Beaten Best Quotes

Whether you’re beaten or pampered, fed the best foods or starved, kept in filth or kept clean, a cage is still a cage.

So, as was often the case, a big fear was beaten by a bigger fear. The best way to beat a monster is to find a scarier one.

The best time to cry is at night, when the lights are out and someone is being beaten up and screaming for help.

Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else. Every fucking day, someone, somewhere makes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ's sake, a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know crap about life. And why the FUCK are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don't have any use for it. I don't have any bloody use for it.

No longer can I bear with the ruined god, betrayed and beaten by his own magic. Calling on powers best left unsummoned, he took human beings apart—and then he put them back together again.

And that was how a great scandal threatened to affect the kingdom of Bohemia, and how the best plans of Mr. Sherlock Holmes were beaten by a woman’s wit. He used to make merry over the cleverness of women, but I have not heard him do it of late. And when he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her photograph, it is always under the honourable title of the woman.

I thought it very touching to see these two women, coarse and shabby and beaten, so united; to see what they could be to one another; to see how they felt for one another, how the heart of each to each was softened by the hard trials of their lives. I think the best side of such people is almost hidden from us. What the poor are to the poor is little known, excepting to themselves and God.

Josh’s smile disappeared. “What do you mean, you’ve beaten Alex in chess? When did you play chess together?” He whipped his head toward Alex. “You’ve been playing chess with someone else?”.....Josh looked stricken. “You have another, secret best friend? But…I’m your best friend! I bought you a banana float for your bachelor party!

At its best, science fiction stimulates imagination and creativity. It gets reader and writer off the beaten track, off the narrow, narrow footpath of what "everyone" is saying, doing thinking - whoever "everyone" happens to be this year.

The Quitter When you're lost in the Wild, and you're scared as a child, And Death looks you bang in the eye, And you're sore as a boil, it's according to Hoyle To cock your revolver and . . . die. But the Code of a Man says: "Fight all you can," And self-dissolution is barred. In hunger and woe, oh, it's easy to blow... It's the hell-served-for-breakfast that's hard. "You're sick of the game!" Well, now, that's a shame. You're young and you're brave and you're bright. "You've had a raw deal!" I know — but don't squeal, Buck up, do your damnedest, and fight. It's the plugging away that will win you the day, So don't be a piker, old pard! Just draw on your grit; it's so easy to quit: It's the keeping-your-chin-up that's hard. It's easy to cry that you're beaten — and die; It's easy to crawfish and crawl; But to fight and to fight when hope's out of sight — Why, that's the best game of them all! And though you come out of each gruelling bout, All broken and beaten and scarred, Just have one more try — it's dead easy to die, It's the keeping-on-living that's hard.

The heart of a woman is the best mirror you can find.

Now is definitely the best time to start, though Yesterday would have beaten it easily.

One, the search for the fang-free dragon taught me that fear and intimidation might not be the best way to train dragons. Two, the sword: that sometimes best is second-best. Three, the shield: that sometimes freedom must be fought for. Four, the ticking-thing: that when you fight for your friend, you are also fighting for yourself. Five, the ruby heart’s stone: that love never dies. Six, the arrow from the land-that-does-not-exist: that you must make things right in the Old World before you go looking for the New, and sometimes the things that you are looking for are right at home. Seven, the key-that-opens-all-locks: that accidents happen for a reason. Eight, the Throne: that power can corrupt. Nine, the Crown: that you have to keep on trying even though you are beaten before you even star. And Ten, the dragon Jewel," finished Hiccup. "You need to know what it is to be a slave, before you can be a King.

One, the search for the fang-free dragon taught me that fear and intimidation might not be the best way to train dragons. "Two, the sword: that sometimes best is second-best. "Three, the shield: that sometimes freedom must be fought for. "Four, the ticking-thing: that when you fight for your friend, you are also fighting for yourself. "Five, the ruby heart’s stone: that love never dies. "Six, the arrow from the land-that-does-not-exist: that you must make things right in the Old World before you go looking for the New, and sometimes the things that you are looking for are right at home. "Seven, the key-that-opens-all-locks: that accidents happen for a reason. "Eight, the Throne: that power can corrupt. "Nine, the Crown: that you have to keep on trying even though you are beaten before you even star. "And Ten, the dragon Jewel," finished Hiccup. "You need to know what it is to be a slave, before you can be a King.

KAUFMAN Sir, what if a writer is attempting to create a story where nothing much happens, where people don't change, they don't have any epiphanies. They struggle and are frustrated and nothing is resolved. More a reflection of the real world — MCKEE The real world? KAUFMAN Yes, sir. MCKEE The real fucking world? First of all, you write a screenplay without Conflict or Crisis, you'll bore your audience to tears. Secondly: nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day! There's genocide, war, corruption! Every fucking day somewhere in the world somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else! Every fucking day someone somewhere makes a conscious decision to destroy someone else! People find love! People lose it! For Christ's sake! A child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church! Someone goes hungry! Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman! If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know CRAP about life! And WHY THE FUCK are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don't have any use for it! I don't have any bloody use for it! KAUFMAN Okay, thanks.

When I began to do a little public speaking, one of the questions I heard most often was, "What good is science fiction to Black people?" I was usually asked this by a Black person... What good is science fiction's thinking about the present, the future, and the past? What good is its tendency to warn or to consider alternative ways of thinking and doing? What good is its examination of the possible effects of science and technology, or social organization and political direction? At its best, science fiction stimulates imagination and creativity. It gets reader and writer off the beaten track, off the narrow, narrow footpath of what "everyone" is saying, doing, thinking -- whoever "everyone" happens to be this year. And what good is all this to Black people?

There’s no reason, on paper at least, why I need these pills to get through life. I had a great childhood, loving parents, the whole package. I wasn’t beaten, abused, or expected to get nothing but As. I had nothing but love and support, but that wasn’t enough somehow. My friend Erin says we all have demons inside us, voices that whisper we’re no good, that if we don’t make this promotion or ace that exam we’ll reveal to the world exactly what kind of worthless sacks of skin and sinew we really are. Maybe that’s true. Maybe mine just have louder voices. But I don’t think it’s as simple as that. The depression I fell into after university wasn’t about exams and self-worth, it was something stranger, more chemical, something that no talking cure was going to fix. Cognitive behavioral therapy, counseling, psychotherapy—none of it really worked in the way that the pills did. Lissie says she finds the notion of chemically rebalancing your mood scary, she says it’s the idea of taking something that could alter how she really is. But I don’t see it that way; for me it’s like wearing makeup—not a disguise, but a way of making myself more how I really am, less raw. The best me I can be.

No, you don’t remember, and sometimes it’s best that way. Sometimes it’s best to start fresh. Every day, fresh. Living always in the present, unburdened by the pain of the past. Most of us drag around our misdeeds like giant dead birds tied to our necks; we condemn ourselves to telling every stranger we meet the story of our anguish and inadequacies, hoping that one day we will be forgiven, hoping that we will find a person who will look at us and pretend to ignore the ridiculous dead birds hanging from our sunburned and weather-beaten necks. And if we find that person, and if we don’t hate him for not hating us, if we don’t hold him in contempt for not treating us contemptuously, as we expect to be treated—nay, as we demand to be treated—well, that person will be something of a soul mate, I imagine.

Imagine being beaten up every day for something you didn’t do and yet, when it’s over, you keep on smiling. That’s what every day of Donald’s life was like. His death was a small death. No one mourned his passing; they merely agreed it was for the best that he be forgotten as quickly as possible, since his was a life misspent.

We know better than to compare ourselves with others online. We know a Facebook feed, for most, is a glorified highlights reel, a round-up of our best moments, our funniest selves, our greatest champions. We know not to compare our worst with someone else’s best. But

Whether you're beaten or pampered, fed the best foods or starved, kept in filth or kept clean, a cage is still a cage

Use what you have. Shop for what you’ll use. Take stock of what you have and wear it. Use it. This is the best way to honor those who have made your clothing. An

I Not my best side, I'm afraid. The artist didn't give me a chance to Pose properly, and as you can see, Poor chap, he had this obsession with Triangles, so he left off two of my Feet. I didn't comment at the time (What, after all, are two feet To a monster?) but afterwards I was sorry for the bad publicity. Why, I said to myself, should my conqueror Be so ostentatiously beardless, and ride A horse with a deformed neck and square hoofs? Why should my victim be so Unattractive as to be inedible, And why should she have me literally On a string? I don't mind dying Ritually, since I always rise again, But I should have liked a little more blood To show they were taking me seriously. II It's hard for a girl to be sure if She wants to be rescued. I mean, I quite Took to the dragon. It's nice to be Liked, if you know what I mean. He was So nicely physical, with his claws And lovely green skin, and that sexy tail, And the way he looked at me, He made me feel he was all ready to Eat me. And any girl enjoys that. So when this boy turned up, wearing machinery, On a really dangerous horse, to be honest I didn't much fancy him. I mean, What was he like underneath the hardware? He might have acne, blackheads or even Bad breath for all I could tell, but the dragon-- Well, you could see all his equipment At a glance. Still, what could I do? The dragon got himself beaten by the boy, And a girl's got to think of her future. III I have diplomas in Dragon Management and Virgin Reclamation. My horse is the latest model, with Automatic transmission and built-in Obsolescence. My spear is custom-built, And my prototype armour Still on the secret list. You can't Do better than me at the moment. I'm qualified and equipped to the Eyebrow. So why be difficult? Don't you want to be killed and/or rescued In the most contemporary way? Don't You want to carry out the roles That sociology and myth have designed for you? Don't you realize that, by being choosy, You are endangering job prospects In the spear- and horse-building industries? What, in any case, does it matter what You want? You're in my way. - Not My Best Side

How Did You Die? Did you tackle that trouble that came your way With a resolute heart and cheerful? Or hide your face from the light of day With a craven soul and fearful? Oh, a trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce, Or a trouble is what you make it. And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts, But only how did you take it? You are beaten to earth? Well, well what's that? Come up with a smiling face. It's nothing against you to fall down flat, But to lie there - that's disgrace. The harder you're thrown, why the higher you bounce; Be proud of your blackened eye! It isn't the fact that you're licked that counts; It's how did you fight and why? And though you be done to death, what then? If you battled the best you could; If you played your part in the world of men, Why the critic will call it good. Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce, And whether he's slow or spry, It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts, But only, how did you die?

