Bemused Quotes

I don't get it,' Caroline said, bemused. 'She's the only one with wings. Why is that?' There were so many questions in life. You couldn't ever have all the answers. But I knew this one. It's so she can fly,' I said. Then I started to run.

I'm Draco Malfoy, I'm Draco, I'm on your side!" Draco was on the upper landing, pleading with another masked Death Eater. Harry Stunned the Death Eater as they passed: Malfoy looked around, beaming, for his savior, and Ron punched him from under the cloak. Malfoy fell backward on top of the Death Eater, his mouth bleeding, utterly bemused. "And that's the second time we've saved your life tonight, you two-faced bastard!" Ron yelled.

Ezra watches them leave with a bemused expression, then turns to me. “I have a really strong feeling that on Wednesdays, they wear pink.

We were walking toward the fountain, the epicenter of activity, when an older couple stopped and openly observed us. Robert enjoyed being noticed, and he affectionately squeezed my hand. "oh, take their picture," said the woman to her bemused husband, "I think they're artists." "Oh, go on," he shrugged. "They're just kids.

Hey, Mikey? You get her hurt and I'll end you.' 'You let anything happen to Eve and I'll do the same,' Michael said. He'd just finished kissing Eve, too. 'While you're at it, don't get yourself killed, either, bro.' 'Ditto. And don't kiss me.' Claire cocked her head at him, exasperated. 'Seriously, Shane? Ditto? That's the best you can do?' Shane and Michael exchanged identical looks and shrugs. Guys. 'Let me show you idiots how it's done,' Eve said, and hugged Claire fiercely. She kissed her on the cheek. 'I love you, CB. Please take care of yourself, okay?' 'I love you, too,' Claire said, and suddenly her throat felt tight and her eyes burned with tears. 'I really do.' Shane and Michael watched them with identical expressions of blank bemusement, and finally Shane said, 'So basically, it's what I said. Ditto.

Unwrapping the paper carefully so it doesn’t tear, I find a beautiful red leather box. Cartier. It’s familiar, thanks to my second-chance earrings and my watch. Cautiously, I open the box to discover a delicate charm bracelet of silver, or platinum or white gold—I don’t know, but it’s absolutely enchanting. Attached to it are several charms: the Eiffel Tower, a London black cab, a helicopter—Charlie Tango, a glider—the soaring, a catamaran—The Grace, a bed, and an ice cream cone? I look up at him, bemused. “Vanilla?” He shrugs apologetically, and I can’t help but laugh. Of course. “Christian, this is beautiful. Thank you. It’s yar.” He grins. My favorite is the heart. It’s a locket. “You can put a picture or whatever in that.” “A picture of you.” I glance at him through my lashes. “Always in my heart.” He smiles his lovely, heartbreakingly shy smile. I fondle the last two charms: a letter C—oh yes, I was his first girlfriend to use his first name. I smile at the thought. And finally, there’s a key. “To my heart and soul,” he whispers.

I just wanted to say that it's okay if you dislike me. If you make Clary happy, I'm fine with you." He stuck his hand out, and Jace took his own hand out of Clary's and shook Simon's, a bemused look on his face. "I don't dislike you," he said. "In fact, because I actually do like you, I'm going to offer you some advice." "Advice?" Simon looked wary. "I see that you are working this vampire angle with some success," Jace said, indicating Isabelle and Maia with a nod of his head. "And kudos. Lots of girls love that sensitive-undead thing. But I'd drop the whole musician angle if I were you. Vampire rock stars are played out, and besides, you can't possibly be very good." Simon sighed. "I don't suppose there's any change you could reconsider the part where you didn't like me?" "Enough, both of you," Clary said. "You can't be complete jerks to each other forever, you know." "Technically," said Simon, "I can." Jace made an inelegant noise; after a moment Clary realized that he was trying not to laugh, and only semi-succeeding. Simon grinned. "Got you." "Well," Clary said. "This is a beautiful moment.

I closed my eyes instead. And Puck kissed me. “If you are going to do that, would you mind not jostling the bed so much?” came a sarcastic voice near the headboard. “Perhaps you could roll around on the floor.” Blushing furiously, I looked up. Grimalkin lay on the pillow, watching us with a bemused, half-lidded stare. Puck followed my gaze and let out an explosive sigh. “Did I ever mention how much I hate cats?” “Do not blame me, Goodfellow.” Grimalkin blinked, managing to sound bored and indignant at the same time. “I was minding my own business long before you and the princess started humping like rabbits.

Seriously, Shane? Ditto? That's the best you can do?" Shane and Michael exchanged identical looks and shrugs. Guys. "Let me show you idiots how it's done," Eve said, and hugged Claire fiercely. She kissed her on the cheek. "I love you, CB. Please take care of yourself, okay?" "I love you, too," Claire said, and suddenly her throat felt tight and her eyes burned with tears. "I really do." Shane and Michael watched them with identical expressions of blank bemusement, and finally Shane said, "So basically, it's what I said. Ditto.

Hey, big spender,” I said. He looked appreciative but more amused than anything else. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a one dollar bill. “Hugh,” I said. “Don’t insult me.” With a sigh, he produced a five and tucked it underneath my bra strap. “Hey, Seth,” Cody suddenly said. I looked up and saw Seth standing in the doorway. A look of comic bemusement was on his face. “Hey,” he said, studying me. “So…you’re paying for dinner?

I walked to the table and picked it up, doing as he asked. And then it struck me that I was setting a so-called zombie’s alarm clock for him, and I swear I heard something snap in my ears. I started laughing uproariously. I heard the monster’s bemused voice outside, asking me if I was alright, but that just made it funnier.

You should have told her differently,' said Hermione, still with that maddeningly patient air. 'You should have said it was really annoying, but I'd made you promise to come along to the Three Broomsticks, and you really didn't want to go, you'd much rather spend the whole day with her, but unfortunately you thought you really ought to meet me and would she please, please come along with you, and hopefully you'd be able to get away more quickly? And it might have been a good idea to mention how ugly you think I am too,' Hermione added as an afterthought. 'But I don't think you're ugly,' said Harry, bemused. Hermione laughed.

The grapes are smaller than I’m used to, and the skin is slightly textured. Is that dirt? I dip my napkin in water and dab at the tiny purple globes. It helps, but they’re still sort of rough. Hmm. St. Clair and Meredith stop talking. I glance up to find them staring at me in matching bemusement. “What?” “Nothing,” he says. “Continue your grape bath.

Ryan stared at me as I pulled my phone out to see who was calling at this late hour. “You have the Fraggle Rock theme song as your ring tone,” he said, with a bemused look on his face. “You are so weird.

Griffin!” Finley cried. She moved to attack the automaton, but Sam stopped her. “Wait. Griff’s got a plan.” “How do you know?” she demanded. Sam and Jasper both looked at her with bemused expressions. “Griff’s always got a plan,” Jasper informed her, as though it was absolute fact.

Alec cleared his throat. He felt dizzy, but he also felt alive — blood rushing through his veins like traffic at top speed, everything seemingly almost too brightly colored. As he stepped through the door, he turned and looked at Magnus, who was watching him bemusedly. He reached forward and took hold of the front of Magnus’ t-shirt and dragged the warlock toward him. Magnus stumbled against him, and Alec kissed him, hard and fast and messy and unpracticed, but with everything he had. He pulled Magnus against him, his own hand between them, and felt Magnus’ heart stutter in his chest. He broke off the kiss, and drew back. “Friday,” he said, and let Magnus go. He backed away, down the landing, Magnus looking after him. The warlock crossed his arms over his shirt — wrinkled where Alec had grabbed it — and shook his head, grinning.

He looked like you ripped his heart out of his chest, threw it to the ground, and stomped all over it while singing a jaunty tune.” Annwyl shrugged at Morfyd’s bemused expression. “I might have seen that look before on his brother.” “Perhaps when you stabbed our father?” Annwyl laughed. “No. Then he just looked proud.

But I know, at least, that you would keep a library on the subject, and I hoped that I might be allowed to read from it.” He regarded me with a bemused expression. “You want me for my library.

We are so bemused by our own petard, that we are unable to look at things objectively.

