Bonds Between Friends Quotes

Aren't we all drawn to friends in the beginning by trifling things? True bonds develop afterward, when character is revealed.

God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments. Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.

The giant, once well buried, now stirs. When soon he rises, as surely he will, the friendly bonds between us will prove as knots young girls make with the stems of small flowers.

A sister is not a friend. Who can explain the urge to take a relationship as primal and complex as a sibling and reduce it to something as replaceable, as banal as a friend? Yet this status is used again and again to connote the highest intimacy. True sisterhood is not the same as friendship. You don't choose each other and there is no furtive period of getting to know each other. You are a part of each other, right from the start. Look at an umbilical cord—tough, sinuous, unlovely, yet essential—and compare it to a friendship bracelet of brightly woven thread. That is the difference between a sister and a friend.

The bond between friends cannot be broken by chance; no interval of time or space can destroy it. Not even death itself can part true friends.

When a person dies, he disappears, along with his past, current lifestyle, and his future. Many people die in missions and wars. They die easily and in surprisingly simple ways. Hayate was one of them. Those who died had hopes and dreams, but everyone has something as important as those: parents, siblings, friends, lovers; people who are important to you, they trust and help each other. The bond between the people important to you ever since birth and the string that binds them becomes thicker and stronger as time goes by... It's beyond reason. Those bound to you by that string will do that because it is important.

Two friends . . . there are stronger forces on earth, perhaps, but few as tenacious and enduring as the bond between true friends.

Sometimes words aren't needed for you to know a change has come upon you. You can share a look with a friend that cements a deeper understanding between you, and thus a stronger bond. A touch with a sister or brother or parent that says 'I'm here, no matter what' and suddenly someone who was just a relative, a person you love, turns out to be one of your best friends.

Changes in Relationship with others: It is especially hard to trust other people if you have been repeatedly abused, abandoned or betrayed as a child. Mistrust makes it very difficult to make friends, and to be able to distinguish between good and bad intentions in other people. Some parts do not seem to trust anyone, while other parts may be so vulnerable and needy that they do not pay attention to clues that perhaps a person is not trustworthy. Some parts like to be close to others or feel a desperate need to be close and taken care of, while other parts fear being close or actively dislike people. Some parts are afraid of being in relationships while others are afraid of being rejected or criticized. This naturally sets up major internal as well as relational conflicts.

Now of all the bonds between homosexual friends, none was greater than that between friends who danced together. The friend you danced with, when you had no lover, was the most important person in your life; and for people who went without lovers for years, that was all they had.

Well, he’s not really my friend,” Julius admitted. “I don’t even know his real name, actually, but I was his healer in the game, and the bond between healer and tank runs deep.

But as they grew closer and closer, Sophie had opened Agatha's wings to a love so strong she thought it would last forever. It was she and Sophie against the world. But on that first day of school, watching Sophie with a prince, Agatha realized how blind she'd been. The bond between two girls, no matter how fierce or loyal, changed once a boy came between them.

Rukia, let me ask you something. From your experience where do you think your heart is?" "um well if I had to guess I think somewhere around here isn't that right?" "If you want to be literal about it. But in my opinion it's more a state of mind. I believe its right here, not inside our bodies at all. I think a heart is created between people when they meet for the first time, a bond that's brought to life between individuals. It's an emotional connection, when you think about something or care about someone, that's where your heart is born. If you were the only person that existed in this world, your heart would have no way of forming so it just wouldn't be anywhere. There's nothing to worry about Rukia. If you believe with all of your heart that you belong here, then this is where you'll stay. If your heart is here then that's all the reason in the world you need to be here. You must never doubt that. But listen Rukia, in the fights to come, there's something I must warn you about. Something you must promise me you will never ever do. I mean this. You must never die alone. Our souls are our bodies and when we die our bodies turn to dust and become the reishi that go on to form the soul society, but where do our hearts go? We entrust our hearts to our friends. If you entrust your heart to your friends it will continue to live on inside them. That's the most important thing you'll learn from my training. Don't you dare die alone Rukia.

Sisters share a bond that no one can explain. They understand each other in a way not even girl friends can approach. Secrets, heartbreaks, codes, history, delights, and sheer happiness can be shared in a simple glance between sisters. Many have attempted to decipher the language between sisters, and many have failed. sisters everywhere understand the importance of the bond and respect the relationship in other sisters. There is nothing more prized to a women than the secrets she shares with her sisters.

Aren’t we all drawn to our friends in the beginning by trifling things? True bonds develop afterward, when character is revealed.

I think there's something to the old saying that women use sex to get love, and men use love to get sex. And love is really just a word we use to describe a close bond, or relationship, between two people. Men have been programmed to want sex, so they do whatever is necessary to be in a relationship with a woman. And a woman is programmed to want the stability and (financial) security of a relationship, so she offers the man what he wants: sex.

Love-that which biologists, nervous about being misunderstood call "attachment"-fuels the bond between dog and master or mistress.

When two human beings divided by hostility are both, at the same time, mystified—no, frightened—by the same apparition, there is a bond that springs up between them, and they find themselves united in the most unexpected way. United in their humanity—that is the only way I can describe it. We parted almost as friends.

If you ask these heroes why they risked their lives, don’t do it on a stand in front of a crowd while you give them their medal. Because the truth is, they likely didn’t do it for their country. Or even for their ideals. Consistently, across cultures, eras, and ideologies, war heroes report the same simple motivation. They did it for their friends. In the frenzied anarchy of destruction, loyalty to causes and kingdoms alike tends to fall to the chaos. But the bond between people, well, that’s stronger than steel. If you want to create heroes, don’t give them something to fight for. Give them someone to fight for.

V grabbed him by the lapels and yanked him up against his body. The brother was trembling from head to foot, his eyes glowing like crystals in the night. "You are not my enemy." Instantly pissed off, Butch gripped V's shoulders, bunching up the leather jacket in his fists. "How do we know for sure." V bared his fangs and hissed, his black eyebrows cranking down hard. Butch gave the aggression right back, hoping, praying, ready for them to start clocking each other. He was jonesing to hit and get hit back; he wanted blood all over the both of them. For long moments, they stayed locked together, muscles straining, sweat blooming, right on the edge. Then Vishous's voice came out into space between their faces, the cracked tone riding a panting, desperate breath and getting bucked off. "You are my only friend. Never my enemy." No telling who embraced who first, but the urge to beat the living shit out of the other guy bled from their bodies, leaving only the bond between them. They wound up tight together and stood for a time in the cold wind. When they stepped back, it was awkwardly and with embarrassment.

I want to open a broken marriage repair shop. I’m not a counselor or psychologist, but I am a fan of the magical bonding that occurs between two people when duct tape binds them together for a long period of time in a dark basement. Refer a friend, and you get a two for one abuse session.

The paradoxical intercourse of audience and celebrity. The suppressed awareness that the whole reason ordinary people found celebrity fascinating was that they were not, themselves, celebrities. That wasn't quite it. (....) It was more the deeper, more tragic and universal conflict of which the celebrity paradox was a part. The conflict between the subjective centrality of our own lives versus our awareness of its objective insignificance. Atwater knew - as did everyone at Style, though by some strange unspoken consensus it was never said aloud - that this was the single great informing conflict of the American psyche. The management of insignificance. It was the great syncretic bond of US monoculture. It was everywhere, at the root of everything - of impatience in long lines, of cheating on taxes, of movements in fashion and music and art, of marketing. In particular, he thought it was alive in the paradoxes of audience. It was the feeling that celebrities were your intimate friends, coupled with the inchoate awareness that that untold millions of people felt the same way - and that the celebrities themselves did not. Atwater had had contact with a certain number of celebrities (there was no way to avoid it at BSG), and they were not, in his experience, very friendly or considerate people. Which made sense when one considered that celebrities were not actually functioning as real people at all, but as something more like symbols of themselves.

The bonding ceremony is a walk through our peers, a family member or friend usually leads those to be bonded down that path with a white laced leash.” “You want me to wear a collar!” He placed a hand around his neck instinctively. Lorn lifted a dark eyebrow. “The leash doesn't go around your neck.” He glanced between Kallen’s legs.

He(Samuel, known as 'the Pea') was as apprehensive, weak and nervous about things as Swaminathan was. The bond between them was laughter. They were able to see together the same absurdities and incongruities in things. The most trivial and unnoticeable thing to others would tickle them to death.

I don’t think there’s a less elitist thing on earth to do than to try and reach out and connect with another human being . . . And that’s what the best writing does, that’s what art does. It looks a reader in the eye, and it proceeds honestly with that reader, and nakedly. There is a compact there, a bond, a relationship, a union, a symbiosis . . . It’s not about you. Whether you’re a genius or an idiot savant. It’s about the work. The work is more important than you. So it’s not about back-claps and plaudits and “isn’t that author smart.” It’s about, “this book really connected with me. And even though you, my friend, are very different from me, I’m lending it to you, because I think it will connect with you as well.” Community. Across the eras. Between people who have never met, who will never meet, who are nonetheless bound in something together, in different ways.

Ahora somos conscientes de que comprar animales salvajes o exóticos solo favorece a que se siga traficando con ellos

The bond between parent and child was all-consuming, and yet its power was not cumulative. It had to be remade again and again throughout the course of a lifetime. A mother could do everything right early on, and still, if she failed to renegotiate the terms, all would be lost.

I felt confident that his inherited knowledge and instincts would soon assert themselves, given the chance, and in spite of his [lion] breeding. I must admit that I did not feel the same confidence about his two owners, when I heard they would accompany Christian [lion] and stay a few weeks at my camp. I was lead to believe they were very 'mod' with long hair and exotic clothing.

It was not just friendship that we are attached to each other, it was sisterhood that made that bonding between us, but now that love doesn't exist anymore as people changes with time- that's reality.

You know how there’s that one person who stumbles into your life and you instantly have a connection with them? Someone who’s a genuinely good person. Someone you just know you can build a great bond with, and it doesn’t have to be in a romantic way either. It can be with someone you have no attraction to whatsoever, you just instantly recognize something in them and they in you. Like in another realm, in another life, you were meant to be together in some way. Whether with a mother, daughter, sibling, best friend, or romantic partner, it’s a strong, unexplainable connection between two individuals

They had that special bond that sometimes exists between mothers and sons, as confidants and friends.

Sometimes words aren’t needed for you to know a change has come upon you. You can share a look with a friend that cements a deeper understanding between you, and thus a stronger bond. A touch with a sister or brother or parent that says ‘I’m here, no matter what’ and suddenly someone who was just a relative, a person you love, turns out also to be one of your best friends.

