Bleed In Battle Quotes

They want us to be afraid. They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes. They want us to barricade our doors and hide our children. Their aim is to make us fear life itself! They want us to hate. They want us to hate 'the other'. They want us to practice aggression and perfect antagonism. Their aim is to divide us all! They want us to be inhuman. They want us to throw out our kindness. They want us to bury our love and burn our hope. Their aim is to take all our light! They think their bricked walls will separate us. They think their damned bombs will defeat us. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that my soul and your soul are old friends. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that when they cut you I bleed. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that we will never be afraid, we will never hate and we will never be silent for life is ours!

As a child, I read because books–violent and not, blasphemous and not, terrifying and not–were the most loving and trustworthy things in my life. I read widely, and loved plenty of the classics so, yes, I recognized the domestic terrors faced by Louisa May Alcott’s March sisters. But I became the kid chased by werewolves, vampires, and evil clowns in Stephen King’s books. I read books about monsters and monstrous things, often written with monstrous language, because they taught me how to battle the real monsters in my life. And now I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don’t write to protect them. It’s far too late for that. I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed.

What if I say I can't bear to lose you?" A smile tugged at her lips. "I'd say you're a liar. That claims like that belong to romantic ninnies." She raised her hand and let her fingertips trace the line of his beautiful jaw. He closed his eyes. "We would go on, you and I. If I couldn't be queen, you would find a way to win this battle and save this country. You would make a sheltering place for my people. You would march an bleed and crack terrible jokes until you had done all you said you would. I suppose that's why I love you.

Poppies bleed petals of sheer excess. You and I, this sweet battle ground.

the more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in battle.

He who sweats more in training bleeds less in battle.

When battling Alien Vampires one thing is certain…Get Ready To Bleed!

Conventional belief holds that after triumphing over a mid-career bout with polio, FDR went on to serve two vigorous terms as gov- ernor of New York and three-plus more as president of the United States, succumbing unexpectedly to a stroke on April 12, 1945. In truth, Franklin spent those eventful twenty-four years battling swarms of maladies including polio’s ongoing crippling effects, life-threatening gastrointestinal bleeding, two incurable cancers, severe cardiovascular disease, and epilepsy.

I remember when I saw Peter Pan when I was little. After all the other kids wanted to reenact the battles of the lost boys, pirates, and Indians, and all I could think about was the part where Peter Pan sits still while Wendy takes a sharp needle and, with concern and maybe love, sews his shadow onto his feet. And I wonder if the pain excited him as much as it excited me to watch. I hang here, the voices still bleeding in my ears. I watch my shadow, solid like a murdered body's outline, and I pray. Maybe one more slice, just one more, will sever it forever.

Kiaran and I have little connection beyond our names. We battle, bleed and hunt together almost every night. He teaches me how to slaughter in the most effective, brutal ways possible. But I've never told Kiaran why I hunt, and he has never told me why he kills his own kind. This is our ritual, our dance. The only one that matters.

The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle.

Hope you don’t mind my taste in music. I like a little backbeat when I launch. (Devyn) Just wait until you’re in battle with him. That shit’ll make your ears bleed. (Sway)

Shoot the moon," Aurora says dreamily. "Would it bleed, do you think? I think it would. I think it would bleed...shooting stars.

Today is yesterday's victory, yesterday is tomorrow's conquest, and tomorrow is today's war. Though I face death, I am not fearsome.

War is not two great armies meeting in the clash and frenzy of battle. War is a boy being carried on a stretcher, looking up at God’s blue sky with bewildered eyes that are soon to close; war is a woman carrying a child that has been injured by a shell; war is spirited horses tied in burning buildings and waiting for death; war is the flower of a race, battered, hungry, bleeding, up to its knees in filthy water; war is an old woman burning a candle before the Mater Dolorsa for the son she has given.

On the Doncella, Federico Venusta had his hand mutilated by the explosion of his own grenade. He demanded a galley slave cut it off. When the man refused, he performed the operation himself and then went to the cook’s quarters, ordered them to tie the carcass of a chicken over the bleeding stump, and returned to battle, shouting at his right hand to avenge his left.

My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine.

The whole human earth was bleeding. Time, buildings, routes, rain, erase the constellation of the crime, the fact is, this small planet has been covered a thousand times by blood, war or vengeance, ambush or battle, people fell, they were devoured, and later oblivion wiped clean each square meter: sometimes a vague, dishonest monument, other times a clause in bronze, and still later, conversations, births, townships, and then oblivion. What arts we have for extermination and what science to obliterate memory! What was bloody is covered with flowers. Once more, young men, ready yourselves for another chance to kill, to die again, and to scatter flowers over the blood.

To die in a battle is often referred to as a heroic act, but I will never understand that. What glory is there in bleeding to death in agony on the battlefield? I have no intention of dying at the hands of my enemy.

I have heard ballads of great battles, and poems about the beauty of a charge and the grace of a leader. But I did not know that war was nothing more than butchery, as savage and unskilled as sticking a pig in the throat and leaving it to bleed to make the meat tender. I did not know that the style and nobility of the jousting arena had nothing to do with this thrust and stab. Just like killing a screaming piglet for bacon after chasing it round the sty. And I did not know that war thrilled men so: they come home laughing like schoolboys after a prank; but they have blood on their hands and a smear of something on their cloaks and the smell of smoke in their hair and a terrible ugly excitement on their faces. I understand now why they break into convents, force women against their will, defy sanctuary to finish the killing chase. They arouse in themselves a wild vicious hunger more like animals than men. I did not know war was like this. I feel I have been a fool not to know, since I was raised in a kingdom at war and am the daughter of a man captured in battle, the widow of a night, the wife of a merciless solider. But I know now.

In every battle, there is a death. The loser may laugh it off if the war is short and sweet and without cost. Or the loser may bleed out, if the war is to the death.

Jule believed that the more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in battle.

The more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in battle.

Instead, you should focus your energy on things in your control, such as how well you prepare and train because the more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in battle.

We would go on, you and I. If I couldn't be queen, you would find a way to win this battle and save this country. You would make a sheltering place for my people. You would march and bleed and crack terrible jokes until you had done all you said you would do. I suppose that's why I love you.

No harm," he said as he danced on, cutting the air. Only now, the snowflakes began to bleed as he cut them. Battle of white and scarlet... "Oto-san, what can I do?" I wept in the dream, my tears freezing to my cheeks. "Dance," he said, his face still and calm, his blade whistling through the air. Blood flew from the tip of the sword, painting characters of death and disaster across the white ground. Dancing.

Every now and then a green dot shifted to yellow. A soldier down, their armored suits detecting the injuries or death that rendered them combat ineffective. Combat ineffective. Such a nice euphemism for one of his kids bleeding out.

Jule believed that the more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in battle. She believed that the best way to avoid having your heart broken was to pretend you don't have one. She believed that the way you speak is often more important than anything you have to say. She also believed in action movies, weight training, the power of makeup, memorization, equal rights, and the idea that YouTube videos can teach you a million things you won't learn in college.

And there are millions of teens who read because they are sad and lonely and enraged. They read becuase they live in an often-terrible world. They read becuause they believe, despire the callow protestations of certain adults, that books-especially the dark and dangerous ones-will save them. As a child, I read because books-violent and not, blasphemous and not, terrifying and not-were the most loving and trustworthy things in my life. I read widely, and loved plenty of the classics so, yes, I recognized the domestic terrors faced by Lousia May Alcott's March sisters. But I became the kids chased by werewolves, vampires and evil clowns in Stephen King's books. I read books about monsters and monsterous things, often written with monstrous language, becuase they taught me how to battle the real monsters in my life. And now i write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don't write to protect them. It's far to late for that. I write to give them weapons-in the form of wors and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed.

The power of the bleeding love of God is stronger than the power of Caesar, of the law, of Mars, Mammon, Aphrodite and the rest. This is the point that Paul grasped. And that is the reason for the Colossians' gratitude. The battle has been won.

There’s a bond forged in war that people who haven’t fought for their lives will never understand. When you put your trust in someone to watch your back in battle, when you kill and bleed together, you become more than family. And as I look around the room, that’s what I see here—people who are more than blood, the ties that bind them forged in the fires of a lifetime of war.

I wasn’t jealous seeing you with him, Bianca.” My guttural and raw voice stills her just as she reaches the hallway. “I was in pain.” I cross the distance and take her hand in mine, slowly turning her around to face me. Tilting her head back, I cup her cheek and let it all out. “Every single smile, every word, every touch that you gave him freely made me see and bleed red. It was a constant battle inside my head to not care, to not stare and not have you all to myself.

Please know that you are NOT alone. Before you judge someone, they are fighting their own battles that you are unaware of. Be kind to each other. Always.

world will know that wronged men stood against a tyrant, that the righteous stood against the protected arrogant, and before this battle was over, even a god-king and his queen can bleed.

What worried him worst at the moment - for it is often little things that are hardest to stand - was that his lip was bleeding where they had hit him and he couldn't wipe the little trickle of blood away although it tickled him.

