universe novels (written by many authors) Star Wars series (written by many authors) The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann D. Wyss Tales from a Not-So-Graceful Ice Princess (Dork Diaries) by Rachel Renée Russell Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt Under the Blood-Red Sun by Graham Salisbury The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

To improve chances of success, you want to build a project or product where you think you’re filling a hole. Part of the trick is showing people things that they either a) haven’t seen in a long time or b) things they haven’t seen before.

I haven’t killed anyone. We took a risk. We did our job. We found a way to cure one of the deadliest diseases of our species. There are always side effects. How the hell could we see this coming? Who could’ve predicted this outcome? Stephen King?

he’d believed that he was smarter and more disciplined than the others, and that these traits alone might save them. He was a fool, though; he could see that now. He’d been a fool to cut off Pablo’s legs. All he’d managed to do was prolong the Greek’s suffering. And he’d been a fool—worse than a fool, so much worse—to sit there pouting while, fifteen feet away from him, Amy had choked to death. Even if, through some miracle, he managed to leave this place alive, he couldn’t see how he’d ever be able to survive that memory.

(...) if a person, as one theory goes, is chosen to live in a particular time for one specific reason, then why am I here now? What moment in history is my life destined to intersect with? Or has it already happened, and I just didn't understand that that was my moment?

The most famous long-distance race with a Greek origin is the marathon, which celebrates the arduous journey of the messenger who ran from Marathon to Athens, a distance of 26.2 miles, to announce Greece’s victory over the Persians in 490 B.C.; he then dropped dead from exhaustion.

But time, rather impatiently, waits for no one. As I waited for her to return, the seasons had faded in and out in a cycle of rebirth. Flowers and grass now shyly decorated the forsaken grounds and earthen graves, much like in cemeteries; as a reminder, lest we forget, of life or some form of existence after death.

I watched the woman in her mortal sleep, my nightmares now becoming hers. And as I watched, from my distant prison of stone, in the midnight silence, I heard the undying screams. I would continue to hear them every night; a reminder that pain does indeed continue eternally. Contrary to what we had hoped, death did not bring a sweet release from life’s torture, but an endless torment.

Loftus Hall was yet again empty and abandoned as many years before. But echoes of sadness, hopes, and memories lingered in the deafening silence. The woman closed her eyes and silently prayed for those who remained within its walls. She felt deeply for them; their unfinished stories and words unsaid. Unable to say goodbye and now in the realm of the dead, she could feel their heartbeats as strongly as her own.

There were countless fugitive slaves, but only one - Dred Scott - had the patience to endure the vicissitudes of America's legal system. But it was all worth it when he made it to the highest court in the land and was told by the chief justice that he was a) wrong and b) not a man, but a piece of property. His true reward, however, would come years later, after he was dead and it was of no use to him. For his case was a precedent, and today it is discussed by historians, memorized by high-school students, and joked about by assholes like myself.

False dichotomies are undisciplined thought. In the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” Builders of greatness are comfortable with paradox. They don’t oppress themselves with what we call the “Tyranny of the OR,” which pushes people to believe that things must be either A OR B, but not both. Instead, they liberate themselves with the “Genius of the AND.” Undisciplined thinkers force debates into stark “Tyranny of the OR” choices; disciplined thinkers expand the conversation to create Genius of the AND solutions.

The bacteria don't physically reshape the gut themselves. Instead, they work via their hosts. They are more management than labour. Lora Hooper demonstrated this by infusing into germ-free mice a common gut bacterium called Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron-or B-theta to its friends. She found that the microbe actovated a wide range of mouse genes that are involved in absorbing nutrients, building an impermeable barrier, breaking down toxins, creating blood vessels, and creating mature cells. In other words, the microbe told the mice how to use their own genes to make a healthy gut. Scott Gilbert, a developmental biologist, calls this idea co-devolopment. It's as far as you can get from the still-lingering idea that microbes are just threats. Instead, they actually help us become who we are.

