Baker Boy Quotes

I really wondered why people were always doing what they didn't like doing. It seemed like life was a sort of narrowing tunnel. Right when you were born, the tunnel was huge. You could be anything. Then, like, the absolute second after you were born, the tunnel narrowed down to about half that size. You were a boy, and already it was certain you wouldn't be a mother and it was likely you wouldn't become a manicurist or a kindergarten teacher. Then you started to grow up and everything you did closed the tunnel in some more. You broke your arm climbing a tree and you ruled out being a baseball pitcher. You failed every math test you ever took and you canceled any hope of being a scientist. Like that. On and on through the years until you were stuck. You'd become a baker or a librarian or a bartender. Or an accountant. And there you were. I figured that on the day you died, the tunnel would be so narrow, you'd have squeezed yourself in with so many choices, that you just got squashed.

The room fell quiet. And as I read down the list of over one hundred and fifty eight-grade boys, I realized that to me, there had only ever been one boy.

Hello, boys and girls. Hannah Baker here. Live and in stereo. No return engagements. No encore. And this time, absolutely no requests. I hope you’re ready, because i’m about to tell you the story of my life. More specifically, why my life ended. And if you’re listening to theses tapes, you’re one of the reasons why. Now, why would a dead girl lie?

Plenty of clever children have to pretend to be not clever or else they get bullied by the thick.

Hello boys and girls, Hannah Baker here. Live and in stereo. No return engagements, no encore. And this time? Absolutely no requests.

...be sure to wash every day, even if it is with your own spit; don't squat down to play marbles—you are not a boy, you know; don't pick people's flowers—you might catch something; don't throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a blackbird at all; this is how to make a bread pudding; this is how to make doukona; this is how to make pepper pot; this is how to make a good medicine for a cold; this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child; this is how to catch a fish; this is how to throw back a fish you don't like, and that way something bad won't fall on you; this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man; and if this doesn't work there are other ways, and if they don't work don't feel too bad about giving up; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doesn't fall on you; this is how to make ends meet; always squeeze bread to make sure it's fresh; but what if the baker won't let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won't let near the bread?

Always be careful, my boy, what you make up. Life's more full of things made up on the Spur of the Moment than most people realize. Beware of the Spur of the Moment. It may turn and rend you.

Your mother is a baker," I snapped. "How do you not know how to work a bleeding stove?" "And yours is a flashy fashion designer," he shot back. "But I don't see you prancing around the place in fur coats and Prada handbags.

No one looks like a girl, or a boy, or an elm tree, or anything else. Someone either is or isn't a thing, and the world can put as many layers on top of the thing as it likes; won't change what's underneath.

Underneath the photograph, in blocky letters, was a name. LUCY. “A boy named Lucy,” Linus said. “That’s certainly a first. I wonder why they chose … the name … Lucy…” The last word came out choked. There, written in clear English, was exactly the reason why. The file read: NAME: LUCIFER (NICKNAME LUCY) AGE: SIX YEARS, SIX MONTHS, SIX DAYS (AT TIME OF THIS REPORT) HAIR: BLACK EYE COLOR: BLUE/RED MOTHER: UNKNOWN (BELIEVED DECEASED) FATHER: THE DEVIL SPECIES OF MAGICAL YOUTH: ANTICHRIST Linus Baker fainted dead away.

When Adam Smith, extolling the power of the market, noted that, ‘it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner’, he forgot to mention the benevolence of his mother, Margaret Douglas, who had raised her boy alone from birth. Smith never married so had no wife to rely upon (nor children of his own to raise). At the age of 43, as he began to write his opus, The Wealth of Nations, he moved back in with his cherished old mum, from whom he could expect his dinner every day. But her role in it all never got a mention in his economic theory, and it subsequently remained invisible for centuries.

Peasants and princes, bailiffs and bakers' boys, merchants and mermaids, the figures were all immediately familiar. I had read these stories a hundred, a thousand, times before. They were stories everyone knew. But gradually, as I read, their familiarity fell away from them. They became strange. They became new. These characters were not the colored manikins I remembered from my childhood picture books, mechanically acting out the story one more time. They were people.... The stories were shot through with an unfamiliar mood. Everyone achieved their heart's desire...but only when it was too late did they realize the price they must pay for escaping their destiny. Every Happy Ever After was tainted.

When I got to school the next morning I had stepped only one foot in the quad when he spotted me and nearly tackled me to the ground. “Jamie!” he hollered, rushing across the lawn without caring the least bit about the scene he was creating. The next thing I knew, my feet were off the ground and I was squished so tightly in Ryan’s arms that I could barely breathe. “Okay, Ryan?” I coughed in a hushed tone. “This is exactly the kind of thing that can get you killed.” “I don’t care, I’m not letting go. Don’t ever disappear like that again!” he scolded, but his voice was more relieved than angry. “It’s been days! You had your mother worried sick!” “My mother?” I questioned sarcastically. Ryan laughed as he finally set me back on my feet. “Okay, fine, me too.” He still wouldn’t let go of me, though. He was gripping my arms while he looked at me with those eyes, and that smile… You know, being all Ryan-ish. And then, when I got lost in the moment, he totally took advantage of how whipped I was and he kissed me. The jerk. He just pulled my face to his right then and there, in the middle of a crowded quad full of students, where I could have accidentally unleashed an electrical storm at any moment. And okay, maybe I liked it, and maybe I even needed it, but still! You can’t just go kissing Jamie Baker whenever you want, even if you are Ryan Miller! “Ryan!” I yelled as soon as I was able to pull away from him—which admittedly took a minute. “I’m sorry.” Ryan laughed with this big dopey grin on his face and then kissed me some more. I had to push him away from me. “Don’t be sorry, just stop!” I realized I was screaming at him when I felt a hundred different pairs of eyes on me. I tried to ignore the audience that Ryan seemed oblivious to and dropped the audio a few decibels. “I wasn’t kidding when I said this has to stop. Look, I will be your friend. I want to be your friend. But that’s it. We can’t be anything more. It’ll never work.” Ryan watched me for a minute and then whispered, “Don’t do that.” I was shocked to hear the sudden emotion in his voice. “Don’t give up.” It was hopeless. “Fine!” I snapped. “I’ll be your stupid girlfriend!” Big shocker, me giving Ryan his way, I know. But let’s face it—it’s just what I do best. I had to at least act a little tough, though. “But!” I said in the harshest voice I was capable of. “You can’t ever touch me unless I say. No more tackling me, and especially no more surprise kissing.” He actually laughed at my request. “No promises.” Stupid, cocky boyfriend. “You’re crazy. You know that, right?” Ryan got this big cheesy smile on his face and said, “Crazy about you.” “Ugh,” I groaned. “Would you be serious for a minute? Why do you insist on putting your life in danger?” “Because I like you.” His stupid grin was infectious. I wanted to be angry, but how could I with him looking at me like that? “I’m not worth it, you know,” I said stubbornly. “I have issues. I’m unstable.” “You’re cute when you’re unstable,” Ryan said, “and I like your issues.” The stupid boy was straight-up giddy now. But he was so cute that I cracked a smile despite myself. “You really are crazy,” I muttered.

