Bert Quotes

One time, Bert and I were making out for so long it wasn't even funny..But then it was funny.

Can I ask you a question? You know with vampires and werewolves and goblins and things, is there any mythological creature that doesn't actually exist?" "Of course," he replied. "The unicorn and the leprechaun would be would be the two main ones. The Loch Ness Monster isn't real, either, that's just someone called Bert.

No guts, no glory. - Bert

And I know someone who’s perfect for her. He works in my lab. He’s smart. He’s funny. His name is Bert.” Bert? Is she fucking kidding me? What kind of sick son of a bitch names his kid Bert in this day and age? That’s just cruel. “He’ll show Kate a good time. I plan on setting them up this weekend.” And I plan on handcuffing myself to Kate’s ankle and eating the key. Let’s see what kind of good time Bert can show Kate when she’s dragging me around behind her like a Siamese twin.

Every gay man should be familiar with Bert and Ernie." "And why is that?" Reece rolled his eyes, smiling. "Everyone knows that they're lovers." Ben stopped what he was doing and looked at the man incredulously. "Okay, Reece, seriously, can you hear yourself?" "They are!" Reece said. "They live together, share a bedroom; I'm telling you the sexual tension is very palpable." Ben raised an eyebrow and said nothing. Reece cleared his throat. "You're going to break up with me now, aren't you?

I’ve got my Sig and I’m in a car I swiped,” Bert raged on.” I thought of that much ahead. I don’t miss! It’s like candy, Sammy. His car is candy red. Like Valentine’s Day for me!” I ain’t gonna let a perfect moment pass, Sammy. I’m my own man now in this stuff. I done enough already to earn the respect I don’t get. I’m not stupid, so go to bed.

You're a very odd man," said Bert. "I get that more often than you'd think," replied Charles.

He was looking at me, jsut as I'd thought he would be, but like Bert's, his light was not what I expected. No pity, no sadness: nothing had changed. I realized all the times I'd felt people stare at me, their faces had been pictures, abstracts. None of them were mirrors, able to reflect back the expression I thought one I wore, the feelings only I felt.

Don't go confusing stupidity with guts." -Bert

Brendan suddenly 'came out' to me. In my experience, the hardest thing about having someone 'come out' to you is the 'pretending to be surprised' part. You want him to feel like what he’s telling you is Big. It’s like, if somebody tells you they’re pregnant, you don’t say, 'I did notice you’ve been eating like a hog lately.' Your gay friend has obviously made a big decision to say the words out loud. You don’t want him to realize that everybody’s known this since he was ten and he wanted to be Bert Lahr for Halloween. Not the Cowardly Lion, but Bert Lahr. 'Oh, my gosh, no waaaay?' You stall, trying to think of something more substantial to say. 'Is everyone, like, freaking out? What a… wow.

Someday I will stop being young and wanting stupid tattoos. There are 7 people in my house. We each have different genders. I cut my hair over the bathroom sink and everything I own has a hole in it. There is a banner in our living room that says “Love Cats Hate Capitalism.” We sit around the kitchen table and argue about the compost pile and Karl Marx and the necessity of violence when The Rev comes. Whatever the fuck The Rev means. Every time my best friend laughs I want to grab him by the shoulders and shout “Grow old with me and never kiss me on the mouth!” I want us to spend the next 80 years together eating Doritos and riding bikes. I want to be Oscar the Grouch. I want him and his girlfriend to be Bert and Ernie. I want us to live on Sesame Street and I will park my trash can on their front stoop and we will be friends every day. If I ever seem grouchy it’s just because I am a little afraid of all that fun. There is a river running through this city I know as well as my own name. It’s the first place I’ve ever called home. I don’t think its poetry to say I’m in love with the water. I don’t think it’s poetry to say I’m in love with the train tracks. I don’t think it’s blasphemy to say I see God in the skyline. There is always cold beer asking to be slurped on back porches. There are always crushed packs of Marlboro’s in my back pockets. I have been wearing the same patched-up shorts for 10 days. Someday I will stop being young and wanting stupid tattoos.

You know what happens when someone dies?' Delia said suddenly, startling me a bit. I kept putting together my sandwich, though, not answering: I knew there was more. 'It's like, everything and everyone refracts, each person having a different reaction'...'When Wish died, it just knocked the wind out of me. Truly. It's like that stupid thing bert and Wes do, the leaping out thing, trying to scare each other: it was the biggest gotcha in the world.' She looked down at the sandwiches. 'I'd just assumed she'd be okay. It had never occurd to me she might actually just be... gone. You know?'...'And then she was,' Delia said, her hand on the bread bag. 'Gone. Gotcha. And suddenly I had these two boys to take care of, plus a newborn of my own. It was just this huge loss, this huge gap, you know'...'Some people... they can just move on, you know, mourn and cry and be done with it. Or at least seem to be. But for me... I don't know. I didn't want to fix it, to forget. It wasn't something that was broken. It's just ... something that happened. And like that hole, I'm just finding ways, every day, of working around it. Respecting and remebering and getting on at the same time.' I envied Delia. At least she knew what she was up against. Maybe that's what you got when you stood over your grief, facing it finally. A sense of its depths, its area, the distance across, and the way over or around it, whichever you chose in the end.