She’d been in love with the way Todd made her feel about herself. Evan had been her best friend, but his treatment of her, in a way, had been a rejection. Every single day for two damn years, she’d felt rejected by him. It was no wonder her self-esteem had been so beaten down she’d fal en for the first sweet-talker to come along.

even if Noam Chomsky were right about everything, the Islamic doctrines related to martyrdom, jihad, blasphemy, apostasy, the rights of women and homosexuals, etc. would still present huge problems for the emergence of a global civil society (and these are problems quite unlike those presented by similar tenets in other faiths, for reasons that I have explained at length elsewhere and touch on only briefly here). And any way in which I might be biased or blinded by “the religion of the state,” or any other form of cultural indoctrination, has absolutely no relevance to the plight of Shiites who have their mosques, weddings, and funerals bombed by Sunni extremists, or to victims of rape who are beaten, imprisoned, or even killed as “adulteresses” throughout the Muslim world. I hope it goes without saying that the Afghan girls who even now are risking their lives by merely learning to read would not be best compensated for their struggles by being handed copies of Chomsky’s books enumerating the sins of the West

...her father finds being called a Holocaust surviver demeaning. 'When people talk about the Holocaust, they talk about gas chambers, Auschwitz -- the Holocaust is not just about that,' she said. 'It's about the little humiliations, the loss of dignity.' Her father made much the same point in the film. 'People talk about Sophie's Choice as if it was a rare event,' he said. 'It wasn't. Everybody had to make Sophie's Choice -- all of us. My mother left behind a four-year-old with the maid. You don't think I was beaten and shot at? There are no violins in my story. It is the most common thing that happened.

Twenty years ago, two of the CIA's best double-agents had been murdered in their own home on Christmas Eve. The husband had been killed first, and the wife had been raped repeatedly before she'd been beaten to death. The two children were never found.

I am not at all sure that the majority of the human race have not been ugly, and even among those "lords of their kind," the British, squat figures, ill-shapen nostrils, and dingy complexions are not startling exceptions. Yet there is a great deal of family love amongst us. I have a friend or two whose class of features is such that the Apollo curl on the summit of their brows would be decidedly trying; yet to my certain knowledge tender hearts have beaten for them, and their miniatures—flattering, but still not lovely—are kissed in secret by motherly lips. I have seen many an excellent matron, who could have never in her best days have been handsome, and yet she had a packet of yellow love-letters in a private drawer, and sweet children showered kisses on her sallow cheeks. And I believe there have been plenty of young heroes, of middle stature and feeble beards, who have felt quite sure they could never love anything more insignificant than a Diana, and yet have found themselves in middle life happily settled with a wife who waddles. Yes! Thank God; human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty—it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it.

My smile was pure ice. “I would spend more time improving your chess skills and less worrying about other people’s business, Josh. I’ve beaten Alex in chess. Have you?” Josh’s smile disappeared. “What do you mean, you’ve beaten Alex in chess? When did you play chess together?” He whipped his head toward Alex. “You’ve been playing chess with someone else?” Alex closed his eyes briefly before he opened them and glared at me, his expression filled with frost-tipped venom. My smile widened. “We have a standing chess date every month.” I swirled my drink in my glass. “Didn’t he tell you?” Josh looked stricken. “You have another, secret best friend? But…I’m your best friend! I bought you a banana float for your bachelor party!” “I don’t want a banana float, and he’s not my best friend.” Alex’s glare intensified. I shrugged, my meaning clear. What can you do? C’est la vie.

What good is science fiction’s thinking about the present, the future, and the past? What good is its tendency to warn or to consider alternative ways of thinking and doing? What good is its examination of the possible effects of science and technology, or social organization and political direction? At its best, science fiction stimulates imagination and creativity. It gets reader and writer off the beaten track, off the narrow, narrow footpath of what “everyone” is saying, doing, thinking—whoever “everyone” happens to be this year.

Screw the beaten path! Do your thing. Write the best story you can. the rest will fall into place.

And that was how a great scandal threatened to affect the kingdom of Bohemia, and how the best plans of Mr. Sherlock Holmes were beaten by a woman’s wit. He used to make merry over the cleverness of women, but I have not heard him do it of late. And when he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her photograph, it is always under the honourable title of the woman.

I looked at the images hanging on the walls, wanting to find those things in her pictures. My favorite was directly across from me: a photo of a beaten, weathered hull of a rowboat. I knew about as much about boats as I did photography, which was next to nothing, but that boat wasn’t going anywhere near the water anytime soon unless the owner decided it would make a mediocre shipwreck to explore while scuba diving. Nevertheless, it faced the out-of-focus lake in the background, almost hopefully, as if it hadn’t yet decided its best days were gone, as if it still dreamed of bobbing peacefully on the waves. “Does that one have a name?” I asked. She smiled. “Seaworthy.

I have rules,” she said to him. He stilled his pen, raised expressionless eyes to her face, and waited. “When you bring me an old servant who’s come willingly where the king’s men have bidden him, a man who’s never been convicted, or even accused, of a crime,” Fire said, “I will not take his mind. I’ll sit before him and ask questions, and if my presence makes him more talkative, very well. But I will not compel him to say things he would otherwise not have said. Nor,” she added, voice rising, “will I take the mind of a person who’s been fed too little, or denied medicines, or beaten in your jails. I won’t manipulate a prisoner you’ve mistreated.” Garan sat back and crossed his arms. “That’s rich, isn’t it? Your own manipulation is mistreatment; you’ve said it yourself.” “Yes, but mine is meant to be for good reason. Yours is not.” “It’s not my mistreatment. I don’t give the orders down there, I’ve no idea what goes on.” “If you want me to question them, you’d best find out.” To Garan’s credit, the treatment of Dellian prisoners did change after that. One particularly laconic man, after a session in which Fire learned positively nothing, thanked her for it specifically. “Best dungeons I ever been in,” he said, chewing on a toothpick. “Wonderful,” Garan grumbled when he’d gone. “We’ll grow a reputation for our kindness to lawbreakers.

Bet – But how else are we going to be? In Italy there was this women’s art festival. A friend of ours who does performance dressed as a woman and did a performance. Then he revealed he was a man. The women in the festival beat him up and called the police. Michael – The police? Janey – Was he good? Bet – He was the best performer there. Louie – I think calling the police is weird. They should have just beaten him up. Janey – I don’t like the police.

The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost a maidenlike, guest in hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man. He is not a compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth. When Launcelot heard himself pronounced the best knight in the world, ‘he wept as he had been a child that had been beaten’.2

There are situations in life which are beyond one. The sensible man realizes this, and slides out of such situations, admitting himself beaten. Others try to grapple with them, but it never does any good. When affairs get in a real tangle, it is best to sit still and let them straighten themselves out. Or, if one does not do that, simply to think no more about them. This is Philosophy. The true philosopher is the man who says "All right," and goes to sleep in his arm-chair. One's attitude towards Life's Little Difficulties should be that of the gentleman in the fable, who sat down on an acorn one day and happened to doze. The warmth of his body caused the acorn to germinate, and it grew so rapidly that, when he awoke, he found himself sitting in the fork of an oak sixty feet from the ground. He thought he would go home, but, finding this impossible, he altered his plans. "Well, well," he said, "if I cannot compel circumstances to my will, I can at least adapt my will to circumstances. I decide to remain here." Which he did, and had a not unpleasant time. The oak lacked some of the comforts of home, but the air was splendid and the view excellent. Today's Great Thought for Young Readers. Imitate this man.

But even though I loved being in water, I never enjoyed swim meets. It always seemed like they were imposing structure and stress on something that should have been freeing and fun. For example, going down a slide is awesome. But if you had to show up every day for slide practice at 7 A.M. and then compete against your best friend in slide competitions, while grown-ups screamed at you to slide better, until your friend won and you cried, slides would seem a lot less awesome. And yes, I cried after the 1994 breaststroke finals when the official said I lost even though technically I had a faster time. And yes, I was beaten by Steve Deppe. And yes, I just googled Steve Deppe and discovered he now runs a successful wealth management business in San Diego. And yes, his online corporate profile says, “As a former athlete, Steve continues to exercise daily, whether it’s lifting weights, running, swimming, or playing sports.” And yes, the fourth example he gave of “exercise” was “sports.” And yes, I just went out and bought goggles and a Speedo and went down to my local pool and didn’t leave until I “just went out and bought goggles and a Speedo and went down to my local pool and didn’t leave until I swam a hundred laps, hoping that would be more laps than Steve Deppe swam today. BUT REALLY, WHO EVEN CARES ANYMORE, RIGHT??? NOT ME!!! IT’S NOT A COMPETITION, EVEN THOUGH I’M NOT EVEN MARRIED YET AND STEVE IS ALREADY “THE PROUD FATHER OF HIS DAUGHTER, CAMRYN.” PLUS, HE’S “AN AVID SPORTS FAN, WHO NEVER MISSES HIS FAVORITE TV SHOW, SPORTSCENTER.” WE GET IT STEVE, YOU FUCKING LOVE SPORTS!” Anyway.

The Quitter When you're lost in the Wild, and you're scared as a child, And Death looks you bang in the eye, And you're sore as a boil, it's according to Hoyle To cock your revolver and . . . die. But the Code of a Man says: "Fight all you can," And self-dissolution is barred. In hunger and woe, oh, it's easy to blow . . . It's the hell-served-for-breakfast that's hard. "You're sick of the game!" Well, now, that's a shame. You're young and you're brave and you're bright. "You've had a raw deal!" I know -- but don't squeal, Buck up, do your damnedest, and fight. It's the plugging away that will win you the day, So don't be a piker, old pard! Just draw on your grit; it's so easy to quit: It's the keeping-your-chin-up that's hard. It's easy to cry that you're beaten -- and die; It's easy to crawfish and crawl; But to fight and to fight when hope's out of sight -- Why, that's the best game of them all! And though you come out of each gruelling bout, All broken and beaten and scarred, Just have one more try -- it's dead easy to die, It's the keeping-on-living that's hard.

His cancer was rare, they told him. Even rarer for it to be in both eyes, still rarer to be so aggressive. It felt like a great bitter joke at one point, that out of all the people in the world he had beaten every probability, but instead of a lottery jackpot he’d won cancer.

Henry had been a good master, his widow decided, as good as they come. Yes, he sometimes had to ration the food he gave them. But that was not his fault—had God sent down more food, Henry would certainly have given it to them. Henry was only the middleman in that particular transaction. Yes, he had to have some slaves beaten, but those were the ones who would not do what was right and proper. Spare the rod . . . , the Bible warned. Her husband had done the best he could, and on Judgment Day his slaves would stand before God and testify to that fact.