But Israel’s God was different. He was definite, and his character was immutably fixed. And they were to love him for it with everything they had. They were to love him with all their heart. In the seat of their deepest dreams and desires, in the place where they wrestled with their sorrows and clung to flickering hopes, they were to love him. They were to love him with all their soul. In the place that made each individual unique, in the inner court of the mind where decisions were made, in the forming of the bonds between friends and lovers, as well as in the coming together of a community, they were to love him. They were to love him with all their might. In the outward expressions of the passions and decisions of the heart and soul, in the places where men’s thoughts turned to action and resolve turned to progress, they were to love him. In their creativity and in their learning, in their working and in their resting, in their building up and in their tearing down, they were to love him. They were to love him as whole people, in all their weakness and in all their strength. On their best days and on their worst, in the darkest hours of their loneliest nights, and at the tables of their most abundant feasts, they were to love him. This was the heart of Israel’s religion: love. Only divine love made sense of the world. This love went beyond a mere feeling. This love was doctrine. Israel’s story was a story of being kept, and the only reasonable response was to love the Keeper.

I had Josh and my friends, but there was a difference between platonic love and the deep bonds that bound a person to their parents and significant other. At least there was supposed to be.

I'd been missing this, the ease of being with someone without speaking, without suppressing speech. I'd grown up with it in Karachi, where groups of men will congregate in the smallest spaces -- the grass between houses, a roundabout -- spaces made more generous through companionable silence. It existed between women too, this bond. My sister and her friends could spend hours reclining together on a bed, or a carpet. If secrets were murmured, it happened in a style so intuited it was pre-verbal. I hadn't experienced this very much in the West, where it seemed people had a reason for everything, including intimacy.

Although Gora had tried his best to dissuade Anandamoyi from attending Binoy's marriage ceremony he was not in his heart of hearts very much pained when, taking no account of his anger or distress, she refused to listen to him, in fact he really felt delighted. Feeling so certain that however great the gulf between Binoy and himself might become, Binoy could be never deprived of that part of his mother's immeasurable love which was showered upon him like nectar, Gora's heart was satisfied and at peace. From every other standpoint he might be separated ever so far from Binoy, but by this one bond of imperishable love of a mother these two lifelong friends would be united by the closest and deepest ties for life.

I twisted, studying his face. There was nothing warm in his eyes, nothing of the friend I'd made. I opened my shield enough to let him in. What? His voice floated into my mind. I reached down the bond between us, caressing the wall of ebony adamant. A small sliver cracked- just for me. And I said into it, You are good, Rhys. You are kind. This mask does not scare me. I see you beneath it. His hands tightened on me, and his eyes held mine as he leaned forward to brush his mouth against my cheek. It was answer enough- and... an unleashing.

One reason it is vital to respond to an infant's needs is trhat the baby feels it is the cause of its own neglect, although this is not a conscious thought. Such narcissistic feelings pave the road to an infant's psychological and physical growth; since the baby senses no boundaries between herself and her mother, she "believes" that her cries cause the mother to tend to her. And if the mother does not tend to her, the baby believes that she created her own rejection by not being lovable, not worthy of care. It's a belief that haunts one's life.

Friendship between tow persons, or two nations, is an unbreakable bond, a tie which cannot be cut. An honourable heart does not cast aside a friend because he is in trouble, nor even if he changes his nature and becomes a criminal. Between two nations friendship must also be eternal, else the friend is false and being false in one event was always false. And what was our crime against the Americans? The Great Change? But is it a crime to change a government? By whose law can it be called a crime? It is of no more importance, between friends, than for one to change his garment! For this lack of reason our love for Americans is changed to hate. I fear for the future! A generation is growing up here in our country which has never seen an American face or heard an American voice. What do they know of Americans except to hate them as they are taught to do? There is no hate so dangerous as that which once was love. .... - To the Americans, Communism is a crime. They will have none of it. - But why, when it is ours, not theirs? .... - I suppose this American concern with a form of government springs from their own history. Their ancestors fled from Europe to escape tyranny from their ancient rulers. Freedom was their dream. To them, therefore, tyranny is endemic in Communism. They will have none of it. It is not we who are Chinese whom they hate. It is the tyranny they imagine.

The bonds between men and women predate language, and while the words we have used to express those ties may have grown exceptionally subtle and refined since language first arose, they are still just words. Words make our loves richer and more complicated, yes, but much has also been lost on their account - shrouded in the trappings of the age, drunk on the vacuity of artificial thrills. The progress of language is both a friend to love between the sexes and its enemy. Such love abides, it seems, in the mysterious depths where language cannot reach. Perhaps it's a slight exaggeration to say that the language of love is a stimulant, a drug; but whatever led us humans to create such a language , it was not life itself - which is the root of love - and therefore that language cannot engender the life that is the root of all else.

That, Bonecaster, is what we mortals delight in doing. You bind yourself to a clan, to a tribe, to a nation or an empire, but to give force to the illusion of a common bond, you must feed its opposite – that all those not of your clan, or tribe, or empire, do not share that bond. I have seen Onrack the Broken, a T'lan Imass. And now I have seen him, mortal once again. To the joy and the life in the eyes of my friend, I will fight all those who deem him their enemy. For the bond between us is one of friendship, and that, Til'aras Benok, is not an illusion.

When we miss the meaning of a language, we miss the real essence and impact of communication. If we lose the real meaning of a language, we lose the real understanding of a language. Friendship is developed and nurtured through effective communication and that is the great tool that shapes friendship. A good communication, regardless of how short it might be is a great litmus paper that proves who a true friend or false friend is. A good communication does not only trigger the best bond but it also uncovers things in the heart that are hidden from the eyes. Without an effective communication, real friendship and real love between two great people is just like two great mountains with a valley between them. Without communication, we lose what we could have heard from real people. When we miss the meaning of a language, we miss the real essence and impact of communication!!!

Higher purpose: I am here to serve. I am here to inspire. I am here to love. I am here to live my truth. Communion: I will appreciate someone who doesn’t know that I feel that way. I will overlook the tension and be friendly to someone who has ignored me. I will express at least one feeling that has made me feel guilty or embarrassed. Awareness: I will spend ten minutes observing instead of speaking. I will sit quietly by myself just to sense how my body feels. If someone irritates me, I will ask myself what I really feel beneath the anger—and I won’t stop paying attention until the anger is gone. Acceptance: I will spend five minutes thinking about the best qualities of someone I really dislike. I will read about a group that I consider totally intolerant and try to see the world as they do. I will look in the mirror and describe myself exactly as if I were the perfect mother or father I wish I had had (beginning with the sentence “How beautiful you are in my eyes”). Creativity: I will imagine five things I could do that my family would never expect—and then I will do at least one of them. I will outline a novel based on my life (every incident will be true, but no one would ever guess that I am the hero). I will invent something in my mind that the world desperately needs. Being: I will spend half an hour in a peaceful place doing nothing except feeling what it is like to exist. I will lie outstretched on the grass and feel the earth languidly revolving under me. I will take in three breaths and let them out as gently as possible. Efficiency: I will let at least two things out of my control and see what happens. I will gaze at a rose and reflect on whether I could make it open faster or more beautifully than it already does—then I will ask if my life has blossomed this efficiently. I will lie in a quiet place by the ocean, or with a tape of the sea, and breathe in its rhythms. Bonding: When I catch myself looking away from someone, I will remember to look into the person’s eyes. I will bestow a loving gaze on someone I have taken for granted. I will express sympathy to someone who needs it, preferably a stranger. Giving: I will buy lunch and give it to someone in need on the street (or I will go to a café and eat lunch with the person). I will compliment someone for a quality that I know the individual values in him- or herself. I will give my children as much of my undivided time today as they want. Immortality: I will read a scripture about the soul and the promise of life after death. I will write down five things I want my life to be remembered for. I will sit and silently experience the gap between breathing in and breathing out, feeling the eternal in the present moment.

Nello and Patrasche were left all alone in the world. They were friends in a friendship closer than brotherhood. Nello was a little Ardennois—Patrasche was a big Fleming. They were both of the same age by length of years, yet one was still young, and the other was already old. They had dwelt together almost all their days: both were orphaned and destitute, and owed their lives to the same hand. It had been the beginning of the tie between them, their first bond of sympathy; and it had strengthened day by day, and had grown with their growth, firm and indissoluble, until they loved one another very greatly.

California during the 1940s had Hollywood and the bright lights of Los Angeles, but on the other coast was Florida, land of sunshine and glamour, Miami and Miami Beach. If you weren't already near California's Pacific Coast you headed for Florida during the winter. One of the things which made Miami such a mix of glitter and sunshine was the plethora of movie stars who flocked there to play, rubbing shoulders with tycoons and gangsters. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between the latter two. Miami and everything that surrounded it hadn't happened by accident. Carl Fisher had set out to make Miami Beach a playground destination during the 1930s and had succeeded far beyond his dreams. The promenade behind the Roney Plaza Hotel was a block-long lovers' lane of palm trees and promise that began rather than ended in the blue waters of the Atlantic. Florida was more than simply Miami and Miami Beach, however. When George Merrick opened the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables papers across the country couldn't wait to gush about the growing aura of Florida. They tore down Collins Bridge in the Gables and replaced it with the beautiful Venetian Causeway. You could plop down a fiver if you had one and take your best girl — or the girl you wanted to score with — for a gondola ride there before the depression, or so I'd been told. You see, I'd never actually been to Florida before the war, much less Miami. I was a newspaper reporter from Chicago before the war and had never even seen the ocean until I was flying over the Pacific for the Air Corp. There wasn't much time for admiring the waves when Japanese Zeroes were trying to shoot you out of the sky and bury you at the bottom of that deep blue sea. It was because of my friend Pete that I knew so much about Miami. Florida was his home, so when we both got leave in '42 I followed him to the warm waters of Miami to see what all the fuss was about. It would be easy to say that I skipped Chicago for Miami after the war ended because Pete and I were such good pals and I'd had such a great time there on leave. But in truth I decided to stay on in Miami because of Veronica Lake. I'd better explain that. Veronica Lake never knew she was the reason I came back with Pete to Miami after the war. But she had been there in '42 while Pete and I were enjoying the sand, sun, and the sweet kisses of more than a few love-starved girls desperate to remember what it felt like to have a man's arm around them — not to mention a few other sensations. Lake had been there promoting war bonds on Florida's first radio station, WQAM. It was a big outdoor event and Pete and I were among those listening with relish to Lake's sultry voice as she urged everyone to pitch-in for our boys overseas. We were in those dark early days of the war at the time, and the outcome was very much in question. Lake's appearance at the event was a morale booster for civilians and servicemen alike. She was standing behind a microphone that sat on a table draped in the American flag. I'd never seen a Hollywood star up-close and though I liked the movies as much as any other guy, I had always attributed most of what I saw on-screen to smoke and mirrors. I doubted I'd be impressed seeing a star off-screen. A girl was a girl, after all, and there were loads of real dolls in Miami, as I'd already discovered. Boy, was I wrong." - Where Flamingos Fly

The giant, once buried, now stirs. When soon he rises, as surely he will, the friendly bonds between us will prove as knots young girls make with the stems of small flowers. Men will burn their neighbours' houses by night. Hang children fro trees at dawn. The rivers will stink with corpses bloated from their days of voyaging. And even as they move on, our armies will grow larger, swollen by anger and thirst for vengeance. For you Britons, it'll be as a ball of fire rolls towards you. You'll flee or perish. And country by country, this will become a new land, a Saxon land, with no more trace of your people's time here than a flock or two of sheep wandering the hills untended.