You haven't seen the proof of that either? Alright, alright. Let's say you have an infinite set A. We'll show how to produce another infinite set, B, which is even bigger than A. This B will simply be the set of all subsets of A, which is guaranteed to exist by the power set axiom. How do we know B is bigger than A? Well, suppose we could pair off every element a A with an element f(a) B, in such a way that no elements of B were left over. Then, we could define a new subset S A, consisting of every a that's not contained in f(a). Then S is also an element of B. But notice that S can't have been paired off with any a A – since otherwise, a would be contained in f(a) if and only if it wasn't contained in f(a), contradiction. Therefore, B is larger than A, and we've ended up with a bigger infinity than the one we started with.

Pedigree was the centerpiece of Supreme Court chief justice Roger B. Taney’s majority opinion in the Dred Scott decision (1857). Though this case assessed whether a slave taken into a free state or federal territory should be set free, its conclusions were far more expansive. Addressing slavery in the territories, the proslavery Marylander dismissed Jefferson’s prohibition of slavery in the Northwest Ordinance as having no constitutional standing. He constructed his own version of the original social contract at the time of the Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitutional Convention: only the free white children of the founding generation were heirs to the original agreement; only pedigree could determine who inherited American citizenship and whose racial lineage warranted entitlement and the designation “freeman.” Taney’s opinion mattered because it literally made pedigree into a constitutional principle. In this controversial decision, Taney demonstrably rejected any notion of democracy and based the right of citizenship on bloodlines and racial stock. The chief justice ruled that the founders’ original intent was to classify members of society in terms of recognizable breeds.

If we consider the possibility that all women–from the infant suckling her mother’s breast, to the grown woman experiencing orgasmic sensations while suckling her own child, perhaps recalling her mother’s milk-smell in her own; to two women, like Virginia Woolf’s Chloe and Olivia, who share a laboratory; to the woman dying at ninety, touched and handled by women–exist on a lesbian continuum, we can see ourselves as moving in and out of this continuum, whether we identify ourselves as lesbian or not. It allows us to connect aspects of woman-identification as diverse as the impudent, intimate girl-friendships of eight- or nine-year-olds and the banding together of those women of the twelfth and fifteenth centuries known as Beguines who “shared houses, rented to one another, bequeathed houses to their room-mates … in cheap subdivided houses in the artisans’ area of town,” who “practiced Christian virtue on their own, dressing and living simply and not associating with men,” who earned their livings as spinners, bakers, nurses, or ran schools for young girls, and who managed–until the Church forced them to disperse–to live independent both of marriage and of conventual restrictions. It allows us to connect these women with the more celebrated “Lesbians” of the women’s school around Sappho of the seventh century B.C.; with the secret sororities and economic networks reported among African women; and with the Chinese marriage resistance sisterhoods–communities of women who refused marriage, or who if married often refused to consummate their marriages and soon left their husbands–the only women in China who were not footbound and who, Agnes Smedley tells us, welcomed the births of daughters and organized successful women’s strikes in the silk mills. It allows us to connect and compare disparate individual instances of marriage resistance: for example, the type of autonomy claimed by Emily Dickinson, a nineteenth-century white woman genius, with the strategies available to Zora Neale Hurston, a twentieth-century black woman genius. Dickinson never married, had tenuous intellectual friendships with men, lived self-convented in her genteel father’s house, and wrote a lifetime of passionate letters to her sister-in-law Sue Gilbert and a smaller group of such letters to her friend Kate Scott Anthon. Hurston married twice but soon left each husband, scrambled her way from Florida to Harlem to Columbia University to Haiti and finally back to Florida, moved in and out of white patronage and poverty, professional success and failure; her survival relationships were all with women, beginning with her mother. Both of these women in their vastly different circumstances were marriage resisters, committed to their own work and selfhood, and were later characterized as “apolitical ”. Both were drawn to men of intellectual quality; for both of them women provided the ongoing fascination and sustenance of life.

