Bloom Peters Quotes

Evolution has no foresight. Complex machinery develops its own agendas. Brains — cheat. Feedback loops evolve to promote stable heartbeats and then stumble upon the temptation of rhythm and music. The rush evoked by fractal imagery, the algorithms used for habitat selection, metastasize into art. Thrills that once had to be earned in increments of fitness can now be had from pointless introspection. Aesthetics rise unbidden from a trillion dopamine receptors, and the system moves beyond modeling the organism. It begins to model the very process of modeling. It consumes evermore computational resources, bogs itself down with endless recursion and irrelevant simulations. Like the parasitic DNA that accretes in every natural genome, it persists and proliferates and produces nothing but itself. Metaprocesses bloom like cancer, and awaken, and call themselves I.

The water you kids were playing in, he said, had probably been to Africa and the North Pole. Genghis Khan or Saint Peter or even Jesus may have drunk it. Cleopatra might have bathed in it. Crazy Horse might have watered his pony with it. Sometimes water was liquid. Sometimes it was rock hard- ice. Sometimes it was soft- snow. Sometimes it was visible but weightless- clouds. And sometimes it was completely invisible- vapor- floating up into the the sky like the soals of dead people. There was nothing like water in the world, Jim said. It made the desert bloom but also turned rich bottomland into swamp. Without it we'd die, but it could also kill us, and that was why we loved it, even craved it, but also feared it. Never take water forgranted, Jim said. Always cherish it. Always beware of it.

The flakes stuck in my eyelashes. They fell on my sleeves. Huge. Flowers and stars. They fell onto each other, held their shapes, became small piles of perfect asterisks and blooms tumbled together in their discrete geometries like children’s blocks.

In my early teens, I heard about Naked Lunch and its mutating typewriters and talking cockroaches. While I would hardly classify its dystopic vision as erotica now, at the time, Naked Lunch was my first foray into consuming smut. It was because of Burroughs that I knew about the particular musk that blooms when a rectum is penetrated, and that death-by-hanging produces spontaneous trouser tents. The first Burroughs I read was Naked Lunch, but I buried myself in a few of his stories, and thus the arc of my recollection is just as non-linear as his narrative.

The wilderness really can be ugly sometimes. But from that ugliness came beauty. You see, those poor dead creatures returned to the earth, their bodies nourished the soil, and they helped create the most dazzling spring bloom the island had ever known.

It's always instructive to observe the life cycle of the First World aid worker. A wary enthusiasm blooms into an almost messianic sense of what might be possible. Then, as they bump up against the local cultural limits of acceptable change, comes the inevitable disappointment, which can harden into cynicism and even racism, until they are no better than the resident whites they have initially disparaged.

.... she was like a flower. And suddenly, for a vivid minute, Hercule Poirot had a new conception of the dead girl. In that halting rustic voice the girl Mary lived and bloomed again. "She was like a flower." There was suddenly a poignant sense of loss, of something exquisite destroyed. In his mind phrase after phrase succeeded each other. Peter Lord's "She was a nice kid." Nurse Hopkins's "She could have gone on the films any time." Mrs. Bishop's venomous "No patience with her airs and graces." And now last, putting to shame, laying aside those other views, the quiet, wondering, "She was like a flower.

When the full moon rises and the wolfsbane blooms, you will be as cursed as I am.

…but to the unicorn’s eyes Molly was becoming a softer country, full of pools and caves, where old flowers came burning out of the ground. Under the dirt and indifference, she appeared only thirty-seven or thirty-eight years old - no older than Schmendrick, surely, despite the magician’s birthdayless face. Her rough hair bloomed, her skin quickened, and her voice was nearly as gentle to all things as it was when she spoke to the unicorn. The eyes would never be joyous, any more than they could ever turn green or blue, but they too had wakened in the earth. She walked eagerly into King Haggard’s realm on bare, blistered feet, and she sang often. And far away on the other side of the unicorn, Schmendrick the Magician stalked in silence. His black cloak was sprouting holes, coming undone, and so was he. The rain that renewed Molly did not fall on him, and he seemed ever more parched and deserted, like the land itself. The unicorn could not heal him. A touch of her horn could have brought him back from death, but over despair she had no power, nor over magic that had come and gone.

