Back Speakers Quotes

Don't live the same day over and over again and call that a life. Life is about evolving mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.

Kindness is universal. Sometimes being kind allows others to see the goodness in humanity through you. Always be kinder than necessary.

Caught in a bad romance. Whoaaa-oh-ooooh!" Nellie wailed along to the XM radio blaring from the enormous speakers. "Can I uncover my ears now?" Dan called from the back, where he was reclined across the leather seat. "Has Nellie stopped her Lady Gag Me impression?

No matter how dysfunctional your background, how broke or broken you are, where you are today, or what anyone else says, YOU MATTER, and your life matters!

...the problem with words is that once spoken, they cannot find their way back to the speaker alone.

Embrace who you are and your divine purpose. Identify the barriers in your life, and develop discipline, courage and the strength to permanently move beyond them, and keep moving forward.

Today if anything is trying to hold you back, give no attention to it. Get your hopes up, get your faith up, look up, and get ready to rise up.

Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it. They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it.

If you're not reaching back to help anyone then you're not building a legacy.

Ask God to use you. Ask Him to show you how you can be a blessing everywhere you go. Keep honoring Him so that others can see Him through you.

Did you once have a grand plan which has become obsolete and no longer serves you? If there are areas in your life which must change to help you create better results, a redesign may be in order. Consider going back to the ‘drawing board’ to deconstruct what isn’t working and start anew.

Static cackled from the cafeteria speaker. A bored female voice come on. “Victoria Brennan, please report to the headmaster's office. Victoria Brennan to the headmaster's office.” Classmates glanced our way. Whispers sprang up around me. “Not good.” Shelton was reaching for his earlobe. “Tell them you have amnesia,” Hi said. “Or dementia. Pretend you're Joan of Arc.” “Thanks for the support, guys. If I'm not back for class, look for my body in the harbor.” Hiram's hand flew up. “I call her iTunes collection. Shelton can have the mutt.” “Nice.

So then, it’s fair to say that you were thinking about me all week?” Now it was my turn to look shaken. Damn. Just when I had him. “No…and…. no, I will not go out with you.” I leaned back in my chair and decided to look at the score board. Maybe, if I ignored him, he would leave. The Black Eyed Peas were playing loudly over the speakers. I tapped my foot to the rhythm. “Why not?” He seemed agitated. I liked it. “Because I am a llama and you are a bird and WE are not compatible.

Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain - which is to say, all of it. Every last bit of it, good and bad - Marmite, village fetes, country lanes, people saying 'mustn't grumble' and 'I'm terribly sorry but', people apologizing to me when I conk them with a nameless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, stinging nettles, seaside piers, Ordnance Survey maps, crumpets, hot-water bottles as a necessity, drizzly Sundays - every bit of it. What a wondrous place this was - crazy as fuck, of course, but adorable to the tiniest degree. What other country, after all, could possibly have come up with place names like Tooting Bec and Farleigh Wallop, or a game like cricket that goes on for three days and never seems to start? Who else would think it not the least odd to make their judges wear little mops on their heads, compel the Speaker of the House of Commons to sit on something called the Woolsack, or take pride in a military hero whose dying wish was to be kissed by a fellow named Hardy? ('Please Hardy, full on the lips, with just a bit of tongue.') What other nation in the world could possibly have given us William Shakespeare, pork pies, Christopher Wren, Windsor Great Park, the Open University, Gardners' Question Time and the chocolate digestive biscuit? None, of course. How easily we lose sight of all this. What an enigma Britain will seem to historians when they look back on the second half of the twentieth century. Here is a country that fought and won a noble war, dismantled a mighty empire in a generally benign and enlightened way, created a far-seeing welfare state - in short, did nearly everything right - and then spent the rest of the century looking on itself as a chronic failure. The fact is that this is still the best place in the world for most things - to post a letter, go for a walk, watch television, buy a book, venture out for a drink, go to a museum, use the bank, get lost, seek help, or stand on a hillside and take in a view. All of this came to me in the space of a lingering moment. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I like it here. I like it more than I can tell you.

The speaker at the meeting, a blonde woman in a fine tailored suit, shared how alcoholism had stolen her own childhood, and had now come back for her child.

Let your light shine as an inspiration to humanity and BE THE REASON someone believes in the goodness of people.

The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.

Focus on your work. Do what you're great at. Don't compare yourself to others and or waste time criticizing the lives and work of others. Do what matters most to you and make a difference doing that.

English was such a dense, tight language. So many hard letters, like miniature walls. Not open with vowels the way Spanish was. Our throats open, our mouths open, our hearts open. In English, the sounds were closed. They thudded to the floor. And yet, there was something magnificent about it. Profesora Shields explained that in English there was no usted, no tu. There was only one word—you. It applied to all people. No one more distant or more familiar. You. They. Me. I. Us. We. There were no words that changed from feminine to masculine and back again depending on the speaker. A person was from New York. Not a woman from New York, not a man from New York. Simply a person.

A language is the joint historical creation of millions of speakers. Although all speakers have some effect on the trajectory of a language, the process is not particularly egalitarian. Linguists, grammarians, and educators, some of them backed by the power of the state, weigh in heavily. But the process is not particularly amenable to a dictatorship, either. Despite the efforts toward "central planning," language (especially its everyday spoken form) stubbornly tends to go on its own rich, multivalent, colorful way.

The speaker was stringy and angular, his blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, his plaid workman's shirtsleeves rolled up around his pale biceps. Journalism major, I guessed.

Think of it in terms of men's and women's cultures: women live in male systems, know male rules, speak male language when around men, etc. But what do men really know about women? Only screwed up myths concocted to perpetuate the power imbalance. It is the same situation when it comes to dominant and non-dominant or colonizing and colonized cultures/ countries/ people. As a bilingual/bicultural woman whose native culture is not American, I live in an American system, abide by American rules of conduct, speak English when around English speakers, etc., only to be confronted with utter ignorance or concocted myths and stereotypes about my own culture. -- Judit Moschkovich - "--But I Know You, American Woman

Start today creating a vision for yourself, your life, and your career. Bounce back from adversity and create what you want, rebuild and rebrand. Tell yourself it's possible along the way, have patience, and maintain peace with yourself during the process.

They returned to the gallery and circled its rim, then went down a short hall. Scrap's tail twitched angrily when they reached Tristan's door: it was shut. Daine grabbed the knob. It stung her hand, making her yelp. "Kit? This ones magicked. Can you do anything?" Kitten stood on her hind feet and peered into the lock, then whistled two cheerful notes. Nothing happened. She scowled and whistled again, less cheerfully, more as a demand. Nothing happened. Daine was trying to decide what to do now when the dragon moved back and croaked. The lock popped from the wood to land at Daine's feet, smoking, and the door swung open. Kitten muttered darkly and kicked the lock mechanism aside as she went in. Daine followed, trying not to laugh.

The humans build their stupid fence to keep us out, but that is nothing. The sky is our fence!” Human leapt upward—startlingly high, for his legs were powerful. “Look how the fence throws me back down to the ground!

I arrive now at the ineffable core of my story. And here begins my despair as a writer. All language is a set of symbols whose use among its speakers assumes a shared past. How, then, can I translate into words the limitless Aleph, which my floundering mind can scarcely encompass? Mystics, faced with the same problem, fall back on symbols: to signify the godhead, one Persian speaks of a bird that somehow is all birds; Alanus de Insulis, of a sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere; Ezekiel, of a four-faced angel who at one and the same time moves east and west, north and south. (Not in vain do I recall these inconceivable analogies; they bear some relation to the Aleph.) Perhaps the gods might grant me a similar metaphor, but then this account would become contaminated by literature, by fiction. Really, what I want to do is impossible, for any listing of an endless series is doomed to be infinitesimal. In that single gigantic instant I saw millions of acts both delightful and awful; not one of them occupied the same point in space, without overlapping or transparency. What my eyes beheld was simultaneous, but what I shall now write down will be successive, because language is successive. Nonetheless, I'll try to recollect what I can.

Good grief, Rex, doesn't Skywalker tell his underlings to put clothes on? What does he think this is, a cruise liner?" It was at times like this that Rex savoured the true value of his bucket. He silenced his helmet audio for a moment with a quick eye movement, roared with laughter, and then switched the speaker back on. "Would you like me to ask him, sir?" "Rex, you're enjoying this..." "Me, sir? Never, sir.

Cole," I breathed, "what have you done to yourself?" The wolf's head jerked back toward its shoulders, again and again. Cole sang from the speakers, his voice slow and uncertain against a sparse backing of just piano, a different Cole than I'd ever heard: If I am Hannibal where are my Alps?

A different voice slid through the speakers now--his voice. The one that raised armies, toppled kingdoms. The one that sent the entire stadium into a hush. Even the raindrops hung back in the sky; the air cleared into a spitting drizzle.