Hey". Meghan's fingers on my arm nearly made me jump out of my skin. She smiled up at me, though her eyes were puzzled. "You seem awfully nervous this morning. Is something wrong?" Now or never, Ash. I took a deep breath. "No", I replied, turning to her, "Nothing's wrong, but I did want to ask you something. Come here a moment." Taking both her hands, I backed away to the middle of the floor, to an open space in front of the curtains. She followed, still wearing a bemused expression, and I paused a moment to gather my thoughts. "I don't...know how it's done in your world", I began, as she tilted her head at me. "I've seen it before...but, I'm not sure how to ask. It never really comes up in the Winter Court." Meghan blinked, frowning slightly. "What do you mean?" "I know my role here," I continued. "Whatever happens, I'm still your knight, and nothing will change that. You are queen of this realm, and I have no desire to rule. That said, fighting your enemies, standing with you no matter what comes at us. But I'm no longer satisfied with just being your knight and protector. I want something more". I stopped and took a deep breath, then slowly released her hands, stepped back and sank to one knee. "What I'm trying to ask is...Meghan Chase, will you do me the honor of marrying me?

Leaving?” she squeaked, bemused, as Max opened her wardrobe. “You’re abducting me?” “Eloping. Eloping involves hurried packing. Abducting involves masked men and a burlap sack.

Men are funny characters, they must always have something to bemuse them.

The bemused Brigadier shook his head. "You and that TARDIS.

We experience the externalities of the attention economy in little drips, so we tend to describe them with words of mild bemusement like “annoying” or “distracting.” But this is a grave misreading of their nature. In the short term, distractions can keep us from doing the things we want to do. In the longer term, however, they can accumulate and keep us from living the lives we want to live, or, even worse, undermine our capacities for reflection and self-regulation, making it harder, in the words of Harry Frankfurt, to “want what we want to want.” Thus there are deep ethical implications lurking here for freedom, wellbeing, and even the integrity of the self.

The forest of Skund was indeed enchanted, which was nothing unusual on the Disc, and was also the only forest in the whole universe to be called -- in the local language -- Your Finger You Fool, which was the literal meaning of the word Skund. The reason for this is regrettably all too common. When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don't Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool. Rainclouds clustered around the bald heights of Mt. Oolskunrahod ('Who is this Fool who does Not Know what a Mountain is') and the Luggage settled itself more comfortably under a dripping tree, which tried unsuccessfully to strike up a conversation.

I do not believe in such a thing as love,' Elias scoffed. 'Perhaps attraction, or companionship, or friendship. But so many men act as though love is a special sort of magic. I feel that I am qualified to say it isn't so.' 'Well, but you have just described love, I think,' Albert replied in bemusement. 'Attraction and companionship and friendship. Is there nothing special about those things, especially if they are all together at once?

Fortunately, Park seemed more bemused than offended. “Do you disapprove of human-werewolf relationships, Agent Dayton?” “No. Of course not. I—that’s not what I meant. I just didn’t understand...” Cooper trailed off, thoroughly uncomfortable, and Park took pity on him. “She’s not my type because I’m gay.” The silence was sharp. Vaguely Cooper was aware his mouth was hanging open. He shut it quickly. Then opened it again to say, “Oh, that’s nice.

Is monstrous fuckpuddle,' Perun asserted, and everyone turned to stare at him with equal parts amusement and bemusement. 'What? Is this not English word?' I suggested that if it wasn't a word, it should be, and the others agreed.

The group mind was such (private jokes and bemusement, everyone clustered round vacation videos on the iPhone) that it was hard to imagine any of them going to a movie by themselves or eating alone at a bar; sometimes, the affable sense of committee among the men particularly gave me the slight feeling of being interviewed for a job.

i had spent four years propped on the front porch of the fraternity house, bemused and dreaming, watching the sun shine through the spanish moss, lost in the mystery of finding myself alive at such a time and place.

Hunt and Annabelle stared at each other in silent bemusement, as if someone had posed a question that neither of them knew how to answer. The moment lengthened uncomfortably, until Simon Hunt finally spoke. “A pretty sound, that,” he said softly. Annabelle struggled to find her voice. “What is?” she asked. “Your laughter.

Kelsea didn't recognize the guard, but she knew his voice. After a moment she realized, bemused, that it was Dyer. He'd shaved his red beard. "Dyer, is that your face under there?" Dyer flushed bright red. Pen snorted gleefully, and Kibb clapped Dyer on the back. "I told him, Lady...now we can see every time he blushes.

The oak tree or the eagle would be bemused by such a question. “What time?” they would ask. “Well, of course, it’s now. The time is now. What else is there?

As always when she saw the kind and dreamy eyes of Dennis Mira, her heart gave a little tug. Just something about him, she thought, with his cardigans and mussed hair, bemused smile.

Rupert: "... At this rate, somebody is bound to upset the Warlock once too often, and we'll end up with a Court full of bemused looking toads." "He wouldn't dare use his magic here," said the Champion. "Don't bet on it," said Rupert. "The High Warlock has all the practicality and self-preservation instincts of a depressed lemming.

Nothing, however, bemused the Indians more than the European habit of blowing their noses into a fine handkerchief, folding it carefully, and placing it back in their pockets as if it were a treasured memento.

say she had nefarious motives.” Davis looked over at Jack with a bemused grin. “Nefarious. This is what we get when we hire a Yale boy.” “You missed sacrosanct earlier. And taciturn and glowering,” Jack said. “What’s glowering?” “Me, apparently.

Do you see that man in the black Porsche?" I asked the women. They squinted out at Ranger. "Yes," they said."Your partner." "He's homeless. He's looking for a place to stay and he might be interested in renting Singh's room." Mrs.Apusenja's eyes widened. "We could use the income."She looked at Nonnie and then back at Ranger. "Is he married?" "Nope. He's single. He's a real catch." Connie did something between a gasp and a snort and buried her head back behind the computer. "Thank you for everything." Mrs.Apusenja said. "I suppose you are not such a bad slut. I will go talk to your partner.: "Omigod," Connie said, when the door closed behind the Apusenja's. "Ranger's going to kill you." The Apusenjas stood beside the Porsche, talkig to Ranger for a few long minutes, giving him the big sales pitch. The pitch wound down, Ranger responded, and Mrs. Apusenja looked disappointed. The two women crossed the road and got into the burgundy Escort and quickly drove away. Ranger turned his head in my direction and our eyes met. His expression was still bemused, but this time it was the sort of bemused expression a kid has when he's pulling the wings off a fly. "Uh-Oh,"Connie said. I whipped around and faced Connie. "Quick, give me an FTA. You're backed up, right? For God's sake, give me something fast. I need a reason to stand here until he calms down!" Connie shoved a pile of folders at me. "Pick one. Any one! Oh shit, he's getting out of his car.".... He leaned into me and his lips brushed the shell of my ear. "Feeling playful?" "I don't know what you're talking about." "Watch your back babe. I will get even." -Ranger and Stephanie

Put 'em on and be yourself, mister alienated loner steppenwolf bemused distant meta-izing technocrat rationalist fucking shithead.

They immediately spent a moment in bemused silence in honor of the perilous little paradox that was the English female

Oh take their picture," said the woman to her bemused husband, "I think they're artists." "Oh, go on," he shrugged. "They're just kids.

At last, Sturmhond straightened the lapels of his teal frock coat and said, “Well, Brekker, it’s obvious you only deal in half-truths and outright lies, so you’re clearly the man for the job.” “There’s just one thing,” said Kaz, studying the privateer’s broken nose and ruddy hair. “Before we join hands and jump off a cliff together, I want to know exactly who I’m running with.” Sturmhond lifted a brow. “We haven’t been on a road trip or exchanged clothes, but I think our introductions were civilized enough.” “Who are you really, privateer?” “Is this an existential question?” “No proper thief talks the way you do.” “How narrow-minded of you.” “I know the look of a rich man’s son, and I don’t believe a king would send an ordinary privateer to handle business this sensitive.” “Ordinary,” scoffed Sturmhond. “Are you so schooled in politics?” “I know my way around a deal. Who are you? We get the truth or my crew walks.” “Are you so sure that would be possible, Brekker? I know your plans now. I’m accompanied by two of the world’s most legendary Grisha, and I’m not too bad in a fight either.” “And I’m the canal rat who brought Kuwei Yul-Bo out of the Ice Court alive. Let me know how you like your chances.” His crew didn’t have clothes or titles to rival the Ravkans, but Kaz knew where he’d put his money if he had any left. Sturmhond clasped his hands behind his back, and Kaz saw the barest shift in his demeanor. His eyes lost their bemused gleam and took on a surprising weight. No ordinary privateer at all. “Let us say,” said Sturmhond, gaze trained on the Ketterdam street below, “hypothetically, of course, that the Ravkan king has intelligence networks that reach deep within Kerch, Fjerda, and the Shu Han, and that he knows exactly how important Kuwei Yul-Bo could be to the future of his country. Let us say that king would trust no one to negotiate such matters but himself, but that he also knows just how dangerous it is to travel under his own name when his country is in turmoil, when he has no heir and the Lantsov succession is in no way secured.” “So hypothetically,” Kaz said, “you might be addressed as Your Highness.