A marriage is a private bond between two people. But a wedding is a party for everyone, a celebration of life and love, a gathering of friends and relatives to rejoice in life’s good food, champagne, dancing, laughter, and a golden moment in the passage of life. A marriage lasts years, through the good times and bad, and all the banal, boring everyday goings-on of living. A wedding is a brief flash, a unique, exceptional festivity with singing and flowers and good will among men—and women. A marriage is real life. A wedding is a fairy tale. But a wedding is also a promise that we will hold dear the joys of the fairy tale close to our hearts as we go through the years of our marriage.

Now I understand Isabel's slavish loyalty to George. Now I understand the passionate bond between the king and the queen. Now I even understand the queen's mother Jacquetta dying of heartbreak at the loss of the man she married for love. I learn that to love a man whose interests are mine, whose passion is given freely and openly to me, and whose battle-hardened young lithe body lies beside me every night as his only joy, is to utterly change my life. I was married before; but I was never shaken and touched and puzzled and adored before. I was a wife but I was no lover. With Richard, I become wife and lover, counselor and friend, partner in all things, comrade in arms, fellow traveler. With Richard, I become a woman, not a girl, I become a wife.

Perhaps we are wiser when we are young, though the philosopher would dispute with me. But I swear to you, we were friends from that moment onward; and that moment of foolish laughter was a bond stronger than anything that came between us later —victories or defeats, loyalties or betrayals, griefs or joys. But the days of youth go, and part of us goes with them, not to return.

Recent psychological research on grief favors meaning making over closure; accepts zigzagging paths, not just linear stages; recognizes ambiguity without pathology; and acknowledges continuing bonds between the living and the dead rather than commanding decathexis. But old ideas about grief as a linear march to closure still hold powerful sway. Many psychologists and grief counseling programs continue to consider “closure” a therapeutic goal. Sympathy cards, internet searches, and friendly advice often uphold a rigid division between healthy grief that the mourner “gets over” and unhealthy grief that persists. Forensic exhumation, too, continues to be informed by these deeply rooted ideas. The experiences of grief and exhumation related by families of the missing indicate something more complex and mysterious than “closure.” Exhumation heals and wounds, sometimes both at once, in the same gesture, in the same breath, as Dulce described feeling consoled and destroyed by the fragment of her brother’s bones. Exhumation can divide brothers and restore fathers, open old wounds and open the possibility of regeneration—of building something new with the “pile of broken mirrors” that is memory, loss, and mourning.

WARMING UP TO the crèche turned out to be easy. Warming up to the other mothers there isn’t. I’m aware that Anglo-American-style instant bonding between women doesn’t happen in France. I’ve heard that female friendships here start out slowly, and can take years to ramp up. (Though once you’re finally ‘in’ with a French woman, you’re supposedly stuck with her for life. Whereas your English-speaking insta-friends can drop you at any time.)

#96. Spend a Few Minutes Cuddling Your Significant Other/Child/Pet Physical touch is hugely important to our wellbeing. Cuddling releases oxytocin, the “happy hormone,” which can help reduce stress and even boost your immune system. Physical touch can also make the bonding process easier and improve communication between couples or parents and children. Cuddling doesn’t have to be limited to romantic partners—you’ll get the same effect from hugging a friend, a child or even your favorite furry animal.

In this miasma of forgotten wars, torture and the war on terror, there are no easy answers, especially in the face of a very real terrorism. But I can live my questions. As a humanitarian, I can act from a feeling of shared vulnerability with the victims of preventable suffering. I have a responsibility to bear witness publicly to the plight of those I seek to assist and to insist on independent humanitarian action and respect for international humanitarian law. As a citizen, I can assume my responsibility for the public world - the world of politics - not as a spectator, but as a participant who engages and shapes it. The larger force that can push back against the wrong use of power can be the force of a citizen's politics that openly debates the right use of power and the reasoned pursuit of justice. Catherine Lu, a political philosopher and my friend, has described justice as a boundary over which we must not go, a bond of common humanity between us, a balance among people of equal worth and dignity. I fight not for a utopian ideal, but each day I make a choice, against nihilism and towards justice.

I will add, as a fifth circumstance in the situation of the House of Representatives, restraining them from oppressive measures, that they can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interests and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny.

Even if fate decreed that we had a bond, I definitely don’t recognize it. I don’t even like you.” “If we had no bad blood between us, would you . . . like me?” “I’d be attracted to you, but there’s no way I’d want anything permanent with you—bad blood or not.” “What the hell’s so wrong with me?” His eyes flickered, and the hint of uncertainty he’d just revealed was drowned out by a surge of arrogance. “I’m strong, I can protect you, and I’m rich. And I vow to you, lass, once you experience what it’s like to share my bed, you will no’ ever want to leave it.” His eyes bored into hers as he said the last, and despite herself, his utter confidence in this area affected her, forcing herself to wonder what tricks a twelve-century-old immortal would’ve picked up over the years. She inwardly shook herself. “MacRieve, when I settle down it’s going to be with a male that has—oh, I don’t know—a sense of humor, or of modesty. How about a lack of scathing hatred towards witches? Maybe a zest for life? Too much to ask that he’s born in the same millennium?” “Some of these things canna be changed, but know that I was no’ always so . . . grave as I am now.” “It doesn’t matter. We’re just too different. I need a male who will get along with my friends, my witch friends, who’ll be current enough to know the difference between emo rock and jangle pop, and who’ll be able to get me through the ice world in Zelda.” MacRieve was no doubt speculating in what ice dimension this mysterious land of Zelda was. He finally said, “These differences are surmountable—” “And the age difference? You keep talking about how young I am, but all you’re doing is reminding me how old you are. Any minute now you’re going to say something really lame like ‘When I was your age . . .,’ and I’m just not going to be able to keep from laughing at you.

Gregori stepped away from the huddled mass of tourists, putting distance between himself and the guide. He walked completely erect,his head high, his long hair flowing around him. His hands were loose at his sides, and his body was relaxed, rippling with power. "Hear me now, ancient one." His voice was soft and musical, filling the silence with beauty and purity. "You have lived long in this world, and you weary of the emptiness. I have come in anwer to your call." "Gregori.The Dark One." The evil voice hissed and growled the words in answer. The ugliness tore at sensitive nerve endings like nails on a chalkboard. Some of the tourists actually covered their ears. "How dare you enter my city and interfere where you have no right?" "I am justice,evil one. I have come to set your free from the bounaries holding you to this place." Gregori's voice was so soft and hypnotic that those listening edged out from their sanctuaries.It beckoned and pulled, so that none could resist his every desire. The black shape above their head roiled like a witch's cauldron. A jagged bolt of lightning slammed to earth straight toward the huddled group. Gregori raised a hand and redirected the force of energy away from the tourists and Savannah. A smile edged the cruel set of his mouth. "You think to mock me with display,ancient one? Do not attempt to anger what you do not understand.You came to me.I did not hunt you.You seek to threaten my lifemate and those I count as my friends.I can do no other than carry the justice of our people to you." Gregori's voice was so reasonable, so perfect and pure,drawing obedience from the most recalcitrant of criminals. The guide made a sound,somewhere between disbelief and fear.Gregori silenced him with a wave of his hand, needing no distractions. But the noise had been enough for the ancient one to break the spell Gregori's voice was weaving around him. The dark stain above their heads thrashed wildly, as if ridding itself ot ever-tightening bonds before slamming a series of lightning strikes at the helpless mortals on the ground. Screams and moans accompanied the whispered prayers, but Gregori stood his ground, unflinching. He merely redirected the whips of energy and light, sent them streaking back into the black mass above their heads.A hideous snarl,a screech of defiance and hatred,was the only warning before it hailed. Hufe golfball-sized blocks of bright-red ice rained down toward them. It was thick and horrible to see, the shower of frozen blood from the skies. But it stopped abruptly, as if an unseen force held it hovering inches from their heads. Gregori remained unchanged, impassive, his face a blank mask as he shielded the tourists and sent the hail hurtling back at their attacker.From out of the cemetery a few blocks from them, an army of the dead rose up. Wolves howled and raced along beside the skeletons as they moved to intercept the Carpathian hunter. Savannah. He said her name once, a soft brush in her mind. I've got it, she sent back instantly.Gregori had his hands full dealing with the abominations the vampire was throwing at him; he did't need to waste his energy protecting the general public from the apparition. She moved out into the open, a small, fragile figure, concentrating on the incoming threat. To those dwelling in the houses along the block and those driving in their cars, she masked the pack of wolves as dogs racing down the street.The stick=like skeletons, grotesque and bizarre, were merely a fast-moving group of people. She held the illusion until they were within a few feet of Gregori.Dropping the illusion, she fed every ounce of her energy and power to Gregori so he could meet the attack.

In the Middle Ages, marriage was considered a sacrament ordained by God, and God also authorised the father to marry his children according to his wishes and interests. An extramarital affair was accordingly a brazen rebellion against both divine and parental authority. It was a mortal sin, no matter what the lovers felt and thought about it. Today people marry for love, and it is their inner feelings that give value to this bond. Hence, if the very same feelings that once drove you into the arms of one man now drive you into the arms of another, what’s wrong with that? If an extramarital affair provides an outlet for emotional and sexual desires that are not satisfied by your spouse of twenty years, and if your new lover is kind, passionate and sensitive to your needs – why not enjoy it? But wait a minute, you might say. We cannot ignore the feelings of the other concerned parties. The woman and her lover might feel wonderful in each other’s arms, but if their respective spouses find out, everybody will probably feel awful for quite some time. And if it leads to divorce, their children might carry the emotional scars for decades. Even if the affair is never discovered, hiding it involves a lot of tension, and may lead to growing feelings of alienation and resentment. The most interesting discussions in humanist ethics concern situations like extramarital affairs, when human feelings collide. What happens when the same action causes one person to feel good, and another to feel bad? How do we weigh the feelings against each other? Do the good feelings of the two lovers outweigh the bad feelings of their spouses and children? It doesn’t matter what you think about this particular question. It is far more important to understand the kind of arguments both sides deploy. Modern people have differing ideas about extramarital affairs, but no matter what their position is, they tend to justify it in the name of human feelings rather than in the name of holy scriptures and divine commandments. Humanism has taught us that something can be bad only if it causes somebody to feel bad. Murder is wrong not because some god once said, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Rather, murder is wrong because it causes terrible suffering to the victim, to his family members, and to his friends and acquaintances. Theft is wrong not because some ancient text says, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ Rather, theft is wrong because when you lose your property, you feel bad about it. And if an action does not cause anyone to feel bad, there can be nothing wrong about it. If the same ancient text says that God commanded us not to make any images of either humans or animals (Exodus 20:4), but I enjoy sculpting such figures, and I don’t harm anyone in the process – then what could possibly be wrong with it? The same logic dominates current debates on homosexuality. If two adult men enjoy having sex with one another, and they don’t harm anyone while doing so, why should it be wrong, and why should we outlaw it? It is a private matter between these two men, and they are free to decide about it according to their inner feelings. In the Middle Ages, if two men confessed to a priest that they were in love with one another, and that they never felt so happy, their good feelings would not have changed the priest’s damning judgement – indeed, their happiness would only have worsened the situation. Today, in contrast, if two men love one another, they are told: ‘If it feels good – do it! Don’t let any priest mess with your mind. Just follow your heart. You know best what’s good for you.