When God approaches Cain after he rejects his sacrifice, God says this: “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Gen. 4: 6–7). God does not take Cain’s point of view into account when he rejects his sacrifice. God does not reconsider his position because of Cain’s intentions. A sacrifice must bleed in order to count. This bedrock truth can only be apprehended through God’s point of view, not my own good intentions. So instead God rebukes Cain for pouting, and warns him that if he does not change, worse things are in store. God proclaims to Cain something vital about this enemy we call sin: it lurks at the entrance of your life, it knows you and desires you, it has a key to your heart and affections, and you must go to battle with it. Every day.

We must not take everything on our own shoulders; if we did, our successors would have nothing to do but to sleep. We must leave them some problems to solve, and the means with which to solve them—namely, a mighty Army and a mighty Air Force ; and the Army must be taught that, if some cowardly crew of politicians should come to power, then it is the Army's duty to intervene—as the Army in Japan did. As a general principle, I think that a peace which lasts for more than twenty-five years is harmful to a nation. Peoples, like individuals, sometimes need regenerating by a little bloodletting. Our ancestors fought duels. Next came the barber and his bleeding-cups—and now we have the safety razor ! Nobody in the Middle Ages suffered from high blood-pressure—their constant brawls were ample safeguard against it; and in Upper Bavaria they practised the custom of Sunday bloodletting. Now, thanks to the safety razor, the world's bloodpressure is rising. It fills me with shame when I think that I have lost more blood shaving than on the field of battle.

He closed with a partial verse from “Sir Andrew Barton,” one of the ballads in Percy’s Reliques, published in 1765. Barton had been wounded in battle. “Fight on, my men,” Sir Andrew sayes, “A little Ime hurt, but yett not slaine; He but lye downe and bleede awhile, And then He rise and fight againe.

To be with God is really to be involved with some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control, which controls you. I conceive of my own life as a journey toward something I do not understand, which in the going toward, makes me better. I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others. Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up. No one in the world—in the entire world—knows more—knows Americans better or, odd as this may sound, loves them more than the American Negro. This is because he has had to watch you, outwit you, deal with you, and bear you, and sometimes even bleed and die with you, ever since we got here, that is, since both of us, black and white, got here—and this is a wedding. Whether I like it or not, or whether you like it or not, we are bound together forever. We are part of each other. What is happening to every Negro in the country at any time is also happening to you. There is no way around this. I am suggesting that these walls—these artificial walls—which have been up so long to protect us from something we fear, must come down.

There are those who sail through a ‘visit from Auntie Flo’, enduring little more than a twinge in the abdomen. And then there are people like me, who firmly believe their uterus is re-enacting the Battle of the Somme. Allow me to paint a picture for you. It’s fucking ugly. Your body bloats, your tits hurt and you sweat uncontrollably. Your crevices start to feel like a swamp and your head is pounding all the time. You feel like you have a cold – shivering, aching, nauseous – and have the hair-trigger emotions of someone who has not slept for days. But we’re not done yet. The intense cramping across your lower abdomen feels like the worst diarrhoea you’ve ever had – in fact, you’ll also get diarrhoea, to help with the crying fits. As your internal organs contract and tear themselves to blooded bits so you can lay an egg, blasts of searing pain rip through you. You bleed so much that all ‘intimate feminine hygiene products’ fail you – it’s like trying to control a lava flow with an oven mitt. You worry people can smell your period. You are terrified to sit on anything or stand up for a week in case you’ve bled through. And as you’re sitting, a crying, sweaty, wobbly, spotty, smelly mess, some bastard asks ‘Time of the month, love?’ And then you have to eat his head.

Here they learn the rest of the lesson begun in those soft houses with porch swings and pots of bleeding heart: how to behave. The careful development of thrift, patience, high morals, and good manners. In short, how to get rid of the funkiness. The dreadful funkiness of passion, the funkiness of nature, the funkiness of the wide range of human emotions. Wherever it erupts, this Funk, they wipe it away; where it crusts, they dissolve it; wherever it drips, flowers, or clings, they find it and fight it until it dies. They fight this battle all the way to the grave. The laugh that is a little too loud; the enunciation a little too round; the gesture a little too generous. They hold their behind in for fear of a sway too free; when they wear lipstick, they never cover the entire mouth for fear of lips too thick, and they worry, worry, worry, about the edges of their hair.

Loving someone will be one of the hardest things you ever do, little brother. It will twist you up and hang you out to dry. It’ll fill you with more worry than you think you can stand, then turn right around and fill you with the greatest joy. It’s a fucking battle, Austin. A battle because you’ll spend the rest of your life fighting to keep it. But if you know one thing? Know there’s no better mistake than one you make in the name of love.” I

It’s all over,’ the cat said in a weak voice, sprawled languidly in a pool of blood, ‘step back from me for a second, let me say farewell to the earth. Oh, my friend Azazello,’ moaned the cat, bleeding profusely, ‘where are you?’ The cat rolled his fading eyes in the direction of the dining-room door. ‘You did not come to my aid in the moment of unequal battle, you abandoned poor Behemoth, exchanging him for a glass of—admittedly very good—cognac!

We shall forever be battling our scars, healing ourselves from the deep scars of childhood, to the awkward scars of adolescence, the hard scars of adulthood and scars of frail old age. In the answering spark in another's eyes, the cosy laughter of friends, and the circle of family, we rush to heal, heal our scars. In the eyes of a complete stranger, we finally find our balm until they are a stranger no more, and then we scar again, only to bleed again.

We owe all to Jesus crucified. What is your life, my brethren, but the cross? Whence comes the bread of your soul but from the cross? What is your joy but the cross? What is your delight, what is your heaven, but the Blessed One, once crucified for you, who ever liveth to make intercession for you? Cling to the cross, then, put both arms around it! Hold to the Crucified, and never let Him go. Come afresh to the cross at this moment, and rest there now and for ever! Then, with the power of God resting upon you, go forth and preach the cross! Tell out the story of the bleeding Lamb. Repeat the wondrous tale, and nothing else. Never mind how you do it, only proclaim that Jesus died for sinner. The cross held up by a babe’s hands is just as powerful as if a giant held it up. The power lies in the word itself, or rather in the Holy Spirit who works by it and with it. O glorious Christ, when I have had a vision of Thy cross, I have seen it at first like a common gibbet, and Thou wast hanging on it like a felon; but, as I have looked, I have seen it begin to rise, and tower aloft till it has reached the highest heaven, and by its mighty power has lifted up myriads to the throne of God. I have seen its arms extend and expand until they have embraced all the earth. I have seen the foot of it go down deep as our helpless miseries are; and what a vision I have had of Thy magnificence, O Thou crucified One! Brethren, believe in the power of the cross for the conversion of those around you. Do not say of any man that he cannot be saved. The blood of Jesus is omnipotent. Do not say of any district that it is too sunken, or of any class of men that they are too far gone: the word of the cross reclaims the lost. Believe it to be the power of God, and you shall find it so. Believe in Christ crucified, and preach boldly in His name, and you shall see great and gladsome things. Do not doubt the ultimate triumph of Christianity. Do not let a mistrust flit across your soul. The cross must conquer; it must blossom with a crown, a crown commensurate with the person of the Crucified, and the bitterness of His agony. His reward shall parallel His sorrows. Trust in God, and lift your banner high, and now with psalms and songs advance to battle, for the Lord of hosts is with us, the Son of the Highest leads our van. Onward, with blast of silver trumpet and shout of those that seize the spoil. Let no man’s heart fail him! Christ hath died! Atonement is complete! God is satisfied! Peace is proclaimed! Heaven glitters with proofs of mercy already bestowed upon ten thousand times ten thousand! Hell is trembling, heaven adoring, earth waiting. Advance, ye saints, to certain victory! You shall overcome through the blood of the Lamb.

For a long time, she has known there are two different kinds of war. There are the battles where heroes dance and fight, with their glistening armor and precious swords, and there are those fought between walls, which are made of stabs and whispers. There is nothing dishonorable about that, nothing so different from the field. Either way, it is always what she has been taught in the gymnasium: take down your enemies and make them bleed. After all, what is a field after battle if not a stinking lake of corpses?

One more time. I’m—not—yours. And hitting Cade like that was so . . . so wrong! You could have killed him!” “Do you want me tae?” She started away. “I’m going to check on him—” “Then you do want me tae!” He raised her elbow and spun her around, a wild look in his eyes. His shirt was ripped almost free, displaying his sheening chest, still heaving from the battle. “This is a vulnerable time. I have no’ claimed you, and the full moon nears. Yet you receive the attentions of another male? Witch, you play with fire!” He swiped the back of his hand over his bleeding temple. “Forget the demon. He knows you’re no’ his. If he’d truly believed you were, he would have put up more of a fight. He dinna even hit a rage state.” “You didn’t change to your werewolf form for me!” “I dinna want you to see it!” he roared, grasping her upper arms. “Doona ever doubt my desire for you—if I truly was in a contest for the right to have you, I’d have bitten his goddamned throat free, then laid it at your feet in offer!” Her lips parted. She thought she’d just caught a glimpse of the inner workings of how a Lykae male thought. And she . . . liked it.