The shock of photographed atrocities wears off with repeated viewings, just as the surprise and bemusement felt the first time one sees a pornographic movie wear off after one sees a few more.

Man has "a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and infinity, who can place himself imaginatively at a point in space and contemplate bemusedly his own planet. This immense expansion, this dexterity, this ethereality, this self-consciousness gives to man literally the status of a small god in nature... Yet, at the same time... man is a worm and food for worms

Thank you,” she said. He looked bemused. “For what?” “For everything. For being amazing in bed and endlessly patient, for sacrificing the Savage Club for me and bringing me all the way around the world simply because you were worried about me, even though it meant you were probably going to spend your holidays alone. For the way you always put your hand on the small of my back to guide me across the street and the way you let me be in charge of the television remote control and the way you have never, not once, judged me or mistrusted me or made me feel small or unwanted.” “Violet, sweetheart...” He blinked and she realized that he was close to tears. Her Martin. Mr. Uptight. Mr. Repressed.

I damned myself for my earlier romanticism. That Croaker who had come north, so thoroughly bemused by the mysterious Lady, was another man. A stripling, filled with the foolish ignorances of youth. Yeah. Sometimes you lie to yourself just to keep going.

Sturmhond back into the corridors. As their footfalls faded, silence descended. Wylan cleared his throat and the sound bounced around the blue-tiled room like a spring colt let loose in a corral. Genya’s face was bemused. Zoya crossed her arms. “Well?” “Ma’am …” Wylan attempted. “Miss Genya—” Genya smiled, her scars tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Oh, he is sweet.” “You always take to the strays,” said Zoya sourly.

Worry! What a waste of time. All the holy books were right. Clearly ‘worry’ was the mark of a primitive and spiritually unevolved person. What was that line from Yeats, about the bemused Chinese sages? All things fall and are built again. Ancient glittering eyes. This was wisdom. People had been raging and weeping and destroying things for centuries and wailing about their puny individual lives, when—what was the point? All this useless sorrow? Consider the lilies of the field. Why did anyone ever worry about anything? Weren’t we, as sentient beings, put upon the earth to be happy, in the brief time allotted to us?

What to Do During Algebra O what to do during Algebra! The possibilities are limitless: There's drawing, and yawning, and portable chess There's dozing, and dreaming, and feeling confused. There's humming, and strumming, and looking bemused. You can stare at the clock. You can hum a little song. I've tried just about everything to pass the time along.

Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?” The mountaineer replied in bemusement, as if the question was ridiculous and the answer obvious, “Because it’s there.” Kira understood then, because why had she wanted to go to university when no one else in her family had been? Why had she chosen law when everyone had told her it would be too hard? Why? To find out if she could do it. Because she wanted to climb that damn mountain. Because it was there.

Patrick Kenzie asking a bemused waitress for a newspaper in smalltown USA. 'It’s like a homepage without a scroll button?

I hadn't spent so much time in bemused contemplation of a penis since I was sixteen or so, and here I was, preoccupied with three of the things.

One of the things she'd learnt on her own, ragged, bemused, zigzag way was that the best sources of useful information were often in strange places...

Okay,” I mumble, completely bemused, bewildered, and shell-shocked. He leans over my desk. What now? I am caught in his hypnotic gaze. “Love doing business with you, Mrs. Grey.” He leans in closer as I sit paralyzed, and he plants a soft tender kiss on my lips. “Laters baby,” he murmurs. He stands abruptly, winks at me, and leaves. I lay my head on my desk, feeling like I’ve been run over by a freight train – the freight train that is my beloved husband. He has to be the most frustrating, annoying, contrary man on the planet. I sit up and frantically rub my eyes. What have I just agreed to?

No. I’ll call you Monday after class.” Morgan slid of his stool, gazed seriously at Dan, then bent forward to bestow a chaste kiss to his cheek. Danny watched him leave, bemused. Griff snickered. “Ohh, Danny. A cute boy kissed you. Are you ever going to wash that cheek again?

I turned to face him, knowing in him, I'd find the temporary cure. "Do you want to fuck it out?" Braden smiled slowly, bemused, causing another twist of attraction in my gut. "Fuck it out?" "All the bullshit. What she did. What he did. Every soulless bitch that wanted something from you" His expression changed immediately, becoming hard, unfathomable, as he took a step towards me. "Are you saying you don't want anything from me?" "I want this. I want our arrangement. I want you..." I sucked in a breath, feeling my control slip. "... to fuck it out of me.

My mother was, for the most part, delighted with my brother and regarded him with the bemused curiosity of a brood hen discovering she has hatched a completely different species. 'I think it was very nice of Paul to give me this vase,' she once said, arranging a bouquet of wildflowers into the skull-shaped bong my brother had left on the kitchen table. 'It's nontraditional, but that's the Rooster's way. He's a free spirit, and we're lucky to have him.

I will tell you about the lady I loved." The girls settled together on the entrance steps, not even breathing, for fear it would rustle the rosebushes about them and mask Mr. Keeper's words. Mr. Keeper stood unmoving on the dance floor. "Once upon a time," he said. His voice dripped in silk strands. "There was a High King, who wanted more than anything to kill the Captain General who incited a rebellion against him. It consumed him. The desire to kill the Captain General filled him to his core, and he spent every breath, every step, thinking of ways to murder the Captain General. "But he was old, and time passed, as it always does." Mr. Keeper paused. Bramble cast a slightly bemused glance at Azalea, her eyebrow arched. "So," Mr. Keeper continued, "he took an oath. He filled a wine flute to the brim with blood. And he swore, on that blood, to kill the Wentworth General, and that he would not die until he did. "And then, he drank it. "The end." There was a very ugly, naked silence after that. The girls' mouths gaped in perfect Os. "Sorry?" said Delphinium. "I missed the part about the lady?" "Ah," said Mr. Keeper. "The blood. It was hers.

The pen moved slowly upon paper And tears fell. He had written a name, yours, in printed letters: One word on which bemusedly to pore - No protest, no desire, your naked name, Nothing more. - The Foreboding

So, you may ask, what is the use of studying the world of imagination where anything is possible and anything can be assumed, where there are no rights or wrongs and all arguments are equally good? One of the most obvious uses, I think, is its encouragement of tolerance. In the imagination our own beliefs are also only possibilities, but we can also see the possibilities in the beliefs of others. Bigots and fanatics seldom have any use for the arts, because they're so preoccupied with their beliefs and actions that they can't see them as also possibilities. It's possible to go to the other extreme, to be a dilettante so bemused by possibilities that one has no convictions or power to act at all. But such people are much less common than bigots, and in our world much less dangerous.

All you had to say was, 'I am a writer,' and you became one. You didn't even have to write anything. You could just sit in a coffee shop with a notebook and stare into space, with a slightly bemused look on your face, judging the weight of the world with a jaundiced eye. As you can see, you can be completely full of shit and still be a writer...I also thought it was going to be a great way to meet girls, but it wasn't--probably because as I was staring into space, I no doubt looked mildly retarded. You see, I wanted to write plays, which in retrospect is a lot harder than learning Mandarin, I think. How I ended up in this delusional state shall be saved for another time.

In a series of wonderful essays, Evan Handler gives himself up to us - warts and all. To our amusement and bemusement we share in his emotional growth as he struggles to mature. I not only laughed along with him but felt that I too had grown a little along the way. Who could ask for more?