Somehow, the notion that Professor Moriarty had parents - might have been a child - never sat right. A viper is a snake straight from the egg. I couldn't help but picture little Jamie as a balding midget in a sailor suit, spying Cook and the baker's boy rolling in the flour on the kitchen table through his toy telescope, and blackmailing them for extra buns.

Religion has always been an irrelevant aspect if my life. The people here are either pissed of atheists, or religious freaks waiting for God to save them.

Rape is the story of Helen, Persephone, Norma Jeane, Troy. War is the context and God is a boy.

There are ways to do things, ways to act with people, and I do not understand them. I cannot understand what people mean when they talk. I do not do things right. I do not feel things right. I do not see things right. I am not...I'm not made of the same thing as everyone else.' The baker took in a deep breath. 'I think if you'll look around, my boy,' he said gently, 'you'll find that no one is quite right. But we all do the best we can.

Holden's thoughts: "I left my house not quite sure what happened. I should have never let Baker and Liv become friends. Should have know they would team up on me. Now, I was suddenly the errand boy -- that was Baker's job. Damn it, I hated Christmas.

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man . . .” Evie chanted as she played with Stephen in the Challons’ private railway carriage. They occupied one side of a deep upholstered settee, with Sebastian lounging in the other corner. The baby clapped his tiny hands along with his grandmother, his rapt gaze fastened on her face. “Make me a cake as fast as you can . . .” The nursery rhyme concluded, and Evie cheerfully began again. “Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake—” “My sweet,” Sebastian interrupted, “we’ve been involved in the manufacture of cakes ever since we set foot on the train. For my sanity, I beg you to choose another game.” “Stephen,” Evie asked her grandson, “do you want to play peekaboo?” “No,” came the baby’s grave answer. “Do you want to play ‘beckoning the chickens?’” “No.” Evie’s impish gaze flickered to her husband before she asked the child, “Do you want to play horsie with Gramps?” “Yes!” Sebastian grinned ruefully and reached for the boy. “I knew I should have kept quiet.” He sat Stephen on his knee and began to bounce him, making him squeal with delight.

Stop thief! Stop thief!’ There is a magic in the sound. The tradesman leaves his counter, and the car-man his waggon; the butcher throws down his tray; the baker his basket; the milkman his pail; the errand-boy his parcels; the school-boy his marbles; the paviour his pickaxe; the child his battledore. Away they run, pell-mell, helter-skelter, slap-dash: tearing, yelling, screaming, knocking down the passengers as they turn the corners, rousing up the dogs, and astonishing the fowls: and streets, squares, and courts, re-echo with the sound.

Recipe for Goodbye From the Kitchen of Lila Reyes Ingredients: One Cuban girl. One English boy. One English city. Preparation: Give Polly her kitchen back and share a genuine smile, from one legitimate baker to another. Ride through the countryside on a vintage Triumph Bonneville. Walk through Winchester, all through town and on the paths you ran. Drink vanilla black tea at Maxwell’s. Eat fish and chips and curry sauce at your friend’s pub. Sleep in fits and bits curled up together on St. Giles Hill. *Leave out future talk. Any form of the word tomorrow. Cooking temp: 200 degrees Celsius. You know the conversion by heart.

Hello, boys and girls. Hannah Baker here. Live and in stereo. No return engagements. No encore. And this time, absolutely no requests. I hope you're ready, because I'm about to tell you about the story of my life. More specifically, why my life ended. And if you're listening to these tapes, you're one of the reasons why. -pg 7

When he can't take anymore, Galen plucks his phone from his pocket and dials, then hangs up. When the call is returned, he says, "Hey, sweet lips." The females at the table hush each other to get a better listen. A few of them whip their heads toward Emma to see if she's on the other end of the conversation. Satisfied she's not, they lean closer. Rachel snorts. "If only you liked sweets." "I can't wait to see you tonight. Wear that pink shirt I like." Rachel laughs. "Sounds like you're in what we humans like to call a pickle. My poor, drop-dead-gorgeous sweet pea. Emma still not talking to you, leaving you alone with all those hormonal girls?" "Eight-thirty? That's so far away. Can't I meet you sooner?" One of the females actually gets up and takes her tray and her attitude to another table. Galen tries not to get too excited. "Do you need to be checked out of school, son? Are you feeling ill?" Galen tosses a glance at Emma, who's picking a pepperoni off her pizza and eyeing it as if it were dolphin dung. "I can't skip school to meet you again, boo. But I'll be thinking about you. No one but you." A few more females get up and stalk their trays to the trash. The cheerleader in front of him rolls her eyes and starts a conversation with the chubby brunette beside her-the same chubby brunette she pushed into a locker to get to him two hours ago. "Be still my heart," Rachel drawls. "But seriously, I can't read your signals. I don't know what you're asking me to do." "Right now, nothing. But I might change my mind about skipping. I really miss you." Rachel clears her throat. "All right, sweet pea. You just let your mama know, and she'll come get her wittle boy from school, okay?" Galen hangs up. Why is Emma laughing again? Mark can't be that funny. The girl beside him clues him in: "Mark Baker. All the girls love him. But not as much as they love you. Except maybe Emma, I guess." "Speaking of all these girls, how did they get my phone number?" She giggles. "It's written on the wall in the girls' bathroom. One hundred hall." She holds her cell phone up to his face. An image of his number scrawled onto a stall door lights up the screen. In Emma's handwriting.