I turned down Halloween parties every year, where people wanted zombies raised at the stroke of midnight or some such nonsense. The scarier my reputation got, the more people wanted me to come be scary for them. I'd told Bert I could always go and threaten to shoot all the partygoers, that'd be scary. Bert had not been amused. But he had stopped asking me to do parties.

And I think she works so much becasue she can be in control of it, you know?' I said. She nodded. 'It makes her feel, I don't know, safe.' I can understand that,' Delia said softly. 'Losing someone can make you feel very out of control. Totally so.' I know,' I said. 'But it's not really fair. Like, after my dad died, I wanted to be okay for her. So I was. Even when I had to fake it. But now, when I really do feel okay, she's not happy with me. Because I'm not perfect anymore.' Grieving doesn't make you imperfect,' Delia said quietly, as Bert came back out to the van, adjusting one of the carts inside. 'It makes you human. We all deal with things differently.

How far is too far? When you love a band so much that its songs fill the empty spaces inside your head and heart, is that too far?

When I lived in South Africa, someone told me what the longest road in Africa is. It's not the road from Cairo to Capetown, it's the way from your head to your heart, and from there to the here and now.

I didn't want to understand. Bert had been thrilled that the police wanted to put me on retainer. He told me I would gain valuable experience working with the police. All I had gained so far was a wider variety of nightmares.

The revolution in cancer research can be summed up in a single sentence: cancer is, in essence, a genetic disease. —Bert Vogelstein

Incoming Text: Bert will be so disappointed. He had down that Canon would eat you alive by last night. Note to self: Never bet against Bert.

In the history of show business, there probably never was a straighter straight man than banana-yellow Bert, the paper clip collector and pigeon fancier.

She swallowed, watching as the servants and Harry and Bert trooped out of the room. Lad, apparently not the brightest dog in the world, sat down next to Mickey O’Connor and leaned against his leg. Mr. O’Connor looked at the dog, looked at the damp spot growing on his breeches where the dog was leaning, and sighed. “I find me life is not as quiet as it used to be afore ye came to me palace, Mrs. Hollingbrook.” Silence lifted her chin. “You’re a pirate, Mr. O’Connor. I cannot believe your life was ever very quiet.” He gave her an ironic look. “Aye, amazin’, isn’t it? Yet since yer arrival me servants no longer obey me and I return home to find me kitchen flooded.” He crossed to a cupboard and took down a china teapot, a tin of tea, and a teacup. “And me dog smells like a whorehouse.” Silence glanced guiltily at Lad. “The only soap we could find was rose scented.

Donneven," I said, in my best Monica imitation, and he laughed. "We're not talking about me." "We could be," he said, as I watched Bert take note of a group of what looked like ninth graders who had just come into the living room. "I'm not gorgeous," I said. "Sure you are." I just shook my head, knowing this was him evading the question. "You," I said, "have this whole tall, dark stranger thing going on. Not to mention the tortured artist bit." "Bit?" "You know what I mean." He shook his head, clearly discounting this description. "And you," he said, "have that whole blonde, cool and collected, perfect smart girl thing going on." "You're the boy all the girls want to rebel with," I said. "You," he replied, "are the unattainable girl in homeroom who never gives a guy the time of day.

Bear no malice for the ones who leave you.

I took the money and passed the box across the counter and said politely, ‘Your choice of colour really lacks style.’ I smiled and Beth laughed and the guy asked to see my manager. I got Bert and he leant over the box and looked at the paint and said, ‘Ed was being polite. Your choice of colour is shit.

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

You drop that load too when you find yourself an excuse. Then, afterward, all you got to do is learn to feel sorry for yourself—and lots of people learn to get their kicks that way. It’s one of the best indoor sports, feeling sorry.” Bert’s face broke into an active grin. “A sport enjoyed by all. Especially the born losers.

Art actually happens somewhere in the space between clarity and ambiguity, concept and intuition, thought and feeling.