I have seldom met an individual of literary tastes or propensities in whom the writing of love was not directly attributable to the love of writing. A person of this sort falls terribly in love, but in the end it turns out that he is more bemused by a sheet of white paper than a sheet of white bed linen. He would rather leap into print with his lady than leap into bed with her. (This first pleases the lady and then annoys her. She wants him to do both, and with virtually the same impulse.)

Monroe had in fact preached that God was not at all such a one as ourselves, not one to be temperamentally inclined to tread ragefully upon us until our blood flew up and stained all His white raiment, but rather that He looked on both the best and worst of mankind with weary, bemused pity.

As I worked to disentangle us, she gazed at me, bemused. “This makes me wary of ever dabbling in bondage with you.” Silence greeted us, and I unlooped the seatbelt from her neck before looking up and around us at the other passengers. “We're not alone, are we?” she playfully stage-hissed. “There are others,” I confirmed. “They're regarding you with curiosity.” “And mild horror,” Niall added.

You're going to, Clay? She whispered before he could leave. You're really going to read to me? Sure. The smile that lit Jackie's face was the first Clayton had seen from her in more than a year. It did funny things in the region of his chest. He moved toward the door but ran into the doorpost because he was staring behind him watching her. Eddie who was headed that way laughed when she witnessed it. Are you in a hurry Eddie asked noticing that he looked a little dazed. She smiled He said his voice bemused. I saw her smile. Eddie's gaze became very tender. If Jackie could see him now she'd know in an instant how much he still loved her.

Will said you came from a long way to live here - were you in Idris?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘You know of Idris?’ ‘Or did you come from anther institute? They’re in all the big cities, aren’t they? And why to London -‘ He interrupted her, bemused. ‘You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?’ ‘My brother always says curiosity is my besetting sin.’ ‘As sins go, it isn’t the word one.’ He sat down on the steamer trunk at the foot of the bed, and regarded her with a curious gravity. ‘So go ahead; ask me whatever you want.I can’t sleep anyway, and distractions are welcome.

Rock City begins as an ornamental garden on a mountain side: its visitors walk a path that takes them through rocks, over rocks, between rocks. They throw corn into a deer enclosure, cross a hanging bridge, and peer out through a-quarter-a-throw binoculars at a view that promises them seven states on the rare sunny days when the air is perfectly clear. And from there, like a drop into some strange hell, the path takes visitors, millions upon millions of them every year, down into caverns, where they stare at black-lit dolls arranged into nursery-rhyme and fairy-tale dioramas. When they leave, they leave bemused, uncertain of why they came, of what they have seen, of whether they had a good time or not.

We are all beautiful instruments of God. He created many notes in music so that we would not be stuck playing the same song. Be music always. Keep changing the keys, tones, pitch, and volume of each of the songs you create along your journey and play on. Nobody will ever reach ultimate perfection in this lifetime, but trying to achieve it is a full-time job. Start now and don't stop. Make your book of life a musical. Never abandon obligations, but have fun leaving behind a colorful legacy. Never allow anybody to be the composer of your own destiny. Take control of your life, and never allow limitations implanted by society, tell you how your music is supposed to sound — or how your book is supposed to be written.

We were interrupted by a girl with a strawberry birthmark on her nose; she had some papers in her hand and asked if we had signed the petition for the imprisoned Argentinean comrades. Belbo signed without reading it. "They're even worse of than I am," he said to Diotallevi, who was regarding him with a bemused expression. "He can't sign," Belbo said to the girl. "He belongs to a small Indian sect that forbids its members to write their own names. Many of them are in jail because of government persecution." The girl looked sympathetically at Diotallevi and passed the petition to me. "And who are they?" I asked. "What do you mean, who are they? Argentinean comrades." "But what group do they belong to?" "The Tacuarus, I think." "The Tacuarus are fascists," I said. As if I knew one group from the other. "Fascist pig," the girl hissed at me. She left.

One of the creatures in the front circle shook itself all over and, still shaking, moved very, very slowly toward Spock. He didn't move a muscle. The creature put out a long slender pseudopod, gleaming in the sunshine like suddenly blown glass, and poked Spock's boot with it. Then it made the scratchy sound again, more laughter, and said a word: "Gotcha!" It jumped back into place. All the other creatures began to echo the scratch-laughter. Spock looked around him in mild bemusement. "Captain," he said, "I suspect we have found a kindergarten...

Eh, I've always rather enjoyed being fashionably late." I picked up the violin case for Melanie, giving her an hug before clambering off the rock. "I feel like we should be leading a procession in, Pied Piper style." "I know just the thing." A hint of her old self peeked through her eyes. A moment later the first bars of "Safety Dance" hummed from the strings. I bit my lip trying not to giggle. Together the two of us broke out in lopsided chorus as I twirled about her. Ignoring the stares of the elves, we strutted up the center of the caravan, Brystion trailing behind us bemusedly.

I don't know what I expected – no maybe I do, Al Pacino from Scarface- but this drug dealer is more like Al Pacino at the beginning of The Godfather reasonably bemused, untouched by his criminal world, sitting with Diane Keaton whispering about Luca Brazzi, not yet asleep with the fishes, or like Al Pacino from Glengarry Glen Ross, although actually, now that I think about it, he's not like Al Pacino at all but more like Kevin Spacey from that film, and who's ever been afraid of Kevin Spacey?

He leaned in and kissed her. The world didn’t stop dead on its axis. Nothing fell from the sky. It was a gentle meeting of flesh, not a melding of souls. Yet the taste of her lips was everything he remembered, and more. Without moving a muscle—without batting an eyelash—she managed to take ten years of simmering frustration and dissolve them as if they were nothing more than a spoonful of sugar in a pot of hot water. He straightened. A series of expressions tripped across her face in rapid succession. He caught shellshock, bemusement, and then a faint trace of…sadness. Definitely not one-sided. But not what he’d been looking for, either.

In schizoid illness, object-relating goes wrong; the patient relates to a subjective world or fails to relate to any object outside the self. Omnipotence is asserted by means of delusions. The patient is withdrawn, out of contact, bemused, isolated, unreal, deaf, inaccessible, invulnerable, and so on. In health a great deal of life has to do with various kinds of object-relating, and with a ‘to-and-fro’ process between relating to external objects and relating to internal ones. In full fruition this is a matter of interpersonal relationships, but the residues of creative relating are not lost, and this makes every aspect of object-relating exciting.

The people came out of their houses and smelled the hot stinging air and covered their noses from it. And the children came out of the houses, but they did not run or shout as they would have done after a rain. Men stood by their fences and looked at the ruined corn, drying fast now, only a little green showing through the film of dust. The men were silent and they did not move often. And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men - to feel whether this time the men would break. The women studied the men's faces secretly, for the corn could go, as long as something else remained. The children stood near by drawing figures in the dust with bare toes, and the children sent exploring senses out to see whether men and women would break. The children peeked at the faces of the men and women, and then drew careful lines in the dust with their toes. Horses came to the watering troughs and nuzzled the water to clear the surface dust. After a while the faces of the watching men lost their bemused perplexity and became hard and angry and resistant. Then the women knew that they were safe and that there was no break. Then they asked, Whta'll we do? And the men replied, I don't know. but it was all right. The women knew it was all right, and the watching children knew it was all right. Women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole. The women went into the houses to their work, and the children began to play, but cautiously at first. As the day went forward the sun became less red. It flared down on the dust-blanketed land. The men sat in the doorways of their houses; their hands were busy with sticks and little rocks. The men sat still - thinking - figuring.

She strolled between shelves, looking at titles, smiling as she met old friends - books she had read three times or five times or a dozen. Just a title, or an author's name, would be enough to summon up happy images. Strange creatures like phoenixes and psammeads, moving under smokey London daylight of a hundred years before, in company with groups of bemused children; starships and new worlds and the limitless vistas of interstellar night, outer space challenged but never conquered; princesses in silver and golden dresses, princes and heroes carrying swords like sharpened lines of light, monsters rising out of weedy tarns, wild creatures that talked and tricked one another...