Luntz spoke in a hushed whisper. “My colleague, Scott Caan, and I have been working for years, trying to learn as much as possible about the origins of the 1918 flu pandemic. It killed at least twenty million people worldwide. I was part of the laboratory team, led by Dr. Jeffrey Taubenberg, who resurrected the killer flu.

As they crossed the assembly yard, all three men suddenly heard the start up of construction noise, coming from the nearby thick forest, on the far side of the wire. A distant whistle, some shouts, and the rat-a-tat of hammers and the ripping sound of handsaws. "They start those poor bastards early, don't they?" Scott asked rhetorically. "And then they work them late. Makes you glad you weren't born a Russian," he said. Then he smiled wryly. "You know, there's probably a joke in that some- where. Do you suppose right now one of those poor s.o.b.'s is saying he's glad he wasn't born black in America? After all, the damn Germans are just working them to death. Me? I've got to worry about my own country- men shooting me.

The BIRD Method for Making Good Choices  B = Breathe - When faced with a decision, take a slow, deep breath first. This stimulates your reasoning brain! I = Identify - What exactly is the situation? What are your alternatives? Say them aloud. R = Reason - What would happen if you made each option? Would it benefit you or harm you and others? D = Decide - Make the best decision based on your reasoning.

All right, they’re on our left, they’re on our right, they’re in front of us, they’re behind us…they can’t get away this time.” Lewis B. Chesty Puller, USMC. The Battle at the "Frozen Chosen" Korean War – 1950.

Strap yourself into the jump-seat, make sure your harnesses are pulled really tightly, and let Scott ‘Sunshine’ Gibson give you the flight of your life. Join him as he meets up with some old and new comrades, Ryan ‘shut-eye’ Davis, Lawrence ‘sticky’ LaBelle, Jack ‘crackerjack’ McCleary, Carson ‘sleepy’ Sandmann, John Edward ‘long john’ Silver, and Sebastian ‘Atlas’ Williams, aboard a Beech 18, Boeing B-29 Superfortress, Boeing 314 Clipper, and a Scottish Aviation Twin Pioneer and share in his adventures from Newfoundland to Mexico to Malaysia in the late 1960’s. Hang on to your hats boys. It’s time to fly. Extract from 'Short Finals

Nathaniel Scott opened my eyes to the possibility of love at first sight, or should I say, love at first fall. He showed me that one moment can change everything.

Nathaniel Scott— the only boy whom I have ever loved, the boy who has dominated my heart and thoughts since the very first day we met.

I love you, Nathaniel Scott,” I exclaim as a tear runs down my face, no longer worrying about holding back the words I’ve wanted to say for weeks. “And I love you too, Isabella Scott.” “That’s not even my name, you idiot,” I reply, smiling and gently smacking his chest for ruining our romantic moment. “Oh, believe me, one day it’s going to be!” retorts Nate, kissing me again.

But what about our night together?” Nate whispers back. “Baby, I love you, but getting Gabe Scott to play nice is rarer than winning the lottery.

Aunt B didn’t have a degree,” Ascanio volunteered. “Yes, she did,” Curran said. “She went to Agnes Scott and majored in psychology.” Ascanio stared out the window. “What’s the plan?” Curran asked. “You’re sixteen; you have to have a plan. Or are you going to let your mother pay your bills for the rest of your life?” “No.” Ascanio bit off the word. “Then I suggest you rethink algebra,” Curran said.

The lights then came on and we all heard the radio. It was time to go home. But the woman didn’t want to leave and the house wanted her to stay. As she got up from the floor, she looked at the walls and knew it would not be the last time. No, she would return. “Soon, very soon” she whispered, and a new promise was made within these walls. Without a sound, she wished Anne and the others a good night, thanking them as her soul…wept. She then stood next to the wooden staircase she loved so much. Gently, she pressed her hand on the wood while touching the banister; looking up, her eyes reassuring told us that she would be back.