In those days Mr. Sherlock Holmes was still living in Baker Street and the Bastables were looking for treasure in the Lewisham Road. In those days, if you were a boy you had to wear a stiff Eton collar every day, and schools were usually nastier than now. But meals were nicer; and as for sweets, I won’t tell you how cheap and good they were,

Boy, you're good at figuring things out. Isn't he? Except that if anybody's the devil in this room it's _you_, buster." An extraordinary bitterness came into his face. "I've seen you before. I know you, all right, preacher man. Age after age, you come back. You always lead the crusades. You're so damned golden-tongued, other people just flock to die for your causes. You die with them, it's true, because you're stupid enough to believe your own great lies; but you always come back again somehow. Oh, I know _you_.

Eric Cameron. No… it couldn’t be. Oh. My. God. “Mattie?” That was why Eric was so familiar to me. I know his freaking name. Mirror Boy had been a foster kid.

Luke pulled his shades off and stared at her in astonishment. Krav Maga was the deadliest form of martial art there was. “You’re kidding?” he choked.

This boy loved me the way I’d always wanted to be loved, the way I needed to be loved, and he gave his life for me.

The doctor who had examined Amy's baby appeared, pronounced the boy healthy and handed the little guy to Keith. Keith stared at the doctor. "Wait. Why are you giving him to me?" "Ms. Baker regained consciousness for a moment is the ambulance and made the paramedic pull out his phone and record her request of giving you custody until she could talk to you." "Me?" The man nodded. "And since you're the law around here..." The doctor shrugged and walked away.

I meant it seriously. I really wondered why people were always doing what they didn't like doing. It seemed like life was a sort of narrowing tunnel. Right when you were born, the tunnel was huge. You could be anything. Then, like, the absolute second after you were born, the tunnel narrowed down to about half that size. You were a boy, and already it was certain you wouldn't be a mother and it was likely you wouldn't become a manicurist or a kindergarten teacher. Then you started to grow up and everything you did closed the tunnel in some more. You broke your arm climbing a tree and you ruled out being a baseball pitcher. You failed every math test you ever took and you canceled any hope of being a scientist. Like that. On and on through the years until you were stuck. You'd become a baker or a librarian or a bartender. Or an accountant. And there you were. I figured that on the day you died, the tunnel would be so narrow, you'd have squeezed yourself in with so many choices, that you just got squashed.

Underneath the photograph, in blocky letters, was a name. LUCY. “A boy named Lucy,” Linus said. “That’s certainly a first. I wonder why they chose … the name … Lucy…” The last word came out choked. There, written in clear English, was exactly the reason why. The file read: NAME: LUCIFER (NICKNAME LUCY) AGE: SIX YEARS, SIX MONTHS, SIX DAYS (AT TIME OF THIS REPORT) HAIR: BLACK EYE COLOR: BLUE/RED MOTHER: UNKNOWN (BELIEVED DECEASED) FATHER: THE DEVIL SPECIES OF MAGICAL YOUTH: ANTICHRIST Linus Baker fainted dead away.

And perhaps that was the worst of it. Whether you were a banker or a baker, a homemaker or homeless, it was with you night and day—a terrible, unrelenting uncertainty about the future, a feeling that the ground could drop out from under you for good at any moment.

Your wife's name is Harley?” she asked in surprise. “It is.” “I like her already,” she laughed and extended her half gloved hand. “I'm Easy.” From her flirtatious manner, he had little doubt of that. Matt shook her hand and introduced himself. “Nice to meet you, Easy. I'm Matt.

Something’s not right. The kid’s not talking to me. That much I know because she’s not even looking my direction. She’s looking in the mirror. My eyes focus on the mirror and I fall backwards trying to get away from the image there. Bloody, broken bits of flesh make up what I think is a face, but it’s hard to tell. It looks like someone carved it up with a cleaver. I don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl staring at me and I’m not sure I want to know, either. The bullet hole in its head is there, but it blends in with the sticky black and red of the shredded face. Whatever got Emma got this… person, too. But why is it stopping her from telling me where they are?

There are three types of boys a girl can meet. The first one makes her believe that everything’s her fault and she’ll never be good enough for anybody. The second one would do anything for her, but she’s just not that into him. And the third type who’s not perfect, who doesn’t show up like a fairy tale prince, he only arrives when you already gave up on him. With him even the imperfect becomes perfect and she gives her heart to him without fear.