She dances, She dances around the burning flames with passion, Under the same dull stars, Under the same hell with crimson embers crashing, Under the same silver chains that wires, All her beauty and who she is inside, She's left with the loneliness of human existence, She's left questioning how she's survived, She's left with this awakening of brutal resilience, Her true beauty that she denies, As much she's like to deny it, As much as it continues to shine, That she doesn't even have to admit, Because we all know it's true, Her glory and success, After all she's been through, Her triumph and madness, AND YET, SHE STANDS. Broken legs- but she's still standing, Still dancing in this void, You must wonder how she's still dancing, You must wonder how she's not destroyed, She doesn't even begin to drown within the flames, But little do you realize, Within these chains, She weeps and she cries, But she still goes on, And just you thought you could stop her? You thought you'd be the one? Well, let me tell you, because you thought wrong. Nothing will ever silence her, Because I KNOW, I know that she is admiringly strong, Her undeniable beauty, The triumph of her song, She's shining bright like a ruby, Reflecting in the golden sand, She's shining brighter like no other, She's far more than human or man, AND YET, SHE STANDS. She continues to dance with free-spirit, Even though she's locked in these chains, Though she never desired to change it, Even throughout the agonizing pain, Throughout all the distress, Anxiety, depression, tears and sorrow, She still dances so beautify in her dress, She looks forward to tomorrow, Not because of a fresh start but a new page, A new day full of opportunities, Despite being trapped in her cage, She still smiles after being beaten so brutally, A smile that could brighten anyone's day, She's so much more than anyone could ask for, She's so much more than I could ever say, She's a girl absolutely everyone should adore, She never gets in the way, Even after her hearts been broken, Even after the way she has been treated, After all these severe emotions, After all all the blood she's bled, AND YET, SHE STANDS. Even if sometimes she wonders why she's still here, She wonders why she's not dead, But there's this one thing that had been here throughout every tear, Throughout the blazing fire leaving her cheeks cherry red, Everyday this thing has given her a place to exist, This thing, person, these people, Like warm sunlight it had so softly kissed, The apples of her cheeks, Even when she's feeling feeble, Always there at her worst and at her best Because of you and all the other people, She has this thing deep inside her chest, That she will cherish forever, Even once you're gone, Because today she smiles like no other, Even when the sun sets at dawn, Because today is the day, She just wants you to remember, In dark and stormy weather, It gets better. And after what she's been through she knows, Throughout the highs and the lows, Because of you and all others, After crossing the seas, She has come to understand, You have formed this key, This key to free her from this land, This endless gorge that swallowed her, Her and other men, She had never knew, nor had she planned, That because of you, She's free. AND YET, THIS VERY DAY, SHE DANCES. EVEN IN THE RAIN.

She isn’t just any woman. She’s different.” “So every man has said since time immemorial.” “Yes, that’s true. I’ve met plenty of women, Mr. Sutton. From a young age, I have had mistresses whose beauty and skills would astound you. Skills they taught to a young man, because I was ever so rich. I also got to know them—courtesans are living, breathing women, you might be surprised to learn. With dreams and ambitions, some longing for a better life, one in which they won’t have to rely on wealthy men’s sons for survival. I became quite good friends with some of the ladies and am still. And then I met Violet.” Mr. Sutton was listening but striving to look uninterested. “Another courtesan?” “She’s neither one thing nor the other. Which is why I say she’s different. She’s not from the upper-class families whose mothers throw their daughters at me with alarming ruthlessness. She’s not a courtesan, selling her body and skills in exchange for diamonds and riches. She’s not a street girl from the gutter, selling her body to survive. She’s not a middle-class daughter, striving to live spotlessly and not shame her parents. Violet faces the world on her own terms, making a living the best she can with the skills she has. And everywhere, everyone has tried to stop her. They’ve used her body to pay their debts. They’ve used her cleverness to bring them clients. They’ve used her skills at understanding people to make them money. Everyone in her entire life has used her in every capacity she has, and yet, she still stands tall and faces the world. They’ve beaten her down at every turn, and still she rises. This is a woman of indomitable spirit. And I want to set her free.

It's easy to cry that you're beaten — and die; It's easy to crawfish and crawl; But to fight and to fight when hope's out of sight — Why, that's the best game of them all! And though you come out of each gruelling bout, All broken and beaten and scarred, Just have one more try — it's dead easy to die, It's the keeping-on-living that's hard.

I smoke. It's expensive. It's also the best option. You see, I am always, always exhausted. It's a stimulant. When I am too tired to walk one more step, I can smoke and go for another hour. When I am enraged and beaten down and incapable of accomplishing one more thing, I can smoke and feel a little better, just for a minute. It is the only relaxation I am allowed.

People like to see a king uncrowned, like to see a thoroughbred racehorse beaten when he's running at the top of his form and has outrun everything in sight. They wanted to see that the king, the top dog, the best man, has a flaw, can be beaten like them, is vulnerable like them, can be defeated, unfrocked, uncrowned, knocked down, and thus brought right down to their level.

Gingerbread Waffles ½ cup molasses 6 tbsp. oil 1 cup milk 2 beaten eggs   Mix together and add the following dry ingredients together in a separate bowl and then add to the liquid ingredients:   2 tsp. baking powder ½ tsp. baking soda 1 tsp. ginger (fresh is best) ½ tsp. cinnamon 4 tbsp. sugar 2 cups flour   Cook in a waffle iron for 4-6 minutes until golden brown. Serve with a lemon sauce or maple syrup.

Heroism is endurance for one moment more. "And that one moment more tells the difference between the "quitter" and the man who has "done his Best. "No one is dead until his heart has ceased beating – and no one has failed so long as there is one more bit of fight in him. And that "one moment more" often is the moment in which the tide turns – the moment when the enemy relaxes his hold and drops back beaten.

God entered the yellow church on the disabled ramp. He was in a wheelchair too; He had once lost a woman too. He was silvery. Not the cheap, glittery silver of a banker’s BMW, but a muted, matte silver. Once, as He was gliding among the silvery stars with his silvery beloved, a gang of golden gods attacked them. When they were kids, God had once beaten one of them up, a short, skinny golden god who had now grown up and returned with his friends. The golden gods beat Him with golden clubs of sunlight and didn’t stop until they’d broken every bone in His divine body. It took Him years to recuperate. His beloved never did. She remained a vegetable. She could see and hear everything, but she couldn’t say a word. The silvery God decided to create a species in His own image so she could watch it to pass the time. That species really did resemble Him: battered and victimized like Him. And His silvery beloved stared wide-eyed at the members of that species for hours, stared and didn’t even shed a tear. 'What do you think,' the silvery God asked the yellow priest in frustration, 'that I created all of you like this because it's what I wanted? Because I'm some kind of pervert or sadist who enjoys all this suffering? I created you like this because this is what I know. It's the best I can do.

Basic Cornbread Recipe 1 cup cornmeal ½ tsp. salt ½ tsp. baking soda 2 tsp. baking powder 1/3 cup flour 2 tbsp. melted butter 2 eggs 1 cup buttermilk (fresh or from powder)   Combine the dry ingredients. Add the butter, beaten eggs, and buttermilk. {For maple: add 1/3 cup maple syrup. For spicy: add 2 Tbs. chopped jalapeños and 1 cup cheddar cheese.} Stir. Pour into a greased pan and bake for 20 minutes at 450 degrees. A cast iron skillet works best.

What’s inside you? Tiffany thought. Who are you really, in there? Did you want me to take your hat? You pretend to be the big bad wicked witch, and you’re not. You test people all the time, test, test, test, but you really want them to be clever enough to beat you. Because it must be hard, being the best. You’re not allowed to stop. You can only be beaten, and you’re too proud ever to lose. Pride! You’ve turned it into terrible strength, but it eats away at you. Are you afraid to laugh in case you hear an early cackle?

Boys will always be boys,’ he said. ‘The relationship obviously wasn’t meant to be.’ He told me I should trust that the break-up was for the best, even if I couldn’t see that yet. As with every form of suffering, heartache brings with it catharsis, and turns us into better human beings. ‘It is like an iron in the furnace that is beaten into shape,’ he said. These bad experiences were ultimately a good sign because God tests the ones He loves. That might be why He has so few friends,’ he added dryly. His words cheered me up a bit.

Like most people in the King-era civil rights movement, they were Gandhians because nonviolent passive resistance was the best way to highlight white racism as an immorality. Their rejection of violence, even as a weapon against racial oppression, gave them the extraordinary power of moral witness—the great power of the early civil rights movement. What could America think of itself when passive freedom riders were beaten or when a little black girl in crinoline and pigtails—an image of perfectly conventional human aspiration—had to be escorted into school past a screaming white mob?

Just as one might do useful work without fully understanding the job one was engaged in, or even what the point of it was, so the behaviour of devotion still mattered to the all-forgiving God, and just as the habitual performance of a task gradually raised one’s skills to something close to perfection, bringing a deeper understanding of the work, so the actions of faith would lead to the state of faith. Finally, she was shown the filthy, stinking, windowless cell carved into the rock beneath the Refuge where she would be chained, starved and beaten if she did not at least try to accept God’s love. She trembled as she looked at the shackles and the flails, and agreed she would do her best.

But still I’m asked, what good is science fiction to Black people? What good is any form of literature to Black people? What good is science fiction’s thinking about the present, the future, and the past? What good is its tendency to warn or to consider alternative ways of thinking and doing? What good is its examination of the possible effects of science and technology, or social organization and political direction? At its best, science fiction stimulates imagination and creativity. It gets reader and writer off the beaten track, off the narrow, narrow footpath of what “everyone” is saying, doing, thinking—whoever “everyone” happens to be this year. And what good is all this to Black people?

Drafting green from a thousand trees shining on each bank of the river in the noonday sun, he threw down steps and made a little platform to stand on. "We", he declared, "are damaged but not dismayed, oppressed but no overwhelmed. We are the Broken, for when our oaths were tested, we broke them ourselves. We were despised: Here are my best friends. This world sees a bastard, an orphan, a hostage, a cripple, an idiot. I call them the Mighty. We - you - are outcasts all, the homeless driven from the lands where our mothers were buried. They have taken the light from our lives. Killed our loved ones, our friends. Taken our homes. Left us to wander as ghosts and feral dogs." [...] [...]"They have taken the light from us. Yes. But now they expect us to cower like dogs beaten and fade like shades forgotten. But I don't see dogs and shades here. Do they not know what they've begun? I see wolves. I see ghosts..." He looked around them as if they had forgotten who they were, and he was here to hold up a mirror for them that they might remember. "Have you forgotten? Have they made you, for this brief houyr, forget? Ghosts and Wolves hunt at night. They thin we cower, waiting for the light? Alone we are broken, bereaved, afraid. together we will hunt. In the darkness, we will usher them into the final darkness. Alone we were weak and frightened. That time is past. Together, today, we are the Nightbringers.