We were alone and yet, I had the undeniable feeling we were being watched. But for all I looked, there was not another soul in sight. With the exception of course, of the stone eagles perched on the roof, which as daylight faded, looked more like gargoyles. Monsters in stone much like those of any nightmare, the finials had guarded the Hall and its secrets for centuries. Their features had been delicately carved and in the mist, resembled grotesque winged demons.

Anne’s home then was already centuries old and though beautiful as it was, I cannot say I had ever felt at ease in the great Hall. Shadows, creaks, and groans as well as whispers and growls have forever lived within its walls. Evil was part of its foundations and even then, the rambling mansion harboured many souls and secrets. This is something inevitable in a place as old as Loftus Hall.

Old homes are enigmatical. It is a given that historic properties always come with countless invisible guests and much that remains hidden. They become alive through the people that reside in them. They breathe, love, and dream much the same way mortals do. Awakening, with every heartbeat and regretting every tear as they scream in silence. And if we listen carefully, we may be able to understand the meaning of such unexplainable noises. In time, walls deteriorate and their splendour fades. All that remains then is their skeletal structure and soul; the eternal memories of all those who lived and died within. And that is, in essence, what ghosts truly are. Shadows of what we once were, yet somehow refusing or unable to cease in existence. But some things are just not meant to last forever; it is unnatural.

Having lost the will to live, we somehow survived from one encounter to the next. Absences in between were filled with sighs that became a melancholy melody. And when we did meet, we fed voraciously as revenants on the only thing that sustained our existence: our love for each other. Love is madness, if it is at all lived as it should it be. It is the fever of an incurable disease. Addictive and lethal, love…love is the most potent poison known to man. And the more we loved, the more alive we felt. But love’s bitter-sweet aftertaste was an illusion. Each moment shared only brought us closer to our end as we fell from grace.

Time didn’t mean much here. I was living on island time now, and it was the happiest time I had ever known.

But a good vaccine maximizes its ability to kindle all of our immune system’s machinery, not only stimulating the production of antibodies but also spurring the activity of T cells and B cells that have memory, and are able to churn out new antibodies and other mediators of our immune response after they come into contact with a virus months or years later.

The Dhammapada says losing what you love brings suffering. But harboring the pain of your loss only brings more pain.

Studies of the DSM-II found that when two psychiatrists consulted the same patient, they gave the same DSM diagnosis only between 32 and 42 percent of the time. Rates of consistency have improved since then, but the diagnosis of many mental disorders remains, despite pretensions to the contrary, more art than science.b

Was I a person or had I just exploded into a million joyful pieces of glass, sparkling in the summer sunshine? Laurie compared everyone to me?

The reason I saw ghosts always made sense to me. I’d been born of death.

Word of advice, young fellow, don’t ever stand still or life will fossilize you on the spot.

I’m most sad about leaving you, Meg. I think you’re the part of the Morrisey I’ll miss the most.” He leaned down and placed a kiss on my forehead.

A healthy gut includes a good population of the Lactobacillus bacteria that produce B12, contributing to their psychobiotic properties.

On the other hand, several boaters who were considering a run on the Tsangpo, such as Ammons and Scott Lindgren, did have big-water descents, including the Grand Canyon of the Stikine, a sixty-mile gorge in B.C. considered by many to be a must-do qualifier for a river like the Tsangpo.

ELAINE: Jerry, it’s B.O.   JERRY: But the whole car smells.   ELAINE: So?   JERRY: So when somebody has B.O., the “O” usually stays with the ”B.” Once the ”B” leaves, the ”O” goes with it.

Now let’s get your shit in the car and get the hell out of Dodge so we can get Scott Aberdeen to Witchy-Woo-Woo Camp so he can run around naked through the woods letting his dingle dangle!

As the biologist J. B. S. Haldane metaphorically described the advantages of smallness: “You can drop a mouse down a thousandyard mineshaft; and on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away. A rat is killed, a man broken, a horse splashes.”3

I need her still, and I don't know what to do. She was just here.