One morning last week He gave me an assignment: for one day I was to go on a "fast" from criticism. I was not to criticize anybody about anything. Into my mind crowded all the usual objections, "But then what happens to value judgments? You yourself, Lord, spoke of 'righteous judgment.' How could society operate without standards and limits?" All such resistance was brushed aside, "Just obey Me without questioning: an absolute fast on any critical judgments for this day." ...Barbed comments about certain world leaders were suppressed. In our talkative family no one seemed to notice. Bemused, I noticed that my comments were not missed. The federal government, the judicial system, and the institutional church could somehow get along without my penetrating observations. ...That afternoon, a specific, positive vision for this life was dropped into my mind with God's unmistakable hallmark on it-joy. Ideas began to flow in a way I had not experienced in years. My critical nature had not corrected a single one of the multitudinous things I found fault with. What it had done was stifle my creativity-in prayer, in relationships, perhaps even in writing-ideas that He wanted to give me.

One morning last week He gave me an assignment: for one day I was to go on a "fast" from criticism. I was not to criticize anybody about anything. Into my mind crowded all the usual objections, "But then what happens to value judgments? You yourself, Lord, spoke of 'righteous judgment.' How could society operate without standards and limits?" All such resistance was brushed aside, "Just obey Me without questioning: an absolute fast on any critical judgments for this day." ...Barbed comments about certain world leaders were suppressed. In our talkative family no one seemed to notice. Bemused, I noticed that my comments were not missed. The federal government, the judicial system, and the institutional church could somehow get along without my penetrating observations. ...That afternoon, a specific, positive vision for this life was dropped into my mind with God's unmistakable hallmark on it-joy. Ideas began to flow in a way I had not experienced in years. My critical nature had not corrected a single one of the multitudinous things I found fault with. What it had done was stifle my creativity-in prayer, in relationships, perhaps even in writing-ideas that He wanted to give me.

A strange, sweet sound pierced the air. "Skerden Fjerda, kende hjertzeeeeeng, lendten isen en de waaaanden." Fjerdan words Jesper didn't understand crested over the courtyard in a shimmering, perfect tenor that seemed to catch upon the black stone battlements. Wylan. The guards whirled, rifles pointed at the walkway that led to the courtyard, seeking the source of the sound. "Olander?" one called. "Nilson?" said another. Their guns were raised, but their voices were more bemused and curious than aggressive. What the hell is he doing? A silhouette appeared in the walkway arch, lurching left and right. "Skerden Fjerda, kende hjertzeeeeeng," Wylan sang, doing a surprisingly convincing impression of a drunk but very talented Fjerdan. The guards burst out laughing, joining in on the song. "Lendten isen . . .

How's everyone in New York?" he added quickly. "Clary dragging Jace into any more trouble? Jace dragging Clary into any more trouble?" "That's the cornerstone of their relationship, but no, Jace is hanging out with Simon," Isabelle reported. "He say they're playing video games." "Do you think Simon invited Jace to hang out with him?" Alec asked skeptically. "Bro," said Isabelle, "I do not." "Has Jace ever played a video game before? I've never played a video game." "I'm sure he'll get the hang of it," said Isabelle. "Simon's explained them to me and they do not sound difficult." "How are things going with you and Simon?" "He's taken a number and remains in the long line of men desperate for my attention," Isabelle said firmly. "How are things between you and Magnus?" "Well, I wondered if you could help me with that." "Yes!" Isabelle exclaimed with horrifying delight. "You are right to come to me with this. I am so much more subtle and skilled in the arts of seduction than Jace. Okay, here's my first suggestion. You're going to need a grapefruit -" "Stop!" said Alec. He hurriedly strode away from Magnus and Shinyun and hid behind a high hedge. They watched him go with bemusement.

A deep laugh stirred in his chest, and his thumb brushed over the backs of her fingers before he withdrew his hand. She felt the rasp of a callus on his thumb, the sensation not unlike the tingling scrape of a cat’s tongue. Bemused by her own response to him, Annabelle looked down at the chess piece in her hand. “That is the queen—the most powerful piece on the board. She can move in any direction, and go as far as she wishes.” There was nothing overtly suggestive in his manner of speaking …but when he spoke softly, as he was doing at that moment, there was a husky depth in his voice that made her toes curl inside her slippers. “More powerful than the king?” she asked. “Yes. The king can only move one square at a time. But the king is the most important piece.” “Why is he more important than the queen if he’s not the most powerful?” “Because once he is captured, the game is over.

After a long and happy life, I find myself at the pearly gates (a sight of great joy; the word for “pearl” in Greek is, by the way, margarita). Standing there is St. Peter. This truly is heaven, for finally my academic questions will receive answers. I immediately begin the questions that have been plaguing me for half a century: “Can you speak Greek? Where did you go when you wandered off in the middle of Acts? How was the incident between you and Paul in Antioch resolved? What happened to your wife?” Peter looks at me with some bemusement and states, “Look, lady, I’ve got a whole line of saved people to process. Pick up your harp and slippers here, and get the wings and halo at the next table. We’ll talk after dinner.” As I float off, I hear, behind me, a man trying to gain Peter’s attention. He has located a “red letter Bible,” which is a text in which the words of Jesus are printed in red letters. This is heaven, and all sorts of sacred art and Scriptures, from the Bhagavad Gita to the Qur’an, are easily available (missing, however, was the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version). The fellow has his Bible open to John 14, and he is frenetically pointing at v. 6: “Jesus says here, in red letters, that he is the way. I’ve seen this woman on television (actually, she’s thinner in person). She’s not Christian; she’s not baptized - she shouldn’t be here!” “Oy,” says Peter, “another one - wait here.” He returns a few minutes later with a man about five foot three with dark hair and eyes. I notice immediately that he has holes in his wrists, for when the empire executes an individual, the circumstances of that death cannot be forgotten. “What is it, my son?” he asks. The man, obviously nonplussed, sputters, “I don’t mean to be rude, but didn’t you say that no one comes to the Father except through you?” “Well,” responds Jesus, “John does have me saying this.” (Waiting in line, a few other biblical scholars who overhear this conversation sigh at Jesus’s phrasing; a number of them remain convinced that Jesus said no such thing. They’ll have to make the inquiry on their own time.) “But if you flip back to the Gospel of Matthew, which does come first in the canon, you’ll notice in chapter 25, at the judgment of the sheep and the goats, that I am not interested in those who say ‘Lord, Lord,’ but in those who do their best to live a righteous life: feeding the hungry, visiting people in prison . . . ” Becoming almost apoplectic, the man interrupts, “But, but, that’s works righteousness. You’re saying she’s earned her way into heaven?” “No,” replies Jesus, “I am not saying that at all. I am saying that I am the way, not you, not your church, not your reading of John’s Gospel, and not the claim of any individual Christian or any particular congregation. I am making the determination, and it is by my grace that anyone gets in, including you. Do you want to argue?” The last thing I recall seeing, before picking up my heavenly accessories, is Jesus handing the poor man a Kleenex to help get the log out of his eye.

I even yelled at you last night." Phin eased up. "For which I apologize." "It was kind of nice," Sophie said. "At least you know I was there." "Oh hell, Spohie, I always know you're there." Phin rolled twords her on one hip, and Sophie felt felt a flare of hope, but he was just digging something out of his back pocket. "Here." He weld out an emerald-cut diamond ring the size of her head. "Marry me, Julie Ann. Ruin the rest of my life." "Hello." Sophie gasped at the ring. "Jeez, that thing is huge. Where did you get it?" "My mother gave it to me," Phin said sounding bemused. Then the other shoe dropped. "Marry you?" Sophie said, and the sun came out and the birds to sing and the river sent up a cheer. Marriage was probably out- Liz as a mother-in-law was too terrifying to complete , and Phin would never get elected agian if he was married to a pornographer- but suddenly everything else was looking pretty good.

There had been a time in high school, see, when I wrestled with the possibility that I might be gay, a torturous six-month culmination of years of unpopularity and girllessness. At night I lay in bed and cooly informed myself that I was gay and that I had better get used to it. The locker room became a place of torment, full of exposed male genitalia that seemed to taunt me with my failure to avoid glancing at them, for a fraction of a second that might have seemed accidental but was, I recognized, a bitter symptom of my perversion. Bursting with typical fourteen-year-old desire, I attempted to focus it in succession on the thought of every boy I knew, hoping to find some outlet for my horniness, even if it had to be perverted, secret, and doomed to disappointment. Without exception these attempts failed to produce anything but bemusement, if not actual disgust. This crisis of self-esteem had been abruptly dispelled by the advent of Julie Lefkowitz, followed swiftly by her sister Robin, and then Sharon Horne and little Rose Fagan and Jennifer Schaeffer; but I never forgot my period of profound sexual doubt. Once in a while I would meet an enthralling man who shook, dimly but perceptibley, the foundations laid by Julie Lefkowitz, and I would wonder, just for a moment, by what whim of fate I had decided that I was not a homosexual.