Oh, you mysterious girls, when you are fifty-two we shall find you out; you must come into the open then. If the mouth has fallen sourly yours the blame: all the meannesses your youth concealed have been gathering in your face. But the pretty thoughts and sweet ways and dear, forgotten kindnesses linger there also, to bloom in your twilight like evening primroses. Is

A look passed between Recevo and Karras. They could hear the rest of them crowded outside the door. Karras cradled the Thompson gun, pressed the butt tight against his ribs. "Well," he whispered. "Come on if you're gonna come." They charged into the room. Karras saw white fire as he heard the reports, heard Joey's gun explode, saw one man fall, heard Joey scream, watched Joey's fedora tumble by as if it had been blown by a strong wind. Karras squeezed the trigger, saw men diving through the gunsmoke, the doorframe disintegrating in spark and dust. He fell back to the floor from a blunt shock that felt like a hammer blow to his chest. Karras winced, got himself up onto the balls of his feet. He leaned his face against the table, rested it there, caught his breath. He listened to the others move about the room. Swim, you Greek bastard. And he was over the table, landing on his feet as softly as if he had landed in water. And they were there, the Welshman and the others, moving toward him, emptying their guns at once, the sound deafening now and riding over their caterwauling screams and the bottomless scream coming from his own mouth. Karras went forward, humming as his finger locked down on the trigger, the Tommy gun dancing crazily in his arms, the gunmen falling before him through the smoke and ejecting shells and the white gulls gliding against the perfect blue sky. Red flowers bloomed on the chests of the men who had come to take Peter Karras to the place where he was always meant to be.

I have hope, though a distant one. The Earth has experienced mass extinctions before. Five times past the planet has lost 70-90% of its species, and it has always sprung back. A few weedy, impoverished survivors have always been enough to pick up the baton, speciate and bloom into brand-new ecospheres full of wonder and biodiversity. It may take ten or twenty million years, but it happens eventually. It will happen this time too. My hope is that nothing like us will be around next time, to fuck it all up again.

There was never a threat of things going too far when we were fake. But I see now how fast things can change without you even realizing it. It can go from a kiss to hands under my shirt in two seconds, and it’s so feverish, so frenzied. It’s like we’re on a high-speed train that’s going somewhere fast, and I like it, I do, but I also like a slow train where I can look out the window and appreciate the countryside, the buildings, the mountains. It’s like I don’t want to miss the little steps; I want it to last. And then the next second I want to grow up faster, more, now. To be as ready as everyone else is. How is everyone else so ready? I still find it very surprising, having a boy in my personal space. I still get nervous when he puts his arm around my waist or reaches for my hand. I don’t think I know how to date in the 2010s. I’m confused by it. I don’t want what Margot and Josh had, or Peter and Genevieve. I want something different. I guess you could call me a late bloomer, but that implies that we’re all on some predetermined blooming schedule, that there’s a right or a wrong way to be sixteen and in love with a boy. My body is a temple not just any boy gets to worship at. I won’t do any more than I want to do.

On the following morning the little hut on the Alm opened wide its doors and windows as if to drink up the early sunshine. Days went by. The warmth of the spring sun woke up first the little blue gentians - those with a white star in the center; then, one by one, all the other lovely flowers opened their petals. There were jonquils and red primroses and little golden rockroses with thorns on the edge of their petals. They all bloomed in their brightest colors while Peter watched the miracle taking place, as he had watched it every spring since he could remember. He had never quite seen the beauty of it, however, until Heidi had come to show him.

At this time, there was a superstition among upper class women that the blood of young children helped keep the bloom of youth and that young fat helped conserve a young skin. There was also TB raging through the city; at that time, it was a disease that was one hundred percent fatal, as in those years there was no penicillin, but there was a popular belief that ingested human blood soothed and healed tuberculosis. Enriqueta now began kidnapping children of all ages, some for prostitution and some to be killed to create her healing tonics and “facial crèmes.” Everything that she possibly could she used from these children: the blood, bones (that she pounded into powder), and the fat.

Allan Bloom suggests a difference between European and American nihilism.3 European nihilism is pessimistic. Nietzsche's philosophy proposes dreadful things. It takes one to the abyss of his being. It's a tremendously confounding, depressing, scary, and confusing time. All the more was nihilism scary for the Europeans because they saw what it resulted in, fascism. In a complete breakdown of cosmic order, humanity seeks an Orderer, and any Orderer will do so long as they give some structure. Europe saw where this led. For the optimistic American, on the other hand, the nihilistic point is exciting and thrilling, a time for wonderful Self-development and growth. The Self can be the Orderer, right? It's an optimistic nihilism.