He was shier than she would’ve guessed; even that evening, standing so near, the rain spattering against the taut fabric only inches above their heads, he hadn’t dared to kiss her good night. This was still to come, another week or so in the future, and it was nice that way; it gave weight to the other things, the smaller gestures, his arm hooking hers as they stepped out from beneath the brightly lighted marquee onto the rain-slick streets. She almost spoke of it now, but then stopped herself, worried he might not have any memory of the moment, that what had felt so touching to her, so joyous, had been an idle gesture on his part, a response to the inclement weather rather than a timid advance toward her heart.

poor Yorick of infinite jest.

AUTHOR’S NOTE The First Assassin is a work of fiction, and specifically a work of historical fiction—meaning that much of it is based on real people, places, and events. My goal never has been to tell a tale about what really happened but to tell what might have happened by blending known facts with my imagination. Characters such as Abraham Lincoln, Winfield Scott, and John Hay were, of course, actual people. When they speak on these pages, their words are occasionally drawn from things they are reported to have said. At other times, I literally put words in their mouths. Historical events and circumstances such as Lincoln’s inauguration, the fall of Fort Sumter, and the military crisis in Washington, D.C., provide both a factual backdrop and a narrative skeleton. Throughout, I have tried to maximize the authenticity and also to tell a good story. Thomas Mallon, an experienced historical novelist, has described writing about the past: “The attempt to reconstruct the surface texture of that world was a homely pleasure, like quilting, done with items close to hand.” For me, the items close to hand were books and articles. Naming all of my sources is impossible. I’ve drawn from a lifetime of reading about the Civil War, starting as a boy who gazed for hours at the battlefield pictures in The Golden Book of the Civil War, which is an adaptation for young readers of The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War by Bruce Catton. Yet several works stand out as especially important references. The first chapter owes much to an account that appeared in the New York Tribune on February 26, 1861 (and is cited in A House Dividing, by William E. Baringer). It is also informed by Lincoln and the Baltimore Plot, 1861, edited by Norma B. Cuthbert. For details about Washington in 1861: Reveille in Washington, by Margaret Leech; The Civil War Day by Day, by E. B. Long with Barbara Long; Freedom Rising, by Ernest B. Ferguson; The Regiment That Saved the Capitol, by William J. Roehrenbeck; The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell, by Thomas P. Lowry; and “Washington City,” in The Atlantic Monthly, January 1861. For information about certain characters: With Malice Toward None, by Stephen B. Oates; Lincoln, by David Herbert Donald; Abe Lincoln Laughing, edited by P. M. Zall; Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries of John Hay, edited by Tyler Dennett; Lincoln Day by Day, Vol. III: 1861–1865, by C. Percy Powell; Agent of Destiny, by John S. D. Eisenhower; Rebel Rose, by Isabel Ross; Wild Rose, by Ann Blackman; and several magazine articles by Charles Pomeroy Stone. For life in the South: Roll, Jordan, Roll, by Eugene D. Genovese; Runaway Slaves, by John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger; Bound for Canaan, by Fergus M. Bordewich; Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, written by himself; The Fire-Eaters, by Eric H. Walther; and The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, by Robert E. May. For background on Mazorca: Argentine Dictator, by John Lynch. This is the second edition of The First Assassin. Except for a few minor edits, it is no different from the first edition.

Let us not look at the talents we wish we had or pine away for the gifts that are not ours, but instead do the best we can with what we have.” – B.J. Richardson

pessimist and fatalist (so R. B. Y. Scott, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes [Garden City, 1965], p. 192), who questions the benefits of wisdom and the meaningfulness of life. Divergent,

pessimist and fatalist (so R. B. Y. Scott, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes [Garden City, 1965], p. 192), who questions the benefits of wisdom and the meaningfulness of life.