It seemed like life was a sort of narrowing tunnel. Right when you were born, the tunnel was huge. You could be anything. Then, like, the absolute second after you were born, the tunnel narrowed down to about half that size. You were a boy, and already it was certain you wouldn’t be a mother and it was likely you wouldn’t become a manicurist or a kindergarten teacher. Then you started to grow up and everything you did closed the tunnel in some more. You broke your arm climbing a tree and you ruled out being a baseball pitcher. You failed every math test you ever took and you canceled any hope of being a scientist. Like that. On and on through the years until you were stuck. You’d become a baker or a librarian or a bartender. Or an accountant. And there you were. I figured that on the day you died, the tunnel would be so narrow, you’d have squeezed yourself in with so many choices, that you just got squashed.

really wondered why people were always doing what they didn’t like doing. It seemed like life was a sort of narrowing tunnel. Right when you were born, the tunnel was huge. You could be anything. Then, like, the absolute second after you were born, the tunnel narrowed down to about half that size. You were a boy, and already it was certain you wouldn’t be a mother and it was likely you wouldn’t become a manicurist or a kindergarten teacher. Then you started to grow up and everything you did closed the tunnel in some more. You broke your arm climbing a tree and you ruled out being a baseball pitcher. You failed every math test you ever took and you canceled any hope of being a scientist. Like that. On and on through the years until you were stuck. You’d become a baker or a librarian or a bartender. Or an accountant. And there you were. I figured that on the day you died, the tunnel would be so narrow, you’d have squeezed yourself

Wait!’ cried a deep, ringing voice. All stood still. Mr. Baker, who had turned away yawning, spun round open-mouthed. At last, furious, he blurted out: — ‘What’s this? Who said “Wait”? What... ‘ But he saw a tall figure standing on the rail. It came down and pushed through the crowd, marching with a heavy tread towards the light on the quarter-deck. Then again the sonorous voice said with insistence: — ‘Wait!’ The lamplight lit up the man’s body. He was tall. His head was away up in the shadows of lifeboats that stood on skids above the deck. The whites of his eyes and his teeth gleamed distinctly, but the face was indistinguishable. His hands were big and seemed gloved. Mr. Baker advanced intrepidly. ‘Who are you? How dare you... ‘ he began. The boy, amazed like the rest, raised the light to the man’s face. It was black. A surprised hum — a faint hum that sounded like the suppressed mutter of the word ‘Nigger’ — ran along the deck and escaped out into the night.

I meant it seriously. I really wondered why people were always doing what they didn’t like doing. It seemed like life was sort of narrowing tunnel. Right when you were born, the tunnel was huge. You could be anything. Then, like, the absolute second after you were born, the tunnel narrowed down to about half that size. You were a boy, and already it was certain you wouldn’t be a mother and it was likely you wouldn’t become a manicurist or a kindergarten teacher. Then you started to grow up and everything you did closed the tunnel in some more. You broke your arm climbing a tree and you ruled out being a baseball pitcher. You failed every math test you ever took and you canceled any hope of being a scientist. Like that. On and on through the years until you will stuck. You’d become a baker or a librarian or a bartender. Or an accountant. And there you were. I figured that on the day you died, the tunnel would be so narrow, you’d have squeezed yourself in with so many choices, that you just got squashed.

Barrels of oysters wrapped in seaweed came by boat from Stollport. Fat beam and trout were carried in dripping wooden boxes lined with wet straw. A great conger eel arrived in a crate large enough to hold a cannon and appeared so fearsome Mister Bunce quelled the kitchen boys' mock-screams only by bringing out Mister Stone to take his pick among the screechers. Sacks of raisins, currants, dried prunes and figs piled up in the dry larder. In the wet room, soused brawn, salted ling and gallipots of anchovies crowded the shelves and floor. In the butchery, Colin and Luke marshalled four undercooks, six men from the Estate armed with saws, a grumbling Barney Curle and his barrow to skin, draw and joint the hogs. Simeon, Tam Yallop and the other bakers lugged in sacks of meal from the Callock Marwood mill while a dray from the ale-house made journeys over the hill, past the gatehouse and into the yard until the buttery and cellar were filled with kegs and barrels. Rhenish wine arrived in a covered wagon, the dark oak tuns resting on a thick bed of bracken. Scents of cinnamon and saffron drifted out of the spice room.

The programme was due at any moment and I felt a bit self-conscious about barging in on some innocent family at sacred tea time. I need not have feared. A young man of about thirty opened the door to me and I asked, 'Do you watch Doctor Who in this house by any chance?' For a split second the young man looked puzzled and then he smiled, opened the door wide, and simply said 'Come in, Doctor.' And in I went. As he ushered me into the sitting room, I heard the title music and I quietly sat in the chair the man pointed to. As I took my seat, he pointed towards two little boys sitting on the sofa, eyes glued to the screen as I appeared. They watched with terrific intensity as a bit of drama unrolled and then, as someone else took up the plot, they lost interest slightly and glanced up at their dad and then at me. Just as they did so, I reappeared on the screen and they looked at me there. Their amazement was simply amazing! They were utterly gobsmacked as the two images jostled in their heads. They could not grasp how I could be in two paces at once and then, to the delight of their dad, they couldn't believe Doctor Who was in their house. What a wonderful hour or so that was.