That Archangel, now, " Miriam continued; "how fair he looks, with his unruffled wings, with his unhacked sword, and clad in his bright armor, and that exquisitely fitting sky-blue tunic, cut in the latest Paradisiacal mode! What a dainty air of the first celestial society! With what half-scornful delicacy he sets his prettily sandaled foot on the head of his prostrate foe! But, is it thus that virtue looks the moment after its death struggle with evil? No, no; I could have told Guido better. A full third of the Archangel's feathers should have been torn from his wings; the rest all ruffled, till they looked like Satan's own! His sword should be streaming with blood, and perhaps broken half-way to the hilt; his armor crushed, his robes rent, his breast gory; a bleeding gash on his brow, cutting right across the stern scowl of battle! He should press his foot down upon the old serpent, as if his very soul depended upon it, feeling him squirm mightily, and doubting whether the fight were half over yet, and how the victory might turn! And, with all this fierceness, this grimness, this unutterable horror, there should be something high, tender, and holy in Michael's eyes, and around his mouth.

Sixty-two years passed since that battle, I can remember it as if it was yesterday. It made me the king I am now, not with the power of swords, but with the power of words. Enemies invaded our land like black death until they reached our city. My father, the king, was preparing for the final battle; even women were given swords and asked to fight. It was a battle like no other battle; we fought like Titans not humans, and we crushed our enemies although they outnumbered us. ” The king is wounded ! The king is wounded ! ” shouted one of the soldiers . I rushed towards the source of the sound to find my father bleeding on the ground, I tried to take off his armor but he refused and asked me to get closer to him. He squeezed my arm with his old hand and said : “Don’t build your life on illusions, Don’t build your opinion on hypotheses, Don’t build your style on imitation, Don’t build your image on lies, Don’t build your respect on fear, Don’t build your dreams on others’ nightmares, Don’t build your friendships on benefits, Don’t build your heroism on foolish acts, Don’t build your kingdom on the backs of the poor, Don’t build your palace on the soft sands of injustice” Then he looked up to the sky and closed his eyes forever. He left me a kingdom in ruins, but left me the richest king.

Recognizing Muhammad Before Muhammad appeared in form, there were scriptural references. People imagined how he would be and called on his presence in battle and sickness. They had thoughts and language about Muhammad. What good was that? Not everyone recognizes Muhammad. Many have a conception of him they can stand to live with. They don't know that if the shadow of Muhammad's true form falls across a wall, the wall will bleed! And it will no longer have two sides! What a blessing to be one thing. When others saw Muhammad, their awe evaporated, as counterfeit coins turn black in the flame. There are false coins who claim they want to be tested, all bravado. And there are touchstones that do not reveal impostors. There are mirrors that hide your flaws. Avoid hypocritical praise, and keep away from flattering mirrors, if you possibly can.

Quincenañera My dolls have been put away like dead children in a chest I will carry with me when I marry. I reach under my skirt to feel a satin slip bought for this day. It is soft as the inside of my thighs. My hair has been nailed back with my mother's black hairpins to my skull. Her hands stretched my eyes open as she twisted braids into a tight circle at the nape of my neck. I am to wash my own clothes and sheets from this day on, as if the fluids of my body were poison, as if the little trickle of blood I believe travels from my heart to the world were shameful. Is not the blood of saints and men in battle beautiful? Do Christ's hands not bleed into your eyes from His cross? At night I hear myself growing and wake to find my hands drifting of their own will to soothe skin stretched tight over my bones. I am wound like the guts of a clock, waiting for each hour to release me.

Worse than the smugglers of the Falkyn guild were the damn king and queen. The recovered circlet in hand, I made my way toward the great hall only to collide with my disheveled mother and father emerging from one of the chambers. “What the hells are you doing?” Heat boiled in my face when my bleeding father spun around, still adjusting his damn belt. “You couldn’t wait a night, perhaps a day, before defiling the linens?” “Jonas, really. Emotions run high during a fight. It isn’t all that scandalous.” My mother had the decency to flush as she smoothed her hair. Daj patted my cheek. Hard. “I expected a quiet reprieve when you all were going to the South. You think I would let something as trivial as battles stop me from claiming that with my wife?” “I’m never looking at you again. You’re heathens. No regal blood in your veins.” “Thank you,” both said in the same breath. “Hopeless.” I shoved into the great hall. “Bleeding hopeless.

I was a bird. I lived a bird's life from birth to death. I was born the thirty-second chick in the Jipu family. I remember everything in detail. I remember breaking out of the shell at birth. But I learned later that my mother had gently cracked the shell first to ease my way. I dozed under my mother's chest for the first few days. Her feathers were so warm and soft! I was strong, so I kicked away my siblings to keep the cozy spot. Just 10 days after I was born, I was given flying lessons. We all had to learn quickly because there were snakes and owls and hawks. My little brothers and sisters, who didn't practice enough, all died. My little sister looked so unhappy when she got caught. I can still see her face. Before I could fly, I hadn't known that our nest was on the second-lowest branch of a big tree. My parents chose the location wisely. Snakes could reach the lowest branch and eagles and hawks could attack us if we lived at the top. We soared through the sky, above mountains and forests. But it wasn't just for fun! We always had to watch out for enemies, and to hunt for food. Death was always nearby. You could easily starve or freeze to death. Life wasn't easy. Once, I got caught in a monsoon. I smacked into a tree and lay bleeding for days. Many of my family and friends died, one after another. To help rebuild our clan, I found myself a female and married her. She was so sweet. She laid many eggs, but one day, a human cut down the tree we lived in, crushing all the eggs and my beloved. A bird's life is an endless battle against death. I survived for many years before I finally met my end. I found a worm at some harvest festival. I came fluttering down. It was a bad mistake. Some big guy was waiting to ambush hungry little birdies like me. I heard my own guts pop. It was clear to me that I was going to die at last. And I wanted to know where I'd go when I died.

Each one of these decisions, even when they were ultimately reversed, set recovery efforts back further. Is this all a masterful conspiracy to make sure Puerto Ricans are too desperate, distracted, and despairing to resist Wall Street’s bitter economic medicine? I don’t believe it’s anything that coordinated. Much of this is simply what happens when you bleed the public sphere for decades, laying off competent workers and neglecting basic maintenance. Run-of-the-mill corruption and cronyism are no doubt at work as well. But it’s also true that many governments have deployed a starve-then-sell strategy when it comes to public services: cut health care/transit/education to the bone until people are so disillusioned and desperate that they are willing to try anything, including selling off those services altogether. And if Rosselló and the Trump administration have seemed remarkably unconcerned about the nonstop relief and reconstruction screw-ups, the attitude may be at least partly informed by an understanding that the worse things get, the stronger the case for privatization becomes.

They stood around a bleeding stump of a man lying on the ground. His right arm and left leg had been chopped off. It was inconceivable how, with his remaining arm and leg, he had crawled to the camp. The chopped-off arm and leg were tied in terrible bleeding chunks onto his back with a small wooden board attached to them; a long inscription on it said, with many words of abuse, that the atrocity was in reprisal for similar atrocities perpetrated by such and such a Red unit—a unit that had no connection with the Forest Brotherhood. It also said that the same treatment would be meted out to all the partisans unless, by a given date, they submitted and gave up their arms to the representatives of General Vitsyn’s army corps. Fainting repeatedly from loss of blood, the dying man told them in a faltering voice of the tortures and atrocities perpetrated by Vitsyn’s investigating and punitive squads. His own sentence of death had been allegedly commuted; instead of hanging him, they had cut off his arm and leg in order to send him into the camp and strike terror among the partisans. They had carried him as far as the outposts of the camp, where they had put him down and ordered him to crawl, urging him on by shooting into the air. He could barely move his lips. To make out his almost unintelligible stammering, the crowd around him bent low. He was saying: “Be on your guard, comrades. He has broken through.” “Patrols have gone out in strength. There’s a big battle going on. We’ll hold him.” “There’s a gap. He wants to surprise you. I know. ... I can’t go on, men. I am spitting blood. I’ll die in a moment.” “Rest a bit. Keep quiet.—Can’t you see it’s bad for him, you heartless beasts!” The man started again: “He went to work on me, the devil. He said: You will bathe in your own blood until you tell me who you are. And how was I to tell him, a deserter is just what I am? I was running from him to you.” “You keep saying ‘he.’ Who was it that got to work on you?” “Let me just get my breath. ... I’ll tell you. Hetman, Bekeshin. Colonel, Strese. Vitsyn’s men. You don’t know out here what it’s like. The whole town is groaning. They boil people alive. They cut strips out of them. They take you by the scruff of the neck and push you inside, you don’t know where you are, it’s pitch black. You grope about—you are in a cage, inside a freight car. There are more than forty people in the cage, all in their underclothes. From time to time they open the door and grab whoever comes first—out he goes. As you grab a chicken to cut its throat. I swear to God. Some they hang, some they shoot, some they question. They beat you to shreds, they put salt on the wounds, they pour boiling water on you. When you vomit or relieve yourself they make you eat it. As for children and women—O God!” The unfortunate was at his last gasp. He cried out and died without finishing the sentence. Somehow they all knew it at once and took off their caps and crossed themselves. That night, the news of a far more terrible incident flew around the camp. Pamphil had been in the crowd surrounding the dying man. He had seen him, heard his words, and read the threatening inscription on the board. His constant fear for his family in the event of his own death rose to a new climax. In his imagination he saw them handed over to slow torture, watched their faces distorted by pain, and heard their groans and cries for help. In his desperate anguish—to forestall their future sufferings and to end his own—he killed them himself, felling his wife and three children with that same, razor-sharp ax that he had used to carve toys for the two small girls and the boy, who had been his favorite. The astonishing thing was that he did not kill himself immediately afterward.