–¡Dayan! No se molestó en contestar mientras la acomodaba hasta sentarla sobre su boca. El aroma de su esencia lo rodeó, aumentando su necesidad de probarla. La sangre le hirvió en las venas cuando la sujetó por las caderas y levantó la cabeza, deslizando la lengua por los empapados pliegues de su sexo, buscando el clítoris. Cuando lo succionó entre los labios ella dejó ir un agudo gemido, y tuvo que agarrarse del cabecero de la cama para no caerse. Dayan sonrió y pasó la lengua otra vez por el nudo de terminaciones nerviosas. –¡Oh, dioses! ¡Dayan! ¡Yo no..! –jadeó–. ¡Sí! ¡Oh, sí! Le rozó el clítoris con los dientes con suavidad y ella alcanzó el éxtasis al instante. Erinni gritó de placer y fue el sonido más maravilloso que Dayan hubiera oído nunca. La liberación de la sanadora provocó en él una satisfacción completamente diferente a cualquiera que hubiera experimentado antes. Siempre le había gustado dejar bien satisfechas a sus mujeres, pero ahora era tan gratificante como frustrante. Increíble pero insuficiente. Dayan saboreó los jugos que brotaban del cuerpo de Erinni. Manteniéndola inmóvil con una mano, deslizó la otra por el interior del muslo hasta introducir dos dedos en su vagina. El calor de Erinni lo rodeó de inmediato, con los músculos internos palpitando aún por el clímax. Unos segundos después, encontró aquel suave y sensible lugar que dicen las malas lenguas que no existe, y lo frotó sin misericordia mientras buscaba de nuevo el clítoris con la boca. Erinni se quedó sin respiración, apretó los dedos aún más fuerte en el cabecero, y se arqueó intentando atenuar las increíbles sensaciones que la abrumaban, comenzando a jadear y gemir. –¡Dayan! Oh, Dayan… por favor… es demasiado… yo no… ¡Ooooh! Quería proporcionarle el tipo de placer que la devastaría y la arruinaría para cualquier otro hombre que no fuera él. Capturó el clítoris con la lengua y lo hizo rodar de un lado hacia otro. Ella tenía los músculos tensos y cerró los puños en el cabecero, inmersa en el frenesí mientras sus pliegues se hinchaban más y más. Dayan apartó la boca un momento para mirarle el sexo; la carne palpitaba con un inflamado color carmesí que suplicaba satisfacción. Erinni inspiró durante el momento de tregua, hasta que aquella estremecedora sensación la rodeó, exigiendo su liberación. Gritó. –¡Dayan! –¿Quieres que pare? –¡No! Sonriendo ampliamente, volvió a succionar el clítoris con los labios. La estimuló con dientes y lengua, hasta que el cuerpo de Erinni se tensó por completo y comenzó a correrse de una manera salvaje mientras gritaba. Lleno de satisfacción masculina, no le dio respiro y la deslizó sobre su cuerpo hasta las caderas. Le separó las piernas con la rodilla y se sujetó la anhelante polla con la mano. Penetrarla fue fácil. Estaba tan lubricada que no encontró ningún impedimento. La fricción de su carne le hizo soltar un gemido desgarrador. Cuando Erinni le tiró del pelo, Dayan tensó la mandíbula y apretó los dientes para controlarse y no explotar. Alejar aquella frenética sensación fue aún más difícil cuando ella empezó a contonearse encima de él. El placer le hizo hervir la sangre. La deseaba de una forma aterradora, insaciable, abrumadora. Quería que Erinni volviera a correrse otra vez. Comenzó a embestirla, con dureza y con profundidad, enterrándose completamente, ardiendo, sintiendo que su polla latía de dolor. Un empuje tras otro, cada vez más duro y rápido, intenso e increíble. Contenerse se hizo imposible cuando ella palpitó alrededor de su miembro mientras jadeaba y gemía. –¡Sí! ¡Sí! ¡Dayan, dioses! (Dayan y Erinni. Capítulo 7, parte B.)

Recalls The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, the better work of Jim Thompson (The Grifters; After Dark, My Sweet) and Thomas Berger’s tales of small-town souls who succumb to murderous mayhem.