It isn't the smallness of this place that bothers me. It's the grey that's worked its way into the walls. It's the stains on the carpet from some other life that came and left before ours. Bert always said he'd give me a good deal on paint but some places take burning down and rebuilding to make them shiny." -Ed, page 10

Whatever happened to chivalry? Does it only exist in 80's movies? I want John Cusack holding a boombox outside my window. I wanna ride off on a lawnmower with Patrick Dempsey. I want Jake from Sixteen Candles waiting outside the church for me. I want Judd Nelson thrusting his fist into the air because he knows he got me. Just once I want my life to be like an 80's movie, preferably one with a really awesome musical number for no apparent reason. But no, no, John Hughes did not direct my life.

We enter that strange period between Christmas and New Year, when time seems to muddle, and we find ourselves asking again and again, What day is it? What date? I always mean to work on these days, or at least to write, but this year, like every other, I find myself unable to gather up the necessary intent. I used to think that these were wasted days, but I now realise that’s the point. I am doing nothing very much, not even actively being on holiday. I clear out my cupboards, ready for another year’s onslaught of cooking and eating. I take Bert out to play with friends. I go for cold walks that make my ears ache. I am not being lazy. I’m not slacking. I’m just letting my attention shift for a while, away from the direct ambitions of the rest of my year. It’s like revving my engines.

But feel what happens in the soul when you imagine children saying to their parents, "What you gave me, first of all, wasn't the right thing, and secondly, it wasn't enough. You still owe me." What do children have from their parents when they feel that way? Nothing. And what do the parents have from their children? Also nothing. Such children cannot separate from their parents. Their accusations and demands tie them to their parents so that, although they are bound to their parents, the children have no parents. They then feel empty, needy and weak. This is the second Order of Love, that children take what their parents give in addition to life as it comes.

Nothing is funny about war. But one must find reasons to laugh anyways, especially when nothing is funny. Sometimes joy is the only defense you have, and your only weapon. Remember that" -Sister Bert

I believe that most of us, students and artists alike, ought to concern ourselves less with what we think is the right way to draw and more with letting our feelings flow through our hand. In this way, we stretch our dynamic nature. Our larger goal should be to draw in a way that expresses our vision.

He liked to talk about the criminals he had put away, and how a person never knew, and how he had to protect his family, and how he wasn’t going to let the other guy make the first move, but really it was just that Bert liked guns. The

That's a shame," said Bert, "to run out of crackers before you've run out of emergency.

Bert gave a long low whistle, like a bullet that could bend around corners.

In the beginning, I want to say something about human greatness. Some time ago, I was reading texts of Kungtse. When I read these texts, I understood something about human greatness. What I understood from his writings was: What is greatest in human beings is what makes them equal to everybody else. Everything else that deviates higher or lower from what is common to all human beings makes us less. If we know this, we can develop a deep respect for every human being.

Led Zeppelin created their music from a diet of Bert Jansch, Memphis Minnie, John Fahey, Billy Fury, Phil Spector, Richard 'Rabbit' Brown, Moby Grape, Manitas De Plata and Om Kalsoum. Those who came afterwards were content with a diet of Led Zeppelin, which is not the same thing at all.

You somehow didn't expect cleverness from a girl this beautiful; beautiful girls did not, as a rule, have to be clever. So far as Bert could tell, all beautiful girls had to do was wake up in the morning.

As I said, I don’t expect you to understand—” “And I don’t,” he cut in. “Ye ask how I can live a life that I know will end with the hangman’s noose. Well, at least I am alive. Ye might as well have climbed inside yer husband’s coffin and let yerself be buried with his corpse.” Her hand flashed out before she’d thought about it, the smack against his cheek loud in the little courtyard. Silence had her eyes locked with Michael’s, her chest rising and falling swiftly, but she was aware that Bert and Harry had looked up. Even Mary and Lad had paused in their play. Without taking his gaze from hers, Michael reached out and grasped her hand. He raised her hand to his lips and softly kissed the center of her palm. He looked at her, her hand still at his lips. “Don’t take to yer grave afore yer time, Silence, m’love.

And winning; that can be heavy on your back, too, like a monkey. You drop that load too when you find yourself an excuse." ... And Bert seemed to relax, knowing he had scored, had pushed his way through Eddie’s consciousness and through his defenses, although Eddie still only partly understood all of what Bert had said, and was already prepared to rationalize the truth out of what he did understand. But Bert had suddenly quit pushing, and seemed now to be merely relaxing with his drink. "That’s your problem," he said.