Like a seed buried underground, my heart was dormant, surrounded by darkness, waiting for the nourishment of love. Then you came along, like water, quenching my thirst, and bringing warmth to my soul. With every moment we share, I feel the warmth spreading, awakening my heart, and giving me the strength to break through the soil of doubt and fear. In the midst of my heart, a garden of love began to bloom, and with every petal that unfurls, I feel myself rising above the ground, reaching for the sun, and radiating the beauty that was hidden within me. You are the sunshine that illuminates my path, the gentle rain that soothes my soul, and the fertile soil that allows me to grow. With you by my side, I am no longer the seed buried in darkness, but a radiant flower, blooming with love, hope, and joy. Together, let us tend to this garden of our hearts, nurturing it with kindness, compassion, and understanding, and watch as our love continues to flourish.

That was the whole trouble with police work. You come plunging in. a jagged Stone Age knife, to probe the delicate tissues of people's relationships, and of course you destroy far more than you discover. And even what you discover will never be the same as it was before you came; the nubbly scars of your passage will remain. At the very least. you have asked questions that expose to the destroying air fibers that can only exist and fulfill their function in coddling darkness. Cousin Amy, now, mousing about in back passages or trilling with feverish shyness at sherry parties—was she really made all the way through of dust and fluff and unused ends of cotton and rusty needles and unmatching buttons and all the detritus at the bottom of God's sewing basket? Or did He put a machine in there to tick away and keep her will stern and her back straight as she picks out of a vase of brown-at-the-edges dahlias the few blooms that have another day's life in them? Or another machine, one of His chemistry sets, that slowly mixes itself into an apparently uncaused explosion, poof!, and there the survivors are sitting covered with plaster dust among the rubble of their lives. It's always been the explosion by the time the police come stamping in with ignorant heels on the last unbroken bit of Bristol glass; with luck they can trace the explosion back to harmless little Amy, but as to what set her off—what were the ingredients of the chemistry set and what joggled them together—it was like trying to reconstruct a civilization from three broken pots and a seven-inch lump of baked clay which might, if you looked at its swellings and hollows the right way, have been the Great Earth Mother. What's more. people who've always lived together think that they are still the same—oh, older of course and a bit more snappish, but underneath still the same laughing lad of thirty years gone by. "My Jim couldn't have done that." they say. "I know him. Course he's been a bit depressed lately, funny like. but he sometimes goes that way for a bit and then it passes off. But setting fire to the lingerie department at the Army and Navy, Inspector—such a thought wouldn't enter into my Jim's head. I know him." Tears diminishing into hiccuping snivels as doubt spreads like a coffee stain across the threadbare warp of decades. A different Jim? Different as a Martian, growing inside the ever-shedding skin? A whole lot of different Jims. a new one every seven years? "Course not. I'm the same. aren't I, same as I always was—that holiday we took hiking in the Peak District in August thirty-eight—the same inside?" Pibble sighed and shook himself. You couldn't build a court case out of delicate tissues. Facts were the one foundation.

There was a dress we always kept in the family---a little girl's dress that once belonged to my great-grandmother. Ashley." Millie hesitated, as though to emphasize the name. "Ashley was just a child when she was sold, and her mother sewed the dress and embroidered a rose like that one on it." "Kind of reminds me of the color of that huge rosebush at Eliza's old estate in Charleston," Sullivan said, and Peter agreed. "I mean, I know it's comparing a real bush to an embroidered one... but isn't it strange. Eliza would have a bush with that color rose in her yards both here and in Charleston, and a collection of needlework displays with it in her attic?" Alice shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. Roses are very popular flowers and were especially popular during that time period. It certainly could mean something, but I'm more interested in the sequence of the flowers this person chose to embroider and the connection Millie mentioned to that dress." Alice leaned closer. "Millie, are you sure the stitching is the same?" As a renowned seamstress, Millie's eye could be trusted. Millie nodded emphatically. "I have no doubt about it," she said. "The gentle curve of the petals. Shows remarkable craftsmanship. I remember admiring it when I was a little girl myself. It's one of the first memories I have of falling in love with textiles.

Paul Bloom is a proponent of the power of reasoning in moral persuasion, arguing that we have direct evidence of the power of reasoning in cases where morality has changed - over time, people have been persuaded to accept gay marriage, for example, or to reject slavery. Reasoning may not be as fast as intuition, as Haidt claims, but it can play a role in where those intuitions come from. Bloom cites an idea Peter Singer describes in his book “The Expanding Circle”. This is that when you decide to make a moral argument - i.e. an argument about what is right or wrong - you must to some extent step outside of yourself and adopt an impartial perspective. If you want to persuade another that you should have more of the share of the food, you need to advance a rule that the other people can agree to. “I should get more because I’m me” won’t persuade anyone, but “I should get more because I did more work, and people who did more work should get more” might. But once you employ an impartial perspective to persuade you lend force to a general rule, which may take on a life of its own. Maybe tomorrow you slack off, so your own rule will work against you. In order to persuade you struck a bargain with the group’s shared understanding of what’s reasonable. Once you’ve done this, Singer argues, you breathe life into the internal logic of argument. The “impartial perspective” develops its own dynamic, driving reason forward quite apart from the external influences of emotion, prejudice and environment. Not only can the arguments you advance come back to bite you, but they might even lead you to conclusions you didn’t expect when you first formulated them.