I don’t know how many evenings we’d spent in here talking, or like tonight, sitting quietly like two solitudes. Lucretia and I had formed a bond that went beyond friends. And yet I felt the difference between us. I noticed it at Meetings when I saw her on the Facing bench, the only female minister among all those men, the way she rose and spoke with such fearless beauty, and every morning when I went downstairs and there were her children sticky with oat gruel. I would get a faintly vacuous feeling in the pit of my stomach, not from envy that she had a profession, or these little ones, or even James, who was not like other men, but of some unknown species, a husband who beamed over her profession and made the oat gruel himself. No, it wasn’t that. It was the belonging I envied. She’d found her belonging.

inspire. I am here to love. I am here to live my truth. Communion: I will appreciate someone who doesn’t know that I feel that way. I will overlook the tension and be friendly to someone who has ignored me. I will express at least one feeling that has made me feel guilty or embarrassed. Awareness: I will spend ten minutes observing instead of speaking. I will sit quietly by myself just to sense how my body feels. If someone irritates me, I will ask myself what I really feel beneath the anger—and I won’t stop paying attention until the anger is gone. Acceptance: I will spend five minutes thinking about the best qualities of someone I really dislike. I will read about a group that I consider totally intolerant and try to see the world as they do. I will look in the mirror and describe myself exactly as if I were the perfect mother or father I wish I had had (beginning with the sentence “How beautiful you are in my eyes”). Creativity: I will imagine five things I could do that my family would never expect—and then I will do at least one of them. I will outline a novel based on my life (every incident will be true, but no one would ever guess that I am the hero). I will invent something in my mind that the world desperately needs. Being: I will spend half an hour in a peaceful place doing nothing except feeling what it is like to exist. I will lie outstretched on the grass and feel the earth languidly revolving under me. I will take in three breaths and let them out as gently as possible. Efficiency: I will let at least two things out of my control and see what happens. I will gaze at a rose and reflect on whether I could make it open faster or more beautifully than it already does—then I will ask if my life has blossomed this efficiently. I will lie in a quiet place by the ocean, or with a tape of the sea, and breathe in its rhythms. Bonding: When I catch myself looking away from someone, I will remember to look into the person’s eyes. I will bestow a loving gaze on someone I have taken for granted. I will express sympathy to someone who needs it, preferably a stranger. Giving: I will buy lunch and give it to someone in need on the street (or I will go to a café and eat lunch with the person). I will compliment someone for a quality that I know the individual values in him- or herself. I will give my children as much of my undivided time today as they want. Immortality: I will read a scripture about the soul and the promise of life after death. I will write down five things I want my life to be remembered for. I will sit and silently experience the gap between breathing in and breathing out, feeling the eternal in the present moment.

This place cuts away the bullshit and the niceties, revealing whoever you are at your core.” I repeat his words from this summer. “Isn’t that what you said to me? Is this who you really are at your core? Someone so enamored with rules that he doesn’t know when to bend or break them for someone he cares about? Someone so focused on the least I’m capable of doing, he can’t believe I can do so much more?” The warmth drains from his brown eyes. “Let’s get one thing straight, Dain.” I take a step closer, but the distance between us only widens. “The reason we’ll never be anything more than friends isn’t because of your rules. It’s because you have no faith in me. Even now, when I’ve survived against all odds and bonded not just one dragon but two, you still think I won’t make it. So forgive me, but you’re about to be some of the bullshit that this place cuts away from me.” I move to the side and march past him through the tunnel, forcing air through my lungs.

I shared my love of books with Benny, but Aunt Yolanda opened my eyes to the world of food as art, cooking without cans. She introduced me to the magic of spices, the exotic perfume of fresh herbs crushed between fingers. Younger than my mother, she was rounded in just the right spots, from her love of good food, and when we talked she looked right at me and listened, nodding and laughing loudly when I'd tell jokes, holding my hand when we'd walk, as if we were best friends or sisters. She liked Anne and Christine, too, but I could tell I was her favorite. She took me with her on shopping trips, to the fish market near the waterfront and the farm stands out west. Sometimes she'd journey to the Asian grocers in Northeast Portland or the hippie vegetarian markets on Hawthorne to find something special. We'd come home laden with ingredients that I knew my mother had never heard of, and the resulting feasts would fill me with a yearning to go to different places, to try new things.

He could not maintain the effort to arrive on time since his lifelong habit had created the opposite habit: to elude, to avoid, to disappoint every expectation of others, every commitment, every promise, every crystallization. The magic beauty of simultaneity, to see the loved one rushing toward you at the same moment you are rushing toward him, the magic power of meeting exactly at midnight to achieve union, the illusion of one common rhythm achieved by overcoming obstacles, deserting friends, breaking other bonds —all this was soon dissolved by his laziness, by his habit of missing every moment, of never keeping his word, of living perversely in a state of chaos, of swimming more naturally in a sea of failed intentions, broken promises, and aborted wishes. The importance of rhythm in Djuna was so strong that no matter where she was, even without a watch, she sensed the approach of midnight and would climb on a bus, so instinctively and accurate that very often as she stepped of the bus the twelve loud gongs of midnight would be striking at the large station clock. This obedience to timing was her awareness of the rarity of unity between human beings.

Perhaps the similarity between their position and her own created a disagreeable impression for her. There was also the fact that they were soured bluestockings who sought, through the number of theatrical entertainments they hosted, to delude themselves that they kept a salon, and there was a rivalry between them, which the considerable erosion of their fortunes in the course of their rather unruly lives, by obliging them to watch their purse strings and to rely on the charity of the actors they used, transformed into a sort of life struggle. And, again, the lady with the Marie-Antoinette coiffure, whenever she set eyes on Mme de Villeparisis, could not help being reminded of the fact that the Duchesse de Guermantes did not come to her own Friday receptions. She was consoled by the unfailing presence at these Fridays of hers of her dutiful relation, the Princesse de Poix, her own special Guermantes, who never went near Mme de Villeparisis, despite the fact that she was an intimate friend of the Duchesse. Nevertheless, from the mansion on the Quai Malaquais to the salons of the rue de Tournon, the rue de la Chaise, and the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, a bond as strong as it was hateful united these three fallen divinities, and I would have been keen to learn, from the pages of some dictionary of society mythology, what amorous adventure, what

There are seven passions in the universe, Ssrin tells her. Seven patterns which appear again and again, across species, across time and space. There are many ideas about why. She shares none of them. She only names the passions for Anna. Preyjest is the chasing passion, the hunting passion. (Her heads show Anna: one slithering up another’s neck, reaching for it with a forked tongue-tip. At the last instant the other slips away.) Prajna is the lonely passion. The need for truth. One star in the dark, trying to brighten. Caryatasis is the dream of all disciples. The passion that binds students to their teacher. It happens when one soul changes many, and many change toward the one. Geashade hurts in the end, and cannot be ended without the hurt. Hesper is the warmth of a need unexpectedly met. Generosity from a stranger. Love from a friend. It is associated with silence: things said without speaking. Rath is the passion which stole gravity’s strength. Like gravity it draws things together to clash, and leaves scars shaped like the enemy. Serendure is the last and greatest. It is the unbreakable bond which may be trust and may be dependence. It persists whether it is wanted or not. It is like the force which binds quarks together: stronger when it is pulled. Each passion, Ssrin says, is a relationship between souls. Souls are the letters that make these words.

No one acts in a void. We all take cues from cultural norms, shaped by the law. For the law affects our ideas of what is reasonable and appropriate. It does so by what it prohibits--you might think less of drinking if it were banned, or more of marijuana use if it were allowed--but also by what it approves. . . . Revisionists agree that it matters what California or the United States calls a marriage, because this affects how Californians or Americans come to think of marriage. Prominent Oxford philosopher Joseph Raz, no friend of the conjugal view, agrees: "[O]ne thing can be said with certainty [about recent changes in marriage law]. They will not be confined to adding new options to the familiar heterosexual monogamous family. They will change the character of that family. If these changes take root in our culture then the familiar marriage relations will disappear. They will not disappear suddenly. Rather they will be transformed into a somewhat different social form, which responds to the fact that it is one of several forms of bonding, and that bonding itself is much more easily and commonly dissoluble. All these factors are already working their way into the constitutive conventions which determine what is appropriate and expected within a conventional marriage and transforming its significance." Redefining civil marriage would change its meaning for everyone. Legally wedded opposite-sex unions would increasingly be defined by what they had in common with same-sex relationships. This wouldn't just shift opinion polls and tax burdens. Marriage, the human good, would be harder to achieve. For you can realize marriage only by choosing it, for which you need at least a rough, intuitive idea of what it really is. By warping people's view of marriage, revisionist policy would make them less able to realize this basic way of thriving--much as a man confused about what friendship requires will have trouble being a friend. . . . Redefining marriage will also harm the material interests of couples and children. As more people absorb the new law's lesson that marriage is fundamentally about emotions, marriages will increasingly take on emotion's tyrannical inconstancy. Because there is no reason that emotional unions--any more than the emotions that define them, or friendships generally--should be permanent or limited to two, these norms of marriage would make less sense. People would thus feel less bound to live by them whenever they simply preferred to live otherwise. . . . As we document below, even leading revisionists now argue that if sexual complementarity is optional, so are permanence and exclusivity. This is not because the slope from same-sex unions to expressly temporary and polyamorous ones is slippery, but because most revisionist arguments level the ground between them: If marriage is primarily about emotional union, why privilege two-person unions, or permanently committed ones? What is it about emotional union, valuable as it can be, that requires these limits? As these norms weaken, so will the emotional and material security that marriage gives spouses. Because children fare best on most indicators of health and well-being when reared by their wedded biological parents, the same erosion of marital norms would adversely affect children's health, education, and general formation. The poorest and most vulnerable among us would likely be hit the hardest. And the state would balloon: to adjudicate breakup and custody issues, to meet the needs of spouses and children affected by divorce, and to contain and feebly correct the challenges these children face.