I wonder if my father, given the chance, would have wished to go back to the time before he made all that money, when he just had one store and we rented a tiny apartment in Queens. He worked hard and had worries but he had a joy then that he never seemed to regain once the money started coming in. He might turn on the radio and dance cheek to cheek with my mother. He worked on his car himself, a used green Impala with carburetor trouble. They had lots of Korean friends that they met in church and then even in the street, and when they talked in public there was a shared sense of how lucky they were, to be in America but still have countrymen near.

Think back through your experiences and make a bullet point list of funny stories that have happened to you or your friends. Travel, school, college, parties, work, interaction with parents/in-laws, embarrassing situations, etc. Looking at old photos will help to jog memories.

Her computer’s fan whirred to life, blowing warm air onto her fingers. Two flame-red slits glowed from the monitor. The speakers boomed. “I lived! I died! I live again!” Olivie had dealt with blue screens, frozen hourglasses, and even the odd hardware conflict back in the day. This was new.

Listening to the testimony of a dying person or a grieving family member can serve the one speaking; it all depends on how we listen. Maybe we can reflect back the words and feelings in such a way that the speaker can at last really hear what he’s said.

Daine put a hand on her bow. It was loaded, but she didn't want to kill Maura's sister. "I wouldn't call names, if I was you " she retorted. Yolane backed up. "Tirell! Oram! Jemis! To me! Oram, on the double!" Daine shook her head. "Yell all you like, they won't come. They're gone. " "What do you mean, 'gone'?" "I mean it's at an end the king knows what you're up to. The rebellion's uncovered. You'll never be queen.

All those iconic presenters of today were a shy little kid back then.

You’ve climbed too many mountains and crossed too many rivers to stop and turn back now.

The truth no matter how hard it is to bear, must be accepted and confronted head on because it is real. Businesses and people who accept truth soar.

Of course they accused Marcão of having done it without provocation—that’s the way of torturers of every age, to put the blame on the victim, especially when he strikes back.

Mirrors are both truth-speakers and liars: a contradiction made of glass and shiny backing.

Rampion, ready for liftoff!” The dash lit up with controls and screens—only the most important ones. The same sterile feminine voice came over the ship’s speakers. “Thorne, I can’t set the automatic lift. You’re going to have to take off manually.” He gaped at the controls. “Why is my ship talking back to me?” “It’s me, you idiot!” He cocked his ear toward the speaker. “Cinder?

She closed her eyes. She didn’t want the world. She wanted his mouth on hers. She wanted his hands at her neck, along her back. She wanted Archer, and, at least for tonight, absolutely nothing else.

I know what coming back to America from a war zone is like because I’ve done it so many times. First, there’s a kind of shock at the comfort and affluence that we enjoy, but that is followed by the dismal realization that we live in a society that is basically at war with itself. People speak with incredible contempt about, depending on their views: the rich, the poor, the educated, the foreign born, the President, or the entire US government. It is a level of contempt that is usually reserved for enemies in wartime except that now it is applied to our fellow citizens. Unlike criticism, contempt is particularly toxic because it assumes a moral superiority in the speaker. Contempt is often directed at people who have been excluded from a group or declared unworthy its benefits. Contempt is often used by governments to provide rhetorical cover for torture or abuse. Contempt is one of four behaviors that, statistically, can predict divorce in married couples. People who speak with contempt for one another will probably not remain united for long.

I took a step forward. Henry caught my elbow. "No bloodshed," he said. "No blackmail. No obstruction of justice." "You drive a hard bargain," I told him. "What are your thoughts on extortion?" Without waiting for an answer, I headed for Bancroft's car. Henry and Asher followed on my heels. "The cat is dancing in the catnip," Asher reported back to Vivvie. "Grumpy lion is grumpy." "Did you just refer to me as a grumpy lion?" Henry asked Asher. "Absolutely not," Asher promised. Then he took the phone off speaker and lowered his voice. "Suspicious lion is suspicious," he stage whispered to Vivvie.

Back in New York I took full advantage of my status as a native speaker. I ran my mouth to shop clerks and listened in on private conversations, realising I’d gone an entire month without hearing anyone complaint that they were “stressed out”.

We treat ourselves both as objects of language and as speakers of language, both as objects of the symbolism and as symbols in it. And all the difficult paradoxes which go right back to Greek times and reappear in modern mathematics depend essentially on this.

My Chocolate Mudslide is going down smooth when we hear the three bells. Bing. Bing. Bing. But instead of Dan Dan the Party Man, it’s a woman’s voice and she’s breathing heavily. She sounds Filipina, if that’s even a thing. “Bravo… Bravo… Bravo,” she pants. “Main engine. Starboard side. Bravo… Bravo… Bravo.” We hear the speaker shut off. People look around a little nervously. The dancer warming up on stage makes a beeline for backstage. Within seconds the three bells are back. Oh, thank God, it’s our Greek captain. “Laydis and gentlemen, thissis your captain spicking. Pliss proceed to your muster stations.” This is not what I wanted him to say. We get up and make our way painfully slowly through the completely full theater. Everyone is quiet. Which is the wooooooorst. It’s scary when a group of people all know instinctively not to joke around. Another voice comes over the PA, repeating, “Please, remain calm. Please proceed to your muster stations.” The German half of me is thinking, “Shove the old people out of the way. Shove the old and the infirm! If they are strong enough to resist you, they deserve to live.” The Greek half of me wants to scream at our Greek captain. I do neither and proceed obediently.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility, or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law, or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard. You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self-improvement.

Fritz was standing there, four feet back from the door to the office, which was standing open, staring wide-eyed at me. When he saw I was looking at him he beckoned me to come, and the thought popped into my mind that, with guests present and Wolfe making an oration, that was precisely how Fritz would act if the house was on fire.

A unified team is a force to be reckoned with. When teams pull together to serve a higher purpose, the synergy builds momentum and helps everyone head in the right direction. When people reunite, pull together, have each other’s backs, and strive to achieve a clearly defined purpose, the culture is empowered to produce extraordinary outcomes.

He wasn’t preoccupied, he was unoccupied. He had detached himself from the world. And her job was to reconnect him. To bring him back and show him his place in the web of humanity.

Of course they accused Marcão of having done it without provocation - that is the way of torturers of every age, to put the blame on victim, especially when he strikes back.

I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the Speaker of the United State House of Representatives. “We’re doing great. Turn on any news channel, they’ll tell you. Taxes are low, business is booming, crime is down, the Patriots win the Super Bowl every year, and we’re finally getting our country back. I’ll admit, it used to be a real nightmare around here.

Hassan said, "I'm a Kuwaiti exchange student; my dad's an oil baron." Colin shook his head, "Too obvious. I'm a Spaniard. A refugee. My parents were murdered by Basque separatists." "I don't know if Basque is a thing or a person and neither will they, so no. Okay, I just got to America from Honduras. My name is Miguel. My parents made a fortune in bananas, and you are my bodyguard, because the banana workers' union wants me dead." Colin shot back, "That's good, but you don't speak Spanish. Okay, I was abducted by Eskimos in the Yukon Terr-no, that's crap. We're cousins from France visiting the United States for the first time. It's out high school graduation trip." "That's boring, but we're out of time. I'm the English speaker?" asked Hassan. "Yeah, fine." "Okay, they're coming," said Hassan. "What's your name?" "Pierre." "Okay. I'm Salinger, pronounced SalinZHAY." ........ "He has Tourette's?" asked Katrina. "MERDE!" (Shit) shouted Colin. "Yes," said Hassan excitedly. "same word both language, like hemorrhoid. That one we learned yesterday because Pierre had the fire in his bottom. He has Toorettes. And the hemorrhoid. But, is good boy. "Ne dis pas que j'ai des hemorroides! Je n'ai pas d'hemorroide," (Don't say I have hemorrhoids! I don't have hemorrhoids.) Colin shouted, at once trying to continue the game and get Hassan on to a different topic. Hassan looked at Colin, nodded knowingly, and then told Katrina, "He just said that your face, it is beautiful like the hemorrhoid.

As American English speakers, we are perfectly at liberty to use whatever language we want; we just have to know that our words reveal our social and moral beliefs to some extent. So if one were to use the term comedienne instead of comic or the pronoun she to describe a Ferrari, they could be opening themselves up to criticism, not for flat-out sexism but definitely for expressing an indifference to gender equality. What rubs people the wrong way about political correctness is not that they can’t use certain words anymore, it’s that political neutrality is no longer an option.

Moments later, I was climbing nervously into the back of the car. The driver wore the archetypal expression of an antagonist. No words were exchanged beyond the brief lines uttered to this nameless stranger, whose inclinations remained unclear. The car sped along empty roads and traversed dingy alleyways. Music blared from its speakers. I did not remember exhaling throughout the entire journey.

I was one of only two native English speakers in the company, so other departments would send me English texts for correction. That lasted two weeks, until they noticed I had no idea how the English language worked. I sent their creations back with more mistakes than they’d had when I received them. They began sending the texts to the Scandinavian team instead. They spoke such lovely English, after all.