What’s wrong?” Before I could stop myself, I mumbled, “I’m used to resting my head on a warm tiger-fur pillow is what’s wrong.” He grunted, “Hmm, let me see what I can do.” Panicky, I squeaked out, “No, really. I’m okay. Don’t bother.” He ignored my protests, scooped up my mummy-wrapped self, and set me down again on his side of the fire. He turned me on my side so I faced the fire, lay down behind me, and slid an arm under my neck to cradle my head. “Is that more comfortable for you?” “Uh, yes and no. My head can definitely rest better in this position. Unfortunately, the rest of me is feeling the complete opposite of relaxed.” “What do you mean? Why can’t you relax?” “Because you’re too close for me to relax.” Bemused, he said, “Me being too close never bothered you when I was a tiger.” “The tiger you and the man you are two completely different things.” He put his arm around my waist and tugged me closer so we were spooned together. He sounded irritated and disappointed when he muttered, “It doesn’t feel different to me. Just close your eyes and imagine I’m still a tiger.” “It doesn’t exactly work like that.” I lay stiffly in his arms, nervous, especially when he began nuzzling the back of my neck. He said softly, “I like the smell of your hair.” His chest rumbled against my back, sending massaging vibrations through my body as he purred. “Ren, can you not do that right now?” He lifted his head. “You like it when I purr. It helps you sleep better.” “Yes, well, that only works with the tiger. How can you do that as a man anyway?” He paused, and said, “I don’t know. I just can,” then buried his face in my hair again and stroked my arm. “Uh, Ren? Explain to me how you plan to keep watch like this.” His lips grazed my neck. “I can hear and smell the Kappa, remember?” I twitched and shivered, with nerves, or anticipation, or something else, and he noticed. He stopped kissing my neck and lifted his head to peer at my face in the flickering firelight. His voice was solemn and calm. “Kells, I hope you know that I would never hurt you. You don’t need to be afraid of me.” Rolling toward him, I lifted my hand and touched his cheek. Looking into his blue eyes, I sighed. “I’m not afraid of you, Ren. I trust you with my life. I’ve just never been close to someone like this before.” He kissed me softly and smiled. “I haven’t either.” He shifted, lying down again. “Now, turn around and go to sleep. I’m warning you that I plan to sleep with you in my arms all night long. Who knows when, or if, I’ll ever get to do it again. So try to relax, and for heaven’s sake, don’t wiggle!” He pulled me back against his warm chest, and I closed my eyes. I ended up sleeping better than I had in weeks.

And Throgmorten’s arched ginger body came flying out of the creepers like a furry orange boomerang and landed slap in the basket. Christopher was deeply impressed – so impressed that he was a bit slow getting the lid down. Throgmorten came pouring over the edge of the basket again in an instant ginger stream. The Goddess seized him and crammed him back, whereupon a large number of flailing ginger legs – at least seven, to Christopher’s bemused eyes – clawed hold of her bracelets and her robe and her legs under the robe, and tore pieces off them. Christopher waited and aimed for an instant when one of Throgmorten’s heads – he seemed to have at least three, each with more fangs than seemed possible – came into range. Then he banged the basket lid on it, hard. Throgmorten, for the blink of an eye, became an ordinary dazed cat instead of a fighting devil.

All that you pray to reach at some point in the circuit of your life can be yours now - if you are generous to yourself. That is, if you leave all the past behind, entrust the future to Providence, and direct the present solely to reverence and justice. To reverence, so that you come to love your given lot: it was Nature that brought it to you and you to it. To justice, so that you are open and direct in word and action, speaking the truth, observing law and proportion in all you do. You should let nothing stand in your way - not the iniquity of others, not what anyone else thinks or says, still less any sensation of this poor flesh that has accreted round you: the afflicted part must see to its own concern. If, then, when you finally come close to your exit, you have left all else behind and value only your directing mind and the divinity within you, if your fear is not that you will cease to live, but that you never started a life in accordance with nature, then you will be a man worthy of the universe that gave you birth. You will no longer be a stranger in your own country, no longer meet the day's events as if bemused by the unexpected, no longer hang on this or that.

I did dream about you," she confessed. Derek smoothed his hand over her chestnut hair and brought her head closer to his. "What was I doing in your dreams?" he asked against her lips. "Chasing me," she admitted in a mortified whisper. A delicious grin curved his mouth. "Did I catch you?" Before she could reply his lips were on hers. His mouth twisted gently, his tongue hunting for an intimate taste of her. Closing her eyes, Sara made no protest as he took her wrists in his hands and twined her arms around his neck. He stretched one of his legs out to rest his foot on the seat. Caught in the lee of his powerful thighs, she had no choice but to let her body rest on the hard length of his. Leisurely he fondled and kissed her, wringing succulent delight from every nerve. As he began to slide his hand into her bodice, the thick wool fabric of her gown resisted his efforts. Foiled in his attempt to reach her breasts, he pushed a lock of hair aside and dragged his mouth over her throat. She stiffened, unable to hold back a whimper of pleasure. The carriage swayed and jolted suddenly, forcing their bodies closer with the impact. Derek felt himself approaching a flashpoint beyond which there was no return. With a tortured groan he pried Sara's voluptuous body away from his and held her away, while he struggled to emerge from a scarlet fog of desire. "Angel," he said hoarsely, nudging her toward the opposite seat. "You... you'd better go over there." Bemused, Sara nearly toppled to the floor from his gentle push. "But why?" Derek lowered his head and tunneled his fingers into his black hair. He started as he felt her hand brush the nape of his neck. "Don't touch me," he said, more roughly than he intended. Raising his head, he stared into Sara's perplexed face with a crooked smile. "Sorry," he muttered. "But if you don't move away, sweet, you're going to be lifting your heels for me right here.

Through The Mecca I saw that we were, in our own segregated body politic, cosmopolitans. The black diaspora was not just our own world but, in so many ways, the Western world itself. Now, the heirs of those Virginia planters could never directly acknowledge this legacy or reckon with its power. And so that beauty that Malcolm pledged us to protect, black beauty, was never celebrated in movies, in television, or in the textbooks I’d seen as a child. Everyone of any import, from Jesus to George Washington, was white. This was why your grandparents banned Tarzan and the Lone Ranger and toys with white faces from the house. They were rebelling against the history books that spoke of black people only as sentimental “firsts”—first black five-star general, first black congressman, first black mayor—always presented in the bemused manner of a category of Trivial Pursuit. Serious history was the West, and the West was white. This was all distilled for me in a quote I once read from the novelist Saul Bellow. I can’t remember where I read it, or when—only that I was already at Howard. “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?” Bellow quipped. Tolstoy was “white,” and so Tolstoy “mattered,” like everything else that was white “mattered.” And this view of things was connected to the fear that passed through the generations, to the sense of dispossession. We were black, beyond the visible spectrum, beyond civilization. Our history was inferior because we were inferior, which is to say our bodies were inferior. And our inferior bodies could not possibly be accorded the same respect as those that built the West. Would it not be better, then, if our bodies were civilized, improved, and put to some legitimate Christian use?

The rest of the family looked on with a bemusement that, in the case of Rafa’s mother, occasionally gave way to anger. His father, Sebastián, had his misgivings. His uncle Rafael wondered sometimes whether Toni was pushing his nephew too hard. His godfather, his mother’s brother, Juan, went so far as to say that what Toni was doing to the child amounted to “mental cruelty.” But Toni was hard on Rafa because he knew Rafa could take it and would eventually thrive. He would not have applied the same principles, he insists, with a weaker child. The sense that perhaps he might have been right was what stopped the more doubtful members of his family from outright rebellion. One who did not doubt Toni was Miguel Ángel, the professional football player. Another disciple of the endurance principle, in which he believes with almost as much reverence as Toni himself, Miguel Ángel says that success for the elite sportsman rests on the capacity “to suffer,” even to enjoy suffering. “It means learning to accept that if you have to train two hours, you train two hours; if you have to train five, you train five; if you have to repeat an exercise fifty thousand times, you do it. That’s what separates the champions from the merely talented. And it’s all directly related to the winners’ mentality; at the same time as you are demonstrating endurance, your head becomes stronger.