But what Ianthe and Tamlin had said... 'You don't think it sends a bad message if people see me learning to fight- using weapons?' The moment the words were out, I realised the stupidity of them. The stupidity of- of what had been shoved down my throat these past months. Silence. Then Mor said with a soft venom that made my understand the High Lord's Third had received training of her own in the Court of Nightmares, 'Let me tell you two things. As someone who has perhaps been in your shoes before.' Again, that shared bond of anger, of pain throbbed between them all, save for Amren, who was giving me a look dripping with distaste. 'One,' Mor said, 'you have left the Spring Court.' I tried not to let the full weight of those words sink in. 'If that does not send a message, for good or bad, then your training will not, either. Two,' she continued, laying her palm flat on the table, 'I once lived in a place where the opinion of others mattered. It suffocated me, nearly broke me. So you'll understand me, Feyre, when I say that I know what you feel, and I know what they tried to do to you, and that with enough courage, you can say to help with a reputation.' Her voice gentled, and the tension between them all faded with it. 'You do what you love, what you need.' Mor would not tell me what to wear or not wear. She would not allow me to step aside while she spoke for me. She would not... would not do any of the things that I had so willingly, desperately, allowed Ianthe to do I had never had a female friend before. Ianthe... she had not been one. Not in the way that mattered, I realised. And Nesta and Elain, in those few weeks I'd been at home before Amarantha, had started to fill that role, but... but looking at Mor, I couldn't explain it, couldn't understand it, but... I felt it. Like I could indeed go to dinner with her. Talk to her. Not that I had much of anything to offer her in return.

Earlier today—at the loft,” he said, pulling back to meet my eyes. Unflinching. Open. “I didn’t mean to insult her.” “I’m sorry I snapped at you.” He lifted a dark brow. “Why in hell would you be? I insulted your sister; you defended her. You had every right to kick my ass for it.” “I didn’t mean to … undermine you.” Shadows flickered in his eyes. “Ah.” He twisted toward the Sidra, and I followed suit. The water meandered past, its dark surface rippling with golden faelights from the streetlamps and the bright jewels of the Rainbow. “That was why it was … strange between us this afternoon.” He cringed and faced me fully. “Mother above, Feyre.” My cheeks heated and I interrupted before he could continue. “I get why, though. A solid, unified front is important.” I scratched at the smooth wood of the rail with a finger. “Especially for us.” “Not amongst our family.” Warmth spread through me at the words—our family. He took my hand, interlacing our fingers. “We can make whatever rules we want. You have every right to question me, push me—both in private and in public.” A snort. “Of course, if you decide to truly kick my ass, I might request that it’s done behind closed doors so I don’t have to suffer centuries of teasing, but—” “I won’t undermine you in public. And you won’t undermine me.” He remained quiet, letting me think, speak. “We can question each other through the bond if we’re around people other than our friends,” I said. “But for now, for these initial years, I’d like to show the world a unified front … That is, if we survive.” “We’ll survive.” Uncompromising will in those words, that face. “But I want you to feel comfortable pushing me, calling me out—” “When have I ever not done that?” He smiled. But I added, “I want you to do the same—for me.” “Deal. But amongst our family … call me on my bullshit all you want. I insist, actually.” “Why?” “Because it’s fun.” I nudged him with an elbow. “Because you’re my equal,” he said. “And as much as that means having each other’s backs in public, it also means that we grant each other the gift of honesty. Of truth.

That was the first thing that struck him: although he had never given people cause to doubt his integrity, they were ready to bet on his dishonesty rather than on his virtue. The second thing that struck him was their reaction to the position they attributed to him. I might divide it into two basic types: The first type of reaction came from people who themselves (they or their intimates) had retracted something, who had themselves been forced to make public peace with the occupation regime or were prepared to do so (unwillingly, of course—no one wanted to do it). These people began to smile a curious smile at him, a smile he had never seen before: the sheepish smile of secret conspiratorial consent. It was the smile of two men meeting accidentally in a brothel: both slightly abashed, they are at the same time glad that the feeling is mutual, and a bond of something akin to brotherhood develops between them. Their smiles were all the more complacent because he had never had the reputation of being a conformist. His supposed acceptance of the chief surgeon's proposal was therefore further proof that cowardice was slowly but surely becoming the norm of behavior and would soon cease being taken for what it actually was. He had never been friends with these people, and he realized with dismay that if he did in fact make the statement the chief surgeon had requested of him, they would start inviting him to parties and he would have to make friends with them. The second type of reaction came from people who themselves (they or their intimates) had been persecuted, who had refused to compromise with the occupation powers or were convinced they would refuse to compromise (to sign a statement) even though no one had requested it of them (for instance, because they were too young to be seriously involved). . . . And suddenly Tomas grasped a strange fact: everyone was smiling at him, everyone wanted him to write the retraction; it would make everyone happy! The people with the first type of reaction would be happy because by inflating cowardice, he would make their actions seem commonplace and thereby give them back their lost honor. The people with the second type of reaction, who had come to consider their honor a special privilege never to be yielded, nurtured a secret love for the cowards, for without them their courage would soon erode into a trivial, monotonous grind admired by no one.

Revolt of solitary instincts against social bonds is the key to the philosophy, the politics, and the sentiments, not only of what is commonly called the romantic movement, but of its progeny down to the present day. Philosophy, under the influence of German idealism, became solipsistic, and self-development was proclaimed as the fundamental principle of ethics. As regards sentiment, there has to be a distasteful compromise between the search for isolation and the necessities of passion and economics. D. H. Lawrence's story, 'The Man Who Loved Islands', has a hero who disdained such compromise to a gradually increasing extent and at last died of hunger and cold, but in the enjoyment of complete isolation; but this degree of consistency has not been achieved by the writers who praise solitude. The comforts of civilized life are not obtainable by a hermit, and a man who wishes to write books or produce works of art must submit to the ministrations of others if he is to survive while he does his work. In order to continue to feel solitary, he must be able to prevent those who serve him from impinging upon his ego, which is best accomplished if they are slaves. Passionate love, however, is a more difficult matter. So long as passionate lovers are regarded as in revolt against social trammels, they are admired; but in real life the love-relation itself quickly becomes a social trammel, and the partner in love comes to be hated, all the more vehemently if the love is strong enough to make the bond difficult to break. Hence love comes to be conceived as a battle, in which each is attempting to destroy the other by breaking through the protecting walls of his or her ego. This point of view has become familiar through the writings of Strindberg, and, still more, of D. H. Lawrence. Not only passionate love, but every friendly relation to others, is only possible, to this way of feeling, in so far as the others can be regarded as a projection of one's own Self. This is feasible if the others are blood-relations, and the more nearly they are related the more easily it is possible. Hence an emphasis on race, leading, as in the case of the Ptolemys, to endogamy. How this affected Byron, we know; Wagner suggests a similar sentiment in the love of Siegmund and Sieglinde. Nietzsche, though not scandalously, preferred his sister to all other women: 'How strongly I feel,' he writes to her, 'in all that you say and do, that we belong to the same stock. You understand more of me than others do, because we come of the same parentage. This fits in very well with my "philosophy".

Mowbray! Been a while since you bothered with the season. What brings you to town?” Lord Adrian Montfort, Earl of Mowbray, shifted his gaze from the couples whirling past on the dance floor and to the man who approached: the tall, fair, eminently good-looking Reginald Greville. He and Greville, his cousin, had once been the best of friends. However, time and distance had weakened the bond—with a little help from the war with France, Adrian thought bitterly. Ignoring Reginald’s question, he offered a somewhat rusty smile in greeting, then turned his gaze back to the men and women swinging elegantly about the dance floor. He replied instead, “Enjoying the season, Greville?” “Certainly, certainly. Fresh blood. Fresh faces.” “Fresh victims,” Mowbray said dryly, and Reginald laughed. “That too.” Reginald was well-known for his success in seducing young innocents. Only his title and money kept him from being forced out of town. Shaking his head, Adrian gave that rusty smile again. “I wonder you never tire of the chase, Reg. They all look sadly similar to me. I would swear these were the very same young women who were entering their first season the last time I attended…and the time before that, and the time before that.” His cousin smiled easily, but shook his head. “It has been ten years since you bothered to come to town, Adrian. Those women are all married and bearing fruit, or well on their way to spinsterhood.” “Different faces, same ladies,” Adrian said with a shrug. “Such cynicism!” Reg chided. “You sound old, old man.” “Older,” Adrian corrected. “Older and wiser.” “No. Just old,” Reg insisted with a laugh, his own gaze turning to the mass of people moving before them. “Besides, there are a couple of real lovelies this year. That blonde, for instance, or that brunette with Chalmsly.” “Hmmm.” Adrian looked the two women over. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but my guess is that the brunette—lovely as she is—doesn’t have a thought in her head. Rather like that Lady Penelope you seduced when last I was here.” Reg’s eyes widened in surprise at the observation. “And the blonde…” Adrian continued, his gaze raking the woman in question and taking in her calculating look. “Born of parents in trade, lots of money, and looking for a title to go with it. Rather like Lily Ainsley. Another of your conquests.” “Dead-on,” Reginald admitted, looking a bit incredulous. His gaze moved between the two women and then he gave a harsh laugh. “Now you have quite ruined it for me. I was considering favoring one or both of them with my attentions. But now you have made them quite boring.” -Reg & Adrian

To see how we separate, we first have to examine how we get together. Friendships begin with interest. We talk to someone. They say something interesting and we have a conversation about it. However, common interests don’t create lasting bonds. Otherwise, we would become friends with everyone with whom we had a good conversation. Similar interests as a basis for friendship doesn’t explain why we become friends with people who have completely different interests than we do. In time, we discover common values and ideals. However, friendship through common values and ideals doesn’t explain why atheists and those devout in their faith become friends. Vegans wouldn’t have non-vegan friends. In the real world, we see examples of friendships between people with diametrically opposed views. At the same time, we see cliques form in churches and small organizations dedicated to a particular cause, and it’s not uncommon to have cliques inside a particular belief system dislike each other. So how do people bond if common interests and common values don’t seem to be the catalyst for lasting friendships? I find that people build lasting connections through common problems and people grow apart when their problems no longer coincide. This is why couples especially those with children tend to lose their single friends. Their primary problems have become vastly different. The married person’s problems revolve around family and children. The single person’s problem revolves around relationships with others and themselves. When the single person talks about their latest dating disaster, the married person is thinking I’ve already solved this problem. When the married person talks about finding good daycare, the single person is thinking how boring the problems of married life can be. Eventually marrieds and singles lose their connection because they don’t have common problems. I look back at friends I had in junior high and high school. We didn’t become friends because of long nights playing D&D. That came later. We were all loners and outcasts in our own way. We had one shared problem that bound us together: how to make friends and relate to others while feeling so “different”. That was the problem that made us friends. Over the years as we found our own answers and went to different problems, we grew apart. Stick two people with completely different values and belief systems on a deserted island where they have to cooperate to survive. Then stick two people with the same values and interests together at a party. Which pair do you think will form the stronger bond? When I was 20, I was living on my own. I didn’t have many friends who were in college because I couldn’t relate to them. I was worrying about how to pay rent and trying to stretch my last few dollars for food at the end of the month. They were worried about term papers. In my life now, the people I spend the most time with have kids, have careers, are thinking about retirement and are figuring out their changing roles and values as they get older. These are problems that I relate to. We solve them in different ways because our values though compatible aren’t similar. I feel connected hearing about how they’ve chosen to solve those issues in a way that works for them.