He flipped the switch on the side of the player and was delighted when the record began to spin, crackling quietly. “I think we’re in business,” he murmured. “It would appear so,” Arthur replied. He lowered the needle. The speakers crackled a little louder. And then— A man began to sing, saying darling, you send me, I know you send me. “Sam Cooke,” Linus whispered. He dropped his hand back to his side. “Oh. Oh. That’s wonderful.

But first let me mention the second aid to understanding provided by science. We know today that in a physical experiment the observer himself enters into the experiment and only by doing so can arrive at a physical experience. This means that there is no such thing as pure objectivity in in physics, that even here the result of the experiment, nature's answer, depends on the question put to it. In the answer there is always a bit of the question and a bit of the questioner himself; it reflects not only nature in itself, in its pure objectivity, but also gives back something of man, of what is characteristically ours, a bit of the human subject. This too, mutatis mutandis, is true of the question of God. There is no such thing as a mere observer. There is no such thing as pure objectivity. One can even say that the higher an object stands in human terms, the more it generates the center of individuality; and the more it engages the beholder's individuality, then the smaller the possibility of the mere distancing involved in pure objectivity. Thus, whenever an answer is presented as unemotionally objective, as a statement that finally goes beyond the prejudices of the pious and provides purely factual, scientific information, then it has to be said that the speaker has here fallen victim to self-deception. This kind of objectivity is quite simply denied to man. He cannot ask and exist as a mere observer. He who tries to be a mere observer experiences nothing. Even the reality "God" can only impinge on the vision of him who enters into the experiment with God--the experiment that we call faith. Only be entering does one experience; only by cooperating in the experiment does one ask at all; and only he who asks receives an answer.

Suddenly, I hear Steph, the bass in his voice vibrating through the speakers pulsing on my back. For a split second, I forget, and my eyes run around the room, searching for him. Maybe it was all a dream. Maybe I didn’t see him lying in that casket.

Anglo-Saxon Protestant, otherwise known as WASP, and American Black is always on the bottom, and what’s in the middle depends on time and place. (Or as that marvelous rhyme goes: if you’re white, you’re all right; if you’re brown, stick around; if you’re black, get back!) Americans assume that everyone will get their tribalism. But it takes a while to figure it all out. So in undergrad, we had a visiting speaker and a classmate whispers to another, “Oh my God, he looks so Jewish,” with a shudder, an actual shudder. Like Jewish was a bad thing. I didn’t get it. As far as I could see, the man was white, not much different from the classmate herself. Jewish to me was something vague, something biblical. But I learned quickly. You see, in America’s ladder of races, Jewish is white but also some rungs below white. A bit confusing, because I knew this straw-haired, freckled girl who said she was Jewish. How can Americans tell who is Jewish? How did the classmate know the guy was Jewish? I read somewhere how American colleges used to ask applicants for their mother’s surnames, to make sure they weren’t Jewish because they wouldn’t admit Jewish people. So maybe that’s how to tell? From people’s names? The longer you are here, the more you start to get it.

Kingsley could ‘do’ the sound of a brass band approaching on a foggy day. He could become the Metropolitan line train entering Edgware Road station. He could be four wrecked tramps coughing in a bus shelter (this was very demanding and once led to heart palpitations). To create the hiss and crackle of a wartime radio broadcast delivered by Franklin Delano Roosevelt was for him scant problem (a tape of it, indeed, was played at his memorial meeting, where I was hugely honored to be among the speakers). The pièce de résistance, an attempt by British soldiers to start up a frozen two-ton truck on a windy morning ‘somewhere in Germany,’ was for special occasions only. One held one's breath as Kingsley emitted the first screech of the busted starting-key. His only slightly lesser vocal achievement—of a motor-bike yelling in mechanical agony—once caused a man who had just parked his own machine in the street to turn back anxiously and take a look. The old boy's imitation of an angry dog barking the words 'fuck off' was note-perfect.

Cameron found that when people use female as a noun, as opposed to woman, it’s often in explicitly negative contexts. For example: My poor Clemence was as helpless a female as you’d find in a long day’s march. “Stupid, crazy female” was all he said as he set about bandaging it. A call yesterday involved giving the chatty female at the other end one’s address. These examples all involve a speaker passing derogatory judgment on the subject. And though their statements would still be insulting if you swapped in the word woman, they would be, as Cameron says, “less unequivocally contemptuous.” The corpus data also showed that the noun form of female is almost never used in a positive context. You wouldn’t hear someone say, “My best friend is the kindest, most generous female I have ever met.

—so much more opportunity now." Her voice trails off. "Hurrah for women's lib, eh?" "The lib?" Impatiently she leans forward and tugs the serape straight. "Oh, that's doomed." The apocalyptic word jars my attention. "What do you mean, doomed?" She glances at me as if I weren't hanging straight either and says vaguely, "Oh …" "Come on, why doomed? Didn't they get that equal rights bill?" Long hesitation. When she speaks again her voice is different. "Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful, and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like—like that smoke. We'll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You'll see." Now all this is delivered in a gray tone of total conviction. The last time I heard that tone, the speaker was explaining why he had to keep his file drawers full of dead pigeons. "Oh, come on. You and your friends are the backbone of the system; if you quit, the country would come to a screeching halt before lunch." No answering smile. "That's fantasy." Her voice is still quiet. "Women don't work that way. We're a—a toothless world." She looks around as if she wanted to stop talking. "What women do is survive. We live by ones and twos in the chinks of your world-machine." "Sounds like a guerrilla operation." I'm not really joking, here in the 'gator den. In fact, I'm wondering if I spent too much thought on mahogany logs. "Guerrillas have something to hope for." Suddenly she switches on a jolly smile. "Think of us as opossums, Don. Did you know there are opossums living all over? Even in New York City." I smile back with my neck prickling. I thought I was the paranoid one. "Men and women aren't different species, Ruth. Women do everything men do." "Do they?" Our eyes meet, but she seems to be seeing ghosts between us in the rain. She mutters something that could be "My Lai" and looks away. "All the endless wars …" Her voice is a whisper. "All the huge authoritarian organizations for doing unreal things. Men live to struggle against each other; we're just part of the battlefield. It'll never change unless you change the whole world. I dream sometimes of—of going away—" She checks and abruptly changes voice. "Forgive me, Don, it's so stupid saying all this." "Men hate wars too, Ruth," I say as gently as I can. "I know." She shrugs and climbs to her feet. "But that's your problem, isn't it?" End of communication. Mrs. Ruth Parsons isn't even living in the same world with me.

I say is someone in there?’ The voice is the young post-New formalist from Pittsburgh who affects Continental and wears an ascot that won’t stay tight, with that hesitant knocking of when you know perfectly well someone’s in there, the bathroom door composed of thirty-six that’s three times a lengthwise twelve recessed two-bevelled squares in a warped rectangle of steam-softened wood, not quite white, the bottom outside corner right here raw wood and mangled from hitting the cabinets’ bottom drawer’s wicked metal knob, through the door and offset ‘Red’ and glowering actors and calendar and very crowded scene and pubic spirals of pale blue smoke from the elephant-colored rubble of ash and little blackened chunks in the foil funnel’s cone, the smoke’s baby-blanket blue that’s sent her sliding down along the wall past knotted washcloth, towel rack, blood-flower wallpaper and intricately grimed electrical outlet, the light sharp bitter tint of a heated sky’s blue that’s left her uprightly fetal with chin on knees in yet another North American bathroom, deveiled, too pretty for words, maybe the Prettiest Girl Of All Time (Prettiest G.O.A.T.), knees to chest, slew-footed by the radiant chill of the claw-footed tub’s porcelain, Molly’s had somebody lacquer the tub in blue, lacquer, she’s holding the bottle, recalling vividly its slogan for the past generation was The Choice of a Nude Generation, when she was of back-pocket height and prettier by far than any of the peach-colored titans they’d gazed up at, his hand in her lap her hand in the box and rooting down past candy for the Prize, more fun way too much fun inside her veil on the counter above her, the stuff in the funnel exhausted though it’s still smoking thinly, its graph reaching its highest spiked prick, peak, the arrow’s best descent, so good she can’t stand it and reaches out for the cold tub’s rim’s cold edge to pull herself up as the white- party-noise reaches, for her, the sort of stereophonic precipice of volume to teeter on just before the speaker’s blow, people barely twitching and conversations strettoing against a ghastly old pre-Carter thing saying ‘We’ve Only Just Begun,’ Joelle’s limbs have been removed to a distance where their acknowledgement of her commands seems like magic, both clogs simply gone, nowhere in sight, and socks oddly wet, pulls her face up to face the unclean medicine-cabinet mirror, twin roses of flame still hanging in the glass’s corner, hair of the flame she’s eaten now trailing like the legs of wasps through the air of the glass she uses to locate the de-faced veil and what’s inside it, loading up the cone again, the ashes from the last load make the world's best filter: this is a fact. Breathes in and out like a savvy diver… –and is knelt vomiting over the lip of the cool blue tub, gouges on the tub’s lip revealing sandy white gritty stuff below the lacquer and porcelain, vomiting muddy juice and blue smoke and dots of mercuric red into the claw-footed trough, and can hear again and seems to see, against the fire of her closed lids’ blood, bladed vessels aloft in the night to monitor flow, searchlit helicopters, fat fingers of blue light from one sky, searching.