Evie.” She glanced at Sebastian. Whatever she saw in his face caused her to walk around the bed to him. “Yes,” she said with a concerned frown. “Dearest, this is going to help you—” “No.” It would kill him. It was difficult enough already to fight the fever and the pain. If he was further weakened by a long bloodletting he wouldn’t be able to hold on any longer. Frantically Sebastian tugged at his tautly stretched arm, but the binding held fast and the chair didn’t even wobble. Bloody hell. He stared up at his wife wretchedly, battling a wave of light-headedness. “No,” he rasped. “Don’t…let him…” “Darling,” Evie whispered, bending over to kiss his shaking mouth. Her eyes were suddenly shiny with unshed tears. “This may be your best chance—your only chance—” “I’ll die. Evie…” Rising fear caused blackness to streak across his vision, but he forced his eyes to stay open. Her face became a blur. “I’ll die,” he whispered again. “Lady St. Vincent,” came Dr. Hammond’s steady, kind voice, “your husband’s anxiety is quite understandable. However, his judgment is impaired by illness. At this time, you are the one who is best able to make decisions for his benefit. I would not recommend this procedure if I did not believe in its efficacy. You must allow me to proceed. I doubt Lord St. Vincent will even remember this conversation.” Sebastian closed his eyes and let out a groan of despair. If only Hammond were some obvious lunatic with a maniacal laugh…someone Evie would instinctively mistrust. But Hammond was a respectable man, with all the conviction of someone who believed he was doing the right thing. The executioner, it seemed, could come in many guises. Evie was his only hope, his only champion. Sebastian would never have believed it would come to this…his life depending on the decision of an unworldly young woman who would probably allow herself to be persuaded by the Hammond’s authority. There was no one else for Sebastian to appeal to. He felt her gentle fingers at the side of his fevered face, and he stared up at her pleadingly, unable to form a word. Oh God, Evie, don’t let him— “All right,” Evie said softly, staring at him. Sebastian’s heart stopped as he thought she was speaking to the doctor…giving permission to bleed him. But she moved to the chair and deftly untied Sebastian’s wrist, and began to massage the reddened skin with her fingertips. She stammered a little as she spoke. “Dr. H-Hammond…Lord St. Vincent does not w-want the procedure. I must defer to his wishes.” To Sebastian’s eternal humiliation, his breath caught in a shallow sob of relief. “My lady,” Hammond countered with grave anxiety, “I beg you to reconsider. Your deference to the wishes of a man who is out of his head with fever may prove to be the death of him. Let me help him. You must trust my judgment, as I have infinitely more experience in such matters.” Evie sat carefully on the side of the bed and rested Sebastian’s hand in her lap. “I do respect your j-j—” She stopped and shook her head impatiently at the sound of her own stammer. “My husband has the right to make the decision for himself.” Sebastian curled his fingers into the folds of her skirts. The stammer was a clear sign of her inner anxiety, but she would not yield. She would stand by him. He sighed unsteadily and relaxed, feeling as if his tarnished soul had been delivered into her keeping.

Another howl ruptured the quiet, still too far away to be a threat. The Beast Lord, the leader, the alpha male, had to enforce his position as much by will as by physical force. He would have to answer any challenges to his rule, so it was unlikely that he turned into a wolf. A wolf would have little chance against a cat. Wolves hunted in a pack, bleeding their victim and running them into exhaustion, while cats were solitary killing machines, designed to murder swiftly and with deadly precision. No, the Beast Lord would have to be a cat, a jaguar or a leopard. Perhaps a tiger, although all known cases of weretigers occurred in Asia and could be counted without involving toes. I had heard a rumor of the Kodiak of Atlanta, a legend of an enormous, battle-scarred bear roaming the streets in search of Pack criminals. The Pack, like any social organization, had its lawbreakers. The Kodiak was their Executioner. Perhaps his Majesty turned into a bear. Damn. I should have brought some honey. My left leg was tiring. I shifted from foot to foot . . . A low, warning growl froze me in midmove. It came from the dark gaping hole in the building across the street and rolled through the ruins, awakening ancient memories of a time when humans were pathetic, hairless creatures cowering by the weak flame of the first fire and scanning the night with frightened eyes, for it held monstrous hungry killers. My subconscious screamed in panic. I held it in check and cracked my neck, slowly, one side then another. A lean shadow flickered in the corner of my eye. On the left and above me a graceful jaguar stretched on the jutting block of concrete, an elegant statue encased in the liquid metal of moonlight. Homo Panthera onca. The killer who takes its prey in a single bound. Hello, Jim. The jaguar looked at me with amber eyes. Feline lips stretched in a startlingly human smirk. He could laugh if he wanted. He didn’t know what was at stake. Jim turned his head and began washing his paw. My saber firmly in hand, I marched across the street and stepped through the opening. The darkness swallowed me whole. The lingering musky scent of a cat hit me. So, not a bear after all. Where was he? I scanned the building, peering into the gloom. Moonlight filtered through the gaps in the walls, creating a mirage of twilight and complete darkness. I knew he was watching me. Enjoying himself. Diplomacy was never my strong suit and my patience had run dry. I crouched and called out, “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.” Two golden eyes ignited at the opposite wall. A shape stirred within the darkness and rose, carrying the eyes up and up and up until they towered above me. A single enormous paw moved into the moonlight, disturbing the dust on the filthy floor. Wicked claws shot forth and withdrew. A massive shoulder followed, its gray fur marked by faint smoky stripes. The huge body shifted forward, coming at me, and I lost my balance and fell on my ass into the dirt. Dear God, this wasn’t just a lion. This thing had to be at least five feet at the shoulder. And why was it striped? The colossal cat circled me, half in the light, half in the shadow, the dark mane trembling as he moved. I scrambled to my feet and almost bumped into the gray muzzle. We looked at each other, the lion and I, our gazes level. Then I twisted around and began dusting off my jeans in a most undignified manner. The lion vanished into a dark corner. A whisper of power pulsed through the room, tugging at my senses. If I did not know better, I would say that he had just changed. “Kitty, kitty?” asked a level male voice. I jumped. No shapechanger went from a beast into a human without a nap. Into a midform, yes, but beast-men had trouble talking. “Yeah,” I said. “You’ve caught me unprepared. Next time I’ll bring cream and catnip toys.” “If there is a next time.

White Man, to you my voice is like the unheard call in the wilderness. It is there, though you do not hear it. But, this once, take the time to listen to what I have to say. Your history is highlighted by your wars. Why is it all right for your nations to conquer each other in your attempts at domination? When you sailed to our lands, you came with your advanced weapons. You claimed you were a progressive, civilized people. And today, White Man, you have the ultimate weapons. Warfare which could destroy all men, all creation. And you allow such power to be in the hands of those few who have such little value in true wisdom. White Man, when you first came, most of our tribes began with peace and trust in dealing with you, strange white intruders. We showed you how to survive in our homelands. We were willing to share with you our vast wealth. Instead of repaying us with gratitude, you, White Man, turned on us, your friends. You turned on us with your advanced weapons and your cunning trickery. When we, the Indian people, realized your intentions, we rose to do battle, to defend our nations, our homes, our food, our lives. And for our efforts, we are labelled savages, and our battles are called massacres. And when our primitive weapons could not match those which you had perfected through centuries of wars, we realized that peace could not be won, unless our mass destruction took place. And so we turned to treaties. And this time, we ran into your cunning trickery. And we lost our lands, our freedom, and were confined to reservations. And we are held in contempt. 'As long as the Sun shall rise...' For you, White Man, these are words without meaning. White Man, there is much in the deep, simple wisdom of our forefathers. We were here for centuries. We kept the land, the waters, the air clean and pure, for our children and our children's children. Now that you are here, White Man, the rivers bleed with contamination. The winds moan with the heavy weight of pollution in the air. The land vomits up the poisons which have been fed into it. Our Mother Earth is no longer clean and healthy. She is dying. White Man, in your greedy rush for money and power, you are destroying. Why must you have power over everything? Why can't you live in peace and harmony? Why can't you share the beauty and the wealth which Mother Earth has given us? You do not stop at confining us to small pieces of rock an muskeg. Where are the animals of the wilderness to go when there is no more wilderness? Why are the birds of the skies falling to their extinction? Is there joy for you when you bring down the mighty trees of our forests? No living things seems sacred to you. In the name of progress, everything is cut down. And progress means only profits. White Man, you say that we are a people without dignity. But when we are sick, weak, hungry, poor, when there is nothing for us but death, what are we to do? We cannot accept a life which has been imposed on us. You say that we are drunkards, that we live for drinking. But drinking is a way of dying. Dying without enjoying life. You have given us many diseases. It is true that you have found immunizations for many of these diseases. But this was done more for your own benefit. The worst disease, for which there is no immunity, is the disease of alcoholism. And you condemn us for being its easy victims. And those who do not condemn us weep for us and pity us. So, we the Indian people, we are still dying. The land we lost is dying, too. White Man, you have our land now. Respect it. As we once did. Take care of it. As we once did. Love it. As we once did. White Man, our wisdom is dying. As we are. But take heed, if Indian wisdom dies, you, White Man, will not be far behind. So weep not for us. Weep for yourselves. And for your children. And for their children. Because you are taking everything today. And tomorrow, there will be nothing left for them.