You don't get to ask questions,' I said, and he looked up at me, exhaustion and pain lining his face, my blood shining on his lips. Part of me hated the words, for acting like this while he was wounded, but I didn't care. 'You only get to answer them. And nothing more.' Wariness flooded his eyes, but he nodded, biting off another mouthful of the weed and chewing. I stared down at him, the half-Illyrian warrior who was my soul-bonded partner. 'How long have you know that I'm your mate?' Rhys stilled. The entire world stilled. He swallowed. 'Feyre.' 'How long have you know that I'm your mate.' 'You... You ensnared the Suriel?' How he'd pieced it together, I didn't give a shit. 'I said you don't get to ask questions.' I thought something like panic might have flashed over his features. He chewed again on the plant- as if it instantly helped, as if he knew that he wanted to be at his full strength to face this, face me. Colour was already blooming on his cheeks, perhaps from whatever healing was in my blood. 'I suspected for a while,' Rhys said, swallowing once more. 'I knew for certain when Amarantha was killing you. And when we stood on the balcony Under the Mountain- right after we were freed, I felt it snap into place between us. I think when you were Made, it... it heightened the smell of the bond. I looked at you then and the strength of it hit me like a blow.' He'd gone wide-eyed, had stumbled back as if shocked- terrified. And had vanished. That had been over half a year ago. My blood pounded in my ears. 'When were you going to tell me?' 'Feyre.' 'When were you going to tell me?' 'I don't know. I wanted to yesterday. Or whenever you'd noticed that it wasn't just a bargain between us. I hoped you might realise when I took you to bed, and-' 'Do the others know?' 'Amren and Mor do. Azriel and Cassian suspect.' My face burned. They knew- they- 'Why didn't you tell me?' 'You were in love with him; you were going to marry him. And then you... you were enduring everything and it didn't feel right to tell you.' 'I deserved to know.' 'The other night you told me you wanted a distraction, you wanted fun. Not a mating bond. And not to someone like me- a mess.' So the words I'd spat after the Court of Nightmares had haunted him. 'You promised- you promised no secrets, no games. You promised.' Something in my chest was caving in on itself. Some part of me I'd thought long gone. 'I know I did,' Rhys said, the glow returning to his face. 'You think I didn't want to tell you? You think I liked hearing you wanted me only for amusement and release? You think it didn't drive me out of my mind so completely that those bastards shot me out of the sky because I was too busy wondering if I should just tell you, or wait- or maybe take whatever pieces that you offered me and be happy with it? Or that maybe I should let you go so you don't have a lifetime of assassins and High Lords hunting you down for being with me?' 'I don't want to hear this. I don't want to hear you explain how you assumed that you knew best, that I couldn't handle it-' 'I didn't do that-' 'I don't want to hear you tell me that you decided I was to be kept in the dark while you friends knew, while you all decided what was right for me-' 'Feyre-' 'Take me back to the Illyrian camp. Now.' He was panting in great, rattling gulps. 'Please.' But I stormed to him and grabbed his hand. 'Take me back now.' And I saw the pain and sorrow in his eyes. Saw it and didn't care, not as that thing in my chest was twisting and breaking. Not as my heart- my heart- ached, so viciously that I realised it'd somehow been repaired in these past few months. Repaired by him. And now it hurt. Rhys saw all that and more on my face, and I saw nothing but agony in his as he rallied his strength, and, grunting in pain, winnowed us into the Illyrian camp.

In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale, there is much running backwards and forwards among the crew. Now hands are wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there. There is no staying in any one place; for at one and the same time everything has to be done everywhere. It is much the same with him who endeavors the description of the scene. We must now retrace our way a little. It was mentioned that upon first breaking ground in the whale’s back, the blubber-hook was inserted into the original hole there cut by the spades of the mates. But how did so clumsy and weighty a mass as that same hook get fixed in that hole? It was inserted there by my particular friend Queequeg, whose duty it was, as harpooneer, to descend upon the monster’s back for the special purpose referred to. But in very many cases, circumstances require that the harpooneer shall remain on the whale till the whole flensing or stripping operation is concluded. The whale, be it observed, lies almost entirely submerged, excepting the immediate parts operated upon. So down there, some ten feet below the level of the deck, the poor harpooneer flounders about, half on the whale and half in the water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill beneath him. On the occasion in question, Queequeg figured in the Highland costume—a shirt and socks—in which to my eyes, at least, he appeared to uncommon advantage; and no one had a better chance to observe him, as will presently be seen. Being the savage’s bowsman, that is, the person who pulled the bow-oar in his boat (the second one from forward), it was my cheerful duty to attend upon him while taking that hard-scrabble scramble upon the dead whale’s back. You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by a long cord. Just so, from the ship’s steep side, did I hold Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is technically called in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of canvas belted round his waist. It was a humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before we proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at both ends; fast to Queequeg’s broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow leather one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage and honor demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag me down in his wake. So, then, an elongated Siamese ligature united us. Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother; nor could I any way get rid of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond entailed. So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then, that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another’s mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster and death. Therefore, I saw that here was a sort of interregnum in Providence; for its even-handed equity never could have so gross an injustice. And yet still further pondering—while I jerked him now and then from between the whale and ship, which would threaten to jam him—still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of life. But handle Queequeg’s monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, that I came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I would, I only had the management of one end of it.

As the most perfect subject for painting I have already specified inwardly satisfied [reconciled and peaceful] love, the object of which is not a purely spiritual ‘beyond’ but is present, so that we can see love itself before us in what is loved. The supreme and unique form of this love is Mary’s love for the Christ-child, the love of the one mother who has borne the Saviour of the world and carries him in her arms. This is the most beautiful subject to which Christian art in general, and especially painting in its religious sphere, has risen. The love of God, and in particular the love of Christ who sits at’ the right hand of God, is of a purely spiritual kind. The object of this love is visible only to the eye of the soul, so that here there is strictly no question of that duality which love implies, nor is any natural bond established between the lovers or any linking them together from the start. On the other hand, any other love is accidental in the inclination of one lover for another, or,’ alternatively, the lovers, e.g. brothers and sisters or a father in his love for his children, have outside this relation other conceI1l8 with an essential claim on them. Fathers or brothers have to apply themselves to the world, to the state, business, war, or, in short, to general purposes, while sisters become wives, mothers, and so forth. But in the case of maternal love it is generally true that a mother’s love for her child is neither something accidental just a single feature in her life, but, on the contrary, it is her supreme vocation on earth, and her natural character and most sacred calling directly coincide. But while other loving mothers see and feel in their child their husband and their inmost union with him, in Mary’s relation to her child this aspect is always absent. For her feeling has nothing in common with a wife’s love for her husband; on the contrary, her relation to Joseph is more like a sister’s to a brother, while on Joseph’s side there is a secret awe of the child who is God’s and Mary’s. Thus religious love in its fullest and most intimate human form we contemplate not in the suffering and risen Christ or in his lingering amongst his friends but in the person of Mary with her womanly feeling. Her whole heart and being is human love for the child that she calls her own, and at the same time adoration, worship, and love of God with whom she feels herself at one. She is humble in God’s sight and yet has an infinite sense of being the one woman who is blessed above all other virgins. She is not self-subsistent on her own account, but is perfect only in her child, in God, but in him she is satisfied and blessed, whether. at the manger or as the Queen of Heaven, without passion or longing, without any further need, without any aim other than to have and to hold what she has. In its religious subject-matter the portrayal of this love has a wide series of events, including, for example, the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Birth, the Flight into Egypt, etc. And then there are, added to this, other subjects from the later life of Christ, i.e. the Disciples and the women who follow him and in whom the love of God becomes more or less a personal relation of love for a living and present Saviour who walks amongst them as an actual man; there is also the love of the angels who hover over the birth of Christ and many other scenes in his life, in serious worship or innocent joy. In all these subjects it is painting especially which presents the peace and full satisfaction of love. But nevertheless this peace is followed by the deepest suffering. Mary sees Christ carry his cross, she sees him suffer and die on the cross, taken down from the cross and buried, and no grief of others is so profound as hers. Mary’s grief is of a totally different kind. She is emotional, she feels the thrust of the dagger into the centre of her soul, her heart breaks, but she does not turn into stone.

Today's enemies can be your friends tomorrow. And today's friends can be tomorrow's enemies. What you reject today, you could accept tomorrow. And what you accept today, you could reject tomorrow. Never say never unless you can predict the future. Unforeseeable circumstances can make a rich man, poor - And a poor man, rich. And unpredictable experiences can also make a good man, bad - And a bad man, good. Like the weather or bonds between lovers, Transformations cannot always be predicted. All energy transmutes one day or another, In one way or another, Either in its form or composition, Or in its position or disposition. Today will always offer new experiences, And tomorrow will always offer new opportunities. But if you heed to yesterday's lessons, You can shape your present and future To be filled with positive relationships And beautiful blessings. TODAY AND TOMORROW by Suzy Kassem THE SPRING FOR WISDOM Copyright 1993

Identical twins often look so similar that they are confused with one another—an occasional source of amusement. As a result, they may find that their teachers, friends, or even relatives tend to treat them in similar ways, either because they cannot tell the twins apart or because they subconsciously assume that two people who look so much alike are also similar in other respects. A similarity in interpersonal interactions of this type creates what behavioral geneticists call a “shared environment,” and it can confound the analysis of nature versus nurture. Additionally, as described below, identical twins do, in fact, tend to resemble one another on a wide range of personality traits and, perhaps in consequence, often develop an extraordinarily close bond with one another. This development leads to a second conundrum: maybe the close interpersonal relationship between many identical twins tends to reinforce their psychological similarities and suppress their differences.

HAVING MADE a different choice from that of many women, I occasionally do feel a tug of regret. When her mother died, Dawn’s eulogy was an expression of such feeling and care that I was shaken beyond the grief of having lost the dear friend her mother had become. I spent the following days pondering the bond between parent and child and wondering whether anyone would miss me that much when I died. Ultimately, I accept that there is no perfect substitute for the claim that a parent and child have on each other’s heart. But families can be made in other ways, and I marvel at the support and inspiration I’ve derived from the ones I’ve built of interlocking circles of friends. In their constant embrace I have never felt alone.