Even if I’m setting myself up for failure, I think it’s worth trying to be a mother who delights in who her children are, in their knock-knock jokes and earnest questions. A mother who spends less time obsessing about what will happen, or what has happened, and more time reveling in what is. A mother who doesn’t fret over failings and slights, who realizes her worries and anxieties are just thoughts, the continuous chattering and judgement of a too busy mind. A mother who doesn’t worry so much about being bad or good but just recognizes that she’s both, and neither. A mother who does her best, and for whom that is good enough, even if, in the end, her best turns out to be, simply, not bad. —Ayelet Waldman, Bad Mother

Once, we were artists. Pure! But we, all of us, we became a distraction, compromised for the sake of fame, comfort, the approval of strangers. We spend our lives pursuing something as empty as `relevance' and they use our fear of losing it to corral us. Dirty Malaysian money. Saudi money. We'll take it all. What went wrong? We sing and dance not to entertain but to distract people from the crushing gears of a capitalist machine that has no ideals save for greed and violence. And let's not kid ourselves, Hollywood is the best PR firm the gunmakers ever had. What a sick culture." "But what about artistic beauty?" asked Cameron Diaz. "When you can perceive beauty there's no excuse for serving ugliness. For aiding cons, inflaming desires, promising everything and delivering nothing. It doesn't matter what you put on TV because people are so frightened and lonely they'll watch it just to hear human voices and feel like they're not alone. They're so beaten down all they need is a soccer tournament every four years and they stay in their place. This is not a society. This is a system of soul-murder. And history will not be kind to us for our complicity, because we know better. The executives"—he nodded Maoishly to the Disney team —"they can say they were serving their god Mammon, but we artists can't. We're all East German playwrights now, complicit with the regime! And there will come a time of judgment. We're destroying the planet. This cannot last.

When he was twenty-three years old, he (George Fox) saw the inner light in a vision. For him it symbolized the spirit against the letter, silence against chatter, experience against dogma, and equality against all who build inequality on authority and power, be it of the state or religion. His mistrust of the official Anglican Church was immense. He spoke with disdain of the "towered houses" and was tormented by the ringing of church bells. He frequently interrupted preachers, standing in the church's doorway, a hat covering his head, and uttering threatening words toward the pulpit, causing great excitement in the gathered congregation. It often resulted in Fox being beaten up, banished, and, later on, jailed for years. What aroused his ire, above all, were the priests who, without ever having experienced or even looked for illumination, presented themselves as servants of God but, in truth, comprised a "society of cannibals." It is "not enough to have been educated in Oxford or Cambridge in order to become capable for and efficient in the service of Christ. To this day it is difficult for many Friends to speak of "Quaker theology." The Friends believe in Scripture - George Fox knew it by heart - but they also believe that the Spirit transcends Scripture and that the inner light is experienced by all human beings without human mediation. "The inner light," "the inward teacher" are names that the early Quakers gave to their experiences of the Spirit. They believe that everyone can meet the "Christ within," even though he has different names in different ages and places and is not tied to any form of religion. This light is open to everyone and, yet, it is not simply the natural light of reason. In a conversation that Fox had with Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, he vigorously resisted this rational interpretation. In every human being is "that of God," hidden, eclipsed, often forgotten. Linguistically a clumsy expression at best, "that of God in everyone" is the foundation of human dignity. In addition, it is the admonition to believe in it, to discover it in each and everyone and to respond to it. Fox said, "Walk joyfully on the earth and respond to that of God in every human being.

Black as an 8 year old kid all the way til we were 18 was beaten in the place that was supposed to be "home". He never complained or fought to stop it because it somehow... made things better for the rest of his family. I can never understand his tolerance to all that he's been through. He keeps trying and fighting without realising it himself when he opened up to me when I put myself in his shoes... and actually felt what he was feeling, I almost became scarred forever because of it. And even then he was the one who pulled me back from that dark place. I can say the best thing there is to say I am able to make him see things from a different point of voice but he's always been the one... that makes us smile in the end. He's been this strong at heart for both of us for so long.

I was reading a New Yorker online piece the other week by Roxanna Robinson, who always gives her first-year writing students at Hunter College Madame Bovary. And each year their reactions are predictably depressing. It’s a “cold” book, Flaubert doesn’t “like” his characters enough, Emma Bovary is “selfish”, she’s a “materialist” and, best of all, she’s a “bad mother”. One boy thinks that Rodolphe’s cowardly letter dismissing Emma is really cool (ie, applicable to his own life) until he is beaten up by the female students and backs down. In other words, these characters and their creator aren’t nice enough, they wouldn’t be my friends, they’re not enough like me and mine… It’s a world in which reading has been corrupted by the cliches of film and television – cliches of character as well as plot.

I think that the ones who speak cruelly or taunt are the ones who should be pressured to change. I have no delusions about myself. In a physical fight, Trist would best me easily. And, having won it, he would then use that superiority to justify however he treated me afterward. He is saying that my physical condition should determine how he treats me. And you think that because you have bested him in a physical struggle, you have proved something to him. But you haven’t. All you have done is shown that you agree with him, that the man who can physically defeat another is the man who should make the rules. I don’t agree with that. If I attempt to live by those rules, I will be beaten, and I do not intend to be beaten. So I will not be goaded into a physical confrontation with Trist or anyone else. I will win another way.

She dances, She dances around the burning flames with passion, Under the same dull stars, Under the same hell with crimson embers crashing, Under the same silver chains that wires, All her beauty and who she is inside, She's left with the loneliness of human existence, She's left questioning how she's survived, She's left with this awakening of brutal resilience, Her true beauty that she denies, As much she's like to deny it, As much as it continues to shine, That she doesn't even have to admit, Because we all know it's true, Her glory and success, After all she's been through, Her triumph and madness, AND YET, SHE STANDS. Broken legs- but she's still standing, Still dancing in this void, You must wonder how she's still dancing, You must wonder how she's not destroyed, She doesn't even begin to drown within the flames, But little do you realize, Within these chains, She weeps and she cries, But she still goes on, And just you thought you could stop her? You thought you'd be the one? Well, let me tell you, because you thought wrong. Nothing will ever silence her, Because I KNOW, I know that she is admiringly strong, Her undeniable beauty, The triumph of her song, She's shining bright like a ruby, Reflecting in the golden sand, She's shining brighter like no other, She's far more than human or man, AND YET, SHE STANDS. She continues to dance with free-spirit, Even though she's locked in these chains, Though she never desired to change it, Even throughout the agonizing pain, Throughout all the distress, Anxiety, depression, tears and sorrow, She still dances so beautify in her dress, She looks forward to tomorrow, Not because of a fresh start but a new page, A new day full of opportunities, Despite being trapped in her cage, She still smiles after being beaten so brutally, A smile that could brighten anyone's day, She's so much more than anyone could ask for, She's so much more than I could ever say, She's a girl absolutely everyone should adore, She never gets in the way, Even after her hearts been broken, Even after the way she has been treated, After all these severe emotions, After all all the blood she's bled, AND YET, SHE STANDS. Even if sometimes she wonders why she's still here, She wonders why she's not dead, But there's this one thing that had been here throughout every tear, Throughout the blazing fire leaving her cheeks cherry red, Everyday this thing has given her a place to exist, This thing, person, these people, Like warm sunlight it had so softly kissed, The apples of her cheeks, Even when she's feeling feeble, Always there at her worst and at her best Because of you and all the other people, She has this thing deep inside her chest, That she will cherish forever, Even once you're gone, Because today she smiles like no other, Even when the sun sets at dawn, Because today is the day, She just wants you to remember, In dark and stormy weather, It gets better. And after what she's been through she knows, Throughout the highs and the lows, Because of you and all others, After crossing the seas, She has come to understand, You have formed this key, This key to free her from this land, This endless gorge that swallowed her, Her and other men, She had never knew, nor had she planned, That because of you, She's free. AND YET, THIS VERY DAY, SHE STILL DANCES, EVEN IN THE RAIN.

Weak and trembling from passion, Major Flint found that after a few tottering steps in the direction of Tilling he would be totally unable to get there unless fortified by some strong stimulant, and turned back to the club-house to obtain it. He always went dead-lame when beaten at golf, while Captain Puffin was lame in any circumstances, and the two, no longer on speaking terms, hobbled into the club-house, one after the other, each unconscious of the other's presence. Summoning his last remaining strength Major Flint roared for whisky, and was told that, according to regulation, he could not be served until six. There was lemonade and stone ginger-beer. You might as well have offered a man-eating tiger bread and milk. Even the threat that he would instantly resign his membership unless provided with drink produced no effect on a polite steward, and he sat down to recover as best he might with an old volume of Punch. This seemed to do him little good. His forced abstemiousness was rendered the more intolerable by the fact that Captain Puffin, hobbling in immediately afterwards, fetched from his locker a large flask of the required elixir, and proceeded to mix himself a long, strong tumblerful. After the Major's rudeness in the matter of the half-crown, it was impossible for any sailor of spirit to take the first step towards reconciliation. Thirst is a great leveller. By the time the refreshed Puffin had penetrated half-way down his glass, the Major found it impossible to be proud and proper any longer. He hated saying he was sorry (no man more) and he wouldn't have been sorry if he had been able to get a drink. He twirled his moustache a great many times and cleared his throat--it wanted more than that to clear it--and capitulated. "Upon my word, Puffin, I'm ashamed of myself for--ha!--for not taking my defeat better," he said. "A man's no business to let a game ruffle him." Puffin gave his alto cackling laugh. "Oh, that's all right, Major," he said. "I know it's awfully hard to lose like a gentleman." He let this sink in, then added: "Have a drink, old chap?" Major Flint flew to his feet. "Well, thank ye, thank ye," he said. "Now where's that soda water you offered me just now?" he shouted to the steward. The speed and completeness of the reconciliation was in no way remarkable, for when two men quarrel whenever they meet, it follows that they make it up again with corresponding frequency, else there could be no fresh quarrels at all. This one had been a shade more acute than most, and the drop into amity again was a shade more precipitous.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now. I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

An ugly woman, very poorly clothed, hurried in while I was glancing at them, and coming straight up to the mother, said, “Jenny! Jenny!” The mother rose on being so addressed and fell upon the woman’s neck. She also had upon her face and arms the marks of ill usage. She had no kind of grace about her, but the grace of sympathy; but when she condoled with the woman, and her own tears fell, she wanted no beauty. I say condoled, but her only words were “Jenny! Jenny!” All the rest was in the tone in which she said them. I thought it very touching to see these two women, coarse and shabby and beaten, so united; to see what they could be to one another; to see how they felt for one another, how the heart of each to each was softened by the hard trials of their lives. I think the best side of such people is almost hidden from us. What the poor are to the poor is little known, excepting to themselves and God.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

He glanced over at Luthar, sneering down into his bowl as though it was full of piss. No respect. He glanced over at Ferro, staring yellow knives at him through narrowed eyes. No trust. He shook his head sadly. Without trust and respect the group would fall apart in a fight like walls without mortar. Still, Logen had won over tougher audiences, in his time. Threetrees, Tul Duru, Black Dow, Harding Grim, he'd fought each one in single combat, and beaten them all. Spared each man's life, and left him bound to follow. Each one had tried their best to kill him, and with good reasons too, but in the end Logen had earned their trust, and their respect, and their friendship even. Small gestures and a lot of time, that was how he'd done it. 'Patience is the chief of virtues,' his father used to say, and 'you won't cross the mountains in a day.' Time might be against them, but there was nothing to be gained by rushing. You have to be realistic about these things.