Using ShotSpotter, The New York Times reports that neighbors called police only 10 percent of the time that guns were fired in a high-crime area of San Francisco. In Oakland, 22 percent of gunshots prompted 911 calls. Chief Chris Magnus of Richmond, Calif., a community of 120,000 north of Berkeley that routinely ranks among country’s most violent cities, recalled listening to a ShotSpotter recording of a gun battle in 2010 that involved more than 100 rounds fired from four guns. “It was just mind-boggling,” he said. “This is like 11 at night on a summer night, and nobody even called it in.”2

But, ladies and gentlemen, we will also be asked to make sacrifices in matters that are not our affair and that do not concern us, sacrifices that would leave our people bleeding or wounded, or even dead, from battle. There is no equality for us in this lifetime.

Courtney!’ he shouted, but didn’t know if she could hear him. Where was she? ‘Courtney!’ There. He forced his way over to her and pulled the sickos from her back. She was bleeding from small cuts all over her, and her right arm was red from shoulder to fingertips, but she was still battling with her knife. DogNut took hold of her and started to drag her away, ignoring the sickos that grabbed at him from all sides. All his energy was ebbing away. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep this up. ‘Come on, Courtney,’ he said. ‘Don’t give up. You and me, girl. You and me.’ ‘You and me, Dog,’ said Courtney. ‘Love you, girl...’ ‘Love you, too...

I can die?” Hayley squeaked. “We can all die,” he said with a shrug. She pursed her lips at that. No shit, everyone can die, it’s that opposite part of living. But… “How likely is the dying part? Like…plague rips apart a village, or knock your head on a rock and maybe bleed from your eyeballs certain death?” “That,” the knight returned to his march through the masses, “depends entirely upon you.

Block said. “I mean, he’s a professor emeritus. He’s never watched a football game in my conscious memory. The whole picture—it wasn’t the guy I thought I knew.” But the conversation proved critical, because after surgery he developed bleeding in the spinal cord. The surgeons told her that in order to save his life they would need to go back in. But the bleeding had already made him nearly quadriplegic, and he would remain severely disabled for many months and likely forever. What did she want to do? “I had three minutes to make this decision, and I realized, he had already made the decision.” She asked the surgeons whether, if her father survived, he would still be able to eat chocolate ice cream and watch football on TV. Yes, they said. She gave the okay to take him back to the operating room. “If I had not had that conversation with him,” she told me, “my instinct would have been to let him go at that moment because it just seemed so awful. And I would have beaten myself up. Did I let him go too soon?” Or she might have gone ahead and sent him to surgery, only to find—as occurred—that he was faced with a year of “very horrible rehab” and disability. “I would have felt so guilty that I condemned him to that,” she said. “But there was no decision for me to make.” He had decided. During the next two years, he regained the ability to walk short distances. He required caregivers to bathe and dress him. He had difficulty swallowing and eating. But his mind was intact and he had partial use of his hands—enough to write two books and more than a dozen scientific articles. He lived for ten years after the operation. Eventually, however, his difficulties with swallowing advanced to the point where he could not eat without aspirating food particles, and he cycled between hospital and rehabilitation facilities with the pneumonias that resulted. He didn’t want a feeding tube. And it became evident that the battle for the dwindling chance of a miraculous recovery was going to leave him unable ever to go home again. So, just a few months before I’d spoken with Block, her father decided to stop the battle and go home. “We started him on hospice care,” Block said. “We treated his choking and kept him comfortable. Eventually, he stopped eating and drinking. He died about five days later.

General Banks saw that Jackson meant business, and so recalled General Williams’ brigade that was en route to Centreville. The rebels suffered 139 killed, 312 wounded, and 253 captured. The Union lost 118, 450 were wounded, and 22 were missing or captured. The Pritchard home was turned into a hospital, with Samuel, the pregnant Helen, and their children aiding the groaning and bleeding men of both sides. Though Stonewall Jackson had lost the battle, he gained a strategic victory by draining troops from the main fight in front of Richmond; the Valley Campaign had begun in earnest. Although

The intruder shifted his weight and pulled the knife back, aiming at Gabriel’s chest. The moonlight glinted off the sharp blade and Gabriel found himself backed up against a wall. There was no escape. Gabriel was going to have to bear the pain of a knife through his chest. He could do it. He would wait until the knife entered his flesh and then he’d snap the Ashman’s neck in half. Yeah. That was a good plan. Just as the knife came toward Gabriel, the Ashman grunted and pulled back, taking a few wobbly steps before falling to the floor. Nate stood to the side, his hands on a large sword jutting from the Ashman’s back. He yanked out the sword, leaving the stranger’s body limp. Nate stepped toward the Ashman’s body, looking him over timidly. Without warning, the intruder rolled over and pulled himself up off the floor. Nate jumped back, lifted the sword in defense, and made a loud noise that sounded something like, “Arrrhh!” Still clutching the bloody knife, the Ashman looked back and forth between Nate and Gabriel. Seeing he was outnumbered, he turned and ran back through the destruction of the living room.Jumping out of the gaping hole from the missing living room window, the Ashman disappeared into the storm A moment passed as Gabriel and Nate stared after their attacker, both of them out of breath. Still badly bleeding, Gabriel turned to Nate and looked at the weapon he held. The sword was oversized, extra shiny and had a very ornate handle. “I don’t remember ever seeing that sword in our arsenal before.” Hunched over and trying to catch his breath, Nate said, “That’s because it’s from my arsenal.” “So, you just had that,” Gabriel nodded at the weapon, “laying around?” Nate righted himself and shrugged. “I’m a Zelda fan.” “Ah.” Gabriel nodded. “And the noise you just made?” “That was my battle cry.” “Really?” Gabriel winced as he took a step forward. “It sounded more like the cry of a wounded animal. A cat, maybe. Or a small monkey.” “Shut up.” Nate looked at Gabriel’s bleeding torso. “Are you okay?

Are you okay?” Crowfeather asked. Breezepelt’s throat was bleeding, but not too badly; it looked as if the stoat’s fangs hadn’t sunk in very deep. “Fine,” Breezepelt replied. “You?” Crowfeather nodded. “Let’s go and kill some stoats!” Breezepelt instantly leaped into the battle, but Crowfeather paused a moment to take in what was happening.

Midwest Book Full Review It's unusual to find a political and supernatural thriller so intrinsically woven into current issues about the fabric of American society that its fiction bleeds into a cautionary nonfiction tale, but Robert Hamilton's Crux: A Country That Cannot Feed Its People and Its Animals Will Fall represents such an achievement. Its saga of race, food security, violence and prejudice from religious and social circles alike, and the vulnerability of the American food supply chain provides a powerful story that holds many insights, perspectives, and warnings for modern-day readers concerned about this nation's trajectory. Readers who choose the story for its political and supernatural thriller elements won't be disappointed. The tale adopts a nonstop staccato, action-filled atmosphere as a series of catastrophes force veterinarian Dr. Thomas Pickett to move beyond his experience and objectives to become an active force in effecting change in America. How (and why) does a vet become involved in political scenarios? As Dr. Pickett becomes entangled in pork issues, kill pens, and a wider battle than that against animal cruelty, readers are carried into a thought-provoking scenario in which personal and environmental disasters change his upward trajectory with his new wife and their homestead. As Dr. Pickett is called on stage to testify about his beliefs and the Hand of God indicates his life and involvements will never be the same, readers receive a story replete in many social, spiritual, and political inquiries that lead to thought-provoking reflections and insights. True miracles and false gods are considered as he navigates unfamiliar territory of the heart, soul, and mind, coming to understand that his unique role as a vet and a caring, evolving individual can make a difference in the role America plays both domestically and in the world. From the Vice President's involvement in a national security crisis to the efforts to return the country to "its true Christian foundations," Robert Hamilton examines the crux of good intentions and beliefs gone awry and the true paths of those who link their personal beliefs with a changing political scenario. Whose side is God on, anyway? These and other questions make Crux not just a highly recommended read for its political thriller components, but a powerful social and spiritual examination that contains messages that deserve to be inspected, debated, and absorbed by book clubs and a broad audience of concerned American citizens. How do you reach hearts and minds? By producing a story that holds entertainment value and educational revelations alike. That's why libraries need to not only include Crux in their collections, but highlight it as a pivot point for discussions steeped in social, religious, and political examination. There is a bad storm coming. Crux is not just a riveting story, but a possible portent of a future America operating in the hands of a dangerous, attractive demagogue.