And he wanted us to call him Twilight. I was too tired and melancholy to truly feel the level of bafflement this request deserved. However, I did notice the initial exchange between my brother and Isaac/Twilight when they arrived with Tina’s momma. It went something like this: Jackson: “Tina. I didn’t know you were bringing Isaac. Good to see you, man.” Isaac/Twilight: “It’s Twilight.” Jackson (looking bemused): “No it ain’t, it’s not even noon yet.” Isaac/Twilight: “No. My name is Twilight.” Jackson (still looking bemused): “Say what?” Isaac/Twilight: “My name. Call me Twilight.” Jackson: “You mean like that My Little Pony character?” Tina: “Jackson! I didn’t know you were a My Little Pony fan.” Jackson (scowling then motioning to Isaac/Twilight): “Jessica was always watching it growing up, and I’m not a fan—not like Twilight Sparkle over here.” Isaac/Twilight: “The name is Twilight, not Twilight Sparkle.” Jackson (irritated): “If you want me to call you Twilight, then don’t be surprised if I slip up a few times and call you Pinky Pie.” A similar conversation ensued when Twilight was brought in to greet my dad, except my dad said, “That’s not a name, son. That’s a time of day.

Huffing from her exertion, her face flushed and her expression happy, she looked toward the door—and went still. Dare pushed past Trace and went to the wall unit to turn down the music. Into the silence, Chris asked, “Everyone having fun?” “God, Chris,” Dare said. “Trace is going to kill you if you don’t shut up.” “Really?” Priss struck a pose of annoyance, one hip cocked out, her arms crossed, her chin elevated. “And here Molly and Chris assured Matt that you weren’t the type to cause bodily harm.” “They must have been jesting.” Trace was well used to Chris’s warped sense of humor, so Chris wasn’t in any danger. But Matt . . . Trace zeroed in on him. In a tone more lethal for the quietness of it, he asked, “What are you doing?” “Harmless dancing?” Matt replied in a nervous question, unsure of the right answer. Priss suddenly stepped in front of Matt, which left Matt bemused. “Don’t act snarky with him, Trace. I asked him to dance with me. We had some time to kill before this crud comes out of my hair. And you were nowhere to be found.” Matt pulled her aside, earning a glare from Trace. He quickly held up his hands, palms out, to prove he wasn’t touching her. “Speaking of time, we can go wash your hair right now, if everyone will just excuse us.” “I need a minute with Priss first.” Trace eyed her militant stance, and had to fight a smile. She had a backbone of steel. He liked that. “Alone.

How was your journey?" he asked. "You don't have to make small talk with me," she said. "I don't like it, and I'm not very good at it." They paused at the shade of portico, beside a sweet-scented bower of roses. Casually Lord St. Vincent leaned a shoulder against a cream-painted column. A lazy smile curved his lips as he looked down at her. "Didn't Lady Berwick teach you?" "She tried. But I hate trying to make conversation about weather. Who cares what the temperature is? I want to talk about things like... like..." "Yes?" he prompted as she hesitated. "Darwin. Women's suffrage. Workhouses, war, why we're alive, if you believe in séances or spirits, if music has ever made you cry, or what vegetable you hate most..." Pandora shrugged and glanced up at him, expecting the familiar frozen expression of a man who was about to run for his life. Instead she found herself caught by his arrested stare, while the silence seemed to wrap around them. After a moment, Lord St. Vincent said softly, "Carrots." Bemused, Pandora tried to gather her wits. "That's the vegetable you hate most? Do you mean cooked ones?" "Any kind of carrots." "Out of all vegetables?" At his nod, she persisted, "What about carrot cake?" "No." But it's cake." A smile flickered across his lips. "Still carrots." Pandora wanted to argue the superiority of carrots over some truly atrocious vegetable, such as Brussels sprouts, but heir conversation was interrupted by a silky masculine voice. "Ah, there you are. I've been sent out to fetch you." Pandora shrank back as she saw a tall msn approach in a graceful stride. She knew instantly that he must be Lord Sy. Vincent's father- the resemblance was striking. His complexion was tanned and lightly time-weathered, with laugh-lines at the outer corners of his blue eyes. He had a full head of tawny-golden hair, handsomely silvered at the sides and temples. Having heard of his reputation as a former libertine, Pandora had expected an aging roué with coarse features and a leer... not this rather gorgeous specimen who wore his formidable presence like an elegant suit of clothes. "My son, what can you be thinking, keeping this enchanting creature out in the heat of midday?

We might call this existential paradox the condition of individuality finitude. Man has a symbolic identity that brings him sharply out of nature. He is a symbolic self, a creature with a name, a life history. He is a creator with a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and infinity, who can place himself imaginatively at a point in space and contemplate bemusedly his own planet. This immense expansion, this dexterity, this ethereality, this self-consciousness gives to man literally the status of a small god in nature, as the Renaissance thinkers knew. Yet, at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways-the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with. The lower animals are, of course, spared this painful contradiction, as they lack a symbolic identity and the self-consciousness that goes with it. They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If they pause at all, it is only a physical pause; inside they are anonymous, and even their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were, in a state of dumb being. This is what has made it so simple to shoot down whole herds of buffalo or elephants. The animals don't know that death is happening and continue grazing placidly while others drop alongside them. The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams and even the most sun-filled days-that's something else.

She had just given Liger his food when a tap sounded on the connecting door. Priss’s heart leaped into her throat. With excitement. Not dread, or annoyance, or even indifference. Pure, sizzling stimulation. Suddenly she was wide-awake. Tamping down her automatic smile, Priss leaned on the door. “Yeah?” “Open up.” Still fighting that twitching grin, Priss tried to sound disgruntled as she asked, “Why?” Something hit the door—maybe his head—and Trace said, “I heard you up and moving around, Priss. I have coffee ready, but if you don’t want any—” Being a true caffeine junkie, she jerked open the door. “Oh, bless you, man.” She took the cup straight out of Trace’s hand, drank deeply and sighed as the warmth penetrated the thick fog of novel sentiment. “Ahhhh. Nirvana. Thank you.” Only after the caffeine ingestion did she notice that Trace wore unsnapped jeans and nothing else. Her eyes flared wide and her jaw felt loose. Holy moly. “That was my cup,” Trace told her, bemused. But Priss could only stare at him. Despite the delicious coffee she’d just poured in it, her mouth went dry. When she continued to stare at him, at his chest and abdomen, her gaze tracking a silky line of brown hair that disappeared into his jeans, Trace crossed his arms. Her gaze jumped to his face and she found him watching her with equal fascination. A little lost as to the reason for that look, Priss asked with some belligerence, “What?” With a cryptic smile, Trace shook his head. “Never mind. Help yourself, and I’ll get another.” Oh, crap, she’d snatched away his cup! “Sorry.” He lifted a hand in dismissal and went to the coffee machine sitting atop the dresser. His jeans rode low on his hips. The sun had darkened his skin, creating a sharp contrast to his fair hair. Another drink was in order, and another sigh of bliss. Hoping to regain her wits, Priss said, “God, nothing in the world tastes better than that first drink of coffee.” Trace looked over his shoulder, his attention zeroing in on her mouth, then her chest and finally down to her bare legs. “Oh, I don’t know about that.