They killed everyone in the camps. The whole world was dying there. Not only Jews. Even a black woman. Not gypsy. Not African. American like you, Mrs. Clara. They said she was a dancer and could play any instrument. Said she could line up shoes from many countries and hop from one pair to the next, performing the dances of the world. They said the Queen of Denmark honored her with a gold trumpet. But she was there, in hell with the rest of us. A woman like you. Many years ago. A lifetime ago. Young then as you would have been. And beautiful. As I believe you must have been, Mrs. Clara. Yes. Before America entered the war. Already camps had begun devouring people. All kinds of people. Yet she was rare. Only woman like her I saw until I came here, to this country, this city. And she saved my life. Poor thing. I was just a boy. Thirteen years old. The guards were beating me. I did not know why. Why? They didn't need a why. They just beat. And sometimes the beating ended in death because there was no reason to stop, just as there was no reason to begin. A boy. But I'd seen it many times. In the camp long enough to forget why I was alive, why anyone would want to live for long. They were hurting me, beating the life out of me but I was not surprised, expected no explanation. I remember curling up as I had seen a dog once cowering from the blows of a rolled newspaper. In the old country lifetimes ago. A boy in my village staring at a dog curled and rolling on its back in the dust outside a baker's shop and our baker in his white apron and tall white hat striking this mutt again and again. I didn't know what mischief this dog had done. I didn't understand why the fat man with flour on his apron was whipping it unmercifully. I simply saw it and hated the man, felt sorry for the animal, but already the child in me understood it could be no other way so I rolled and curled myself against the blows as I'd remembered the spotted dog in the dusty village street because that's the way it had to be. Then a woman's voice in a language I did not comprehend reached me. A woman angry, screeching. I heard her before I saw her. She must have been screaming at them to stop. She must have decided it was better to risk dying than watch the guards pound a boy to death. First I heard her voice, then she rushed in, fell on me, wrapped herself around me. The guards shouted at her. One tried to snatch her away. She wouldn't let go of me and they began to beat her too. I heard the thud of clubs on her back, felt her shudder each time a blow was struck. She fought to her feet, dragging me with her. Shielding me as we stumbled and slammed into a wall. My head was buried in her smock. In the smell of her, the smell of dust, of blood. I was surprised how tiny she was, barely my size, but strong, very strong. Her fingers dug into my shoulders, squeezing, gripping hard enough to hurt me if I hadn't been past the point of feeling pain. Her hands were strong, her legs alive and warm, churning, churning as she pressed me against herself, into her. Somehow she'd pulled me up and back to the barracks wall, propping herself, supporting me, sheltering me. Then she screamed at them in this language I use now but did not know one word of then, cursing them, I'm sure, in her mother tongue, a stream of spit and sputtering sounds as if she could build a wall of words they could not cross. The kapos hesitated, astounded by what she'd dared. Was this black one a madwoman, a witch? Then they tore me from her grasp, pushed me down and I crumpled there in the stinking mud of the compound. One more kick, a numbing, blinding smash that took my breath away. Blood flooded my eyes. I lost consciousness. Last I saw of her she was still fighting, slim, beautiful legs kicking at them as they dragged and punched her across the yard. You say she was colored? Yes. Yes. A dark angel who fell from the sky and saved me.

We don't talk about the danger -- but what I imagine is a cartoon version, bullets flying and each boy a super hero, running, invincible, through a spray of gunfire.

where they had come from. The baker’s wife saw them first, as they stood looking in at the window of her store. The little boy was looking at the cakes, the big boy was looking at the loaves of bread, and the two girls were looking at the cookies.

By sodomising the boys, Wilken fell into the typical pattern of passive-active role reversal by identifying with the aggressor and selecting a victim like himself. When he sodomised and strangled 12-year-old Henry Bakers he even told Henry that he was going to do to him what was done to himself when he was a child of Henry’s age.

After a few more minutes, Josh guzzled back the rest of his beer. “Gotta head out. Elizabeth is making me go to a cake-tasting party tonight. Since when did everything about weddings turn into a damn event? I’ve had to go to a food tasting, a band showcase, and a floral-presentation party. Vegas is sounding better and better.” “Just wait.” Chase stood. “Anna had a bridal shower, a pregnancy-announcement party, and a gender-reveal party. You’re just getting started, buddy.” “What the hell is a gender-reveal party?” The parents-to-be give a sealed envelope that contains the sex of the baby to a bakery, and the baker puts pink frosting inside the cupcakes if it’s a girl and blue if it’s a boy. Then they have a party, and everyone finds out at the same time, including the parents-to-be. Pure. Fucking. Torture. Whatever happened to the kid popping out and the doctor giving it a smack and yelling it’s a boy over the thing crying?

When we pray the Lord's Prayer, observed Luther, we ask God to give us this day our daily bread. And He does give us our daily bread. He does it by means of the farmer who planted and harvested the grain, the baker who made the flour into bread, the person who prepared our meal. We might today add the truck drivers who hauled the produce, the factory workers in the food processing plant, the warehouse men, the wholesale distributors, the stock boys, the lady at the checkout counter. Also playing their part are the bankers, futures investors, advertisers, lawyers, agricultural scientists, mechanical engineers, and every other player in the nation's economic system. All of these were instrumental in enabling you to eat your morning bagel.

His worn leather boots are a stark contrast to the white sneakers I wear almost every day. I realize how we look so very opposite: a tatted-up bookseller clad in leather and the sweetie-pie baker in a puffer jacket and thick-rimmed glasses. But when I look down at our clasped hands, my heart thunders yet again, like it has ever since the two of us got together. We fit together perfectly.

Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman, The Fabulous Bush & Baker Boys, New York Times Magazine, 5/6/90.

When Huy was young, his classmates called him "wee wee” because of an unfortunate linguistic coincidence that shaped the part of him that constructs identity beneath a title. When he dwelled on the identity that his name began constructing for him in childhood, a loud American Schoolyard memory of boys and girls yelling "wee wee" at him was dominant, within a mental file full of similar confusion that came back to him as obnoxious, repetitive shaming.