Know this, equerry,’ said Perturabo. ‘I pity you. You see, and you know, and you fear for your Legion and wonder what the oaths you swore mean now. Yet you do not have the strength and the power to do the only thing that is left to do.’ Argonis looked as though he might reply, but the Lord of Iron had turned to Forrix. ‘Send a signal to all of our forces, full withdrawal. Bring our fleet into dock and begin to embark. We will move to the system edge and translate. This is immediate.’ Forrix did not move. The words he had just heard rang like bullets hitting iron. ‘Lord…’ ‘It is over,’ said Perturabo. ‘Horus has given this battle to sorcerers and beasts. The war of Legions is over. Mortarion comes here to take this place. He and what he has become is what this war is now. He comes at the will of Horus to be the agent of what will happen.’ ‘But he did not order our withdrawal.’ ‘I order it,’ growled Perturabo. ‘It is my will. There is no victory here, just creatures and parasites pulling down a dying beast. It is gone. The Legion war is dead. The chance is gone. The cause is gone…’ Perturabo paused, and then shook his head. ‘We will not bleed for this. We will not break the circle of our iron for this.

Malkuthians… I’m bleeding. I bleed with you. Malkuthians, I’m hurting. I hurt with you. Malkuthians, I’m struggling. I struggle with you. It’s true, Hod has been destroyed. Malkuth is the last major stronghold still standing. With that said, the outcome of this battle will decide the future of our Union. This is the new Capital of our civilization.” - Autumn Antares from "The Destroyer of Worlds by Steven Seril

The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in battle. Go harder in training.

People who burn out usually do so because their newfound awareness causes them to try to bleed the white supremacy out of any and everything. They become overly scrupulous, refusing to participate in or enjoy everything they think could be “problematic.” They fight every battle, going to the mat over every instance where white supremacy shows up with the same level of tenacity for each offense. Large or small, every incident or slight raises the threat level to DEFCON 1 and must be dispensed with. They struggle to give people a chance to learn or course-correct out of fear that they could be giving place to white supremacy. They adopt a form of fundamentalism that seems principled on the exterior but often ends in existential crisis. They chop away at the white supremacy they discern in everything, and they end up experiencing a personal crisis because they’ve left nothing to anchor themselves to.

Now it was time for others to take up the battle because he had given up trying to save or change the world. He simply wanted to survive it.

Been biting my tongue till it bleeds cry over things I don't need. My mother told me pick your battles wisely but you made me angry at the world so I chose them all.

Let’s play a game.” “You and your damn games. I swear it’s like you were deprived of fun as a child.” His lips twitch as he slides his palms up my thighs. They tremble beneath his touch, and I press them together to hide their shakiness. “You’ll like this one. I promise.” He makes quick work of my sneakers and socks, and they thud against the carpet like stripped battle armor. I rise up on my elbows. “What are the rules?” His eyes bleed to black. “There is only one.” “That seems easy.” He tsks as he drags my dress hem a little higher. My breathing comes out harsher, and that seems to only encourage him. “Beg.

Mala’s bloodline shall bleed again to forge the Lock anew. And you will lead them, a lamb to slaughter, to pay the price of this choice you made to waste its power here, for this petty battle. You will show this future scion how to forge a new Lock with Mala’s gifts, how to then use it to wield the keys and send us home. Our original bargain still holds: we will take the Dark King with us. Tear him apart in our own world, where he will be but dust and memory. When we are gone—you will show this scion how to seal the gate behind us, the Lock holding it intact eternally. By yielding every last drop of their life force. As your father was prepared to do when the time was right.

This is not a scenario where you are fucking a man with no heart. Again with the books. I have feelings, emotions. I’m not made of steel, I bleed and I like to get to know the women I fuck. It’s a matter of feeling them out, seeing what they prefer, their wants and needs. Sex is just as psychological as it is physical, Violet. I date. I have relationships. Not all people into kink have some sort of demon to battle. It’s a sexual preference.” … “So what you’re saying is you’re normal?” I asked, the disappointment in my voice unmistakable.” “Sorry to disappoint you again. Would you prefer I acted like a pompous ass with mental issues and ordered you around like a bitch in heat?

The essence of a poet lies not in articulating thoughts, but in bleeding raw emotion onto the page. It's a tumultuous dance, a desperate clinging to individuality in a world striving for uniformity. To feel is to be an anomaly, a rebel against the current. And therein lies the poet's struggle - a lifelong fight to preserve the untamed spirit within, a battle waged with every word.

To tear down silos, leaders must go beyond behaviors and address the contextual issues at the heart of departmental separation and politics. The purpose of this book is to present a simple, powerful tool for addressing those issues and reducing the pain that silos cause. And that pain should not be underestimated. Silos—and the turf wars they enable—devastate organizations. They waste resources, kill productivity, and jeopardize the achievement of goals. But beyond all that, they exact a considerable human toll too. They cause frustration, stress, and disillusionment by forcing employees to fight bloody, unwinnable battles with people who should be their teammates. There is perhaps no greater cause of professional anxiety and exasperation—not to mention turnover—than employees having to fight with people in their own organization. Understandably and inevitably, this bleeds over into their personal lives, affecting family and friends in profound ways.

This gospel I preach to you. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Trust him quietly, humbly, simply, immediately. Trust him to make you a holy man—to deliver you from the power of the devil and the power of sin, and he will do it: I will be bound for him that he will keep his word. Jesus is truth itself, and never breaks his word. He never boasts that he can do what he cannot do. He has gone into heaven, and he is therefore “able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.” Only trust him. Trust him to overcome the evil you have to fight with. You will conquer it, man, if you will only trust Jesus. Woman, there is hope for you if you will trust the wounded, bleeding, dying, risen, living Savior. He will battle for you, and you shall get the victory.

We owe all to Jesus crucified. What is your life, my brethren, but the cross? Whence comes the bread of your soul but from the cross? What is your joy but the cross? What is your delight, what is your heaven, but the Blessed One, once crucified for you, who ever liveth to make intercession for you? Cling to the cross, then, Put both arms around it! Hold to the Crucified, and never let Him go. Come afresh to the cross at this moment, and rest there now and for ever! Then, with the power of God resting upon you, go forth and preach the cross! Tell out the story of the bleeding Lamb. Repeat the wondrous tale, and nothing else. Never mind how you do it, only proclaim that Jesus died for sinner. The cross held up by a babe’s hands is just as powerful as if a giant held it up. The power lies in the word itself, or rather in the Holy Spirit who works by it and with it. O glorious Christ, when I have had a vision of Thy cross, I have seen it at first like a common gibbet, and Thou wast hanging on it like a felon; but, as I have looked, I have seen it begin to rise, and tower aloft till it has reached the highest heaven, and by its mighty power has lifted up myriads to the throne of God. I have seen its arms extend and expand until they have embraced all the earth. I have seen the foot of it go down deep as our helpless miseries are; and what a vision I have had of Thy magnificence, O Thou crucified One! Brethren, believe in the power of the cross for the conversion of those around you. Do not say of any man that he cannot be saved. The blood of Jesus is omnipotent. Do not say of any district that it is too sunken, or of any class of men that they are too far gone: the word of the cross reclaims the lost. Believe it to be the power of God, and you shall find it so. Believe in Christ crucified, and preach boldly in His name, and you shall see great and gladsome things. Do not doubt the ultimate triumph of Christianity. Do not let a mistrust flit across your soul. The cross must conquer; it must blossom with a crown, a crown commensurate with the person of the Crucified, and the bitterness of His agony. His reward shall parallel His sorrows. Trust in God, and lift you banner high, and now with psalms and songs advance to battle, for the Lord of hosts is with us, the Son of the Highest leads our van. Onward, with blast of silver trumpet and shout of those that seize the spoil. Let no man’s heart fail him! Christ hath died! Atonement is complete! God is satisfied! Peace is proclaimed! Heaven glitters with proofs of mercy already bestowed upon ten thousand times ten thousand! Hell is trembling, heaven adoring, earth waiting. Advance, ye saints, to certain victory! You shall overcome through the blood of the Lamb.

Lawrence of Arabia, lionized in print and on film, lived with the tribal warriors and spoke their language. Schooled in history and archaeology, he found that the locals preferred raids and ambushes, short skirmishes, and quick hit-and-run escapades to Western maneuvers. They disdained uniforms, discipline, and stand-and-fight tactics. But they could make entire desert districts wholly untenable for conventional adversaries, demolishing rail lines, blowing out bridges, sniping, stealing, and slowly bleeding the big regiments to death. Lawrence called it “winning wars without battles.