Layla!" Don bounded into her sight. The door behind her was still bolted. Where had he come from? The starshot tumbled from her hands and clattered to the floor. She snatched it up and slipped it back inside her dress. Bill was gone.But Don was-Daniel was right where she wanted him to be. "What are you doing here?" Her voice broke with the force of having to act surprised to see him. He didn't seem to hear it.He rushed toward her and wrapped her in his arms. "Saving your life." "How did you get in?" "Don't worry about that.No mortal man, no slab of stone can obstruct a love as true as ours. I will always find you." In his bare, bronzed arms, it was Luce's instinct to feel comforted. But she couldn't right then.Her heart felt ragged and cold.This easy happiness, these feelings of complete trust, every one of the lovely emotions Daniel had shown her how to feel in every life-they were torture to her now. "Fear not," he whispered. "Let me tell you, my love, what happens after this life.You come back,you rise again. Your rebirth is beautiful and real.You come back to me,again and again-" The light from the lamp flickered and made his violet eyes sparkle.His body was so warm against hers. "But I die again and again." "What?" He tilted his head.Even when his physique looked exotic to her, she knew his expressions so well-that bemused adoration when she expressed something he hadn't expected her to understand. "How do you-Never mind. It doesn't matter.What matters is that we will again be together.We will always find each other,always love each other, no matter what.I will never leave you." Luce fell to her knees on the stone steps. She hid her face in her hands. "I don't know how you can stand it.Over and over again,the same sadness-" He lifted her up. "The same ecstasy-" "The same fire that kills everything-" "The same passion that ignites it all again.You don't know.You can't remember how wonderful-" "I've seen it.I do know." How she had his attention. He didn't seem sure whether or not to believe her, but at least he was listening. "What if there's no hope of anything ever changing?" she asked. "There is only hope. One day, you will live through it.That absolute truth is the only thing that keeps me going. I will never give up on you. Even if it takes forever." He wiped away her tears with his thumb. "I'll love you with all my heart,in every life, through every death. I will not be bound by anything but my love for you." "But it's so hard.Isn't it hard for you? Haven't you ever thought,what if..." "One day,our love will conquer this dark cycle.That's worth everything to me.

There is nothing that the media could say to me that would justify the way they’ve acted. You can hound me. You can follow me, but in no way should you frighten those around me. To harm my wife and potentially harm my daughter—there is no excuse that could put any of you on the right side of morality. I met Rose when I was fifteen and she was fourteen, and through what she would call fate and I’d call circumstance of our hobbies, we’d cross paths dozens of times over the course of a decade. At seventeen, I attended the same national Model UN conference as Rose, and a delegate for Greenland locked us in a janitorial closet. He also stole our phones. He had to beat us dishonorably because he couldn’t beat us any other way. Rose said being locked in a confined space with me was the worst two hours of her life" They look bemused, brows furrowing. I can’t help but smile. “You’re confused because you don’t know whether she was exaggerating or whether she was being truthful. But the truth is that we are complex people with the ability to love to hate and to hate to love, and I wouldn’t trade her for any other person. So that day, stuck beside mops and dirtied towels, I could’ve picked the lock five minutes in and let her go. Instead, I purposefully spent two hours with a girl who wore passion like a dress made of diamonds and hair made of flames. Every day of my life, I am enamored. Every day of my life, I am bewitched. And every day of my life, I spend it with her.” My chest swells with more power, lifting me higher. “I’ve slept with many different kinds of people, and yes, the three that spoke to the press are among them. Rose is the only person I’ve ever loved, and through that love, we married and started a family. There is no other meaning behind this, and for you to conjure one is nothing less than a malicious attack against my marriage and my child. Anything else has no relevance. I can’t be what you need me to be. So you’ll have to accept this version or waste your time questioning something that has no answer. I know acceptance isn’t easy when you’re unsure of what you’re accepting, but all I can say is that you’re accepting me as me. I leave them with a quote from Sylvia Plath. “‘I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart.’” My lips pull higher, into a livelier smile. “‘I am, I am, I am.’” With this, I step away from the podium, and I exit to a cacophony of journalists shouting and asking me to clarify. Adapt to me. I’m satisfied, more than I even predicted. Some people will rewind this conference on their television, to listen closely and try to understand me. I don’t need their understanding, but my daughter will—and I hope the minds of her peers are wide open with vibrant hues of passion. I hope they all paint the world with color.

And then there are colors. The truth is that the brain knows far less about colors than one might suppose. It sees more or less clearly what the eyes show it, but when it comes to converting what it has seen into knowledge, it often suffers from one might call difficulties in orientation. Thanks to the unconscious confidence of a lifetime's experience, it unhesitatingly utters the names of the colors it calls elementary and complementary, but it immediately lost, perplexed and uncertain when it tries to formulate words that might serve as labels or explanatory markers for the things that verge on the ineffable, that border on the incommunicable, for the still nascent color which, with the eyes' other bemused approval and complicity, the hands and fingers are in the process of inventing and which will probably never even have its own name. Or perhaps it already does -- a name known only to the hands, because they mixed the paint as if they were dismantling the constituent parts of a note of music, because they became smeared with the color and kept the stain deep inside the dermis, and because only with the invisible knowledge of the fingers will one ever be able to paint the infinite fabric of dreams. Trusting in what the eyes believe they have seen, the brain-in-the-head states that, depending on conditions of light and shade, on the presence or absence of wind, on whether it is wet or dry, the beach is white or yellow or olden or gray or purple or any other shade in between, but then along comes the fingers and, with a gesture of gathering in, as if harvesting a wheat field, they pluck from the ground all the colors of the world. What seemed unique was plural, what is plural will become more so. It is equally true, though, that in the exultant flash of a single tone or shade, or in its musical modulation, all the other tones and shades are also present and alive, both the tones or shades of colors that have already been name, as well as those awaiting names, just as an apparently smooth, flat surface can both conceal and display the traces of everything ever experience in the history of the world. All archaeology of matter is an archaeology of humanity. What this clay hides and shows is the passage of a being through time and space, the marks left by fingers, the scratches left by fingernails, the ashes and the charred logs of burned-out bonfires, our bones and those of others, the endlessly bifurcating paths disappearing off into the distance and merging with each other. This grain on the surface is a memory, this depression the mark left by a recumbent body. The brain asked a question and made a request, the hand answered and acted.

Yeah, Jules!" Chelsea said in a voice thick with envy. "Go away, you're making the rest of us look bad." She winked at Jule's date wickedly. "I bet you just want to eat her up, don't ya?" He stared at Chelsea with bewilderment and glanced back at Jules for help. "Just ignore her," Jules explained over the noise from the sound system. "She doesn't get out much." Chelsea tried to look hurt by Jule's words, but she couldn't quite pull it off. "I'm just sayin', Jules, he'd better watch his back tonight, or I might be trying to take you away from him." Chelsea loved to play the potentially bi-curious card, even though everyone knew she liked boys far too much to go to bat for the other team. "Gross!" cried Claire, who wasn't pretending at all. Claire hated it when the conversation deviated too far off her straight and narrow path. The operative word being straight. "Don't worry, Claire-bear," Chelsea soothed condescendingly. "I'm not going to hook up with Jules." She wrapped her arm around Claire's waist and then said suggestively in he ear, "I'm much more likely to make a move on you." "Eww!" Claire shrieked, shoving Chelsea away. "Get away from me!" "Leave her alone, Chels," Jules interrupted. "Or you're gonna make her start her 'It's Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' speech. And sorry, Claire, but none of us really want to hear that." Jay pulled Violet close to him as they listened to the familiar, playful bantering. He slid his arm around her waist from behind, and let his lips gently tease her earlobe while no one was paying attention to the two of them. Violet wanted to turn around right there, in his arms, and forget this whole dance thing altogether. "Hey!" Chelsea's voice interrupted them, and Violet jumped a little, realizing that everyone was staring at them. "Did you hear me?" Violet leaned forward on her crutches and away from Jay, still feeling bemused by the close and intimate contact. "What?" she asked, trying to focus on what had been said. "I said, 'I gotta pee.' Let's go to the bathroom," Chelsea repeated as if Violet were some sort of imbecile, incapable of understanding normal human speech. "Keep it up, Chels, and none of us is gonna want to hook up with you tonight," Violet promised jokingly. Chelsea grinned at Violet. "I like the way you think, Violet Ambrose. Maybe you'll be the lucky girl I choose.' And then she turned to Jay. "Don't worry, I've got her from here," Chelsea announced. Jules and Claire followed. Violet laughed and glanced back at him. "I'll only be a few." Jay gave her a skeptical look that no one else would have even noticed, as he assessed the three girls who would be escorting Violet. And then he finally nodded. "Okay, I'm gonna show these guys my car." He was beaming again. "I'll be right outside, but I won't be long." Violet did her best to keep up with the trio ahead of her, but it was hard on one high heel and two crutches. Finally she yelled at them exasperatedly, "If you guys don't wait, I'm not going!" They all three stopped and turned around. Chelsea tapped her lovely silver shoe impatiently. "Hurry up, Violet, or I swear I'll take you off my list.