Sometimes... Come on, how often exactly, Bert? Can you recall four, five, more such occasions? Or would no human heart have survived two or three? Sometimes (I have nothing to say in reply to your question), while Lolita would be haphazardly preparing her homework, sucking a pencil, lolling sideways in an easy chair with both legs over its arm, I would shed all my pedagogic restraint, dismiss all our quarrels, forget all my masculine pride - and literally crawl on my knees to your chair, my Lolita! You would give me one look - a gray furry question mark of a look: "Oh no, not again" (incredulity, exasperation); for you never deigned to believe that I could, without any specific designs, ever crave to bury my face in your plaid skirt, my darling! The fragility of those bare arms of yours - how I longed to enfold them, all your four limpid lovely limbs, a folded colt, and take your head between my unworthy hands, and pull the temple-skin back on both sides, and kiss your chinesed eyes, and - "Please, leave me alone, will you," you would say, "for Christ's sake leave me alone." And I would get up from the floor while you looked on, your face deliberately twitching in imitation of my tic nerveux. But never mind, never mind, I am only a brute, never mind, let us go on with my miserable story.

Friends and enemies were the same people, just time and context told you who was who at any given moment.

The foreign policy aim of ants can be summed up as follows: restless aggression, territorial conquest, and genocidal annihilation of neighboring colonies whenever possible. If ants had nuclear weapons, they would probably end the world in a week.

Las madres son tan humanas como cualquiera, con cualidades y defectos, con valores y deficiencias. Si soy capaz de verla como es y desde el corazón decir: “Es mi madre. Como es, es mi madre”, entonces soy capaz de tomar la vida como viene sin la ilusión de cambiarla.

Okay, before we do this, do you all know which Loculi you’re carrying?” Aliyah asked. I adjusted my pack and stood. “I have Language and Flight.” “Invisibility and Healing,” Cass said. “Bert and Ernie,” Marco said. Aliyah glared at him. “Okay. Underwater Breathing and Teleportation,” Marco said. “Then let’s roll,” I said. Aliyah

Jim Henson's body was gone, and yet that powerful presence-that undefinable 'something' that compelled men to seek his appreciation and approval, and that women found somehow irresistible-would always remain. Anyone who had ever smiled as Ernie tried to play a rhyming game with Bert, or laughed as Kermit had chased Fozzie off the stage, arms flailing, had felt it. Anyone who had ever wished they could explore a Fraggle hole, save the world with a crystal shard, or dance with a charismatic goblin king had been touched by it.

It's nice, Tom. I never milked in a barn so nice.

Um grande obstáculo em um relacionamento de um casal é a fantasia da perfeição, a exigência de que o outro deve ser perfeito ou de que eu mesmo devo ser perfeito.

I don't think we can ever say who we are in any fixed sense. Our own curiosity and sense of identification with others drive us constantly toward creative change.

Succesul în afaceri se bazează pe succesul profund în a primi viata și a fi în acord cu ea.

None of us need ever fear that we don't have an active imagination, because imagination is mostly a willingness to entertain a strange idea now and then.

Quit crabbing,” Bert said mildly. “We’re here now, and we’ve got to like it.

Bert knows it would take more than a little row to get between us. Because friends like us, like Bert and me, we'll always be together.

Bert was short and stout. Cec was tall and lanky. Between them, there was nothing that they could not reach.

William the Conqueror was a thousand years ago, Bert. Surely we might strive to be somewhat more civilized than the maniacal grandson of a Viking raider.

Warren Bennis and Bert Nanus say that “trust is the emotional glue that binds followers and leaders together.

Er wusste nicht, wie es Bert ging, aber er konnte neuerdings Blut im Wind riechen. Möglicherweise würde etwas davon ihr eigenes sein.

The Albion was a spacious pub, built in the days when a public house with any pretensions to gentility had to have fourteen foot ceilings, brass taps and a polished wooden bar you skate down. ... Bert, in his reflective moments, considered that if heaven didn't have a well-appointed pub where a man could sit down over a beer for a yarn with the other angels, then he didn't want to go there.

Will Morven be a good queen? Um, said Anya, flustered. She's the oldest... Bert's eyes opened wider, questioningly. And that makes her fit to rule? Tell me, in your reading, do you study history?

To me she said, "It's this stupid gotcha thing, they've been doing it for weeks now. Leaping out at each other and us, scaring the hell out of everyone." "It's a game of wits," Bert said to me. "Half-wits," Kristy added.

Something entirely unexpected happened to Bert. Yesterday he had seen her as a child grown up, today it was different. There was a pain in his chest and a hammering, the skin on his temples felt oddly tight, his hand trembled so that he almost dropped the bar he was holding. He leaned back against the wheel, staring at her but unable to speak. A long time seemed to pass before he could say anything, and the words sounded clumsy in his own ears. What

His dad had always told him that the red-faced were blusterers, not to be taken seriously. 'But if you see a bloke who's pale and shaking, son,' Bert's father had instructed, 'then run like blazes, because he might flamin' kill you.

I’d like you to meet Bert and Ernie.” She lifted a brow at him and he shrugged. “I didn’t name them. They’re retired military working dogs. I adopted them about three years ago.” He paused. “I wanted Mr. Snuffleupagus too, but one of my buddies took him.