Julia doesn’t like James Gillen, but that’s not the point, not out here. In the Court, back in the Court any eye you catch could be Love peal-of-bells-firework-burst Love, all among the sweet spray of the music and the rainbowing prisms of the lights, this could be the one huge mystery every book and film and song is sizzling with; could be your one-and-only shoulder to lean your head on, fingers woven with yours and lips gentle on your hair and Our Song pouring out of every speaker. This could be the one heart that will open to your touch and offer up its never-spoken secrets, that has spaces perfectly shaped to hold all of yours.

That word. I would have given anything to hear her say it over the summer, to have had the chance to say it back, but now, more than ever, I understand its true power. How it can make you ache as much as it can make you soar. How it shouldn't be said in return unless you mean it as deeply as the speaker. And that's not something you can ever know. Not truly. There's too much blind faith involved and that word is always, always a risk. You'll get hurt. Or the other person will. You'll stomp on someone's heart without meaning to. Loving is foolish and risky, like trying to raise a building in a bog. Emotions don't make strong foundations.

Do you hold fond memories in your heart which you would like to experience again? Have you made mistakes which you wish you could go back and correct? Has life turned out differently than you ever planned for or expected? The wonderful thing about Second Chances is that you get to take what was once created or has already happened and REDO it to make it better.

A cell phone rang from the end table to my right and Kristen bolted up straight. She put her beer on the coffee table and dove across my lap for her phone, sprawling over me. My eyes flew wide. I’d never been that close to her before. I’d only ever touched her hand. If I pushed her down across my knees, I could spank her ass. She grabbed her phone and whirled off my lap. “It’s Sloan. I’ve been waiting for this call all day.” She put a finger to her lips for me to be quiet, hit the Talk button, and put her on speaker. “Hey, Sloan, what’s up?” “Did you send me a potato?” Kristen covered her mouth with her hand and I had to stifle a snort. “Why? Did you get an anonymous potato in the mail?” “Something is seriously wrong with you,” Sloan said. “Congratulations, he put a ring on it. PotatoParcel.com.” She seemed to be reading a message. “You found a company that mails potatoes with messages on them? Where do you find this stuff?” Kristen’s eyes danced. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Do you have the other thing though?” “Yeeeess. The note says to call you before I open it. Why am I afraid?” Kristen giggled. “Open it now. Is Brandon with you?” “Yes, he’s with me. He’s shaking his head.” I could picture his face, that easy smile on his lips. “Okay, I’m opening it. It looks like a paper towel tube. There’s tape on the—AHHHHHH! Are you kidding me, Kristen?! What the hell!” Kristen rolled forward, putting her forehead to my shoulder in laughter. “I’m covered in glitter! You sent me a glitter bomb? Brandon has it all over him! It’s all over the sofa!” Now I was dying. I covered my mouth, trying to keep quiet, and I leaned into Kristen, who was howling, our bodies shaking with laughter. I must not have been quiet enough though. “Wait, who’s with you?” Sloan asked. Kristen wiped at her eyes. “Josh is here.” “Didn’t he have a date tonight? Brandon told me he had a date.” “He did, but he came back over after.” “He came back over?” Her voice changed instantly. “And what are you two doing? Remember what we talked about, Kristen…” Her tone was taunting. Kristen glanced at me. Sloan didn’t seem to realize she was on speaker. Kristen hit the Talk button and pressed the phone to her ear. “I’ll call you tomorrow. I love you!” She hung up on her and set her phone down on the coffee table, still tittering. “And what did you two talk about?” I asked, arching an eyebrow. I liked that she’d talked about me. Liked it a lot. “Just sexually objectifying you. The usual,” she said, shrugging. “Nothing a hot fireman like you can’t handle.” A hot fireman like you.I did my best to hide my smirk. “So do you do this to Sloan a lot?” I asked. “All the time. I love messing with her. She’s so easily worked up.” She reached for her beer. I chuckled. “How do you sleep at night knowing she’ll be finding glitter in her couch for the next month?” She took a swig of her beer. “With the fan on medium.” My laugh came so hard Stuntman Mike looked up and cocked his head at me. She changed the channel and stopped on HBO. Some show. There was a scene with rose petals down a hallway into a bedroom full of candles. She shook her head at the TV. “See, I just don’t get why that’s romantic. You want flower petals stuck to your ass? And who’s gonna clean all that shit up? Me? Like, thanks for the flower sex, let’s spend the next half an hour sweeping?” “Those candles are a huge fire hazard.” I tipped my beer toward the screen. “Right? And try getting wax out of the carpet. Good luck with that.” I looked at the side of her face. “So what do you think is romantic?” “Common sense,” she answered without thinking about it. “My wedding wouldn’t be romantic. It would be entertaining. You know what I want at my wedding?” she said, looking at me. “I want the priest from The Princess Bride. The mawage guy.

Well,all she had to do was ask," one offended male replied. "I hope you're satisfied!" Lauren whispered furiously. "I'm not," Nick chuckled in her ear. "But I'm going to be." Fully intending to leave him to take his own notes, Lauren slammed her notebook closed and tried to shove her chair back. Nick's body blocked the chair. She twisted her head around to say something scathing, and his lips captured hers in a kiss that forced her head against the back of the chair, tripled her pulse rate and robbed her of thought. When he took his mouth away, she was too shaken to do anything except stare at him. "What do you think,Nick?" a voice asked over the speaker. "I think it gets better every time," he answered huskily. When the call was finally over, Nick pressed a button on the desk, and Lauren saw the door leading into Mary's office swing shut electronically. He grasped her arms and drew her out of the chair, turning her toward him. His mouth came closer to hers,and Lauren felt herself being helplessly drawn into his magnetic spell. "Don't!" she pleaded. "Please don't do this to me." His hands tightened on her arms. "Why can't you just admit you want me and enjoy the consequences?" "All right," she said wretchedly, "You win. I want you...I admit it." She saw the gleam of triumph in his eyes, and her chin lifted. "When I was eight years old, I also wanted a monkey I saw in a pet store." The triumph faded. "And?" he sighed irritably,letting go of her. "And unfortunately I got him," Lauren said. "Daisy bit me,and I had to have twelve stitches in my leg." Nick looked as if he was torn between laughter and anger. "I imagine he bit you for naming him Daisy." Lauren ignored his mockery. "And when I was thirteen, I wanted sisters and brothers. My father obliged me by remarrying, and I got a stepsister who stole my clothes and my boyfriends, and a stepbrother who stole my allowances." "What the hell does that have to do with us?" "Everything!

As he neared his close, he reprised the speech he had made one year earlier in his first address to the House as prime minister. “I ask you to witness, Mr. Speaker, that I have never promised anything or offered anything but blood, tears, toil and sweat, to which I will now add our fair share of mistakes, shortcomings and disappointments and also that this may go on for a very long time, at the end of which I firmly believe—though it is not a promise or a guarantee, only a profession of faith—that there will be complete, absolute and final victory.” Acknowledging that one year, “almost to a day,” had passed since his appointment as prime minister, he invited his audience to consider all that had occurred during that time. “When I look back on the perils which have been overcome, upon the great mountain waves in which the gallant ship has driven, when I remember all that has gone wrong, and remember also all that has gone right, I feel sure we have no need to fear the tempest. Let it roar, and let it rage. We shall come through.” As Churchill made his exit, the House erupted in cheers, which continued outside the chamber, in the Members’ Lobby. And then came the vote.

Speaking to a foreigner was the dream of every student, and my opportunity came at last. When I got back from my trip down the Yangtze, I learned that my year was being sent in October to a port in the south called Zhanjiang to practice our English with foreign sailors. I was thrilled. Zhanjiang was about 75 miles from Chengdu, a journey of two days and two nights by rail. It was the southernmost large port in China, and quite near the Vietnamese border. It felt like a foreign country, with turn-of-the-century colonial-style buildings, pastiche Romanesque arches, rose windows, and large verandas with colorful parasols. The local people spoke Cantonese, which was almost a foreign language. The air smelled of the unfamiliar sea, exotic tropical vegetation, and an altogether bigger world. But my excitement at being there was constantly doused by frustration. We were accompanied by a political supervisor and three lecturers, who decided that, although we were staying only a mile from the sea, we were not to be allowed anywhere near it. The harbor itself was closed to outsiders, for fear of 'sabotage' or defection. We were told that a student from Guangzhou had managed to stow away once in a cargo steamer, not realizing that the hold would be sealed for weeks, by which time he had perished. We had to restrict our movements to a clearly defined area of a few blocks around our residence. Regulations like these were part of our daily life, but they never failed to infuriate me. One day I was seized by an absolute compulsion to get out. I faked illness and got permission to go to a hospital in the middle of the city. I wandered the streets desperately trying to spot the sea, without success. The local people were unhelpful: they did not like non-Cantonese speakers, and refused to understand me. We stayed in the port for three weeks, and only once were we allowed, as a special treat, to go to an island to see the ocean. As the point of being there was to talk to the sailors, we were organized into small groups to take turns working in the two places they were allowed to frequent: the Friendship Store, which sold goods for hard currency, and the Sailors' Club, which had a bar, a restaurant, a billiards room, and a ping-pong room. There were strict rules about how we could talk to the sailors. We were not allowed to speak to them alone, except for brief exchanges over the counter of the Friendship Store. If we were asked our names and addresses, under no circumstances were we to give our real ones. We all prepared a false name and a nonexistent address. After every conversation, we had to write a detailed report of what had been said which was standard practice for anyone who had contact with foreigners. We were warned over and over again about the importance of observing 'discipline in foreign contacts' (she waifi-lu). Otherwise, we were told, not only would we get into serious trouble, other students would be banned from coming.