Fifty Best Rock Documentaries Chicago Blues (1972) B. B. King: The Life of Riley (2014) Devil at the Crossroads (2019) BBC: Dancing in the Street: Whole Lotta Shakin’ (1996) BBC: Story of American Folk Music (2014) The Weavers: Wasn’t That a Time! (1982) PBS: The March on Washington (2013) BBC: Beach Boys: Wouldn’t It Be Nice (2005) The Wrecking Crew (2008) What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A. (1964) BBC: Blues Britannia (2009) Rolling Stones: Charlie Is My Darling—Ireland 1965 (2012) Bob Dylan: Dont Look Back (1967) BBC: The Motown Invasion (2011) Rolling Stones: Sympathy for the Devil (1968) BBC: Summer of Love: How Hippies Changed the World (2017) Gimme Shelter (1970) Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World (2017) Cocksucker Blues (1972) John Lennon & the Plastic Ono Band: Sweet Toronto (1971) John and Yoko: Above Us Only Sky (2018) Gimme Some Truth: The Making of John Lennon’s “Imagine” Album (2000) Echo in the Canyon (2018) BBC: Prog Rock Britannia (2009) BBC: Hotel California: LA from the Byrds to the Eagles (2007) The Allman Brothers Band: After the Crash (2016) BBC: Sweet Home Alabama: The Southern Rock Saga (2012) Ain’t in It for My Health: A Film About Levon Helm (2010) BBC: Kings of Glam (2006) Super Duper Alice Cooper (2014) New York Dolls: All Dolled Up (2005) End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones (2004) Fillmore: The Last Days (1972) Gimme Danger: The Stooges (2016) George Clinton: The Mothership Connection (1998) Fleetwood Mac: Rumours (1997) The Who: The Kids Are Alright (1979) The Clash: New Year’s Day ’77 (2015) The Decline of Western Civilization (1981) U2: Rattle and Hum (1988) Neil Young: Year of the Horse (1997) Ginger Baker: Beware of Mr. Baker (2012) AC/DC: Dirty Deeds (2012) Grateful Dead: Long, Strange Trip (2017) No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005) Hip-Hop Evolution (2016) Joan Jett: Bad Reputation (2018) David Crosby: Remember My Name (2019) Zappa (2020) Summer of Soul (2021)

For those who lack the classical education of New York’s early butchers and bakers, Xanthippe was Socrates’ wife, and has gone down in history as an atrocious nag. Socrates’ equanimity in enduring (ignoring) her is regularly held out as a proof of his nobility of character. Graves begins by pointing out: why is it that for two thousand years, no one seems to have asked what it might have actually been like to be married to Socrates? Imagine you were saddled with a husband who did next to nothing to support a family, spent all his time trying to prove everyone he met was wrong about everything, and felt true love was only possible between men and underage boys? You wouldn’t express some opinions about this? Socrates has been held out ever since as the paragon of a certain unrelenting notions of pure consistency, an unflinching determination to follow arguments to their logical conclusions, which is surely useful in its way--but he was not a very reasonable person, and those who celebrate him have ended up producing a "mechanized, insensate, inhumane, abstract rationality" that has done the world enormous harm. Graves writes that as a poet, he feels no choice but to identify himself more with those frozen out of the "rational" space of Greek city, starting with women like Xanthippe, for whom reasonableness doesn’t exclude logic (no one is actually *against* logic) but combines it with a sense of humor, practicality, and simple human decency. With that in mind, it only makes sense that so much of the initiative for creating new forms of democratic process--like consensus--has emerged from the tradition of feminism, which means (among other things) the intellectual tradition of those who have, historically, tended not to be vested with the power of command. Consensus is an attempt to create a politics founded on the principle of reasonableness--one that, as feminist philosopher Deborah Heikes has pointed out, requires not only logical consistency, but "a measure of good judgment, self-criticism, a capacity for social interaction, and a willingness to give and consider reasons." Genuine deliberation, in short. As a facilitation trainer would likely put it, it requires the ability to listen well enough to understand perspectives that are fundamentally different from one’s own, and then try to find pragmatic common ground without attempting to convert one’s interlocutors completely to one’s won perspective. It means viewing democracy as common problem solving among those who respect the fact they will always have, like all humans, somewhat incommensurable points of view. (p. 201-203)

I turn and run back the other direction. I run until my lungs hurt, until my legs cramp, and then I keep going until I run off the end of the bridge and right into a brick wall. Whump. A warm, familiar, breathing, brick wall. Sam. He’s as gorgeous as ever, but boy does he look pissed.

Orphan Train Rider: One Boy’s True Story by Andrea Warren; Children of the Orphan Trains, 1854–1929 by Holly Littlefield; and Rachel Calof’s Story: Jewish Homesteader on the Northern Plains edited by J. Sanford Rikoon (which

She looked for any sign of the boy who'd taught her to whistle a hornpipe, who could palm an ace of hearts and make it reappear from her sleeve, but failed to find even a glimmer of him. Instead she saw Ida taking on a second life in the features of her only son, and for a quick heartbeat Jo was almost grateful for the scar tissue dimpled across her cheek, forehead, and chin. No one would ever be able to invade her face, she realized. She would always simply be herself, whether she liked it or not.

Feeding Carmine bread soaked in milk reminds me of the Irish dish called champ I often made for Maisie and the boys—a mash of potatoes, milk, green onions (on the rare occasion when we had them), and salt. On the nights when we went to bed hungry, all of us dreamed of that champ.

In the darkness he tells me more than I want to know. He and Mrs. Grote barely say a word to each other anymore, he says. She hates to talk, but loves sex. But he can’t stand to touch her—she doesn’t bother to clean herself, and there’s always a kid hanging off her. He says, “I should’ve married someone like you, Dorothy. You wouldn’t’ve trapped me like this, would ya?” He likes my red hair. “You know what they say,” he tells me. “If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead.” The first girl he kissed had red hair, but that was a long time ago, he says, back when he was young and good-looking. “Surprised I was good-looking? I was a boy once, you know. I’m only twenty-four now.” He has never been in love with his wife, he says. Call me Gerald, he says. I know that Mr. Grote shouldn’t be saying all this. I am only ten years old.