Veda got victory out of these struggles, she a trembling, ignoble defeat. It always came back to the same thing. She was afraid of Veda, of her snobbery, her contempt, her unbreakable spirit. And she was afraid of something that seemed always lurking under Veda’s bland, phony toniness: a cold, cruel, coarse desire to torture her mother, to humiliate her, above everything else, to hurt her. Mildred apparently yearned for warm affection from this child, such as Bert apparently commanded. But all she ever got was a stagy, affected counterfeit.

I said, somewhat confused, “What’s the problem?” [Kristy] rolled her eyes. Beside her, Monica said, “Donneven.” “Kristy.” Delia shook her head. “This isn’t the time or the place, okay?” “The time or the place for what?” Caroline asked. “There is never,” Kristy said adamantly, “a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.” “Throbbing?” my mother said, leaning forward and looking at me. “Who’s throbbing?” “Macy and Wes,” Kristy told her. “We are not,” I said indignantly. “Kristy,” Delia said helplessly. “Please God I’m begging you, not now.” “Wait a second, wait a second.” Caroline held her hands up. “Kristy. Explain.” “Yes, Kristy,” my mother said, but she was looking at me. Not really mad as much as confused. Join the club, I thought. “Explain.” Bert said, “This ought to be good.” Kristy ignored him, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. “Wes wants to be with Macy. And Macy, whether she’ll admit it or not, wants to be with Wes. And yet they’re not together, which is not only unjust, but really, when you think about it, tragical.” “That’s not a word,” Bert pointed out. “It is now,” she said. “How else can you explain a situation where Wes, a truly extraordinary boy, would be sent packing in favor of some brainiac loser…” “Why,” I said, feeling embarrassed, “do we have to keep talking about this?” “Because it’s tragical!” Kristy said….”I’ll tell you what it is. It’s wrong. You should be with Wes, Macy. The whole time you guys were hanging out, talking about how you were both with other people, it was so obvious to everyone. It was even obvious to Wes. You were the only one who couldn’t see it, just like you can’t see it now.” “Mmm-hmm,” Monica said aloud.

Fix’s and Bert’s mutual theory that a consistent practice over so many years would result in a perfect score had not been correct. A perfect score on the LSAT is 180. Caroline Keating came in at 177. She didn’t know where she had lost those three points but she never forgave herself for them.

Abortion too, is a form of human sacrifice (depopulation) on a huge scale, just as in the distant past babies were sacrificed to the god Moloch. Bert Hellinger warns us in the extreme about the consequences of abortion on a family and the consequences on the other living children of that family.

She had loved Bert Cousins, and then grown used to him, then was disappointed in him, and then later, after he left her with four small children, she had hated him with the full force of her life. But in the airport when she was twenty-two, her love for him had precluded all thoughts of ever not loving him.

There are enough ideas, images, symbols, and experiences in your head already to work with for a lifetime. It's a little like having a car with an unpredictable battery, though. Sometimes you get in and it starts right up. Other times, especially if it has been sitting idle for awhile, you turn the key and nothing happens.

We are aware of conscience in the same way that a horse has a sense of its rider, or a helmsman on a ship takes his bearings from the stars. Alas! The horse has many different riders, and many different helmsmen look toward many stars. The question is who guides the rider and in which direction does a captain steer his ship.

Religion is based on activity and performance outside of hearing and obeying. Liberty comes when you hear and obey what I say. Doing your own will genders bondage.   The only kind of religion that is pure is the kind written in James 1:27 which is to take care of widows and orphans and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

It is important to remember that we all have magic inside us. —J. K. Rowling

after-meal sleepiness.

Optimists are able to view rejection as an opportunity to adjust and improve, embracing the chance to learn, grow, and try again.

Certainty is for the fallen.

When it comes down to who should die: It’s always them!

History is written in grand gestures.

Je me suis encore laissé surprendre. Les lilas, ce matin, ont fleuri derrière mon dos.

Whoever said that thing about how no man is an island probably doesn't live on one.

Мужчина, который находится в области влияния своего отца, привлекателен для женщин. Того же, кто находится в области влияния матери, они просто жалеют.

У детей все в порядке психологически, когда отец любит и уважает жену в детях и когда мать любит и уважает мужа в них. Только тогда дети чувствуют себя цельными личностями.

Только когда уважение предшествует любви, между людьми могут складываться хорошие отношения. Иначе проблемы не решаются, и отношения остаются пустыми.

Wag and the world wags with you.