When I woke up in the morning I was in bad shape. My neck was stiff and I couldn’t turn it. We weren’t pros, so there was no such thing as a physical therapist or masseuse to fix it. The best I could do was just rub in some Bengay and hope for the best. When we got to the Czech Republic a couple of days later, my neck still had zero mobility. In order to look to the side, I had to move my entire body. As if that weren’t enough to worry about, we were competing against Rachael, who was now teamed up with the Russian guy who had beaten me as a junior. His name was Evgeni Smagin, and he wore his dark hair greased back. The guy just looked slick from head to toe. I turned to Aneta. “This is so not good,” I told her. “They are like the ultimate, ultimate couple. They’re going to beat us.” Aneta looked very upset, so I guess something inside me said, “Derek, man up!” My neck was messed up and I was about to get my ass kicked by my archnemesis and my ex. It couldn’t get much worse than that.

Trying to get to 124 for the second time now, he regretted that conversation: the high tone he took; his refusal to see the effect of marrow weariness in a woman he believed was a mountain. Now, too late, he understood her. The heart that pumped out love, the mouth that spoke the Word, didn't count. They came in her yard anyway and she could not approve or condemn Sethe's rough choice. One or the other might have saved her, but beaten up by the claims of both, she went to bed. The whitefolks had tired her out at last. And him. Eighteen seventy-four and whitefolks were still on the loose. Whole towns wiped clean of Negroes; eighty-seven lynchings in one year alone in Kentucky; four colored schools burned to the ground; grown men whipped like children; children whipped like adults; black women raped by the crew; property taken, necks broken. He smelled skin, skin and hot blood. The skin was one thing, but human blood cooked in a lynch fire was a whole other thing. The stench stank. Stank up off the pages of the North Star, out of the mouths of witnesses, etched in crooked handwriting in letters delivered by hand. Detailed in documents and petitions full of whereas and presented to any legal body who'd read it, it stank. But none of that had worn out his marrow. None of that. It was the ribbon. Tying his flatbed up on the bank of the Licking River, securing it the best he could, he caught sight of something red on its bottom. Reaching for it, he thought it was a cardinal feather stuck to his boat. He tugged and what came loose in his hand was a red ribbon knotted around a curl of wet woolly hair, clinging still to its bit of scalp. He untied the ribbon and put it in his pocket, dropped the curl in the weeds. On the way home, he stopped, short of breath and dizzy. He waited until the spell passed before continuing on his way. A moment later, his breath left him again. This time he sat down by a fence. Rested, he got to his feet, but before he took a step he turned to look back down the road he was traveling and said, to its frozen mud and the river beyond, "What are these people? You tell me, Jesus. What are they?" When he got to his house he was too tired to eat the food his sister and nephews had prepared. He sat on the porch in the cold till way past dark and went to his bed only because his sister's voice calling him was getting nervous. He kept the ribbon; the skin smell nagged him, and his weakened marrow made him dwell on Baby Suggs' wish to consider what in the world was harmless. He hoped she stuck to blue, yellow, maybe green, and never fixed on red. Mistaking her, upbraiding her, owing her, now he needed to let her know he knew, and to get right with her and her kin. So, in spite of his exhausted marrow, he kept on through the voices and tried once more to knock at the door of 124. This time, although he couldn't cipher but one word, he believed he knew who spoke them. The people of the broken necks, of fire-cooked blood and black girls who had lost their ribbons. What a roaring.

Geno told them why I was there, and they all came down off the truck and looked me over — I guess just to make sure that they didn’t have any prior problems with me. Geno was standing on my right side. He said to me, “Now I’m going to start it.” He took two steps out in front of me, spun around quickly, and delivered a punch to my left jaw. My head jerked back from his blow. I remember thinking to myself, at least that wasn’t bad. However, before I could register another thought, the five Truck Boys were on me like white on rice. They threw blows and slaps on me. For the next minute or so, I stood there and took it all in like a good soldier. This was the price I was more than willing to pay to become a member of the Rebellions. After it was all over, they welcome me in with handshakes. Then they started asking me where I lived, and what school I had attended. Just like that I was now in the gang, these were my new best friends, individuals whom I would go all out for, and who would do the same for me.

Up and down the coast of Asia Minor St. Paul was mobbed and imprisoned and beaten. In Athens “they brought him unto the Areopagus, saying, ‘May we know what this new teaching is?’” Aristotle, the model scientist, the man of cool head and detached observation, unbiased, impersonal, does not display any dispassionate aloofness in his consideration of reason. He so loves it and delights in it that when it is the theme of discourse he cannot be held within the sober bounds of the scientific spirit. His words must be quoted, they are so characteristically Greek: Since then reason is divine in comparison with man’s whole nature, the life according to reason must be divine in comparison with (usual) human life. Nor ought we to pay regard to those who exhort us that as men we ought to think human things and keep our eyes upon mortality: nay, as far as may be, we should endeavor to rise to that which is immortal, and live in conformity with that which is best, in us. Now, what is characteristic of any nature is that which is best for it and gives most joy. Such to man is the life according to reason, since it is this that makes him man. Love

The single book that has influenced me most is probably the last book in the world that anybody is gonna want to read: Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. This book is dense, difficult, long, full of blood and guts. It wasn’t written, as Thucydides himself attests at the start, to be easy or fun. But it is loaded with hardcore, timeless truths and the story it tells ought to be required reading for every citizen in a democracy. Thucydides was an Athenian general who was beaten and disgraced in a battle early in the 27-year conflagration that came to be called the Peloponnesian War. He decided to drop out of the fighting and dedicate himself to recording, in all the detail he could manage, this conflict, which, he felt certain, would turn out to be the greatest and most significant war ever fought up to that time. He did just that. Have you heard of Pericles’ Funeral Oration? Thucydides was there for it. He transcribed it. He was there for the debates in the Athenian assembly over the treatment of the island of Melos, the famous Melian Dialogue. If he wasn’t there for the defeat of the Athenian fleet at Syracuse or the betrayal of Athens by Alcibiades, he knew people who were there and he went to extremes to record what they told him.Thucydides, like all the Greeks of his era, was unencumbered by Christian theology, or Marxist dogma, or Freudian psychology, or any of the other “isms” that attempt to convince us that man is basically good, or perhaps perfectible. He saw things as they were, in my opinion. It’s a dark vision but tremendously bracing and empowering because it’s true. On the island of Corcyra, a great naval power in its day, one faction of citizens trapped their neighbors and fellow Corcyreans in a temple. They slaughtered the prisoners’ children outside before their eyes and when the captives gave themselves up based on pledges of clemency and oaths sworn before the gods, the captors massacred them as well. This was not a war of nation versus nation, this was brother against brother in the most civilized cities on earth. To read Thucydides is to see our own world in microcosm. It’s the study of how democracies destroy themselves by breaking down into warring factions, the Few versus the Many. Hoi polloi in Greek means “the many.” Oligoi means “the few.” I can’t recommend Thucydides for fun, but if you want to expose yourself to a towering intellect writing on the deepest stuff imaginable, give it a try.

I have felt things that no one should ever have to feel. I have seen things that no one should ever have to see. I have heard things that no one should ever have to hear. I have been beaten down so many times that It is reflexive to get back up immediately without any hesitation expecting another whack to come instantaneously. I have got up off the mat more times than what should be necessary. I know I will need to continue doing so many, many more times. I am prepared to do so and more without complaint or regret. It is outright exhausting. I keep experiencing this pain because 1 life is worth it. Life is awesome and is worth fighting for. Even 1 life is worth it. For 1 life to experience life is my mission. To quote JFK: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win." So I will continue to feel, see and hear things that no parent should ever have to in order for 1 life to be able to experience this awesome life again.

Louis van Gaal is generally considered the creator of a football system or machine. It might be more accurate to describe him as the originator of a new process for playing the game. His underlying tactical principles were much as those of Michels and Cruyff: relentless attack; pressing and squeezing space to make the pitch small in order to win the ball; spreading play and expanding the field in possession. By the 1990s, though, footballers had become stronger, faster and better organised than ever before. Van Gaal saw the need for a new dimension. ‘With space so congested, the most important thing is ball circulation,’ he declared. ‘The team that plays the quickest football is the best.’ His team aimed for total control of the game, maintaining the ball ‘in construction’, as he calls it, and passing and running constantly with speed and precision. Totaalvoetbal-style position switching was out, but players still had to be flexible and adaptable. Opponents were not seen as foes to be fought and beaten in battle; rather as posing a problem that had to be solved. Ajax players were required to be flexible and smart – as they ‘circulated’ the ball, the space on the field was constantly reorganised until gaps opened in the opponents’ defence.