And while thou livest, dear Kate, take a fellow of plain and uncoined constancy; for he perforce must do thee right, because he hath not the gift to woo in other places: for these fellows of infinite tongue, that can rhyme themselves into ladies' favours, they do always reason themselves out again. What! a speaker is but a prater; a rhyme is but a ballad. A good leg will fall; a straight back will stoop; a black beard will turn white; a curled pate will grow bald; a fair face will wither; a full eye will wax hollow: but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon; or, rather, the sun, and not the moon; for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly. If thou would have such a one, take me; and take me, take a soldier; take a soldier, take a king. And what sayest thou then to my love? speak, my fair, and fairly, I pray thee

Then, what is your reason?' 'I don't know!' Pei rubbed her face in frustration. 'There is no reason why I don't want to do this! I'm healthy! I'm clearly capable! Everybody I know who's ever gone to a Kresh comes back saying it's a fantastic time. I'd have ten-days to just lie around and have sex and be catered to. I like kids. I like being around kids. I imagine visiting my own would be nice. I have a partner who understands and friends who would be thrilled, and...there's no reason not to.' Speaker looked at her for a moment. 'Of course, there is. You don't want to.'...'And when it comes to a person's body, that is all the reason there ever needs to be. It doesn't matter if it's a decision about a new pair of legs, or how you like to trim your claws, or...what to do about an egg. You don't want to. That's it. That is all it ever needs to be.

When Peter got injured in Canada and Kira started work, Peter was left at home alone with Isak. One day the child had a stomach ache and wouldn't stop screaming. Panic-stricken, Peter tried everything. He rocked him and took him out in the stroller and tried all the home remedies he had ever heard of, but nothing worked. Until he put a record on. Perhaps it was something about the old record player - the crackle in the speakers, the voices filling the room - but Isak fell completely silent. Then he smiled. And then he fell asleep in Peter's arms. That's the last time Peter can remember really feeling like a good father. The last time he had been able to tell himself that he actually knew what he was doing. He's never told Kira that, has never told anyone. But now he buys records in secret because he keeps hoping that feeling my come back, if only for a moment

guess there’s no way to convince a person of that, but it’s true. Stuttering’s funny, Audra. Spooky. On one level you’re not even aware it’s happening. But . . . it’s also something you can hear in your mind. It’s like part of your head is working an instant ahead of the rest. Or one of those reverb systems kids used to put in their jalopies back in the fifties, when the sound in the rear speaker would come just a split second a-after

As the bartender struck a match to light her cigarette, she put her hand on his wrist to steady it. Travis saw him jump, draw back. He held his wrist, blew on it, looked at her reproachfully. Travis said: 'Why, you scratched him, Sarah.' 'Did I?' And as she turned and looked at him, he saw her hand twitch a little, and drew still further away from her. 'What - what's got into you?' he faltered. There was some kind of tension spreading all around the horseshoe-shaped bar, emanating from her. All the cordiality, the sociability, was leaving it. Cheery conversations even at the far ends of it faltered and died, and the speakers looked around them as though wondering what was putting them so on edge. A heavy leaden pall of restless silence descended, as when a cloud goes over the sun. One or two people even turned and moved away reluctantly, as though they hadn't intended to but didn't like it at the bar any more. The gaunt-faced woman in red and black was the center of all eyes, but the looks sent her were not the admiring looks of men for a well-dressed woman; they were the blinking petrified looks a blacksnake would get in a poultry yard. Even the barman felt it. He dropped and smashed a glass, a thing he hadn't done since he'd been working on the ship. Even the canary felt it, and stood shivering pitifully on its perch, emitting an occasional cheep as though for help. ("I'm Dangerous Tonight")

Expanding further on his own observations of Prince’s writing style(s) during the course of the album’s recording, fellow Paisley Park engineer Eddie Miller, who engineered the recording of ‘Electric Chair’ among other Prince recordings during the Batman era, recalled that “he would write all sorts of ways. I have to admit that I listened to some of his cassette demos that he would sometimes bring into the studio to reference (as I remember, he would hold the cassette player up to his ear, so you couldn’t really hear it.). They were fascinating. His cassette demo technique was extremely crude but ingenious—it’s like something you’d do if you had no access to any equipment. He’d use two cheap cassette recorders. If he wanted to hear drums, he’d record a human beat box rhythm for the length of the song—and most likely, he’d have the form of the song in his head while he was recording this. By the way, it was the same in the studio when he’d do his one man band approach to recording a song. He’d know the song in his head, and start out recording the drums for the song (it would essentially become the ‘click track’—the way a click track should be). Back to the cassette demo—he’d then play his beat box groove over the speaker on the cassette recorder and sing the bass line while recording all this onto the second cassette machine. He’d build up a rhythm track this way, and then add vocals. And there’s your demo.

Marry, if you would put me to verses or to dance for your sake, Kate, why you undid me: for the one, I have neither words nor measure, and for the other, I have no strength in measure, yet a reasonable measure in strength. If I could win a lady at leap-frog, or by vaulting into my saddle with my armour on my back, under the correction of bragging be it spoken. I should quickly leap into a wife. Or if I might buffet for my love, or bound my horse for her favours, I could lay on like a butcher and sit like a jack-an-apes, never off. But, before God, Kate, I cannot look greenly nor gasp out my eloquence, nor I have no cunning in protestation; only downright oaths, which I never use till urged, nor never break for urging. If thou canst love a fellow of this temper, Kate, whose face is not worth sun-burning, that never looks in his glass for love of any thing he sees there, let thine eye be thy cook. I speak to thee plain soldier: If thou canst love me for this, take me: if not, to say to thee that I shall die, is true; but for thy love, by the Lord, no; yet I love thee too. And while thou livest, dear Kate, take a fellow of plain and uncoined constancy; for he perforce must do thee right, because he hath not the gift to woo in other places: for these fellows of infinite tongue, that can rhyme themselves into ladies’ favours, they do always reason themselves out again. What! a speaker is but a prater; a rhyme is but a ballad. A good leg will fall; a straight back will stoop; a black beard will turn white; a curled pate will grow bald; a fair face will wither; a full eye will wax hollow: but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon; or, rather, the sun, and not the moon; for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly. If thou would have such a one, take me; and take me, take a soldier; take a soldier, take a king. And what sayest thou then to my love? speak, my fair, and fairly, I pray thee.

wrapped-in-cloth kind, but a human female body shriveled to a husk. She wore a tie-dyed sundress, lots of beaded necklaces, and a headband over long black hair. The skin of her face was thin and leathery over her skull, and her eyes were glassy white slits, as if the real eyes had been replaced by marbles; she’d been dead a long, long time. Looking at her sent chills up my back. And that was before she sat up on her stool and opened her mouth. A green mist poured from the mummy’s mouth, coiling over the floor in thick tendrils, hissing like twenty thousand snakes. I stumbled over myself trying to get to the trapdoor, but it slammed shut. Inside my head, I heard a voice, slithering into one ear and coiling around my brain: I am the spirit of Delphi, speaker of the prophecies of Phoebus Apollo, slayer of the mighty Python. Approach, seeker, and ask. I wanted to say, No thanks, wrong door, just looking for the bathroom. But I forced myself to take a deep breath. The mummy wasn’t alive. She

Toward the end of that session at the Hudson, our instructor split us into two long lines and took out a bouquet of multicolored feathers. 'I would normally give the feathers to the ladies,' she explained as she passed them out, 'but we will have to make do.' Out of fifty or so front-of-the-house employees present, there were maybe six or seven women. 'The point of this dance is to think about giving and receiving,' she said, pressing play on her tiny boom box. A slow and stately march started playing through tinny speakers, a march to which we learned a simple dance: stepping up to our partner to give him the feather, stepping back to a bow, taking his hand, turning around, receiving the feather again, and stepping back to the line. 'Are you starting to feel each other's sense of space?' she called out. Someone sneezed. As the dance went on, we grew more comfortable with one another, fighting and roughhousing over the props. 'I've been defeathered!' 'Giveth the feather backeth or I will have to unsheathe my sword!