Epictetus actually says all the enmity between people is down to a single judgement of this kind, they ‘put themselves and what belongs to themselves in the category of things which lie outside the sphere of volition’ (Discourses, 2.22). We see dogs playfully fawning on each other and might say that they ‘love’ one another as ‘friends’ but if we throw a piece of meat between them then a fight breaks out and they are quickly pitted against each other. Throw some land or money between father and son, he says, and we will see how fragile the bond is between them, as long as external things are confused with our ultimate good (Discourses, 3.24).

An invisible inquisition stands armed with canons outside the house gates of every person awakening to their destiny. Yet God is a playful guard pup, a magnificent constellation with a massive pair of brass balls called the Sun and the Moon. Visibly excited and panting at the game, this gigantic guard pup wags a tail of stars back and forth then lifts his hind leg like a radiant sequoia tree uprooted from the earth. After blinding them and spraying them with bright yellow doggie urination, he towers over the marked territory of tiny toy soldier figurines, barking, panting, kicking up dust, and doing all those playful doggie things. Hosed down with blinding misfortune, and standing there dripping with dishonor, the army finally begins to discover the depths of the unbreakable bond between a person and their pup. However, at daybreak, the big-eyed and floppy-eared puppy happily scurries back through the gate slides on the loose gravel at the corner of the house, darts through the doggie door, up the stairs, and leaps into the bed of his awakening master or mistress, jumping upon them and licking them all over, with the warmth of puppy love.

But Willa Faye and me, not a war about it between us. It bonded us. Branded us as best friends. Because I will always remember that when I told her I needed help burying a body, the first thing she said was, "Let me go get my shovel.

[Lieutenant Fitzpatrick] would not have dared to make a gesture of reconciliation towards his friend [Seaman Warrington], nor speak the word that would have launched them...on one of the old conversations. Neither could Warrington have made the gesture or spoken the word...The very stress between them, largely monopolizing his emotions and reflections, was, in its polarization, a misery rich in significance, as rich, in that sense, as their harmony had been. Like the officer, if he could not restore the harmony, he clung to the conflict that still bound them. However, the striking think was not that they clung to the only bond that still seemed possible to them; but that they both actually seemed to be striving to protect and preserve, surviving carefully and with a kind of cold desperation, the framework of their quarrel as such.

For the conservative or the liberal, the collective is always on the verge of collapsing. This is because the universal that holds it together—a collective link always requires a universal—is constructed rather than constitutive. As a result, conservatives constantly try to secure it through appeals to national or ethnic identity that would create collectivity through exclusion. Conservative politics has its basis in the opposition between friend and enemy because this is the only way for the conservative to secure a collective bond. Liberals suffer from the same tenuousness but avoid the divisiveness that conservatives use. Instead, liberals advocate forging the connection through difference. For them, the negotiation of differences can be the source of our bond. For the leftist or the proponent of emancipation, the situation is altogether different. Universality is the condition of possibility for particulars. It plays a constitutive role relative to its particulars. As a result, the collective link established through the universal forms an indissoluble connection. The universal is not a foreign outsider but an intimate point at which each particular finds itself lacking. Through this lack, the universal holds the series of particulars together even when they themselves do not register the connection.

Let's get one thing straight, Dain." I take a step closer, but the distance between us only widens. "The reason we'll never be anything more than friends isn't because of your rules. It's because you have no faith in me. Even now, when I've survived against all odds and bonded not just one dragon but two, you still think I won't make it. So forgive me, but you're about to be some of the bullshit that this place cuts away from me.

I'm terrified you're not going to make it to graduation, Vi.' His shoulders slump. 'You know exactly how I feel about you, whether or not I can do anything about it, and I'm terrified.' It's that last line that does me in. Laughter bubbles up through my throat and escapes. His eyes widen. 'This place cuts away the bullshit and the niceties, revealing whoever you are at your core.' I repeat his words from this summer. 'Isn't that what you said to me? Is this who you really are at your core? Someone so enamoured with rules that he doesn't know when to bend or break them for someone he cares about? Someone so focused on the least I'm capable of doing, he can't believe I can do so much more?' The warmth drains from his brown eyes. 'Let's get one thing straight, Dain.' I take a step closer, but the distance between us only widens.' The reason we'll never be anything more than friends isn't because of your rules. It's because you have no faith in me. Even now, when I've survived against all odds and bonded not just one dragon but two, you still think I won't make it. So forgive me, but you're about to be some of the bullshit that this place cuts away from me.

Charley is a born diplomat. He prefers negotiation to fighting, and properly so, since he is very bad at fighting. Only once in his ten years has he been in trouble—when he met a dog who refused to negotiate. Charley lost a piece of his right ear that time. But he is a good watch dog—has a roar like a lion, designed to conceal from night-wandering strangers the fact that he couldn’t bite his way out of a cornet de papier. He is a good friend and traveling companion, and would rather travel about than anything he can imagine. If he occurs at length in this account, it is because he contributed much to the trip. A dog, particularly an exotic like Charley, is a bond between strangers. Many conversations en route began with “What degree of a dog is that?

Though wildly different in both character and tastes, Jane and Mary shared a common bond aside from the royal blood which flowed in their veins: their religious devotion was unswerving, and the dominant factor in both of their lives. For Mary, the situation was heartbreaking. Jane's mother, Frances, had been a close childhood companion. Frances, like her husband and her daughter, was a Protestant, though perhaps not as fervent in her faith as her husband and eldest daughter. Despite the fact that she and Mary were on opposing sides of the religious fence, to all appearances their differing beliefs had never driven a wedge between the cousins. Frances was a seasoned courtier, and as such she was well skilled in the art of diplomacy. It seems likely, therefore, that when she was in the company of her childhood friend, the two women tactfully avoided conversing on the subject of religion. After all, there were many at court who managed to maintain friendships with people who held differing religious beliefs, and Mary had also been friendly with Jane's step-grandmother, Katherine Willoughby. But it was quite different with jane, for though Mary had tried her best with the teenager, and had done her utmost to be affectionate, the relationship was not a harmonious one. The age gap between them meant that to Jane, Mary was probably more like an aunt than a cousin. Mary may have been twenty years Jane's senior, but it was not age that lay at the heart of the matter; the reason for the distance between the two cousins was perfectly simple: religion.

A time later, I located the Fool. He knelt beside me, his arm around my shoulders. I had not been aware of him steadying me. I wobbled my head to look at him. His face sagged with weariness and his brow was creased with pain, but he managed a lopsided smile. “I did not know if I could do it. But it was the only thing I could think of to try.” After a few moments, his words made sense to me. I looked down at my wrist. His fingerprints were renewed there; not silver as they were the first time he Skill-touched me, but a darker shade of gray than they had been for some time. The thread of awareness that linked us had become one strand stronger. I was appalled at what he had done. “Thank you. I suppose.” I offered the words ungraciously. I felt invaded. I resented that he had touched me in such a way, without my consent. It was childish, but I had not the strength to reach past it just then. He laughed aloud at me, but I could hear the edge of hysteria in it. “I did not think you would like it. Yet, my friend, I could not help myself. I had to do it.” He drew a ragged breath. His voice was softer as he added, “And so it begins again, already. Scarcely two days am I at your side, and fate reaches for you. Will this always be the cost for us? Must I always dangle you over death’s jaws in an effort to lure this world into a better course?” His grip on my shoulders tightened. “Ah, Fitz. How can you continually forgive what I do to you?” I could not forgive it. I did not say so. I looked away from him. “I need a moment to myself. Please.” A bubble of silence met my words. Then, “Of course.” He let his arm fall away from my shoulders and abruptly stood clear of me. It was a relief. His touch on me had been heightening the Skill-bond between us. It made me feel vulnerable. He did not know how to reach across it and plunder my mind, but that did not lessen my fear. A knife to my throat was a threat, even if the hand that held it had only the best intentions. I tried to ignore the other side of that coin. The Fool had no concept of how open he was to me just then. The sense of it tainted me, tempting me to attempt a fuller joining. All I would have to do was bid him lay his fingers once more on my wrist. I knew what I could have done with that touch. I could have swept across into him, known all his secrets, taken all his strength. I could have made his body and extension of my own, used his life and his days for my own purpose. It was a shameful hunger to feel. I had seen what became of those who yielded to it. How could I forgive him for making me feel it?

There is something in the bond of an honest friendship between women that a lover can never breach and that fake friends will never understand. Without honest friendship, the world is lonely, and Marilyn is lonely enough. " - Can't We Be Friends

The best transactions in families or between friends occur on the fly. They come as stochastic shocks, or serendipities. People often step out onto our path as we are hurrying to a meeting or intent on finishing a project, and it usually turns out that the meeting or the project was inconsequential compared to the chance to get closer to someone we cared for.

Relationships are work, but they’re not just work. It shouldn’t feel like a constant stream of chores and problems. You have to be business partners, parenting partners, and sex partners, but you also have to be friends. Never forget how important it is just to like each other. Spend time bonding and making each other laugh. Always leave room for friendship between you. You can always still love somebody, but once you don’t like them anymore, that’s when you’re in trouble.

Social networks like Facebook seem impelled by a similar aspiration. Through the statistical "discovery" of potential friends, the provision of "Like" buttons and other clickable tokens of affection, and the automated management of many of the time-consuming aspects of personal relations, they seek to streamline the messy process of affiliation. Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, celebrates all of this as "frictionless sharing"--the removal of conscious effort from socializing. But there's something repugnant about applying the bureaucratic ideals of speed, productivity, and standardization to our relations with others. The most meaningful bonds aren't forged through transactions in a marketplace or other routinized exchanges of data. People aren't notes on a network grid. The bonds require trust and courtesy and sacrifice, all of which, at least to a technocrat's mind, are sources of inefficiency and inconvenience. Removing the friction from social attachments doesn't strengthen them; it weakens them. It makes them more like the attachments between consumers and products--easily formed and just as easily broken. Like meddlesome parents who never let their kids do anything on their own, Google, Facebook, and other makers of personal software end up demeaning and diminishing qualities of character that, at least in the past, have been seen as essential to a full and vigorous life: ingenuity, curiosity, independence, perseverance, daring. It may be that in the future we'll only experience such virtues vicariously, though the exploits of action figures like John Marston in the fantasy worlds we enter through screens.