My eyes stray back to Eric Cameron, a.k.a. Mirror Boy. It might or might not be him. The face is the same shape and the eyes the same color, but aside from that, I just can’t tell. His face was pretty mangled last I’d seen it, and that’s how I’d drawn him.

you thought it meant a swishy little boy with peroxided hair, dressed in a picture hat and a feather boa, pretending to be Marlene Dietrich? Yes, in queer circles they call that camping ... You can call [it] Low Camp ... High Camp is the whole emotional basis for ballet, for example, and of course of baroque art ... High Camp always has an underlying seriousness. You can't camp about something you don't take seriously. You're not making fun of it, you're making fun out of it. You're expressing what's basically serious to you in terms of fun and artifice and elegance. Baroque art is basically camp about religion. The ballet is camp about love.

He nods, and his face brightens. “Four boys,” he says. “Men, really. Thatcher, Sterling, Campbell, and Baker.” Oh. My. God. Those are some of the worst names I have ever heard. “Oh, great names,” I say.

For the One Jesus gave His life for me, He took away my pain, He made beat this heart of mine So I could love again. In return I asked Him What I could give away, He showed me things That break His heart, And then I heard Him say. Just stop for the one, Until My kingdom comes, From the smallest seed, Comes a mighty tree. When you just stop for the one. He showed me orphans on the street, Their faces full of fear, Always hungry, always cold, Always death is near. Girls in flimsy dresses, Watching men drive past, Trading on their kisses, Every kiss their last. He said... Just stop for the one, Until My kingdom comes, From the smallest seed, Comes a mighty tree. When you just stop for the one. I saw boys without a purpose Become men before their time. Every day a little worse, Driven into crime. Drugs to ease the sorrow, Never kill the pain, Peace lasts ’til tomorrow, Then it all starts up again. Jesus stopped for children And the thief on Calvary, For the woman at the water well, And then He stopped for me. He said go love another, Until the battle’s done, In this world you will have trouble, But victory shall come. He said... Just stop for the one, Until My kingdom comes, From the smallest seed Comes a mighty tree. Just stop for the one, Until My will is done Here on earth, As you just ... stop ... for ... the ... one. (Claire Vorster, 2012)

years, but this feels different somehow. A spark zooms through me, and I quickly stare at my feet. No luck for Andrea tonight, or Gemette. The bottle comes to rest on Andrea’s best friend, Annelise, instead. She and I were in Science together a long time ago. Her dark brown hair hangs loose, framing high cheekbones and expressive chocolate eyes. She frowns. Tonight doesn’t seem to be going right for anyone so far. “Now what?” Annelise’s voice shakes. “We just kiss, right here in front of everyone?” “No, of course not,” Gemette snaps. “Who made you the boss?” Evan frowns. Judging by his sulky tone, he’s still mad about losing his turn earlier. “Unfortunately, I’m the boss,” Wesley says, “and she’s right.” He points to a dilapidated shed at the top of the hill. “You two go up there.” “Romantic.” Tom rolls his eyes as he stands up. He rubs his bare palms on his pants. Gross. At least I know I’m not the only nervous one here. Tom and Annelise trudge a path through clumps of frozen brown grass toward the rundown tool shed. What a special memory for their first kiss. Gemette sighs and I pat her gloved hand with my own. I’d feel worse for her, but Gemette likes every decent looking guy in town, including a few boys a year younger than us. She’ll recover from missing out on a special moment with Tom. I glance again toward Andrea, an acquaintance from my time in Agriculture. She and Tom trained together for years. She may have liked him as long as I’ve liked Wesley. She looks into the fire while her foot digs a messy hole in the soil. I wonder how I’ll feel if Wesley spins and gets Andrea. Or worse, Gemette. I’ll have to sit here and twiddle my thumbs while I know he’s in there kissing a friend. My stomach lurches. Coming tonight was a stupid idea. I clearly didn’t think this through.

The Buckley boys, like the Bushes, had been in Skull and Bones, and Bill Buckley, whose conservative intellectual magazine National Review was often politically helpful to Poppy Bush, would in later years admit to a stint working for the CIA himself.

I guess I’m a better baker than I am a cook.

And perhaps that was the worst of it. Whether you were a banker or a baker, a homemaker or homeless, it was with you night and day—a terrible, unrelenting uncertainty about the future, a feeling that the ground could drop out from under you for good at any moment

The old man pointed to a baker standing in his shop window at one corner of the plaza. 'When he was a child, that man wanted to travel, too. But he decided first to buy his bakery and put some money aside. When he's an old man, he's going to spend a month in Africa. He never realized that people are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.' 'He should have decided to become a shepherd,' the boy said. 'Well, he thought about that," the old man said. 'But bakers are more important people than shepherds. Bakers have homes, while shepherds sleep out in the open. Parents would rather see their children marry bakers than shepherds.' The old man continued, 'In the long run, what people think about shepherds and bakers becomes more important for them than their own Personal Legends.

If Baker's expedition should succeed in annexing the valley of the Nile to Egypt, the question arises,—Would not the miserable condition of the natives, when subjected to all the atrocities of the White Nile slave-traders, be worse under Egyptian dominion? The villages would be farmed out to tax-collectors, the women, children and boys carried off into slavery, and the free thought and feeling of the population placed under the dead weight of Islam. Bad as the situation now is, if Baker leaves it matters will grow worse. It is probable that actual experience will correct the fancies he now puts forth as to the proper mode of dealing with Africans

Black Studies guru Houston Baker has defended rap music in the same terms. “Rap is like a rich stock garnered from the sudden simmering of titanic B-boy/B-girl energies. Such energies were diffused over black cityscapes.” Baker also describes the same energy in “wilding,” and in the murderous mass rape of a white female jogger in Central Park in 1987, as the vital overthrow of the white man’s attempt to tame nature by constructing a park in the first place. Just as in The Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche’s blond beast emerges “from a disgusting procession of murder, arson, rape, and torture, exhilarated and undisturbed of soul, as if it were no more than a student’s prank,” so do young blacks joyfully bring the reality of terror to the white power structure (as Nietzsche wrote, “That lambs dislike great birds of prey does not seem strange”).56