In the absence of expert [senior military] advice, we have seen each successive administration fail in the business of strategy - yielding a United States twice as rich as the Soviet Union but much less strong. Only the manner of the failure has changed. In the 1960s, under Robert S. McNamara, we witnessed the wholesale substitution of civilian mathematical analysis for military expertise. The new breed of the "systems analysts" introduced new standards of intellectual discipline and greatly improved bookkeeping methods, but also a trained incapacity to understand the most important aspects of military power, which happens to be nonmeasurable. Because morale is nonmeasurable it was ignored, in large and small ways, with disastrous effects. We have seen how the pursuit of business-type efficiency in the placement of each soldier destroys the cohesion that makes fighting units effective; we may recall how the Pueblo was left virtually disarmed when it encountered the North Koreans (strong armament was judged as not "cost effective" for ships of that kind). Because tactics, the operational art of war, and strategy itself are not reducible to precise numbers, money was allocated to forces and single weapons according to "firepower" scores, computer simulations, and mathematical studies - all of which maximize efficiency - but often at the expense of combat effectiveness. An even greater defect of the McNamara approach to military decisions was its businesslike "linear" logic, which is right for commerce or engineering but almost always fails in the realm of strategy. Because its essence is the clash of antagonistic and outmaneuvering wills, strategy usually proceeds by paradox rather than conventional "linear" logic. That much is clear even from the most shopworn of Latin tags: si vis pacem, para bellum (if you want peace, prepare for war), whose business equivalent would be orders of "if you want sales, add to your purchasing staff," or some other, equally absurd advice. Where paradox rules, straightforward linear logic is self-defeating, sometimes quite literally. Let a general choose the best path for his advance, the shortest and best-roaded, and it then becomes the worst path of all paths, because the enemy will await him there in greatest strength... Linear logic is all very well in commerce and engineering, where there is lively opposition, to be sure, but no open-ended scope for maneuver; a competitor beaten in the marketplace will not bomb our factory instead, and the river duly bridged will not deliberately carve out a new course. But such reactions are merely normal in strategy. Military men are not trained in paradoxical thinking, but they do no have to be. Unlike the business-school expert, who searches for optimal solutions in the abstract and then presents them will all the authority of charts and computer printouts, even the most ordinary military mind can recall the existence of a maneuvering antagonists now and then, and will therefore seek robust solutions rather than "best" solutions - those, in other words, which are not optimal but can remain adequate even when the enemy reacts to outmaneuver the first approach.

STUFFIN’ MUFFINS Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position. 4 ounces salted butter (1 stick, 8 Tablespoons, ¼ pound) ½ cup finely chopped onion (you can buy this chopped or chop it yourself) ½ cup finely chopped celery ½ cup chopped apple (core, but do not peel before chopping) 1 teaspoon powdered sage 1 teaspoon powdered thyme 1 teaspoon ground oregano 8 cups herb stuffing (the kind in cubes that you buy in the grocery store—you can also use plain bread cubes and add a quarter-teaspoon more of ground sage, thyme, and oregano) 3 eggs, beaten (just whip them up in a glass with a fork) 1 teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon black pepper (freshly ground is best) 2 ounces (½ stick, 4 Tablespoons, pound) melted butter ¼ to ½ cup chicken broth (I used Swanson’s) Hannah’s 1st Note: I used a Fuji apple this time. I’ve also used Granny Smith apples, or Gala apples. Before you start, find a 12-cup muffin pan. Spray the inside of the cups with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray OR line them with cupcake papers. Get out a 10-inch or larger frying pan. Cut the stick of butter in 4 to 8 pieces and drop them inside. Put the pan over MEDIUM heat on the stovetop to melt the butter. Once the butter has melted, add the chopped onions. Give them a stir. Add the chopped celery. Stir it in. Add the chopped apple and stir that in. Sprinkle in the ground sage, thyme, and oregano. Sauté this mixture for 5 minutes. Then pull the frying pan off the heat and onto a cold burner. In a large mixing bowl, combine the 8 cups of herb stuffing. (If the boxed stuffing you bought has a separate herb packet, just sprinkle it over the top of the mixture in your frying pan. That way you’ll be sure to put it in!) Pour the beaten eggs over the top of the herb stuffing and mix them in. Sprinkle on the salt and the pepper. Mix them in. Pour the melted butter over the top and mix it in. Add the mixture from your frying pan on top of that. Stir it all up together. Measure out ¼ cup of chicken broth. Wash your hands. (Mixing the stuffing is going to be a lot easier if you use your impeccably clean hands to mix it.) Pour the ¼ cup of chicken broth over the top of your bowl. Mix everything with your hands. Feel the resulting mixture. It should be softened, but not wet. If you think it’s so dry that your muffins might fall apart after you bake them, mix in another ¼ cup of chicken broth. Once your Stuffin’ Muffin mixture is thoroughly combined, move the bowl close to the muffin pan you’ve prepared, and go wash your hands again. Use an ice cream scoop to fill your muffin cups. If you don’t have an ice cream scoop, use a large spoon. Mound the tops of the muffins by hand. (Your hands are still impeccably clean, aren’t they?) Bake the Stuffin’ Muffins at 350 degrees F. for 25 minutes. Yield: One dozen standard-sized muffins that can be served hot, warm, or at room temperature. Hannah’s 2nd Note: These muffins are a great accompaniment to pork, ham, chicken, turkey, duck, beef, or . . . well . . . practically anything! If there are any left over, you can reheat them in the microwave to serve the next day. Hannah’s 3rd Note: I’m beginning to think that Andrea can actually make Stuffin’ Muffins. It’s only April now, so she’s got seven months to practice.

Spinach Quiche Preheat oven to 375 degrees F., rack in the middle position   This is my recipe. It can be served as an appetizer if you cut it into thin slices and arrange them on a platter. It can also be served as an entrée.   One 9-inch unbaked pastry shell 1 beaten egg yolk (reserve the white in a small dish) 10-ounce package frozen chopped spinach ½ teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon pepper (freshly ground is best) 3 Tablespoons horseradish sauce 2 ounces shredded Jarlsberg (or good Swiss cheese) 4 eggs 1½ cups Half & Half (or light cream) 1/8 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg (freshly ground is best)   Beat the egg yolk in a glass with a fork. Brush the inside of the unbaked pastry shell with the yolk. Set the shell aside to dry. Cook and drain the spinach. Squeeze out as much moisture as you can and then blot with a paper towel. In a bowl, combine the spinach with the salt, pepper, and horseradish sauce. Spread it in the bottom of the pastry shell. Sprinkle the top with the grated cheese. Beat the 4 whole eggs with the reserved egg white. Add the Half & Half, salt, and cayenne pepper. Mix well and pour on top of cheese. Sprinkle the top with nutmeg. Bake at 375 degrees F. for 40 minutes, or until a knife inserted one inch from the center comes out clean. Let cool for ten minutes and then cut into wedges and serve. This quiche can be served warm or at room temperature. I’ve even been known to eat it cold, straight out of the refrigerator. It’s perfect for a fancy brunch or a lazy, relaxed breakfast on the weekend. Yield: Serves from 12 to 18 as an appetizer. Serves six as an entrée if they only have one piece.

TIO TITO’S SUBLIME LIME BAR COOKIES Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position. ½ cup finely-chopped coconut (measure after chopping—pack it down when you measure it) 1 cup cold salted butter (2 sticks, 8 ounces, ½ pound) ½ cup powdered (confectioners) sugar (no need to sift unless it’s got big lumps) 2 cups all-purpose flour (pack it down when you measure it)   4 beaten eggs (just whip them up with a fork) 2 cups white (granulated) sugar cup lime juice (freshly squeezed is best) cup vodka (I used Tito’s Handmade Vodka) ½ teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking powder ½ cup all-purpose flour (pack it down when you measure it) Powdered (confectioners) sugar to sprinkle on top Coconut Crust: To get your half-cup of finely-chopped coconut, you will need to put approximately ¾ cup of shredded coconut in the bowl of a food processor. (The coconut will pack down more when it’s finely-chopped so you’ll need more of the stuff out of the package to get the half-cup you need for this recipe.) Chop the shredded coconut up finely with the steel blade. Pour it out into a bowl and measure out ½ cup, packing it down when you measure it. Return the half-cup of finely chopped coconut to the food processor. (You can also do this by spreading out the shredded coconut on a cutting board and chopping it finely by hand.) Cut each stick of butter into eight pieces and arrange them in the bowl of the food processor on top of the chopped coconut. Sprinkle the powdered sugar and the flour on top of that. Zoop it all up with an on-and-off motion of the steel blade until it resembles coarse cornmeal. Prepare a 9-inch by 13-inch rectangular cake pan by spraying it with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray. Alternatively, for even easier removal, line the cake pan with heavy-duty foil and spray that with Pam. (Then all you have to do is lift the bar cookies out when they’re cool, peel off the foil, and cut them up into pieces.) Sprinkle the crust mixture into the prepared cake pan and spread it out with your fingers. Pat it down with a large spatula or with the palms of your impeccably clean hands. Hannah’s 1st Note: If your butter is a bit too soft, you may end up with a mass that balls up and clings to the food processor bowl. That’s okay. Just scoop it up and spread it out in the bottom of your prepared pan. (You can also do this in a bowl with a fork or a pie crust blender if you prefer.) Hannah’s 2nd Note: Don’t wash your food processor quite yet. You’ll need it to make the lime layer. (The same applies to your bowl and fork if you make the crust by hand.) Bake your coconut crust at 350 degrees F. for 15 minutes. While your crust is baking, prepare the lime layer. Lime Layer: Combine the eggs with the white sugar. (You can use your food processor and the steel blade to do this, or you can do it by hand in a bowl.) Add the lime juice, vodka, salt, and baking powder. Mix thoroughly. Add the flour and mix until everything is incorporated. (This mixture will be runny—it’s supposed to be.) When your crust has baked for 15 minutes, remove the pan from the oven and set it on a cold stovetop burner or a wire rack. Don’t shut off the oven! Just leave it on at 350 degrees F. Pour the lime layer mixture on top of the crust you just baked. Use potholders to pick up the pan and return it to the oven. Bake your Sublime Lime Bar Cookies for an additional 30 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and cool your lime bars in the pan on a cold stovetop burner or a wire rack. When the pan has cooled to room temperature, cover it with foil and refrigerate it until you’re ready to serve. Cut the bars into brownie-sized pieces, place them on a pretty platter, and sprinkle them lightly with powdered sugar. Yum! Hannah’s 3rd Note: If you would prefer not to use alcohol in these bar cookies, simply substitute whole milk for the vodka. This recipe works both ways and I can honestly tell you that I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like my Sublime Lime Bar Cookies!

For me, that translated into fund-raising. I knew that I could and I would raise any amount of money to get that job done. Fund-raising to end hunger wasn’t just a job or a fad or a political statement for me. It was an expression of my own soulful commitment, and as such, I could only do it in a way that would call on people to reconnect with their own higher calling, or soulful longing, to be the kind of people they wanted to be, the kind of difference they wanted to make, and see how they could express that with their money. So rather than feeling that fund-raising was a matter of twisting arms for a donation or playing on emotions to manipulate money from contributors, it became for me an arena in which I was able to create an opportunity for people to engage in their greatness. It was in this soul-searching dimension of fund-raising, in these intimate conversations, that I discovered deep wounds and conflicts in the way people related to their money. Many people felt they had sold out and become someone they didn’t like anymore. Some were forcing themselves to do work that wasn’t meaningful. Many felt enslaved by their experience of being overtaxed by their government, or felt beaten down by their boss or by the burden of running a family business or employing others. Their relationship with money was dead—or, more accurately, dread—and there was hurt there. There was resentment. There were painful compromises, a kind of rawness. People were bruised and battered there. Not everyone, but many people were very unsettled and uncomfortable and just not their best selves in their relationship with money. They felt little or no freedom with money, no matter how much they had. This lackluster relationship with money wasn’t for lack of expert advice or practical tips. Money-management strategies were plentiful, but the concept of personal transformation was a stranger there. What became clear was that when people were able to align their money with their deepest, most soulful interests and commitments, their relationship with money became a place where profound and lasting transformation could occur.