This Blue Coat’s woman?” he demanded, gesturing toward Lily. Caleb shook his head. “She’s her own woman. Just ask her.” Lily’s heart was jammed into her throat. She had an urge to go for the rifle again, but this time it was Caleb she wanted to shoot. “He lies,” she said quickly, trying to make sign language. “I am too his woman!” The Indian looked back at his followers, and they all laughed. Lily thought she saw a hint of a grin curve Caleb’s lips as well but decided she must have imagined it. “You trade woman for two horses?” Caleb lifted one hand to his chin, considering. “Maybe. I’ve got to be honest with you. She’s a lot of trouble, this woman.” Lily’s terror was exceeded only by her wrath. “Caleb!” The Indian squinted at Lily and then made an abrupt, peevish gesture with the fingers of one hand. “He wants you to get down from the buggy so he can have a good look at you,” Caleb said quietly. “I don’t care what he wants,” Lily replied, folding her trembling hands in her lap and squaring her shoulders. The Indian shouted something. “He’s losing his patience,” Caleb warned, quite unnecessarily. Lily scrambled down from the buggy and stood a few feet from it while the Indian rode around her several times on his pony, making thoughtful grunting noises. Annoyance was beginning to overrule Lily’s better judgment. “This is my land,” she blurted out all of a sudden, “and I’m inviting you and your friends to get off it! Right now!” The Indian reined in his pony, staring at Lily in amazement. “You heard me!” she said, advancing on him, her hands poised on her hips. At that, Caleb came up behind her, and his arms closed around her like the sides of a giant manacle. His breath rushed past her ear. “Shut up!” Lily subsided, watching rage gather in the Indians’ faces like clouds in a stormy sky. “Caleb,” she said, “you’ve got to save me.” “Save you? If they raise their offer to three horses, you’ll be braiding your hair and wearing buckskin by nightfall.” The Indians were consulting with one another, casting occasional measuring glances in Lily’s direction. She was feeling desperate again. “All right, then, but remember, if I go, your child goes with me.” “You said you were bleeding.” Lily’s face colored. “You needn’t be so explicit. And I lied.” “Two horses,” Caleb bid in a cheerful, ringing voice. The Indians looked interested. “I’ll marry you!” Lily added breathlessly. “Promise?” “I promise.” “When?” “At Christmas.” “Not good enough.” “Next month, then.” “Today.” Lily assessed the Indians again, imagined herself carrying firewood for miles, doing wash in a stream, battling fleas in a tepee, being dragged to a pallet by a brave. “Today,” Lily conceded. The man in the best calico shirt rode forward again. “No trade,” he said angrily. “Blue Coat right—woman much trouble!” Caleb laughed. “Much, much trouble,” he agreed. “This Indian land,” the savage further insisted. With that, he gave a blood-curdling shriek, and he and his friends bolted off toward the hillside again. Lily turned to face Caleb. “I lied,” she said bluntly. “I have no intention of marrying you.” He brought his nose within an inch of hers. “You’re going back on your word?” “Yes,” Lily answered, turning away to climb back into the buggy. “I was trying to save myself. I would have said anything.” Caleb caught her by the arm and wrenched her around to face him. “And there’s no baby?” Lily lowered her eyes. “There’s no baby.” “I should have taken the two horses when they were offered to me,” Caleb grumbled, practically hurling her into the buggy. Lily

She sees tall, sensible Eleanor sitting out on a terrace at twilight, with bats circling above her head. She sees the Pargiter family rising and falling through the decades like swimmers battling the waves.’ Summer Lies Bleeding

Me and Joe lay there freezing in the snow, shivering, bleeding, both of us full of shrapnel.

Fabius, as defender of the land, had time on his hands and he also had manpower. He took over the two legions of the consul Gnaeus Servilius and added a further two legions to the army that now lay at his disposal. At the same time he gave orders for all the people who lay ahead of Hannibal’s line of march to abandon their farms, burn the buildings, and destroy the crops. (Centuries later his basic strategy was to be adopted by the Russian general Kutusov against Napoleon.) The people of Italy should withdraw into their land, leaving as little behind them as possible, and he himself—as commander of the only organised army—should avoid a pitched battle at any costs. Guerrilla tactics, harassing the flanks of the enemy, cutting off his foraging parties and gradually bleeding the invader to death, were the methods that Fabius was to employ against the general whom, very wisely, he was unwilling to meet on normal terms.

Aaarrgghheeee….” There was a pounding of feet and a yell that would make a ninja master proud. I spun around just as Shawn dashed past me in a mindless panic. Before I could understand the reason behind his mad dash for freedom, I felt the brush of feathers. A black swan was madly flapping his wings and chasing after my boyfriend, reaching his long neck to peck at his butt. Shawn ran for his life, darting across the lawn and running in a circle before making his way back toward me. “Shawn!” I gasped in shock and panic. He attempted to jump over a small tree in the garden, but caught his foot and went sprawling on the lakeside path, knocking me off balance as he fell. I took a step backward with the impact of his body against mine, but there was nothing behind me apart from lake. The water was knee deep, and I fell, spread eagle on my back, and splashed into it without hurting myself. But it was cold, wet, and dirty. Birds scattered in fright as I picked myself up with disgust. Ow, help, ow, help, ow, get off, ow.” Shawn was still yelling, and I looked up to see a swan attacking his prone body, pecking at his arms, legs, and face. His mother came to the rescue, using her handbag like a battle-ax, knocking the bird away from Shawn, then swinging the bag in front of the swan’s face until he gave up the fight and retreated to the water. I climbed out of the lake, dripping and stinking like a sewer. “Shawn?” There was blood on his clothes, and my heart stopped. “Shawn? Baby? You’re bleeding.” He sat up gingerly and inspected a couple of peck marks on his arms before touching his chin. “Oh, fiddlesticks,” he exclaimed. “I hit my chin when I fell. How bad is it, Harley?” Still soaking wet, I drove him to the hospital, where Christine exclaimed with delight over his injuries before the doctor slipped in three stitches under his chin. Christine patched up his peck marks and cleaned his grazed palms before we went home.

I’m certain every last one of them fell hopelessly in love with you. How many proposals have you rejected in the past four years? A hundred or more, I’m sure.” “Twenty-six.” Luke slowed as the cottage came into view—a tidy, thatched-roof dwelling hunched between two tall pine trees. “Twenty-six,” he repeated, coming to a stop. She turned to him, clutching his hand tight. “Yes. Twenty-six. Not counting the invalid soldiers.” The color of her eyes deepened to an intense cobalt blue. “You cannot know how I have fought for you, Luke. Not in the same way you have suffered, to be sure. But I have waged my own small battles here. I have fought the pressure to marry, fought the envy for my friends who did. I have struggled against my own desire for companionship and affection.” Her voice broke. “I am not a woman formed for solitude.” “I know it,” he whispered, raising his free hand to her cheek. “I know it. That’s why you need a husband who can—” “I have fought despair,” she interrupted, “when months, years passed with no word of you.” Guilt twisted in his gut. “I could not have written. We weren’t engaged.” “Yes, but you might have written Denny. Or any one of our mutual friends. You might have casually asked for word of me.” “I didn’t want word of you.” She recoiled, and he whipped an arm around her waist, pulling her close. “How can I explain? You know my parents died several years ago. I’ve no siblings, very few relations. And it didn’t take but one dusty skirmish in Portugal for me to realize—if I died on that battlefield, there would be no one to mourn me, but a handful of old school friends.” He touched her cheek. “No one but you. I did think of you. Constantly. I did remember that perfect, sweet kiss when I was bleeding and starving and pissing scared. It was the thought that kept me going: Cecily Hale cares whether I live or die. I couldn’t risk asking word of you, don’t you understand? I didn’t want to know. Surely I’d learn you’d married one of those twenty-six men queuing up for the pleasure of your hand, and I would have nothing left.” “But I didn’t marry any of them. I waited for you.” “Then you were a fool.” He gripped her chin. “Because that man you waited for . . . he isn’t coming back. I’ve changed, too much. Some men lose a leg in war; others, a few fingers. I surrendered part of my humanity. Just like the ridiculous werestag you’re out here chasing.” “I’m out here chasing you, you idiot!” She buffeted his shoulder with her fist. “You’re the one I love.” He

The essence of a poet lies not in articulating thoughts, but in bleeding raw emotion onto the page. It's a tumultuous dance, a desperate clinging to individuality in a world striving for uniformity. To feel is to be an anomaly, a rebel against the current. And therein lies the poet's struggle - a lifelong fight to preserve the untamed spirit within, a battle waged with every word.

You sway amid the words, drawing us closer. We fight for your love. I want her, I chose her. I’ll save you, he sings. Enslave you, I whisper. And around we go. Bleeding anew, Battling for love. Killing for you...