She was sitting there one afternoon in early June. The sun was coming in at the window warm and bright; the orchard on the slope below the house was in a bridal flush of pinky-white bloom, hummed over by a myriad of bees. Thomas Lynde—a meek little man whom Avonlea people called “Rachel Lynde’s husband”—was sowing his late turnip seed on the hill field beyond the barn; and Matthew Cuthbert ought to have been sowing his on the big red brook field away over by Green Gables. Mrs. Rachel knew that he ought because she had heard him tell Peter Morrison the evening before in William J. Blair’s store over at Carmody that he meant to sow his turnip seed the next afternoon. Peter had asked him, of course, for Matthew Cuthbert had never been known to volunteer information about anything in his whole life.

This woman is not someone he would have forgotten. She is extraordinarily tall and slender, her body wrapped in overlapping fronds of shimmering blue silk. Silver bangles encircle her velvet-sheathed arms in serpentine coils. Her scalp is smoothly shaven save for a braided topknot that blooms out to cover her ears and shoulders in an indigo cascade. A web of fine black lines covers her face, weaving a ‘third eye’ upon her forehead, its spiral iris framed by widespread wings. The traveller cannot tell whether the pattern is tattooed or incised into her alabaster skin, nor decide upon her age, for she seems suspended between youth and maturity, but her allure is unquestionable. Timeless. The name he knows her by is Euryale, though he suspects that is only one of many and not the truest.

God started it. Baked into the name “Israel” is this very idea of a divinely initiated wrestling match. And this name, “you have striven with God,” the ancient biblical storyteller claimed, was not one that the people of Israel chose for themselves but one God bestowed upon them . . . as a blessing. So, here is my late-blooming insight: perhaps wrestling with God is God-initiated and a blessing. Why is it a blessing? Because we never come out of that wrestling match as we entered. Wrestling with God may leave us limping, but it transforms our understanding of who God is. We see God better after the struggle.

The garden was always so beautiful this time of year. The flowers were beginning to bloom, and despite her minor allergy to pollen, the garden was Wendy’s favorite place to write. The grass was vivid green, the kind of color that Wendy had only seen described in books. The kind of green that made you take a step back and widen your eyes at its vibrance and boldness. The flowers were a symphony, each flower complimenting another, moving in perfect harmony.

Evolution has no foresight. Complex machinery develops its own agendas. Brains—cheat. Feedback loops evolve to promote stable heartbeats and then stumble upon the temptation of rhythm and music. The rush evoked by fractal imagery, the algorithms used for habitat selection, metastasize into art. Thrills that once had to be earned in increments of fitness can now be had from pointless introspection. Aesthetics rise unbidden from a trillion dopamine receptors, and the system moves beyond modeling the organism. It begins to model the very process of modeling. It consumes ever-more computational resources, bogs itself down with endless recursion and irrelevant simulations. Like the parasitic DNA that accretes in every natural genome, it persists and proliferates and produces nothing but itself. Metaprocesses bloom like cancer, and awaken, and call themselves I.

I have names for Mankiw’s approach, grabbing whatever you need without attribution. Sometimes I call it "take what you wish," and sometimes I call it "Kiplingism." And when I call it Kiplingism, I'm reminding you of Kipling's stanza of poetry', which went something like this: "When Homer smote his blooming lyre, he'd heard men sing by land and sea, and what he thought he might require, he went and took, the same as me.

evolution has no foresight. complex machinery develops its own agendas. brains cheat. feedback loops evolve to promote stable heartbeats and then stumble upon the temptations of rhythm and music. the rush evoked by fractal imagery, the algorithms used for habitat selection, metastasize into art. thrills that once had to be earned in increments of fitness can now be had by pointless introspection. aesthetics rise unbidden from a trillion dopamine receptors, and the system moves beyond modeling the organism. it begins to model the very process of modeling. it consumes ever more computational resources, bogs itself down with endless recursion and irrelevant simulations. like the parasitic dna that accrues in every natural genome, it persists and proliferates and produces nothing but itself. metaprocesses bloom like cancer, and awaken, and call themselves I.

he pugnaciously advanced his view that the study of ‘high culture’ has to be the main aim of education. Above all, he said, we must pay attention to ancient Greece, because it provided ‘the models for modern achievement’. Bloom believed that the philosophers and poets of the classical world are those from whom we have most to learn, because the big issues they raised have not changed as the years have passed.