It was a story no one could tell me when I was child. The story of Russian Jewry had been told in English, by American Jews; to them, it was a story that began with antiquity, culminated with the pogroms, and ended with emigration. For those who remained in Russia, there had been a time before the pogroms and a time after: a period of home, then a period of fear and even greater fear and then brief hope again, and then a different kind of fear, when one no longer feared for one's life but fear never having hope again. This story did not end; it faded into a picture of my parents sitting at the kitchen table poring over an atlas of the world, or of me sitting on the bedroom floor talking at my best friend. The history of the Soviet Union itself remains a story without an narrative; every attempt to tell this story in Russia has stopped short, giving way to the resolve to turn away from the decades of pain and suffering and bloodshed. With every telling, stories of Stalinism and the Second World War become more mythologized. And with so few Jew left in Russia, with so little uniting them, the Russian Jewish world is one of absences and silences. I had no words for this when I was twelve, but what I felt more strongly that anything, more strongly even than the desire to go to Israel, was this absence of a story. My Jewishness consisted of the experience of being ostracized and beaten up and the specter of not being allowed into university. Once I found my people milling outside the synagogue (we never went inside, where old men in strange clothes sang in an unfamiliar language), a few old Yiddish songs and a couple of newer Hebrew ones were added to my non-story. Finally, I had read the stories of Sholem Aleichem, which were certainly of a different world, as distant from my modern urban Russian-speaking childhood as anything could be. In the end, my Jewish identity was entirely negative: it consisted of non-belonging. How had I and other late-Soviet Jews been so impoverished? Prior to the Russian Revolution, most of the world's Jews lived in the Russian Empire. Following the Second World War, Russia was the only European country whose Jewish population numbered not in the hundreds or even thousands but in the millions. How did this country rid itself of Jewish culture altogether? How did the Jews of Russia lose their home? Much later, as I tried to find the answers to these questions, I kept circling back tot he story of Birobidzhan, which, in its concentrated tragic absurdity seemed to tell it all.

Joseph protested: “But who has said that the King Messiah must be a second Authority, God forbid! The Messiah is sent to us, to Israel, to restore the Kingdom of Israel.” “Not the Kingdom of Israel alone, but the Kingdom of God for the whole world,” cried Saul, fervently. “Touching this point, I am utterly at one with the preacher. On this he spoke like one moved by the divine spirit, and I have never heard one who brought out more clearly the fullness of the meaning of the Messiah. It may indeed be that he crowned him with too much authority, making him almost the equal of God. Yet I say that if he had not applied these words to him that was hanged, if he, the preacher, had not claimed Yeshua of Nazareth to be the Messiah, he would be my best-beloved brother.” “Of whom dost thou speak, Saul?” “Of him, of the preacher who gave us the burning vision of the Day of Judgment, and of the coming of the Messiah,” answered Saul, his voice vibrant with warmth. “Do you, too, believe that the King of Messiah is, God forbid, a second Authority?” “I believe with perfect faith that he stands between us and God, and that all the Authorities have been relinquished into the hand of the King Messiah, to loosen the bonds of all that are bound, and to loosen the bonds of the world, and of all worlds, for all time,” answered Saul. “No, no,” argued bar Naba, “the King Messiah comes only for Israel, to restore the kingdom, as the Prophets have told us in the name of God.” “It is only the little of faith who await such a Messiah. And that Messiah is not worth the price we have paid with our waiting.” “But why can we not be like all the other peoples?” asked bar Naba. “But are we like the other peoples? Have we not been beaten and smitten and humiliated daily for the Messiah’s sake? Have we not denied ourselves the joys of this world, and still for his sake?” “But I am weary of carrying the burden of the world; I am weary of being the scapegoat for the sins of others. Is not Israel worthy of being an end unto himself?” “But I ask you, what is Israel if only an end unto itself? If it is a worm under the feet of the nations?  Israel is the light of the world, the guiding star of mankind. It is not asked whether it wills this or not. Israel has been elected to this end, as the Messiah was chosen before the creation of the world. Israel was elected to bear like a beast of burden, the yoke of the Torah, until God will send it a redeemer. And then will the redeemer bind the nations as the reaper binds the sheaves. He will bring them into the granary, under the wings of his glory. Israel will be the guiding star of heaven, the pillar of fire which goes before the whole world on the path of redemption. For such a mission no price of suffering is too high. Bar

Not liking to think of him so, and wondering if they had guessed at dinner why he suddenly became irritable when they talked about fame and books lasting, wondering if the children were laughing at that, she twitched the stockings out, and all the fine gravings came drawn with steel instruments about her lips and forehead, and she grew still like a tree which has been tossing and quivering and now, when the breeze falls, settles, leaf by leaf, into quiet. It didn't matter, any of it, she thought. A great man, a great book, fame—who could tell? She knew nothing about it. But it was his way with him, his truthfulness—for instance at dinner she had been thinking quite instinctively, If only he would speak! She had complete trust in him. And dismissing all this, as one passes in diving now a weed, now a straw, now a bubble, she felt again, sinking deeper, as she had felt in the hall when the others were talking, There is something I want—something I have come to get, and she fell deeper and deeper without knowing quite what it was, with her eyes closed. And she waited a little, knitting, wondering, and slowly rose those words they had said at dinner, "the China rose is all abloom and buzzing with the honey bee," began washing from side to side of her mind rhythmically, and as they washed, words, like little shaded lights, one red, one blue, one yellow, lit up in the dark of her mind, and seemed leaving their perches up there to fly across and across, or to cry out and to be echoed; so she turned and felt on the table beside her for a book. And all the lives we ever lived And all the lives to be, Are full of trees and changing leaves, she murmured, sticking her needles into the stocking. And she opened the book and began reading here and there at random, and as she did so, she felt that she was climbing backwards, upwards, shoving her way up under petals that curved over her, so that she only knew this is white, or this is red. She did not know at first what the words meant at all. Steer, hither steer your winged pines, all beaten Mariners she read and turned the page, swinging herself, zigzagging this way and that, from one line to another as from one branch to another, from one red and white flower to another, until a little sound roused her—her husband slapping his thighs. Their eyes met for a second; but they did not want to speak to each other. They had nothing to say, but something seemed, nevertheless, to go from him to her. It was the life, it was the power of it, it was the tremendous humour, she knew, that made him slap his thighs. Don't interrupt me, he seemed to be saying, don't say anything; just sit there. And he went on reading. His lips twitched. It filled him. It fortified him. He clean forgot all the little rubs and digs of the evening, and how it bored him unutterably to sit still while people ate and drank interminably, and his being so irritable with his wife and so touchy and minding when they passed his books over as if they didn't exist at all. But now, he felt, it didn't matter a damn who reached Z (if thought ran like an alphabet from A to Z). Somebody would reach it—if not he, then another. This man's strength and sanity, his feeling for straight forward simple things, these fishermen, the poor old crazed creature in Mucklebackit's cottage made him feel so vigorous, so relieved of something that he felt roused and triumphant and could not choke back his tears. Raising the book a little to hide his face, he let them fall and shook his head from side to side and forgot himself completely (but not one or two reflections about morality and French novels and English novels and Scott's hands being tied but his view perhaps being as true as the other view), forgot his own bothers and failures completely in poor Steenie's drowning and Mucklebackit's sorrow (that was Scott at his best) and the astonishing delight and feeling of vigour that it gave him.

And it is plain enough, not from this instance only, but from many everywhere, that freedom is an excellent thing since even the Athenians, who, while they continued under the rule of tyrants, were not a whit more valiant than any of their neighbors, no sooner shook off the yoke than they became decidedly the first of all. These things show that, while undergoing oppression, they let themselves be beaten, since then they worked for a master; but so soon as they got their freedom, each man was eager to do the best he could for himself.2 Despite Herodotus’s

I stamp back through the forest with my brother and Kedrick, refusing to talk to either of them. The prince and my brother decide this is very amusing. Now that they have beaten each other up, they appear to be best friends.

Whenever politicians start talking in mystical terms, beware. They might be trying to disguise and excuse real suffering by wrapping it up in big incomprehensible words. Be particularly careful about the following four words: sacrifice, eternity, purity, redemption. If you hear any of these, sound the alarm. And if you happen to live in a country whose leader routinely says things like ‘Their sacrifice will redeem the purity of our eternal nation’ – know that you are in deep trouble. To save your sanity, always try to translate such hogwash into real terms: a soldier crying in agony, a woman beaten and brutalised, a child shaking in fear. So if you want to know the truth about the universe, about the meaning of life, and about your own identity, the best place to start is by observing suffering and exploring what it is. The answer isn’t a story.

There is something difficult to describe about how different you feel working under someone who doesn’t have too many other places he’d rather be, who wants you to do well, who is genuinely excited about imparting information, who loves cooking and assumes the same about you, who watches every move you make—not to nail you for an error, but to be sure you’re doing it the best possible way—and who is having a truly good time doing it all. It’s like being given permission to succeed, and you operate fueled by a low, constant ebullience.

[On D. W. Griffith] Even in Griffith’s best work there is enough that is poor, or foolish, or merely old-fashioned, so that one has to understand, if by no means forgive, those who laugh indiscriminately at his good work and his bad. (With all that “understanding,” I look forward to killing, some day, some specially happy giggler at the exquisite scene in which the veteran comes home, in The Birth of a Nation) But even his poorest work was never just bad. Whatever may be wrong with it, there is in every instant, so well as I can remember, the unique purity and vitality of birth or of a creature just born and first exerting its unprecedented, incredible strength; and there are, besides, Griffith’s overwhelming innocence and magnanimity of spirit; his moral and poetic earnestness; his joy in his work; and his splendid intuitiveness, directness, common sense, daring, and skill as an inventor and as an artist. Aside from his talent or genius as an inventor and artist, he was all heart; and ruinous as his excesses sometimes were in that respect, they were inseparable from his virtues, and small beside them. He was remarkably good, as a rule, in the whole middle range of feeling, but he was at his best just short of his excesses, and he tended in general to work out toward the dangerous edge. He was capable of realism that has never been beaten and he might, if he had been able to appreciate his powers as a realist, have found therein his growth and salvation. But he seems to have been a realist only by accident, hit-and-run; essentially, he was a poet. He doesn’t appear ever to have realized one of the richest promises that movies hold, as the perfect medium for realism raised to the level of high poetry; nor, oddly enough, was he much of a dramatic poet. But in epic and lyrical and narrative visual poetry, I can think of nobody who has surpassed him, and of few to compare with him. And as a primitive tribal poet, combining something of the bard and the seer, he is beyond even Dovshenko, and no others of their kind have worked in movies.