Lucien crossed the street moments before the horses reached him. He tackled Horatia, knocking her to the ground in an alley between the shops. The curricle’s wheels sliced through the snow and slush inches from his boots, soaking them with icy water. For a long moment, Lucien couldn’t move. She was alive. He’d made it. The curricle hadn’t run either of them over… Then his body seemed to realize it had a woman under it. A woman with the finest curves God had ever made to tempt a man. Her bonnet was askew, revealing long lustrous curls of deep chestnut hair. Her dark eyes, so innocent, fixed on his face in wonder. “My lord…” she murmured in a daze. Her gloved hands rested on his chest, holding him at bay. He felt the tremble of her hands all the way to his bones, and his body responded with interest. “What in blazes?” Charles rushed into the alley, gray eyes alight with fury. “Did you see who was driving that curricle?” Charles paused and took in the scene before him with a smile. “Horatia, love, how are you? Not too bruised I hope?” Charles had never in his life bothered with titles or propriety. Neither did Lucien for that matter. So it didn’t surprise Lucien that his friend treated Horatia as he did. “Oh Charles!” she exclaimed. She seemed to realize only now she was on her back in an alley just off Bond Street, with a street full of curious people peering in and Lucien on top of her. Lucien gritted his teeth. “Oh Charles!” she’d said, but Lucien was always “My lord.” It grated his nerves that she didn’t offer such intimacy to him. It was his own damned fault. He pushed her away at every opportunity, just to keep himself from tugging her into the nearest alcove and kissing her. Something about her seemed to render him into the most barbaric state possible. He had little else on his mind other than how she’d taste, how she’d moan and sigh if he could just get his hands on her. “Lucien…” Horatia stammered. His name on her lips was more erotic than a lover’s sated sigh. “What on earth just happened?” “I fear someone just tried to run me over, and you were, unfortunately, in the way,” he explained, worried by the dazed expression swallowing her dark eyes. “I say, Lucien, you might want to get off the girl, she’s turning blue,” Charles teased. “Besides, stay on top of her any longer and people are bound to talk." -Horatia, Lucien, & Charles

Mate. He’d told Hayden he would stick to his routine. That meant watching the game at her apartment on Sunday and maintaining their friendship. His logical mind fought against his growing urges. Last night, he couldn’t have a simple conversation without touching her. And she didn’t make things any easier. He could smell the desire pouring out of her. It took every ounce of his self-control to hold himself back. At times, it was painful. “I know what I’m doing. I’ve got the situation under control.” Cam laughed. “Like you did yesterday? Dude, we both know it’s only going to get worse. You’re like a ticking sex bomb.” Deep down, Kaden knew he was right. Annabelle would become an irresistible, unquenchable thirst. Ordinarily, she would feel the same pull, but there was no way to know how a human would react. “There’s no such thing as a sex bomb.” Cam spread himself flat across the sofa with his arms crossed behind his head. “Yeah, well, there definitely should be.” “Be serious.” He sat up. “I’m trying to tell you, it’s foolish to fight the bond between you. You’d be better off going with it and letting the panties drop where they may.” And what would happen if he did bond with her? There was no chance it would ever work out between them. He had to hide who he was from the world. A life with him meant Annabelle would have to lie to her friends and family about their relationship. He would never be able to marry her or give her the children she wanted. They’d talked about her dreams for a white picket fence and a family. Even if she were willing to give up those things, wouldn’t he be putting her life in danger? A dull ache formed in the pit of his chest. “You know that’s not possible.” If he could somehow push away these human emotions of his, maybe he stood a chance of keeping her in his life. Maybe someday he could actually be happy for her if she found a suitable mate. He dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands at the thought of her with a human. “I have to go. She’s waiting for me.” “Don’t forget the condoms,” Cam shouted out. “Matter of fact, you might want to double up. With all your pent-up frustration, there’s bound to be an explosion.” “Hilarious,” he replied, shutting the door behind him as he made his way toward his truck. Once inside, he slid his seat belt on and leaned back against the head cushion with his eyes closed. Filled with self-doubt, he worried that he wouldn’t be able to handle it. But he had to. For the sake of everyone he loved, he had to find a way.

If we are fortunate, we get to experience a lifetime event, And in my case it was meeting a true friend that God sent. A friend is someone that I will always care for and cherish, There is a bond between us that I definitely won’t let perish.

What should a city accomplish after it meets our basic needs of food, shelter, and security? • The city should strive to maximize joy and minimize hardship. • It should lead us toward health rather than sickness. • It should offer us real freedom to live, move, and build our lives as we wish. • It should build resilience against economic or environmental shocks. • It should be fair in the way it apportions space, services, mobility, joys, hardships, and costs. • Most of all, it should enable us to build and strengthen the bonds between friends, families, and strangers that give life meaning,

She had become reconciled to the idea of an eternal shadow; she discovered that, far from being a threat, her bodyguards were much wiser sounding boards than many of the gentleman courtiers who fluttered around her. Police officers like Sergeant Allan Peters and Inspector Graham Smith became avuncular father figures, defusing tricky situations and deflating overweening subjects alike with a joke or a crisp command. They also brought her mothering instincts to the fore. She remembered their birthdays, sent notes of apology to their wives when they had to accompany her on an overseas tours and ensured that they were “fed and watered” when she went out with them from Kensington Palace. When Graham Smith contracted cancer, she invited him and his wife on holiday to Necker in the Caribbean and also on a Mediterranean cruise on board the yacht owned by Greek tycoon, John Latsis. Such is her affection for this popular police officer that she arranged a dinner in his honour after he had recovered which was attended by her family. If she is dining with friends at San Lorenzo, her favourite restaurant, her current detective, Inspector Ken Wharfe will often join her table at the end of the meal and regale the assembled throng with his jokes. Perhaps she reserves her fondest memories for Sergeant Barry Mannakee who became her bodyguard at a time when she felt lost and alone in the royal world. He sensed her bewilderment and became a shoulder for her to lean on and sometimes to cry on during this painful period. The affectionate bond that built up between them did not go unnoticed either by Prince Charles nor Mannakee’s colleagues. Shortly before the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of York in July 1986 he was transferred to other duties, much to Diana’s dismay. In the following spring he was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident.

These days her family, particularly her sisters, Jane and Sarah and brother Charles, are aware of the appalling problems she has endured. Jane has always given sensible advice and Sarah, from being dubious of her kid sister’s success, is now very protective. “You never criticize Diana in front of her,” notes a friend. Her relations with her mother and her father, when he was alive, are patchier. While Diana enjoys a sporadic but affectionate relationship with her mother, she was robust in her reaction to news that her second husband, Peter Shand Kydd had left her for another woman. Last summer her bond with her father went through a difficult period following publicity surrounding the secret sale of treasures from Althorp House. The children, including the Princess, had written to their father objecting to the trade in family heirlooms. There were bitter exchanges, subsequently regretted, which deeply hurt the Princess of Wales. Even the Prince of Wales intervened, voicing his concern to Raine Spencer who was typically robust in her response. Last autumn a reconciliation between father and daughter was effected. During a leisurely tour around the world the late Earl Spencer was deeply touched by the affection shown towards his youngest daughter by so many strangers. He telephoned from America to tell her just how proud of her that made him feel.

Not yet, Baird,” the one beside him cautioned. He was as tall as his friend and just as muscular but he had short, spiky blond hair that complimented his pale blue eyes. “Can’t wait much longer.” Long, strong fingers curled into a fist as though the amber-eyed male could grasp the slender figure in his hand and hold her through sheer force of will. “Been dreaming about her every night, Sylvan. I ache for her.” “What does she look like?” There was genuine curiosity in the question. Though Baird had never seen her outside his dreams, Sylvan had no doubt he could describe his chosen female to the last detail. “So fuckin’ beautiful it hurts to look at her. Yellow hair like yours but longer—more golden. And her eyes…” Baird shook his head. “Like jewels. A pale grey that’s almost silver.” “You find these human women appealing then?” “Only her—she’s the only one I can see.” The amber eyes stared hungrily across the road. “I need her soon. Need to be with her. In her.” “You’re sure she’s the one?” Sylvan stared doubtfully at the woman silhouetted in the window. She was humming softly to herself but despite the distance and the pane of glass between them he could hear her perfectly and knew Baird could too. As attuned as his half brother was to this human female, he could probably hear her heartbeat even from across the street. “I know she’s the one.” There wasn’t a shred of doubt in the deep, rumbling voice. “Didn’t I tell you we’ve been dream-sharing? And her scent…” He inhaled deeply and his dark gold eyes were suddenly half-lidded with desire. “It’s her all right and she’s ripe for bonding. I want her.” “I know you do, but Baird…” The other male shifted from foot to foot uneasily. “You haven’t been back that long—only three days and it’s a miracle you escaped alive. Don’t you think it might be a good idea to wait a while? To take some time to recover?” “Waited long enough,” was the rumbling reply. “Six months in that hell hole and the only thing keeping me alive and sane were the dreams I had of her. I won’t wait any longer—she’s mine, whether she knows it yet or not.” “You’ll scare her,” his half-brother objected. “Human women are frightened enough of us as it is.” “I won’t hurt her. Just need to take her—bond her.

I’m going to get some human food for later. Make yourself at home but don’t go out by yourself. Understand?” Liv’s frustration at her own vulnerability rose to the boiling point. “I understand,” she flared back. “I’m supposed to stay here like a good little bride while you go out and act like the big, brave warrior bragging to all your friends that you bagged your human woman and she can’t wait to spread her legs and let you bond with her all night long. Is that it?” For a moment he looked even angrier and then the expression in his bold features became quieter and a little sad. “I would never brag about what happens between us in the privacy of our rooms, Lilenta. That would be breaking the trust between us. No matter how much you hate me, I wouldn’t do that to you.” Her anger drained suddenly away and Liv felt taken aback. “I…I never said I hated you,” she protested at last in a small voice. “You didn’t have to.” Turning he left the dimly lit room. Liv watched him go, sitting alone on the bed in the dark. For some reason she felt like crying.

But first, please tell me your name. I really would like to know it.” “Sophia.” She looked up at him at last. “But my friends call me Sophie.” Sylvan smiled, being careful not to show his fangs this time. “I hope to someday call you that but I think I’d better stick to Sophia for now.” She sighed. “Look, I’m sorry I was nasty to you earlier. I know you’re not exactly to blame for what’s happened and you’re just doing what you do, making a genetic trade or whatever. It’s just that…my sister is my best friend and I can’t stand the thought of never seeing her again.” “You’ll still see her,” Sylvan objected. “Kindred brides are allowed to return to their home planet on most of the major holidays.” “Great, so I get to see her for Christmas and Thanksgiving? Two or three days out of the year? Thanks a lot!” Sophia leaned forward and looked at him. “Let me tell you something—Liv and I have never gone a whole day without speaking to each other in our lives. Even when we were babies my mom said we would cry and cry if you took one of us out of the room, away from the other one. And after our parents died, we got even closer. So please try to understand. I love her—she’s all I have left and I just can’t lose her like this.” Sylvan nodded gravely. “I can see your point. There is a similar bond between Baird and myself. We have the same father and we’ve saved each other’s lives many times in battle. I would be sad to only see him a few days of the year.” “So you get it.” She touched his knee lightly for emphasis and Sylvan felt his shaft harden in response. “How would you feel if I was threatening to take your brother and best friend away from you for basically the rest of his life?” she asked earnestly. “I wouldn’t like it.” Sylvan shifted uncomfortably, hoping she couldn’t see the evidence of her effect on him in his tight black uniform pants. “I guess the only way around your dilemma is for you to be claimed by a warrior yourself. Then you could see your sister every day on our ship.” “Oh…oh, no!