Dear Pen Pal, I know it’s been a few years since I last wrote you. I hope you’re still there. I’m not sure you ever were. I never got any letters back from you when I was a kid. But in a way it was always therapeutic. Everyone else judges everything I say. And here you are: some anonymous person who never says “boo.” Maybe you just read my letters and laughed or maybe you didn’t read my letters or maybe you don’t even exist. It was pretty frustrating when I was young, but now I’m glad that you won’t respond. Just listen. That’s what I want. My dog died. I don’t know if you remember, but I had a beagle. He was a good dog. My best friend. I’d had him as far back as I could remember, but one day last month he didn’t come bounding out of his red doghouse like usual. I called his name. But no response. I knelt down and called out his name. Still nothing. I looked in his doghouse. There was blood everywhere. Cowering in the corner was my dog. His eyes were wild and there was an excessive amount of saliva coming out of his mouth. He was unrecognizable. Both frightened and frightening at the same time. The blood belonged to a little yellow bird that had always been around. My dog and the bird used to play together. In a strange way, it was almost like they were best friends. I know that sounds stupid, but… Anyway, the bird had been mangled. Ripped apart. By my dog. When he saw that I could see what he’d done, his face changed to sadness and he let out a sound that felt like the word ‘help.’ I reached my hand into his doghouse. I know it was a dumb thing to do, but he looked like he needed me. His jaws snapped. I jerked my hand away before he could bite me. My parents called a center and they came and took him away. Later that day, they put him to sleep. They gave me his corpse in a cardboard box. When my dog died, that was when the rain cloud came back and everything went to hell…

On September 22, 1958, the Edmund Fitzgerald, skippered by Captain Bert Lambert, left Rouge River bound for Silver Bay, Minnesota, where it was scheduled to pick up a load of taconite pellets to be delivered to Toledo. Not surprisingly, that very first load set a tonnage record when the Fitz passed through the Soo Locks a few days later. The ship's life on the Great Lakes had begun.

Bert, a slow moving tropical storm that had spent the past few days wandering around the Bahamas like a dog looking to do its business. Circle once, circle twice, and squat. Now the storm had settled over Cockroach Cay, prompting Sonny to conclude that renting a sailboat during hurricane season, while exciting and dangerous, was too much fun for him. He was glad they were still at the dock.

Acquire the habit of speaking to God as if you were alone with God. Speak with familiarity and confidence as to your dearest and most loving friend. Speak of your life, your plans, your troubles, your joys, your fears. In return, God will speak to you— not that you will hear audible words in your ears, but words that you will clearly understand in your heart.”1 —St. Alphonsus de’Liguori (1696–1797)

- He sido un necio –dijo con una voz tan temblorosa como sus manos. - Desde luego que sí –dijo Cuthbert-, ya lo creo. –Cayó de rodillas sobre el polvo, de cara a Roland-. Ahora ya puedes empezar a pegarme si quieres. Todas las veces y con la fuerza que te dé la gana. No te devolveré los golpes. He hecho todo lo que he podido para despertar tu sentido de la responsabilidad. Si sigues durmiendo, que así sea. En cualquiera de los dos casos, te quiero. Bert apoyó las manos en los hombros de Roland y besó brevemente la mejilla de su amigo. Roland se echó a llorar. En parte eran lágrimas de gratitud. Pero sobre todo una mezcla de rabia y desconcierto; había incluso una pequeña y oscura parte de sí mismo que odiaba a Cuthbert y siempre lo odiaría. Aquella parte odiaba a Cuthbert más por el beso que por el puñetazo en la mandíbula; más por el perdón que por el despertar.

All the various time travel devices used by Verne and Bert were stored in the repository, Poe explained, including the ones that had never quite worked as they were meant to. There was one that resembled a blue police box from London—“Stolen by a doctor with delusions of grandeur,” said Poe—one that was simply a large, transparent sphere—“Created by a scientist with green skin and too much ego,” said Verne—and one that was rather ordinary by comparison. “This one looks like an automobile,” John said admiringly, “with wings.” “The doors open that way for a reason,” Verne explained, “we just never figured out what it was. The inventor of this particular model tried integrating his designs into a car, an airplane, and even a steam engine train. He was running a crackpot laboratory in the Arizona desert, and he never realized that it was not his inventions themselves, but his proximity to some sort of temporal fluctuation in the local topography, that allowed them to work.” “What happened to him?” asked Jack. “He’d get the machines up to one hundred and six miles per hour,” said Bert, “and then he’d run out of fuel and promptly get arrested by whatever constabulary had been chasing him. The sad part was that Jules figured out if he’d just gone two miles an hour faster, he’d likely have been successful in his attempt.