Most recently, Speaker of the House John Boehner (who has said he would commit suicide before voting to increase the minimum wage unless said increase were tied to massive tax cuts for the wealthy and their corporations)53 suggested that what’s been holding back job creation in America is not the lack of employment openings but “this idea that has been born . . . that you know, I really don’t have to work . . . I think I’d rather just sit around.”54 According to conservative leaders, many Americans actually enjoy long-term unemployment.

What do you think of your kingdom?" "It's beautiful," I said. And very empty. Where is everyone? "It might even be dangerous to live in such luxury and repose." "This is no place of repose." Amar glanced outside where a sliver of moon glimmered behind clouds. “I am at the mercy of the moon to reveal the secrets of this kingdom. Until then, you must practice what it means to rule. I will test you, as this palace will, in its own way.” I straightened in my seat. “On what?” “Familiarity, you might say.” His voice was low. “All the usual aspects of ruling. I’ll test your fangs and claws and bloodlust.” He stopped to trace the inside of my wrist, and my pulse leapt to meet his touch. I scowled and grabbed my hand back. Treacherous blood. “I’ll test your eyes and ears and thoughts.” “Not geography, then?” I asked, half joking. “It’s useless here.” He shrugged. “You’ll see.” “History?” “Written by the victors,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I’m not interested in one-sided tales.” “Legends? Folktales?” This time, Amar grinned. “Perhaps. Do you have a favorite tale?” My throat tightened and I thought of Gauri standing outside my door and demanding a story. “Many…And you?” “All of them. Except for tragedies. I cannot abide those.” In the harem, all the wives preferred tragedies. They wanted stories of star-crossed lovers. They wanted betrayal and declarations of love that ended with the speaker dying at their feet. “You don’t find them romantic?” “No,” he said, an edge to his voice. “There is no romance in real grief. Only longing and fury.” He rose to his feet. “Tomorrow, you can tour the palace fully. It’s yours now.

One of the first official observations of vocal fry in English was made by a UK linguist in the 1960s, who determined that it was British dudes who employed vocal fry as a way of communicating a higher social standing. There was also an American study of creaky voice in the 1980s that called the phenomenon “hyper-masculine” and a “robust marker of male speech.” Many linguists also agree that using a bit of creak at the ends of sentences has been happening in the United States among English speakers of all genders, with no fuss or fallout, for decades.

Not all of history is recorded in the books supplied to school children in Harlem or Birmingham. Yet this boy and this girl know something of the part of history which has been censored by the white writers and purchasers of board-of-education books. They know that Negroes were with George Washington at Valley Forge. They know that the first American to shed blood in the revolution which freed his country from British oppression was a black seaman named Crispus Attucks. The boy's Sunday-school teacher has told him that one of the team who designed the capital of their nation, Washington, D.C., was a Negro, Benjamin Banneker. Once the girl had heard a speaker, invited to her school during Negro History Week. This speaker told how, for two hundred years, without wages, black people, brought to this land in slave ships and in chains, had drained the swamps, built the homes, made cotton king and helped, on whip-lashed backs, to lift this nation from colonial obscurity to commanding influence in domestic commerce and world trade. Wherever there was hard work, dirty work, dangerous work—in the mines, on the docks, in the blistering foundries—Negroes had done more than their share.

I’m crossing our backyard to the Pearces’, trying to juggle the bag and the portable speakers and my phone, when I see John Ambrose McClaren standing in front of the tree house, staring up at it with his arms crossed. I’d know the back of his blond head anywhere. I freeze, suddenly nervous and unsure. I’d thought Peter or Chris would be here with me when he arrived, and that would smooth out any awkwardness. But no such luck. I put down all my stuff and move forward to tap him on the shoulder, but he turns around before I can. I take a step back. “Hi! Hey!” I say. “Hey!” He takes a long look at me. “Is it really you?” “It’s me.” “My pen pal the elusive Lara Jean Covey who shows up at Model UN and runs off without so much as a hello?” I bite the inside of my cheek. “I’m pretty sure I at least said hello.” Teasingly he says, “No, I’m pretty sure you didn’t.” He’s right: I didn’t. I was too flustered. Kind of like right now. It must be that distance between knowing someone when you were a kid and seeing them now that you’re both more grown-up, but still not all the way grown-up, and there are all these years and letters in between you, and you don’t know how to act. “Well--anyway. You look…taller.” He looks more than just taller. Now that I can take the time to really look at him, I notice more. With his fair hair and milky skin and rosy cheeks, he looks like he could be an English farmer’s son. But he’s slim, so maybe the sensitive farmer’s son who steals away to the barn to read. The thought makes me smile, and John gives me a curious look but doesn’t ask why. With a nod, he says, “You look…exactly the same.” Gulp. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? “I do?” I get up on my tiptoes. “I think I’ve grown at least an inch since eighth grade.” And my boobs are at least a little bigger. Not much. Not that I want John to notice--I’m just saying.

The smallest bell was Ranna. Sleeper, some called it, its voice a sweet lullaby calling those who heard it into slumber. The second bell was Mosrael, the Waker. Lirael touched it ever so lightly, for Mosrael balanced Life with Death. Wielded properly, it would bring the Dead back into Life and send the wielder from Life into Death. Kibeth was the third bell, the Walker. It granted freedom of movement to the Dead, or it could be used to make them walk where the wielder chose. Yet it could also turn on a bell-ringer and make her march, usually somewhere she would not wish to go. The fourth bell was called Dyrim, the Speaker. This was the most musical bell, according to The Book of the Dead, and one of the most difficult to use as well. Dyrim could return the power of speech to long-silent Dead. It could also reveal secrets, or even allow the reading of minds. It had darker powers, too, favored by necromancers, for Dyrim could still a speaking tongue forever. Belgaer was the name of the fifth bell. The Thinker. Belgaer could mend the erosion of mind that often occurred in Death, restoring the thoughts and memory of the Dead. It could also erase those thoughts, in Life as well as in Death, and in necromancers’ hands had been used to splinter the minds of enemies. Sometimes it splintered the mind of the necromancer, for Belgaer liked the sound of its own voice and would try to steal the chance to sing of its own accord. The sixth bell was Saraneth, also known as Binder. Saraneth was the favorite bell of all Abhorsens. Large and trustworthy, it was powerful and true. Saraneth was used to dominate and bind the Dead, to make them obey the wishes and directions of the wielder. Lirael was reluctant to touch the seventh bell, but she felt it would not be diplomatic to ignore the most powerful of all the bells, though it was cold and frightening to her touch. Astarael, the Sorrowful. The bell that sent all who heard it into Death.

Looking back, Colleen and Neal have somewhat different perspectives. . . . She remembers she "was impressed that he seemed to have so much charisma. People were looking to him for answers and just had a great regard for him." Then Neal adds, "So much charisma [that] she turned me down when I first asked her for a date." Fortunately for both, he called again, and this time she said yes. . . . Colleen found herself increasingly drawn to him. She found him "really cute and interesting," even if he did lack just a little social polish. He didn't care for dancing and didn't like small talk, both of which were more important to other people than they were to her. He "was so knowledgeable and such a good speaker, even though he did talk fast. But if you could listen fast you could learn a lot." As Neal came to know her better, he was impressed with her maturity, her sensitivity to other people, and the depth of her spiritual convictions. He began feeling a "spiritual impetus that this was a young woman out of the ordinary." . . . Emma remembered, "Our first introduction to Colleen was when you came home one night and said, 'I've got to see more of that girl. She has some thinking under her hood.'" . . . "I knew I was not dealing with an eighteen-year-old co-ed who was so anxious to please me that I'd have my way when I shouldn't," he said. "We hadn't been married long before I knew I had a kind of Gibraltar--someone who would be tough and strong in the storms of life.

It was one thing to know with his mind that Human would not really die. It was another thing to believe it. Ender did not take the knives at first. Instead he reached past the blades and took Human by the wrists. “To you it doesn’t feel like death. But to me—I only saw you for the first time yesterday, and tonight I know you are my brother as surely as if Rooter were my father, too. And yet when the sun rises in the morning, I’ll never be able to talk to you again. It feels like death to me, Human, how ever it feels to you.” “Come and sit in my shade,” said Human, “and see the sunlight through my leaves, and rest your back against my trunk. And do this, also. Add another story to the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. Call it the Life of Human. Tell all the humans how I was conceived on the bark of my father’s tree, and born in darkness, eating my mother’s flesh. Tell them how I left the life of darkness behind and came into the half-light of my second life, to learn language from the wives and then come forth to learn all the miracles that Libo and Miro and Ouanda came to teach. Tell them how on the last day of my second life, my true brother came from above the sky, and together we made this covenant so that humans and piggies would be one tribe, not a human tribe or a piggy tribe, but a tribe of ramen. And then my friend gave me passage to the third life, to the full light, so that I could rise into the sky and give life to ten thousand children before I die.” “I’ll tell your story,” said Ender. “Then I will truly live forever.