I’m throwing a dinner party at my house, and you’re coming over.” “I am, huh? I kinda like it when you tell me what to do. For such a pretty boy, you sure can play butch.” He took a pen from the pen cup and wrote an address on a Post-it Note. “This is the house I live in with my brother. I just want to prepare you ahead of time, before you see the place. I do okay as a dentist, but my brother’s the one who put up the down payment. He’s a software engineer. He sold a few apps.” Megan checked the address and nodded. “He sold more than a few apps,” she said. “When you meet him, you should pretend that sort of thing impresses you, and that you think he’s cooler than me. I’ll know you’re faking it, of course, but he could use the self-esteem boost. The dinner party is in honor of his birthday. He’s turning the big three-oh, and he’s not very happy about getting older.” “Can I sit on his lap and sing him Happy Birthday?” “Seven o’clock,” he said. “Don’t bring any food or wine.” “Are you trying to use reverse psychology on me?” “Not at all,” he said. “My brother always gets enough food and wine to feed an army. All you need to bring is your gorgeous self.” “And I will. Wearing nothing but a trench coat,” she said. “Please wear clothes.

The changeover from knickers to long pants was the ritual recognition that a boy had reached adolescence, or “the awkward age,” as everybody called it. The “teenager,” like the atomic bomb, was still uninvented, and there were few concessions to adolescence, but the change to long pants was a ritual of recognition.

When the little boy looked up at them with laughing eyes, Annie felt her heart melt.

Miss Elton, who found the conversation increasingly distressing, got up, murmured a quick good night . . . and went to her room. During the bellicose talk in the lounge, the ghosts of Frank Durrant, Madeleine, Arvid and Mr. Sorenius seemed to be slipping further and further away with their own receding world. And what was one offered in exchange for this world of the dead? A future in which all signposts pointed to war and the ruin of all those useless little things which made life worth living. And then, as if provoked by the contrast of the speeches and ideas to which she had just been listening, a flood of images, each of them a small part of her life at Ashleigh Place, swept through her mind with an overwhelming suddenness—a walk on a windy autumn afternoon to the farm with a message about eggs, cartloads of logs coming before Christmas to be stacked in the stables, the remodelling of the rose-garden, with Mrs. Durrant setting the new labels in their places, two swans which spent a season on the little River Mene at the foot of the western slope, and the sudden appearance of a kingfisher by those fitful waters, the endless cooing of wood-pigeons in the trees round the house, the catch whistled by the baker's boy as he jumped out of his bright little van, the tick of the huge grandfather clock in the darkest corner of the hall, the pattern of the old-fashioned tiles in the bathroom which she had used, cockchafers beating against the windows on hot summer nights, the scent of the tobacco plants in the round bed near the drawing-room, an expedition to the woods on a grey day to cut mistletoe. . . .

Maman reserves her stormy side for her family,” Père Lessard would say, “for the world she has only sunshine and butterflies.” It was then that she smacked young Lucien in the head with a baguette. The crunchy yet tender crust wrapped around his head, bending but not breaking, showing that the oven had been precisely the right temperature, there had been exactly enough moisture, and in fact, by the ancient Lessard test method it was perfect. Lucien thought this was the way of all French boulangers, and he would be a young man before anyone explained to him that other bakers did not have a test boy who was smacked in the head with a loaf of bread every morning.

To bear him beefy boys?

Sam clears his throat. “See?” Wesley sighs. “Lover Boy shows up to scowl at me and flex his muscles and generally stomp around.” Adam smirks. “I think Lover Boy knows I have no intention of ever wooing Her Royal Highness.

Hang on a second, pretty boy. Ruby already has a boyfriend, the Sam guy she asked about. And she has a back up boyfriend.” He points at himself. “The last thing she needs is another genetically perfect model looking guy following her around all day, flexing, or whatever you’re going to do to keep her safe.

Amazing. College boys are known for big words, not common sense.

You guys can't go home yet. We haven't had tea and chats," Gibsie piped up. "And I have scones baking in the oven." "You baked scones?" I asked, momentarily distracted. "You?" "Yes, me," Gibsie shot back, looking slightly wounded. "I'll have you know that I'm a wonderful baker.

Your mother is a baker," I snapped. "How do you not know how to work a bleeding stove?" "And yours is a flashy fashion designer," he shot back. "But I don't see you prancing around the place in fur coats and Prada handbags." "You're a baby, do you know that?" I growled. "You're like an oversized infant I've been given custody of to care for.

am not the coolest kid in my class, nor am I in the top sixteen. I am dead last. Not only am I dead last in my class, but there are fourth graders that would probably rank higher than me. I’m like the crumbs at the bottom of a potato chip bag. While they should be treated the same as the big ones, they are often tossed away with the bag and discarded. What I find so ironic and hilarious is that these classmates of mine that think they are so much better than me are huge dorks and dweebs themselves in the eyes of the pubbies. When it comes to the hierarchy of the kids in this town, public always wins. Even the runts of the public school crowd rank higher than the coolest of us cathies (that's their unfortunate nickname for us). It makes for a very interesting culture on the shared bus system. Take for instance, Josh Baker. He is pretty much the it guy in the St. Guadalupe’s 5th grade. I know of at least three girls in my class that would shave her head to go out with him (whatever "going out" means to a 5th-grader). All of the other seven boys in the class fight to have him at their sleepovers, parties and picnics. Josh is pretty much on a seven-weekend rotation with these kids. In this little world of ours, we have our kings and queens. Josh is our grade’s king. But as soon as any of us step outside of our parochial world, we become losers to the public crowd. Josh, for instance, tells anyone in our class what to do. If he needs his lunch fetched for him, he has a handful of numbskulls to do his bidding. If he forgets his homework, he only needs to say the words “yeah, so last night…” before receiving a copy of the answers. People are always ready and willing to help him because he is what everyone aspires to be or be around.