It is impossible now to estimate how much of the intellectual and physical energy of the world was wasted in military preparation and equipment, but it was an enormous proportion. Great Britain spent upon army and navy money and capacity, that directed into the channels of physical culture and education would have made the British the aristocracy of the world. Her rulers could have kept the whole population learning and exercising up to the age of eighteen and made a broad-chested and intelligent man of every Bert Smallways in the islands, had they given the resources they spent in war material to the making of men. Instead of which they waggled flags at him until he was fourteen, incited him to cheer, and then turned him out of school to begin that career of private enterprise we have compactly recorded. France achieved similar imbecilities; Germany was, if possible worse; Russia under the waste and stresses of militarism festered towards bankruptcy and decay. All Europe was producing big guns and countless swarms of little Smallways.

That fear—the knowledge that a single false step while wandering inside the maze of the white man’s reality could blast you back home with the speed of a circus artist being shot out of a cannon—is the kryptonite that has lain under the bed of every great black artist from 1920s radio star Bert Williams to Miles Davis to Jay Z. If you can’t find a little lead-lined room where you can flee that panic and avoid its poisonous rays, it will control your life. That’s why Miles Davis and James Brown, who had similar reputations for being cantankerous and outrageous, seem so much alike. Each admired the other from a distance.

[Women] are not even now as concerned about the health of their fame as men are, and, speaking generally, will pass a tombstone or a signpost without feeling an irresistible desire to cut their names on it, as Alf, Bert, or Chas must do in obedience to their instinct, which murmurs if it sees a fine woman go by, or even a dog, Ce chien est à moi. And, of course, it may be a dog, I thought, remembering Parliament square, the Sieges Allee and other avenues; it may be a piece of land or a man with curly black hair. It is one of the great advantages of being a woman that one can pass even a very fine negress without wishing to make an Englishwoman of her.

El que se cree víctima se estanca, no puede avanzar y ve victimarios por doquier. Lo peor que le puede pasar a alguien es creerse víctima con derechos, porque fácilmente se convierte en perpetrador. Los salvadores, los que le quieren solucionar todo a todos son perpetradores disfrazados porque minimizan las capacidades y habilidades de sus víctimas, las inutilizan y destruyen su autoestima.

Calmly We Walk Through This April Day Calmly we walk through this April's day, Metropolitan poetry here and there, In the park sit pauper and rentier, The screaming children, the motor-car Fugitive about us, running away, Between the worker and the millionaire Number provides all distances, It is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now, Many great dears are taken away, What will become of you and me (This is the school in which we learn...) Besides the photo and the memory? (...that time is the fire in which we burn.) (This is the school in which we learn...) What is the self amid this blaze? What am I now that I was then Which I shall suffer and act again, The theodicy I wrote in my high school days Restored all life from infancy, The children shouting are bright as they run (This is the school in which they learn . . .) Ravished entirely in their passing play! (...that time is the fire in which they burn.) Avid its rush, that reeling blaze! Where is my father and Eleanor? Not where are they now, dead seven years, But what they were then? No more? No more? From Nineteen-Fourteen to the present day, Bert Spira and Rhoda consume, consume Not where they are now (where are they now?) But what they were then, both beautiful; Each minute bursts in the burning room, The great globe reels in the solar fire, Spinning the trivial and unique away. (How all things flash! How all things flare!) What am I now that I was then? May memory restore again and again The smallest color of the smallest day: Time is the school in which we learn, Time is the fire in which we burn.

America at a turning point! But in 1813 the United States and Nathan Jeffries may lose everything; blockaded, imprisoned, raided, massacred, Americans are feeling the wrath of British forces on land and sea. Nathan Jeffries, son of Captain William Jeffries and Quaker wife Amy, is also haunted by betrayal and a relentless, deadly enemy seeking to destroy him. Facing his own worst fears, Nathan is hunter and hunted in a violent world at war.

Day after day we were on the list, for a trip to Berlin or Nancy or Munich or somewhere. We weren’t meeting any new people, or learning anything constructive, or deepening our understanding or cementing any friendships. We just went up there and over, to knock hell out of some city with the vague hope that some day that city will be rebuilt for some people we can get along with. Offhand it always seemed like a sort of sick way of doing things, and when the day turns up that we can start using other methods, I’m going to be one of the gladder people in the world.

La felicidad da miedo HELLINGER Te diré algo de la felicidad: la felicidad se experimenta como peligrosa, porque nos convierte en solitarios. Lo mismo se aplica a la solución: se experimenta como peligrosa porque nos convierte en solitarios. Con los problemas y con la desdicha, sin embargo, nos encontramos acompañados. Los problemas y la desdicha van unidos a una sensación de inocencia y de felicidad. La solución y la felicidad, en cambio, van unidas a una sensación de traición y de culpa. Por eso, la solución únicamente es posible cuando la persona afronta esta culpa. Si bien no se trata de una culpa razonable, se experimenta como tal. Por este motivo, el paso del problema a la solución es tan difícil. Significa que tendrías que dar un cambio total si fuera cierto lo que te he dicho, y si tú lo aceptaras así.