When I was a graduate student, I read an article by Peter Singer arguing that citizens of prosperous countries should direct most of their money toward helping the truly needy. Singer argued that choosing to spend our money on luxuries like fancy clothing and expensive meals is really no different from seeing a girl drowning in a shallow lake and doing nothing because you don’t want to ruin your expensive shoes by wading in to save her. I was moved by this argument and would repeat the analogy to my friends, often when we were in bars and restaurants, and it suddenly occurred to me that we were engaged in the moral equivalent of killing children.

In this way, Gregory sowed broadside seeds that, when they bloomed, brought about the end of Christendom and the Reformation. The Bishop of Trier saw the danger. He charged Gregory with  destroying the unity of the church. The Bishop of Verdun said the pope was mistaken in his unheard-of arrogance. Belief belongs to one’s church, the heart belongs to one’s country. The pope, he said, must not filch the heart’s allegiance. This was precisely what Gregory did. He wanted all; he left emperors and princes nothing. The papacy, as he fashioned it, by undermining patriotism, undermined the authority of secular rulers; they felt threatened by the Altar. At the Reformation, in England and elsewhere, rulers felt obliged to exclude Catholicism from their lands in order to feel secure.

NOVELS Coetzee, J.M. Disgrace. Exley, Frederick. A Fan's Notes. Kohler, Sheila. One Girl. Miller, Henry. Tropic of Cancer. Salter, James. Light Years, A Sport and a Pastime. Stone, Robert. Dog Soldiers. Welch, James. The Death of Jim Loney. Wharton, Edith. The Age of Innocence. White, Edmund. The Beautiful Room Is Empty. SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS Bloom, Amy. Come to Me. Cameron, Peter. The Half You Don't Know. Carver, Raymond. Where I'm Calling From. Cheever, John. The Stories of John Cheever. Gaitskill, Mary. Bad Behavior, Because They Wanted To. Houston, Pam. Cowboys Are My Weakness. Johnson, Denis. Jesus' Son. Nugent, Beth. City of Boys. O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. O'Connor, Flannery. The Complete Stories. Paley, Grace. Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. Perrotta, Tom. Bad Haircut. White, Edmund. Skinned Alive. Yates, Richard. Liars in Love.

Peter smiled, a now-familiar wistful curve of the lips that couldn’t seem to reach full bloom. “Haven’t you ever wanted to stand on some isolated shore with a cold wind whipping through you, just to see if it feels any lonelier than walking with a crowd?

Evolution has no foresight. Complex machinery develops its own agendas. Brains—cheat. Feedback loops evolve to promote stable heartbeats and then stumble upon the temptation of rhythm and music. The rush evoked by fractal imagery, the algorithms used for habitat selection, metastasize into art. Thrills that once had to be earned in increments of fitness can now be had from pointless introspection. Aesthetics rise unbidden from a trillion dopamine receptors, and the system moves beyond modeling the organism. It begins to model the very process of modeling. It consumes evermore computational resources, bogs itself down with endless recursion and irrelevant simulations. Like the parasitic DNA that accretes in every natural genome, it persists and proliferates and produces nothing but itself. Metaprocesses bloom like cancer, and awaken, and call themselves I.

I’m expecting another friend,” said Beasley. “I’m not sure when he’ll get here, but . . .” “If I’m not mistaken,” said Sara, who was facing the door, “he’s here now.” Andrew and Beasley both turned as Wyatt came in. He saw them at the same time that they saw him, scowled as he approached the table. “What the blue blazes are the two of you doing here?” he asked. “They’re having lunch with me,” said Beasley. “Why today?” “Why not today? They know they’re welcome anytime. Meet my friend, Keegee Clipson. Inspector Peter Wyatt of Scotland Yard.” “What?” said Clipson, bouncing to his feet. “Is this the friend you was talking about? I ain’t having lunch with no poxy slop, specially not a crusher!” “Ah, language!” sighed Beasley. “What riches we can find in common speech. Do you know what he’s talking about, Sara?” “Of course. Used this way, poxy is a derogatory adjective like blinking and blooming. A slop is back-slang for a copper or policeman and a crusher is a plainclothes policeman.” “Well done,” said Beasley. Then to Clipson, “Are you impressed?” “No, I’m leaving!” “You are not,” said Beasley, catching him by the sleeve. “Sit down.” “I told you . . .” said Clipson. “I know. But you’re not having it with him. You’re having it with Sara, Andrew and me.