Hello, Minister!” bellowed Percy, sending a neat jinx straight at Thicknesse, who dropped his wand and clawed at the front of his robes, apparently in awful discomfort. “Did I mention I’m resigning?” “You’re joking, Perce!” shouted Fred as the Death Eater he was battling collapsed under the weight of three separate Stunning Spells. Thicknesse had fallen to the ground with tiny spikes erupting all over him; he seemed to be turning into some form of sea urchin. Fred looked at Percy with glee. “You actually are joking, Perce. . . . I don’t think I’ve heard you joke since you were —” The air exploded. They had been grouped together, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Fred, and Percy, the two Death Eaters at their feet, one Stunned, the other Transfigured; and in that fragment of a moment, when danger seemed temporarily at bay, the world was rent apart. Harry felt himself flying through the air, and all he could do was hold as tightly as possible to that thin stick of wood that was his one and only weapon, and shield his head in his arms: He heard the screams and yells of his companions without a hope of knowing what had happened to them — And then the world resolved itself into pain and semidarkness: He was half buried in the wreckage of a corridor that had been subjected to a terrible attack. Cold air told him that the side of the castle had been blown away, and hot stickiness on his cheek told him that he was bleeding copiously. Then he heard a terrible cry that pulled at his insides, that expressed agony of a kind neither flame nor curse could cause, and he stood up, swaying, more frightened than he had been that day, more frightened, perhaps, than he had been in his life. . . . And Hermione was struggling to her feet in the wreckage, and three redheaded men were grouped on the ground where the wall had blasted apart. Harry grabbed Hermione’s hand as they staggered and stumbled over stone and wood. “No — no — no!” someone was shouting. “No! Fred! No!” And Percy was shaking his brother, and Ron was kneeling beside them, and Fred’s eyes stared without seeing, the ghost of his last laugh still etched upon his face. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO THE ELDER WAND The world had ended, so why had the battle not ceased, the castle fallen silent in horror, and every combatant laid down their arms? Harry’s mind was in free fall, spinning out of control, unable to grasp the impossibility, because Fred Weasley could not be dead, the evidence of all his senses must be lying —

Edge of the Sword (Poem) ****** I have long sensed that you're an edge of a sword. In halve you managed to pierce me with taps and words. Today those words have turned into a session of stabbing. You cut me deep with your point, my spine is flapping. Who knew that you'd burn into an anatomy of a dagger? To you both the blade and the pommel are the same in danger. Even the peen block is equally harmful too. And the guard and the grip form an army of tools.   So, I fall bleeding from your thrust; Oh! With my body full of bruises and cuts. But only the soil has an interest to lick these wounds For my blood giveth commitment and feeds it life in full. How can a battle of love turn into an unending war? Bow, allow my wailing to cease your cause. Why torture me whereas even fallen leaves nurture my sores And the ground quenches its thirst through my peeled pores? Woe to your love. It touches my trauma with soiled gloves. 

It was fucking awful,” I profess, the words spilling out of me like I’m an overfull levee. Rogan’s quiet as he runs a hand soothingly down my back while holding me tightly to him. “I tried so hard to keep her away from him, to focus on me, but…” “I know,” Rogan comforts, placing light kisses on the back of my hands. “Elon told me what happened. How you…” Emotion bleeds out of his words, and he pauses to try and rein it in. The vehemence leaking to me through the tether has me cracking my fingers so I can look at his face through them. “I fucked up so bad, Lennox. I thought I had to choose, that after everything Elon had been through, he needed to come first no matter what. I didn’t want to admit how I was feeling about you. If I did, it felt like I was betraying Elon. I mean, what kind of person finds happiness and hope when his brother is suffering?” he asks, anguish etched in his features. He shakes his head, ashamed, an indignant scoff sneaking out of his full lips. “I didn’t want to make room for you,” he admits, bringing his hand to his chest and placing it over his heart. “I didn’t want to see that you’d already sunk inside of me so deeply that there wasn’t a me without you anymore. It was the wrong time, too fast, too uncertain, but there you were all the same,” he tells me, gesturing to his heart. His last words coax a small smile to one corner of his mouth, but it’s gone in a blink. “That night when you were torn away from me. It was like I was back in that room with my uncle as he tortured Elon and tried to steal his birthright. I lost it completely. I probably would have taken out half the order if Marx hadn’t been there to stop me. They brought that Saxon fucker in to search your room for who could have planted the trap, and it hit me like a punch to the gut. You were gone. You were gone, and you didn’t know how I felt. I never let you see what you were starting to mean to me. “I knew wherever that portal was leading, it was going to be bad, and I hated myself for not giving you something to fight for, for failing to show you that we were worth fighting for. I’m never going to do that again, Lennox. Never.” Slowly, he pulls my hands from my face, lifting up a corner of the quilt to wipe the tears and snot away. “I love you, Lennox,” he tells me evenly with absolutely no hesitation. “I love you in the way that grows as we grow together. The kind of love worth fighting for, that has me waking up every day grateful and willing to do whatever it takes. I know what you did for Elon, because it’s the same thing you did for me. You’re the light in the darkness. The stars that guide you home when you’re lost. You carry the broken from battle and lift the drowning from the clawing cold that’s trying to claim them. You slay the demons.

Our Mothers Your eyes see hope for tomorrow Your hearts are made of gold that many wish to borrow Your minds sharp enough for others follow Your hands ensure that children grow Your feet go places where some cannot know Your courage makes you stand where strong winds blow Your presence becomes warmth, regardless of the snow Your influence can be felt within a stone’s throw You hold nothing back for whom you protect You speak words with good intent You treat others with so much respect You fight and never retract You pursue a path that keeps your faith intact You fulfil dreams and make a significant impact You pass through tough times while remaining steadfast You conquer battles as you pray and fast You instil discipline that becomes a great shield You serve others until they succeed You give inspiration among those who bleed You understand that you are rearing a rare breed You plant and nurture the right seed You help attract breakthroughs with speed You care for those in need You touch lives, indeed You lead your own to be great every step of the way You play your role very well, even without a pay You smile as if every day is your pay day You exude wisdom and put it on full display You save generations from going astray You run your race just like in a relay You pass the baton with no delay You carry so much worth as you get to be gray Hence, we salute you, our Mothers

Jule believed that the more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in battle. She believed that the best way to avoid having your heart broken was to pretend you don’t have one. She believed that the way you speak is often more important than anything you have to say.

There's a bond forged in war that people who haven't fought for their lives will never understand. When you put your trust in someone to watch your back in battle, when you kill and bleed together, you become more than family. And as I look around the room, that's what I see here - people who are more than blood, the ties that bind them forged in the fire of a lifetime of war.

Five years of sweating, fighting, and bleeding, with billions of kilometers traveled and over a hundred colony planets visited, and the only thing I have to show for it is a collection of colorful ribbons on my Class A smock and an abstract number in a bank account somewhere in a government computer. If I die in battle next month, there will be no evidence that I ever existed.

Early in the battle, Dumas's horse was shot out from under him and fell in such a way that the Austrians were sure it had killed him. "The Black Devil is dead!" the cry went up. But then Dumas rose from the dead, or rather, from behind his horse, which he then used as cover to stage his own counter-fusillade. He had discovered a small cache of loaded Austrian guns, which he now used to return fire. As Dermoncourt lay in a bleeding heap, he later recalled, "I managed to turn toward the general; he was standing at the head of the bridge of Clausen and holding it alone against the whole Austrian squadron; and as the bridge was narrow and the men could only get at him two or three abreast, he cut down as many as came at him. Bleeding from the arm, thigh, and head, Dumas slashed and stabbed with unrelenting fury, and with such power that most every Austrian touched by his blade fell mortally wounded or took a deadly dive over the bridge into the river below. When he was finally relieved on the bridge by a few dozen French cavalry and the Austrians retreated, Dumas did not rest but leapt on a horse to purse the fleeing enemy nearly ten miles into the alpine woods.

THE FOUR LEVELS (OR STAGES) There are four levels to healing. These first appear in Discussion of Warm Diseases by Ye Tian Shi, written in the late 1600s and early 1700s. These levels or stages evolve in order from the surface to deeply internal; and from a light sickness to death.61 These stages are, in this order: •​The wei level is defensive. It is named after wei chi, which guards the body in the skin. It is usually the initial stage of most infections and diseases, caused by the attack of different winds, or atmospheres. A common example problem is warm wind, which is warm evil combined with the wind that attacks the skin. Symptoms on this level often involve the lungs and skin and call for releasing the problematic atmospheres. •​The chi level is internal. It describes the battle between the vital chi (or zheng chi) of the body and the warm evil. The warm evil has attacked the zang-fu, producing excessive symptoms, usually internal excess heat. Symptoms arise based on the particular organ systems involved. •​The ying level is nutritive. The warm evil (a pathogenic mild heat) has dominated the chi level and is confronting the ying, the chi or precursor of the blood. Ying travels through the blood vessels and the heart, which houses shen, the energy of the mind. •​The xue level is the blood. Once the warm evil has entered the blood, the Liver and Kidney systems are involved and bleeding starts. Death can soon follow.

People think his violence is only the fights he gets in, the physical savagery that leaves everybody bruised and bleeding. But what most don’t understand is the violence - the sheer destruction - he can pull out of everybody around him. The internal battles he causes that shred you apart until you’re left in a shattered heap.

He who sweats more in training bleeds less in battle.