Vim?” “Sweetheart?” The whispered endearment spoken with sleepy sensuality had Sophie’s insides fluttering. Was this what married people did? Cuddled and talked in shadowed rooms, gave each other bodily warmth as they exchanged confidences? “What troubles you about going home?” He was quiet for a long moment, his breath fanning across her neck. Sophie felt him considering his words, weighing what to tell her, if anything. “I’m not sure exactly what’s amiss, and that’s part of the problem, but my associations with the place are not at all pleasant, either.” Was that…? His lips? The glancing caress to her nape made Sophie shiver despite the cocoon of blankets. “What do you think is wrong there?” Another kiss, more definite this time. “My aunt and uncle are quite elderly, though Uncle Bert and Aunt Essie seem the type to live forever. I’ve counted on them living forever. You even taste like flowers.” Ah, God, his tongue… a slow, warm, wet swipe of his tongue below her ear, like a cat, but smoother than a cat, more deliberate. “Nobody lives forever.” The nuzzling stopped. “This is lamentably so. My aunt writes to me that a number of family heirlooms have gone missing, some valuable in terms of coin, some in terms of sentiment.” His teeth closed gently on the curve of her ear. What was this? He wasn’t kissing her, exactly, nor fondling the parts other men had tried to grope in dark corners—though Sophie wished he might try some fondling. “Do you think you might have a thief among the servants?” He slipped her earlobe into his mouth and drew on it briefly. “Perhaps, though the staff generally dates back to before the Flood. We pay excellent wages; we pension those who seek retirement, those few who seek retirement.” “Is some sneak thief in the neighborhood preying on your relations, then?” It was becoming nearly impossible to remain passively lying on her side. She wanted to be on her back, kissing him, touching his hair, his face, his chest… “Or has some doughty old retainer merely misplaced some of the silver?” Vim muttered right next to her ear. “You’ll sort it out.

Christopher Cerf has been composing songs for Sesame Street for twenty-five years. His large Manhattan townhouse is full of Sesame Street memorabilia – photographs of Christopher with his arm around Big Bird, etc. ‘Well, it’s certainly not what I expected when I wrote them,’ Christopher said. ‘I have to admit, my first reaction was, “Oh my gosh, is my music really that terrible?” ’ I laughed. ‘I once wrote a song for Bert and Ernie called “Put Down The Ducky”,’ he said, ‘which might be useful for interrogating members of the Ba’ath Party.’ ‘That’s very good,’ I said. ‘This interview,’ Christopher said, ‘has been brought to you by the letters W, M and D.’ ‘That’s very good,’ I said. We both laughed. I paused. ‘And do you think that the Iraqi prisoners, as well as giving away vital information, are learning new letters and numbers?’ I said. ‘Well, wouldn’t that be an incredible double win?’ said Christopher. Christopher took me upstairs to his studio to play me one of his Sesame Street compositions, called ‘Ya! Ya! Das Is a Mountain!’ ‘The way we do Sesame Street,’ he explained, ‘is that we have educational researchers who test whether these songs are working, whether the kids are learning. And one year they asked me to write a song to explain what a mountain is, and I wrote a silly yodelling song about what a mountain was.’ Christopher sang me a little of the song: Oompah-pah! Oompah-pah! Ya! Ya! Das is a mountain! Part of zee ground zat sticks way up high! ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘forty per cent of the kids had known what a mountain was before they heard the song, and after they heard the song, only about twenty-six per cent knew what a mountain was. That’s all they needed. You don’t know what a mountain is now, right? It’s gone! So I figure if I have the power to suck information out of people’s brains by writing these songs, maybe that’s something that could be useful to the CIA for brainwashing techniques.’ Just then, Christopher’s phone rang. It was a lawyer from his music publishers, BMI. I listened into Christopher’s side of the conversation: ‘Oh really?’ he said. ‘I see . . . Well, theoretically they have to log that and I should be getting a few cents for every prisoner, right? Okay. Bye, bye . . .’ ‘What was that about?’ I asked Christopher. ‘Whether I’m due some money for the performance royalties,’ he explained. ‘Why not? It’s an American thing to do. If I have the knack of writing songs that can drive people crazy sooner and more effectively than others, why shouldn’t I profit from that?’ This is why, later that day, Christopher asked Danny Epstein – who has been the music supervisor of Sesame Street since the very first programme was broadcast in July 1969 – to come to his house. It would be Danny’s responsibility to collect the royalties from the military if they proved negligent in filing a music-cue sheet.