He was the vilest speaker I ever heard: vulgar, ignorant, not seeking to teach his hearers, but rather to stir in men as vulgar as himself the irrational excesses to which such people are prone; a whore among orators. Yet, when he denounced the men who were putting the City in fear, there was a kind of flame in him. He was a man so ignoble that if he remembered anything of the nature of excellence, excellence, I should think it was only so that he could taunt someone with the lack of it. He lived in spite and hate. And now he only invoked the good in the name of hatred; yet for a moment nobility glanced back at him, and made him brave. It was like seeing some mangy cur, who for years has lived on scraps and filth about the market, raising his hackles at a pack of wolves.

It is now time to face the fact that English is a crazy language — the most loopy and wiggy of all tongues. In what other language do people drive in a parkway and park in a driveway? In what other language do people play at a recital and recite at a play? Why does night fall but never break and day break but never fall? Why is it that when we transport something by car, it’s called a shipment, but when we transport something by ship, it’s called cargo? Why does a man get a hernia and a woman a hysterectomy? Why do we pack suits in a garment bag and garments in a suitcase? Why do privates eat in the general mess and generals eat in the private mess? Why do we call it newsprint when it contains no printing but when we put print on it, we call it a newspaper? Why are people who ride motorcycles called bikers and people who ride bikes called cyclists? Why — in our crazy language — can your nose run and your feet smell?Language is like the air we breathe. It’s invisible, inescapable, indispensable, and we take it for granted. But, when we take the time to step back and listen to the sounds that escape from the holes in people’s faces and to explore the paradoxes and vagaries of English, we find that hot dogs can be cold, darkrooms can be lit, homework can be done in school, nightmares can take place in broad daylight while morning sickness and daydreaming can take place at night, tomboys are girls and midwives can be men, hours — especially happy hours and rush hours — often last longer than sixty minutes, quicksand works very slowly, boxing rings are square, silverware and glasses can be made of plastic and tablecloths of paper, most telephones are dialed by being punched (or pushed?), and most bathrooms don’t have any baths in them. In fact, a dog can go to the bathroom under a tree —no bath, no room; it’s still going to the bathroom. And doesn’t it seem a little bizarre that we go to the bathroom in order to go to the bathroom? Why is it that a woman can man a station but a man can’t woman one, that a man can father a movement but a woman can’t mother one, and that a king rules a kingdom but a queen doesn’t rule a queendom? How did all those Renaissance men reproduce when there don’t seem to have been any Renaissance women? Sometimes you have to believe that all English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane: In what other language do they call the third hand on the clock the second hand? Why do they call them apartments when they’re all together? Why do we call them buildings, when they’re already built? Why it is called a TV set when you get only one? Why is phonetic not spelled phonetically? Why is it so hard to remember how to spell mnemonic? Why doesn’t onomatopoeia sound like what it is? Why is the word abbreviation so long? Why is diminutive so undiminutive? Why does the word monosyllabic consist of five syllables? Why is there no synonym for synonym or thesaurus? And why, pray tell, does lisp have an s in it? If adults commit adultery, do infants commit infantry? If olive oil is made from olives, what do they make baby oil from? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian consume? If pro and con are opposites, is congress the opposite of progress? ...

When you see the dawn breaking, you think back to the darkness in a new way. “Sin” is not simply the breaking of a law. It is the missing of an opportunity. Having heard the echoes of a voice, we are called to come and meet the speaker. We are invited to be transformed by the voice itself, the word of the gospel- the word which declares that evil has been judged, that the world has been put to rights, that heaven and earth are joined forever, and that new creation has begun. We are called to become people who can speak and live and paint and sing that word so that those who have heard it’s echoes can come and lend a hand in the larger project. That is the opportunity that stands before us, as a gift and a possibility. Christian holiness is not (as people often imagine) a matter of denying something good. It is about growing up and grasping something even better.

Cynnie’s disappeared while I’ve shut up shop. So has Ty, without even giving me a hug. He’s getting a dozen noogies for that the next time I see him. I lock up, checking and double-checking my security. On the way back from checking the manual lock on the fire escape door, I find the dress Cynnie was wearing draped across the foot of the staircase up into the loft like a fallen flower petal. “Baby?” Her wild giggle answers me. Grinning, I scoop up the dress and carry it up the stairs. I expect her to be n*ked in the bed, but she’s not. There’s no sign of her. “Baby, where are you?” Another wild giggle. With the open plan of my apartment, the stairwell, and the screen of trees in the loft, the acoustics can be weird. I was sure the first giggle came from upstairs. Now, it sounds like her giggle is coming from downstairs. “Come out, come out, wherever you are, bumble baby,” I call. Insane giggles. I spin around in place on the landing, trying to locate the source of those irresistible giggles. “When I find you, I’m going to b*te my bumble very hard on her b*ttom,” I growl. “I sting you!” That was definitely from my bedroom. I tear through the doorway and look around. No naughty bumble in my bed. I yank open the closet doors. No naughty bumble in my closets. There aren’t many hiding places in my bedroom. There’s no way she could fit between the trees. Then I spot the black rectangle half-hidden in the rumpled bedding. A phone. She’s put it on speaker and dimmed the screen. That sneaky little bee. I grab the phone and growl into it. “I’m going to find you.” “I fly away!” “You’ll never get away from me, little girl. And when I catch you, I’m going to eat you up.” I grip the phone, so turned on my hand shakes, muscles bunching. I pant into the phone. “I’m going to find you, wherever you are, and rail you into the ground.” She squees. There’s a very faint echo, and I realize where she is. Game on.

He laughs and turns up the music so that I can hear it in the back. The speakers blast out: ‘Streets like a jungle, so call the police.’ ‘Call the police,’ I smile, ‘fuck the police’ nodding my head to the beat. The guard turns it up even more. ‘Yeah, fuck the police for stitching me up and presenting their dodgy evidence,’ I think to myself. Fuck them for getting me put away for seven instead of the four or five I should have got. A new song comes on and I’m merrily tapping my feet while the guard sings along up front to The Clash. ‘Fighting the nation. Police and thieves in the street, oh yeah…Oh yeah! Scaring the nation with their guns and ammunition. Police and thieves in the street. Oh yeah. Fighting the nation with their guns and ammunition’. Ha ha. The DJ on the radio is on my side. The Securicor men are on my side. And I’m heading back to civilisation and as many drugs as I can get my hands on. Everything’s going my way. There must be a song about that, too.

I know what coming back to America from a war zone is like because I've done it so many times. First there is a kind of shock at the level of comfort and affluence that we enjoy, but that is followed by the dismal realization that we live in a society that is basically at war with itself. People speak with incredible contempt about - depending on their views - the rich, the poor, the educated, the foreign-born, the president, or the entire US government. It's a level of contempt that is usually reserved for enemies in wartime, except that now it's applied to our fellow citizens. Unlike criticism, contempt is particularly toxic because it assumes a moral superiority in the speaker. Contempt is often directed at people who have been excluded from a group or declared unworthy of its benefits. Contempt is often used by governments to provide rhetorical cover for torture or abuse. Contempt is one of four behaviors that, statistically, can predict divorce in married couples. People who speak with contempt for one another will probably not remain united for long.

In his earliest memories he was sitting on the floor in the family room, in front of the giant stereo his parents had bought themselves as a wedding present, his face pressed into the padded fabric of one speaker. The fabric was prickly against his forehead but his nose fit perfectly into a little groove, and he could feel music spilling like molten gold through his entire body. He'd sit back on his heels when the song was over and his father, an accountant and amateur drummer whose (still-unrealized) dream was to open a jazz club and coffee house, would say, "Order up!" and put another record on the turntable. Rabbit's favorite albums were by Earth, Wind & Fire (syncopation made his brain feel like it was laughing) and Also sprach Zarathustra, its opening rumbling like an earthquake. And he loved The White Album, and when his mother played ABBA on the piano and they'd sing together (though Alice couldn't do it without being a total showoff), and the Star Wars soundtrack, and of _course_ Zeppelin. For six months in 1984, he had asked his parents to play "Stairway to Heaven" instead of a bedtime story.

My radio show’s producer, Sherri, is African American. She just got back from a trip where she was a guest speaker at a youth event in a church that was primarily white. Just before the Sunday morning service, she was called into the minister’s study for prayer, and she met a man who was overtly hostile to her. The way he looked at her, dismissively and contemptuously, made her feel hated. She felt utterly unwelcome, lonely, and out of place. After she spoke, the same man approached her, took off his glasses, and started crying. He told her that hers was the most influential talk he’d ever heard, and it had affected him particularly because he is very racist against blacks. She was stunned by his honesty. “We’ve always been this way. My family has always been racist. I’ve learned this from my dad. I’m so sorry. I’ve got to change,” he told her. “I can see Jesus is using you. And he’s using you to change me.” Sherri then asked to meet his dad. She did. And she hugged him. I know Sherri takes racism very, very seriously. But, she says, she also has to forgive racists, because she has to love people in her family. And they are part of her family. She has to love them as Jesus loves her. Sherri’s love is not naive. But that’s exactly why it’s so profound. She’s setting her offense aside, not because it doesn’t matter, not because it isn’t completely understandable, but because of what Jesus has done for her. She’s choosing against offense, not just because God loves these men but also because God loves her and has set aside her very real offenses in order to be with her. There are those of us who pat ourselves on the back for loving our families and friends. “I’m loyal to the end; I’d die for my kids,” we’ll say. Truth is, that’s not really terribly remarkable. Everyone, or practically everyone, feels this way. What is terribly remarkable is when someone is willing to love a person, in the name of Jesus, whom he or she would otherwise despise. It makes no sense otherwise. Why would we ever regard someone as family who would otherwise be an enemy? Why ignore his faults, or cover her wrongs with love? Without Jesus, it simply makes no sense. Sherri’s very refusal, and our very refusal, to take and hold offense is evidence of the existence of God. This is how they’ll know we belong to Him, Jesus says. So let’s love—from this moment forward—because He first loved us.