I adore macaroni and cheese. Whenever I see it on a menu at a restaurant, I have to order it. I’ve had (and consequently made) fried mac and cheese balls, lobster mac and cheese, truffle mac and cheese, quattro formaggi mac and cheese, and Kraft mac and cheese. Now, don’t get me wrong—all of the fancy macaroni and cheese dishes have been delectable and enjoyable, but at home, I like a simple, delicious mac and cheese. So here’s my recipe. This dish is best when served during a game or movie night with family and friends. Serves 8 to 10 8 ounces (225 g) elbow macaroni 1½ cups Velveeta cheese (about 7 ounces/190g), cut into ½-inch cubes 2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon all-purpose flour 1½ teaspoons kosher salt 1½ teaspoons dry mustard ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg ⅛ teaspoon cayenne pepper ⅔ cup (165 ml) sour cream 2 large eggs, lightly beaten 1½ cups (360 ml) half-and-half 1½ cups (360 ml) heavy cream ⅓ cup (55 g) grated onion 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 2 cups grated sharp Cheddar cheese (about 8 ounces/230g) • Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease a 9-by-13-inch (23-by-33-cm) baking dish. Bring a 4-quart (3.8-L) saucepan of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook it halfway through, about 3 minutes. Drain the pasta and transfer it to the baking dish. Stir in the cubed Velveeta. • Combine the flour, salt, mustard, black pepper, nutmeg, and cayenne in a large mixing bowl. Add the sour cream and eggs and whisk until smooth. Whisk in the half-and-half, cream, onion, Worcestershire sauce, and a sprinkle of black pepper. Pour the egg mixture over the pasta mixture in the prepared baking dish and stir to combine. Sprinkle the Cheddar cheese evenly over the surface. Bake until the pasta mixture is set around the edges but still a bit loose in the center, about 30 minutes. Let it cool for 10 minutes before serving.

The guns on both sides were silent until they returned. Suddenly, a fierce cannonade from the British ships exploded onto the beach at Turtle Gut Inlet, but only one American was hit, “Shott through the arm and body.” It was Richard Wickes. A cannonball took his arm and half his chest away. Fresh from the Reprisal, Lambert Wickes arrived on the beach at the head of his reinforcements just as his younger brother died: “I arrived just at the Close of the Action Time enough to see him expire . . . Captn Barry . . . says a braver Man never existed.”123 Taking Richard Wickes's body, the American sailors left the spit of sand they fought over that morning. The powder was stowed in the Wasp's hold and sent up the Delaware. “At 2 weighed and made Sail,” Hudson briefly noted in his journal.124 The British returned to Cape Henlopen. As before, Barry had taken long odds, assessed the best plan that could succeed, and beaten the British. The Nancy was destroyed, but the Wasp would reach Philadelphia safely with the desperately needed gunpowder. Despite superior firepower, the “butcher's bill” was far heavier for the British. But the victory brought no cheers or satisfaction among the Americans, and Barry was particularly saddened by the death of the gallant young Wickes.125 The next morning—Sunday, June 30—the men of the Lexington and Reprisal gathered to mourn their shipmate at the log meetinghouse in the small village of Cold Spring, just north of Cape May. Under the same light breezes of the day before, the American sailors, with “bowed and uncovered heads,” filed inside and sat on the long, rough-cut wooden pews. After “The Clergyman preached a very deacent Sermon,” Lambert Wickes and the Reprisal's officers silently hoisted the coffin. Shuffling under its weight, they carried it outside to the little cemetery, and laid their comrade to rest.126 Lambert Wickes now faced the task of informing his family in Maryland of Richard's death. On July 2, in a sad but disjointed letter to his brother Samuel, he mentioned Richard's death among a list of the items—including the sugar and “one Bagg Coffee” that accompanied the letter. “You'll disclose this Secret with as much Caution as possible to our Sisters,” he pleaded. He quoted Barry's report that Richard “fought like a brave Man & was fore most in every transaction of that day,” dying for the cause of the “united Colonies.”127 By the time Lambert's package reached his family in Maryland, the “united Colonies” ceased to exist as well. The same day Wickes posted his letter, Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. Barry, Wickes, and the rest of the Continental Navy were now fighting for the survival of a new country: the United States of America.

I brought him here,” he said, eager to claim credit for whatever had so overjoyed his king. “I caught him making a sacrifice to Lord Hades at your shrine, my lord Theseus, and when I tried to stop him--” Theseus’s laughter crushed Telys’s weak attempt at boasting. “We all know what happened when you tried to stop him, you clown,” he said, wiping his eyes. “The whole palace is talking about how you were bested by a mere boy. Well, the truth is even better.” He was off the throne and across the floor in an instant, scattering everyone who stood between him and me. He bounded behind me, grabbed the waist of my tunic with both hands, and yanked it back, hard. I’d relied on the looseness of my clothing to hide my breasts, small as they were, but now the thin cloth pulled taut against every line of my body. I might as well have been wearing nothing at all. I heard the onlookers gasp. “Why aren’t you smiling, Telys?” Theseus leered as he confronted the horror-struck young guard. “You ought to be glad. You weren’t beaten by a boy after all.

How could a man with any sense of responsibility do a thing like that?” he exclaimed, his voice rising with righteous anger. “He should be beaten!” Then he caught himself. “May God forgive me for raising my voice, but it’s a husband’s sacred duty to take care of his family.” In Matthew Perkins’s censure of Ben, I found new excuses for hating my husband.  Matthew is a man who would never desert his

UnForgiven" I've forgiven myself for all my pasts' wrongs, And others for what they may & have done. And I've forgiven my kids' spermdonor for all the hell he put me through, No I'll definitlie never forget, But I can admit that yes I had to forgive because I wanted to move on, Move on within myself & with my life, I see it this way- I made all the choices that have led me to where I am in my life So therefor I take full responsibility for it all and I've accepted consequences as well as experienced Joy. And am very elated to say that Im at the happiest an best place I've ever been in my life,Forgiving him made it possible for me to accept, appreciate and fully experience the love of my husband, Yea theres things that were ugly but I chose to find the beauty and keep steppin on, I've learned an continue to learn that every single moment has a purpose, every decision we make has an outcome and as long as we refuse to give up, We ( I ) can literally live happy because happiness is a way of life Not a thought. Its when people make choices after they've thought and or talked about. Its finding positivity when ur surrounded by negativity refusing to give in and be beaten, So many of my experiences have led me to my deep values on the pricelessness of life, So those that dont learn to forgive will never feel how great of a relief that you get from forgiving and will remain unforgivin.

Being beaten easily is never fun, and I am sure it is so much worse when you thought you were the best, and got beat by the person you believed to be the worst.

Many bird species incorporate coloured plastic detritus when building their nests (...), using the bright colours as signals to neighbouring birds or to attract females. (...) the largest individuals with the best territories use more plastic in their nests than weaker individuals with less desirable territories. This eye-catching display reduces conflict: each individual can size up a rival´s strenght at a glance, and so avoid getting into fights in which they are likely to be beaten.

He had always wanted the world to be just like that – no doubts, no lingering areas of hesitation or equivocation, just action, purity of will and deed, the knowledge that whatever he did could never be, and could never have been, otherwise. From the first day of this rebellion, everything had shaken that single-mindedness. The things he had relied on with total surety had proven to be illusory and weak, and things he had thought of as being fictive and simple-minded had proved to have unexpected power. He had been forced to recalibrate, to reorientate. As every sword-brother knew, the time of greatest weakness was during the correction of a defective technique. He had started to fight… and lose. He had faced Horus Aximand and had been made to withdraw. He had faced Khârn, whom he had not yet been able to bring himself to hate fully, and been beaten. He had even taken on a primarch. Had that been hubris? Or just frustration, a desperate bid to recover his now-so-elusive sense of superiority? If he had somehow done the impossible and bested Fulgrim, would that have finally banished the whispers of doubt? Probably not. The fault had never been external, he knew now – it had always been within him, slowly metastasising, becoming impassable the longer he ignored it. He had needed to hear Dorn’s words of release to understand it. They had, all of them, been fighting with one hand behind their backs, trying to hold on to a dream that had already died. The enemy was utterly changed now. They were physically stronger and morally intoxicated, eagerly drinking up gifts that should have been shunned as poison. And yet, those who remained loyal had tried to cling on to what they had been at the very start. They had still mouthed pieties about Unity and the Imperial Truth long after fealty to such virtues had become impossible. Once he grasped that, once he faced up to it, he had what he needed to remove the fetters in his mind. I no longer fight for the Imperium that was, he told himself. I fight for the Imperium as it will become.

Ben is the best of the men I’ve ever been with or seen, because he is willing to take the broken and battered and beaten-up parts of me and help me hold them together so that don’t shatter every fucking day

It seems like everyone’s life has been or will be connected to darkness of some kind. Sometimes it’s a deep shade of pure onyx — a complete and total absence of light. Other times it has more grey undertones, with sunshine begging to come out from behind storm clouds. Sometimes there are people who go through the worst of the worst and come out the other side determined to make themselves better because of their traumas. Some come out the other side broken, beaten down, bloody, and can barely manage to pick themselves back up again. Sometimes just pulling yourself off the dirty ground is enough of a win. It’s enough to tell those storm clouds to suck your fucking dick, that they won’t get the best of you. Other times, it’s okay to lie there in a pool of blood and let the icy rain wash it all away, to take the beating that the storm gives you until you can manage to get up and limp through the next thunderstorm. Yet, there are days when your best just isn’t enough to make it through the storm. — Bo Reid, A Reaper Christmas

It seems like everyone’s life has been or will be connected to darkness of some kind. Sometimes it’s a deep shade of pure onyx — a complete and total absence of light. Other times it has more grey undertones, with sunshine begging to come out from behind storm clouds. Sometimes there are people who go through the worst of the worst and come out the other side determined to make themselves better because of their traumas. Some come out the other side broken, beaten down, bloody, and can barely manage to pick themselves back up again. Sometimes just pulling yourself off the dirty ground is enough of a win. It’s enough to tell those storm clouds to suck your fucking dick, that they won’t get the best of you. Other times, it’s okay to lie there in a pool of blood and let the icy rain wash it all away, to take the beating that the storm gives you until you can manage to get up and limp through the next thunderstorm. Yet, there are days when your best just isn’t enough to make it through the storm.