I left Brookstone and went to the Pottery Barn. When I was a kid and everything inside our house was familiar, cheap, and ruined, walking into the Pottery Barn was like entering heaven. If they really wanted people to enjoy church, I thought back then, they should make everything in church look and smell like the Pottery Barn. My dream was to surround myself one day with everything in the store, with the wicker baskets and scented candles, the brushed-silver picture frames. But that was a long time ago. I had already gone through a period of buying everything there was to buy at the Pottery Barn and decorating my apartment like a Pottery Barn outlet, and then getting rid of it all during a massive upgrade. Now everything at the Pottery Barn looked ersatz and mass-produced. To buy any of it now would be to regress in aspiration and selfhood. I didn’t want to buy anything at the Pottery Barn so much as I wanted to recapture the feeling of wanting to buy everything from the Pottery Barn. Something similar happened at the music store. I should try to find some new music, I thought, because there was a time when new music could lift me out of a funk like nothing else. But I wasn’t past the Bs when I saw the only thing I really cared to buy. It was the Beatles’ Rubber Soul, which had been released in 1965. I already owned Rubber Soul. I had owned Rubber Soul on vinyl, then on cassette, and now on CD, and of course on my iPod, iPod mini, and iPhone. If I wanted to, I could have pulled out my iPhone and played Rubber Soul from start to finish right there, on speaker, for the sake of the whole store. But that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to buy Rubber Soul for the first time all over again. I wanted to return the needle from the run-out groove to the opening chords of “Drive My Car” and make everything new again. That wasn’t going to happen. But, I thought, I could buy it for somebody else. I could buy somebody else the new experience of listening to Rubber Soul for the first time. So I took the CD up to the register and paid for it and, walking out, felt renewed and excited. But the first kid I offered it to, a rotund teenager in a wheelchair looking longingly into a GameStop window, declined on the principle that he would rather have cash. A couple of other kids didn’t have CD players. I ended up leaving Rubber Soul on a bench beside a decommissioned ashtray where someone had discarded an unhealthy gob of human hair. I wandered, as everyone in the mall sooner or later does, into the Best Friends Pet Store. Many best friends—impossibly small beagles and corgis and German shepherds—were locked away for display in white cages where they spent their days dozing with depression, stirring only long enough to ponder the psychic hurdles of licking their paws. Could there be anything better to lift your spirits than a new puppy?

I work as fast as I can. Binah will come soon looking for me. It’s Mother, however, who descends the back steps into the yard. Binah and the other house slaves are clumped behind her, moving with cautious, synchronized steps as if they’re a single creature, a centipede crossing an unprotected space. I sense the shadow that hovers over them in the air, some devouring dread, and I crawl back into the green-black gloom of the tree. The slaves stare at Mother’s back, which is straight and without give. She turns and admonishes them. “You are lagging. Quickly now, let us be done with this.” As she speaks, an older slave, Rosetta, is dragged from the cow house, dragged by a man, a yard slave. She fights, clawing at his face. Mother watches, impassive. He ties Rosetta’s hands to the corner column of the kitchen house porch. She looks over her shoulder and begs. Missus, please. Missus. Missus. Please. She begs even as the man lashes her with his whip. Her dress is cotton, a pale yellow color. I stare transfixed as the back of it sprouts blood, blooms of red that open like petals. I cannot reconcile the savagery of the blows with the mellifluous way she keens or the beauty of the roses coiling along the trellis of her spine. Someone counts the lashes—is it Mother? Six, seven. The scourging continues, but Rosetta stops wailing and sinks against the porch rail. Nine, ten. My eyes look away. They follow a black ant traveling the far reaches beneath the tree—the mountainous roots and forested mosses, the endless perils—and in my head I say the words I fashioned earlier. Boy Run. Girl Jump. Sarah Go. Thirteen. Fourteen . . . I bolt from the shadows, past the man who now coils his whip, job well done, past Rosetta hanging by her hands in a heap. As I bound up the back steps into the house, Mother calls to me, and Binah reaches to scoop me up, but I escape them, thrashing along the main passage, out the front door, where I break blindly for the wharves. I don’t remember the rest with clarity, only that I find myself wandering across the gangplank of a sailing vessel, sobbing, stumbling over a turban of rope. A kind man with a beard and a dark cap asks what I want. I plead with him, Sarah Go. Binah chases me, though I’m unaware of her until she pulls me into her arms and coos, “Poor Miss Sarah, poor Miss Sarah.” Like a decree, a proclamation, a prophecy. When I arrive home, I am a muss of snot, tears, yard dirt, and harbor filth. Mother holds me against her, rears back and gives me an incensed shake, then clasps me again. “You must promise never to run away again. Promise me.” I want to. I try to. The words are on my tongue—the rounded lumps of them, shining like the marbles beneath the tree. “Sarah!” she demands. Nothing comes. Not a sound. I remained mute for a week. My words seemed sucked into the cleft between my collar bones. I rescued them by degrees, by praying, bullying and wooing. I came to speak again, but with an odd and mercurial form of stammer. I’d never been a fluid speaker, even my first spoken words had possessed a certain belligerent quality, but now there were ugly, halting gaps between my sentences, endless seconds when the words cowered against my lips and people averted their eyes. Eventually, these horrid pauses began to come and go according to their own mysterious whims. They might plague me for weeks and then remain away months, only to return again as abruptly as they left.

Sometimes Partridge imagines that this isn't real, that, instead, it's just some elaborate reenactment of destruction, not the actual destruction itself. He remembers once being in a museum on a class trip. There were miniature displays with live actors in various wings, talking about what things were like before the Return of Civility. Each display was dedicated to a theme: before the impressive prison system was built, before difficult children were properly medicated, when feminism didn't encourage femininity, when the media was hostile to government instead of working toward a greater good, before people with dangerous ideas were properly identified, back when government had to ask permission to protect its good citizens from the evils of the world and from the evils among us, before the gates had gone up around neighborhoods with buzzer systems and friendly men at gatehouses who knew everyone by name. In the heat of the day, there were battle reenactments on the museum's wide lawn that showed the uprisings waged in certain cities against the Return of Civility and its legislation. With the military behind the government, the uprisings - usually political demonstrations that became violent - were easily tamped down. The government's domestic militia, the Righteous Red Wave, came to save the day. The recorded sounds were deafening, Uzis and attack sirens pouring from speakers. The kids in his class bought bullhorns, very realistic hand grenades, and Righteous Red Wave iron-on emblems in the gift shop. He wanted a sticker that read THE RETURN OF CIVILITY - THE BEST KIND OF FREEDOM written over a rippling American flag, with the words REMAIN VIGILANT written beneath it. But his mother hadn't given him money for the gift shop, no wonder. Of coarse, he knew now that the museum was propaganda.

Last night, as I was sleeping, I dreamt—marvellous error!— that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white cones and sweet honey from my old failures. Antonio Machado, “Last Night” (translated by Robert Bly) I once heard someone ask for the definition of adult. I can’t remember where I was, or who the speaker was who answered the question, but I’ll never forget the answer: “Adult means choice.” As children, most of us had little or no say in most matters. My generation was taught that children should be seen and not heard. We were told to “do as I say, not as I do.” We didn’t have a “vote” in family matters because we were “just children.” Picture this scenario if you will. Five-year-old Jerry has just received his umpteenth whipping or scolding. He turns to his parents and says, “You know, Mom and Dad, I choose not to be abused anymore. I’ll be taking the car keys, withdrawing some money from our joint account, and moving to Florida to live with Grandma and Grandpa. When you both start acting like adults, give me a call, and we’ll discuss the conditions of my return. We’ll see if we can settle on a mutual arrangement where you two stay adult as much of the time as possible, and I’ll be a kid who learns how to make healthy choices by being disciplined instead of punished. We’ll negotiate how you will set healthy boundaries so I can learn to do the same. For now, I’ll be seeing you. Don’t forget to write. And don’t forget to read John Lee’s book on regression. I’m too young, but you’re not.” As children, we did not have the choice of laying down the law for our frequently regressing parents. But as adults we can certainly choose to draw our boundaries and express our needs in all of our relationships as adults—not only with our parents, but also with our spouses, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances.