Book Haul Quotes

November 20. Andrius's birthday. I had counted the days carefully. I wished him a happy birthday when I woke and thought about him while hauling logs during the day. At night, I sat by the light of the stove, reading Dombey and Son. Krasivaya. I still hadn't found the word. Maybe I'd find it if I jumped ahead. I flipped through some of the pages. A marking caught my eye. I leafed backward. Something was written in pencil in the margin of 278. Hello, Lina. You've gotten to page 278. That's pretty good! I gasped, then pretened I was engrossed in the book. I looked at Andrius's handwritting. I ran my finger over this elongated letters in my name. Were there more? I knew I should read onward. I couldn't wait. I turned though the pages carefully, scanning the margins. Page 300: Are you really on page 300 or are you skipping ahead now? I had to stifle my laughter. Page 322: Dombey and Son is boring. Admit it. Page 364: I'm thinking of you. Page 412: Are you maybe thinking of me? I closed my eyes. Yes, I'm thinking of you. Happy birthday, Andrius.

Being alone is not the most awful thing in the world. You visit your museums and cultivate your interests and remind yourself how lucky you are not to be one of those spindly Sudanese children with flies beading their mouths. You make out To Do lists - reorganise linen cupboard, learn two sonnets. You dole out little treats to yourself - slices of ice-cream cake, concerts at Wigmore Hall. And then, every once in a while, you wake up and gaze out of the window at another bloody daybreak, and think, I cannot do this anymore. I cannot pull myself together again and spend the next fifteen hours of wakefulness fending off the fact of my own misery. People like Sheba think that they know what it's like to be lonely. They cast their minds back to the time they broke up with a boyfriend in 1975 and endured a whole month before meeting someone new. Or the week they spent in a Bavarian steel town when they were fifteen years old, visiting their greasy-haired German pen pal and discovering that her hand-writing was the best thing about her. But about the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. They don't know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the laundrette. Or to sit in a darkened flat on Halloween night, because you can't bear to expose your bleak evening to a crowd of jeering trick-or-treaters. Or to have the librarian smile pityingly and say, ‘Goodness, you're a quick reader!’ when you bring back seven books, read from cover to cover, a week after taking them out. They don't know what it is to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor's hand on your shoulder sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin. I have sat on park benches and trains and schoolroom chairs, feeling the great store of unused, objectless love sitting in my belly like a stone until I was sure I would cry out and fall, flailing, to the ground. About all of this, Sheba and her like have no clue.

She didn't dare to look up, but she could feel their frightened eyes hanging onto her as she hauled the words in and breathed them out. A voice played the notes inside her. This, it said, is your accordion.

Who built the seven towers of Thebes? The books are filled with the names of kings. Was it kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?... In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished Where did the masons go?...

Books are completely disappearing. Remember in Fahrenheit 451 where the fireman's wife was addicted to interactive television and they sent fireman crews out to burn books? That mission has been largely accomplished in middle-class America and they didn't need the firemen. The interactive electronics took care of it without the violence,

But about the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. They don't know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the laundrette. Or to sit in a darkened flat on Halloween night, because you can't bear to expose your bleak evening to a crowd of jeering trick-or-treaters. Or to have the librarian smile pityingly and say, ‘Goodness, you're a quick reader!’ when you bring back seven books, read from cover to cover, a week after taking them out. They don't know what it is to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor's hand on your shoulder sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin.

Then she tilted the can and dripped the gasoline throughout the old wooden structure. She didn’t have either time or strength to haul the bodies. In a better world, she would have given One a decent burial, and positioned Four in the driver’s seat of her fashionable vehicle, but alas, neither was possible.

They fought like champions. For a minute. Just when it was getting interesting, both boys were hauled away their collars. A watchful parent.

Who built Thebes of the seven gates? In the books you will find the name of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock? And Babylon, many times demolished. Who raised it up so many times? In what houses Of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live? Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished Did the masons go? Great Rome Is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom Did the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song, Only palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled Atlantis The night the ocean engulfed it The drowning still bawled for their slaves.

The Frays had never been a religiously observant family, but Clary loved Fifth Avenue at Christmas time. The air smelled like sweet roasted chestnuts, and the window displays sparkled with silver and blue, green and red. This year there were fat round crystal snowflakes attached to each lamppost, sending back the winter sunlight in shafts of gold. Not to mention the huge tree at Rockefeller Center. It threw its shadow across them as she and Simon draped themselves over the gate at the side of the skating rink, watching tourists fall down as they tried to navigate the ice. Clary had a hot chocolate wrapped in her hands, the warmth spreading through her body. She felt almost normal—this, coming to Fifth to see the window displays and the tree, had been a winter tradition for her and Simon for as long as she could remember. “Feels like old times, doesn’t it?” he said, echoing her thoughts as he propped his chin on his folded arms. She chanced a sideways look at him. He was wearing a black topcoat and scarf that emphasized the winter pallor of his skin. His eyes were shadowed, indicating that he hadn’t fed on blood recently. He looked like what he was—a hungry, tired vampire. Well, she thought. Almost like old times. “More people to buy presents for,” she said. “Plus, the always traumatic what-to-buy-someone-for-the-first-Christmas-after-you’ve-started-dating question.” “What to get the Shadowhunter who has everything,” Simon said with a grin. “Jace mostly likes weapons,” Clary sighed. “He likes books, but they have a huge library at the Institute. He likes classical music …” She brightened. Simon was a musician; even though his band was terrible, and was always changing their name—currently they were Lethal Soufflé—he did have training. “What would you give someone who likes to play the piano?” “A piano.” “Simon.” “A really huge metronome that could also double as a weapon?” Clary sighed, exasperated. “Sheet music. Rachmaninoff is tough stuff, but he likes a challenge.” “Now you’re talking. I’m going to see if there’s a music store around here.” Clary, done with her hot chocolate, tossed the cup into a nearby trash can and pulled her phone out. “What about you? What are you giving Isabelle?” “I have absolutely no idea,” Simon said. They had started heading toward the avenue, where a steady stream of pedestrians gawking at the windows clogged the streets. “Oh, come on. Isabelle’s easy.” “That’s my girlfriend you’re talking about.” Simon’s brows drew together. “I think. I’m not sure. We haven’t discussed it. The relationship, I mean.” “You really have to DTR, Simon.” “What?” “Define the relationship. What it is, where it’s going. Are you boyfriend and girlfriend, just having fun, ‘it’s complicated,’ or what? When’s she going to tell her parents? Are you allowed to see other people?” Simon blanched. “What? Seriously?” “Seriously. In the meantime—perfume!” Clary grabbed Simon by the back of his coat and hauled him into a cosmetics store that had once been a bank. It was massive on the inside, with rows of gleaming bottles everywhere. “And something unusual,” she said, heading for the fragrance area. “Isabelle isn’t going to want to smell like everyone else. She’s going to want to smell like figs, or vetiver, or—” “Figs? Figs have a smell?” Simon looked horrified; Clary was about to laugh at him when her phone buzzed. It was her mother. where are you? It’s an emergency.

A Kite is a Victim A kite is a victim you are sure of. You love it because it pulls gentle enough to call you master, strong enough to call you fool; because it lives like a desperate trained falcon in the high sweet air, and you can always haul it down to tame it in your drawer. A kite is a fish you have already caught in a pool where no fish come, so you play him carefully and long, and hope he won't give up, or the wind die down. A kite is the last poem you've written so you give it to the wind, but you don't let it go until someone finds you something else to do. A kite is a contract of glory that must be made with the sun, so you make friends with the field the river and the wind, then you pray the whole cold night before, under the travelling cordless moon, to make you worthy and lyric and pure. Gift You tell me that silence is nearer to peace than poems but if for my gift I brought you silence (for I know silence) you would say This is not silence this is another poem and you would hand it back to me There are some men There are some men who should have mountains to bear their names through time Grave markers are not high enough or green and sons go far away to lose the fist their father’s hand will always seem I had a friend he lived and died in mighty silence and with dignity left no book son or lover to mourn. Nor is this a mourning song but only a naming of this mountain on which I walk fragrant, dark and softly white under the pale of mist I name this mountain after him. -Believe nothing of me Except that I felt your beauty more closely than my own. I did not see any cities burn, I heard no promises of endless night, I felt your beauty more closely than my own. Promise me that I will return.- -When you call me close to tell me your body is not beautiful I want to summon the eyes and hidden mouths of stone and light and water to testify against you.- Song I almost went to bed without remembering the four white violets I put in the button-hole of your green sweater and how i kissed you then and you kissed me shy as though I'd never been your lover -Reach into the vineyard of arteries for my heart. Eat the fruit of ignorance and share with me the mist and fragrance of dying.-

In the year Ten Million, according to Koradubian, there would be a tremendous house-cleaning. All records relating to the period between the death of Christ and the year One Million A.D. would be hauled to the dumps and burned. This would be done, said Koradubian, because museums and archives would be crowding the living right off the Earth. The million-year period to which the burned junk related would be summed up in history books in one sentence, according to Koradubian: Following the death of Jesus Christ, there was a period of readjustment that lasted for approximately one million years.

Where human children have years and years in which to grow their hearts and learn to live with them while staying safe from all the troubles a heart hauls with it, a Changeling starts out raw and red and full of longing. Some small ones learn to stitch together a Coat of Scowls r s SCarf of Jokes to hide their Hearts. Some hammer up a Fort of Books to protect theirs. Some walk around naked, though no one can see it but you and I.

Some people wish they could have invented the wheel. But I’m trying to reinvent the wheelbarrow, to more efficiently haul around my bullshit.

Sometimes the books were arranged under signs, but sometimes they were just anywhere and everywhere. After I understood people better, I realized that this incredible disorder was one of the things that they loved about Pembroke Books. They did not come there just to buy a book, plunk down some cash and scram. They hung around. They called it browsing, but it was more like excavation or mining. I was surprised they didn't come in with shovels. They dug for treasures with bare hands, up to their armpits sometimes, and when they hauled some literary nugget from a mound of dross, they were much happier than if they had just walked in and bought it. In that way, shopping at Pembroke was like reading: you never knew what you might encounter on the next page -- the next shelf, stack, or box --and that was part of the pleasure of it.

There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace. To avoid the first danger, one should plant a garden, preferably where there is no grocer to confuse the issue. To avoid the second, he should lay a split of good oak on the andirons, preferably where there is no furnace, and let it warm his shins while a February blizzard tosses the trees outside. If one has cut, split, hauled, and piled his own good oak, and let his mind work the while, he will remember much about where the heat comes from, and with a wealth of detail denied to those who spend the week end in town astride a radiator.

And when I had finished painting & looked at that poor leatherjacket which now lay dead on the table I began to wonder whether, as each fish died, the world was reduced in the amount of love that you might know for such a creature. Whether there was that much less wonder & beauty left to go round as each fish was hauled up in the net. And if we kept on taking & plundering & killing, if the world kept on becoming ever more impoverished of love & wonder & beauty in consequence, what, in the end, would be left?

Where human children have years and years in which to grow their hearts and learn to live with them while staying safe from all the troubles a heart hauls with it, a Changeling starts out raw and red and full of longing. Some small ones learn to stitch together a Coat of Scowls or a Scarf of Jokes to hide their Hearts. Some hammer up a Fort of Books to protect theirs. Some walk around naked, though no one can see it but you and I.

Because our true nature is serious about restoring us to wholeness, it hauls out the one tool that reliably gets our attention: suffering.

At the end of the first date, I got my courage up and I made a move. One U-Haul van and 1,500 miles later, I regretted my boldness.

Titivillus was a tricky little bastard. Despite the scribe’s best intentions, the work itself was repetitive and boring. The mind would wander and mistakes would be made. It was the duty of Titivillus to fill his sack a thousand times each day with manuscript errors. These were hauled to Satan, where they would be recorded in The Book of Errors and used against the scribe on Judgment Day. Thus, the work of copying came with a risk to the scribe: while properly transcribed words were positive marks, incorrectly transcribed words were negative marks.

I rip the bags apart, licking the plastic clean, then lean back against the stall door as the slow surge of cold blood moves through me. Nice. I needed that. Folding both bags neatly, I shove them into my bag to recycle later somewhere. I hate tossing plastic. I need the earth to be liveable for the long haul.

No, the Boss corrected, I'm not a lawyer. I know some law. ... but I'm not a lawyer. That's why I can see what the law is like. It's like a single-bed blanket on a double bed and three folks in the bed and a cold night. There ain't ever enough blanket to cover the case, no matter how much pulling and hauling, and somebody is always going to nigh catch pneumonia. Hell, the law is like the pants you bought last year for a growing boy, but it is always this year and the seams are popped and the shankbone's to the breeze. The law is always too short and too tight for growing humankind. The best you can do is do something and then make up some law to fit and by the time that law gets on the books you would have done something different.

The Lawyers Know Too Much THE LAWYERS, Bob, know too much. They are chums of the books of old John Marshall. They know it all, what a dead hand wrote, A stiff dead hand and its knuckles crumbling, The bones of the fingers a thin white ash. The lawyers know a dead man’s thoughts too well. In the heels of the higgling lawyers, Bob, Too many slippery ifs and buts and howevers, Too much hereinbefore provided whereas, Too many doors to go in and out of. When the lawyers are through What is there left, Bob? Can a mouse nibble at it And find enough to fasten a tooth in? Why is there always a secret singing When a lawyer cashes in? Why does a hearse horse snicker Hauling a lawyer away? The work of a bricklayer goes to the blue. The knack of a mason outlasts a moon. The hands of a plasterer hold a room together. The land of a farmer wishes him back again. Singers of songs and dreamers of plays Build a house no wind blows over. The lawyers—tell me why a hearse horse snickers hauling a lawyer’s bones.

Both In and Out of the Game   Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am, Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary, Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest, Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next, Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.   Walt Whitman

They hang around, hitting on your friends or else you never hear from them again. They call when they’re drunk, or finally get sober, they’re passing through town and want dinner, they take your hand across the table, kiss you when you come back from the bathroom. They were your loves, your victims, your good dogs or bad boys, and they’re over you now. One writes a book in which a woman who sounds suspiciously like you is the first to be sadistically dismembered by a serial killer. They’re getting married and want you to be the first to know, or they’ve been fired and need a loan, their new girlfriend hates you, they say they don’t miss you but show up in your dreams, calling to you from the shoe boxes where they’re buried in rows in your basement. Some nights you find one floating into bed with you, propped on an elbow, giving you a look of fascination, a look that says I can’t believe I’ve found you. It’s the same way your current boyfriend gazed at you last night, before he pulled the plug on the tiny white lights above the bed, and moved against you in the dark broken occasionally by the faint restless arcs of headlights from the freeway’s passing trucks, the big rigs that travel and travel, hauling their loads between cities, warehouses, following the familiar routes of their loneliness.

Why do you have such a nice Bible?” Kelsea asked. “The Bible is a book, Kelsea, a book that has influenced mankind for thousands of years. It deserves to be preserved in a good edition, just like any other important book.” “Do you believe it’s true?” “No.” “Then why did I have to read it?” Kelsea demanded, feeling resentful. It hadn’t been a particularly good book, and it was heavy; she had hauled the damned thing from room to room for days. “What was the point?” “To know your enemy, Kelsea. Even a book can be dangerous in the wrong hands, and when that happens, you blame the hands, but you also read the book.

Reading the book now means that one can, if one wants, play Fantasy Literature--match writers off against each other and see who won over the long haul. Faulkner or Henry Green? I reckon the surprise champ was P.G. Wodehouse, as elegant and resourceful a prose stylist as anyone held up for our inspection here...he has turned out to be as enduring as anyone apart from Orwell. Jokes, you see. People do like jokes. (Hornby's thoughts after reading "Enemies of Promise" by Cyril Connolly)

They hauled books from the shelves, flipped through the pages, and tossed them to the floor until an entire library of legal volumes lay with cracked spines across the Oriental rug.

This morning I was walking through Manhattan, head down, checking directions, when I looked up to see a fruit truck selling lychee, two pounds for five bucks, and I had ten bucks in my pocket! Then while buying my bus ticket for later that evening I witnessed the Transbridge teller’s face soften after she had endured a couple unusually rude interactions in front of me as I kept eye contact and thanked her. She called me honey first (delight), baby second (delight), and almost smiled before I turned away. On my way to the Flatiron building there was an aisle of kousa dogwood—looking parched, but still, the prickly knobs of fruit nestled beneath the leaves. A cup of coffee from a well-shaped cup. A fly, its wings hauling all the light in the room, landing on the porcelain handle as if to say, “Notice the precise flare of this handle, as though designed for the romance between the thumb and index finger that holding a cup can be.” Or the peanut butter salty enough. Or the light blue bike the man pushed through the lobby. Or the topknot of the barista. Or the sweet glance of the man in his stylish short pants (well-lotioned ankles gleaming beneath) walking two little dogs. Or the woman stepping in and out of her shoe, her foot curling up and stretching out and curling up.

The New York Poem,” by Sam Hamill: a mute sadness settles in, like dust, for the long, long haul. But if I do not get up and sing, If I do not get up and dance again, the savages will win

The Bible is a book, Kelsea, a book that has influenced mankind for thousands of years. It deserves to be preserved in a good edition, just like any other important book.” “Do you believe it’s true?” “No.” “Then why did I have to read it?” Kelsea demanded, feeling resentful. It hadn’t been a particularly good book, and it was heavy; she had hauled the damned thing from room to room for days. “What was the point?” “To know your enemy, Kelsea. Even a book can be dangerous in the wrong hands, and when that happens, you blame the hands, but you also read the book.

As I came over the brink of the cliff, a few children laughed, an old hag began screeching, and the men just stared. Here was a white man with 12 Yankee dollars in his pocket and more than $ 500 worth of camera gear slung over his shoulders, hauling a typewriter, grinning, sweating, no hope of speaking the language, no place to stay—and somehow they were going to have to deal with me.

Henry: How does it feel? How does it feel? Sometimes it feels as though your attention has wandered for just an instant. Then, with a start, you realize that the book you were holding, the red plaid cotton shirt with white buttons, the favorite black jeans and the maroon socks with an almost-hole in one heel, the living room, the about-to-whistle tea kettle in the kitchen: all of these have vanished. You are standing, naked as a jaybird, up to your ankles in ice water in a ditch along an unidentified rural route. You wait a minute to see if maybe you will just snap right back to your book, your apartment, et cetera. After about five minutes of swearing and shivering and hoping to hell you can just disappear, you start walking in any direction, which will eventually yield a farmhouse, where you have the option of stealing or explaining. Stealing will sometimes land you in jail, but explaining is more tedious and time consuming and involves lying anyway, and also sometimes results in being hauled off to jail, so what the hell.

But I'm not a lawyer. That's why I can see what the law is like. It's like a single-bed blanket on a double bed and three folks on a cold night. There ain't ever enough blanket to cover the case, no matter how much pulling and hauling, and somebody is always going to nigh catch pneumonia. Hell, the law is like the pants you bought last year for a growing boy, but it is always this year and the seams are popped and the shankbone's in the breeze. The law is always too short and too tight for growing humankind. The best you can do is do something and then make up some law to fit and by the time that law gets on the books you would have done something different...

Jesus’s capacity for mercy baffled me. I didn’t know if I could give up the wrongs my father had done, the way I hauled them around like an ossuary of precious old bones. Jesus made it seem as if one could just lay them down.

Chase grabbed Joey’s neck and hauled him into a kiss. Oh shit. Not again. It didn’t matter how many times it had been wrong, he still wanted to believe it. Wanted to believe it when he kissed a guy and everything inside said him. It had been wrong about Mark and Noah and Jorge and Tom and the whole list going right back to kissing Eduardo under the bleachers in tenth grade. Or maybe before. When he’d been three and told his mom he was going to marry his best friend Cody.

Australians in general are pretty casual about traveling. If you grow up there, you basically get trained in long-haul flights—fifteen hours, twenty-four—it’s what we’re used to. For us, eight hours across the Atlantic seems like a doddle.

That was a cold, late spring. The dawns were chilly, and at noon the sunlight was cool. The trees unfolded their leaves slowly; the peas and beans, the carrots and corn, stood waiting for warmth and did not grow. When the rush of spring’s work was over, Almanzo had to go to school again. Only small children went to the spring term of school, and he wished he were old enough to stay home. He didn’t like to sit and study a book when there were so many interesting things to do. Father hauled the fleeces to the carding-machine in Malone, and brought home the soft, long rolls of wool, combed out straight and fine. Mother didn’t card her own wool any more, since there was a machine that did it on shares. But she dyed it. Alice and Eliza Jane were gathering roots and barks in the woods, and Royal was building huge bonfires in the yard. They boiled the roots and the bark in big caldrons over the fires, and they dipped the long skeins of wool thread that Mother had spun, and lifted them

As we were wrapping up the book, I sat down and thought about all the lessons I’d learned over the past two years. I couldn’t list them all, but here are a few: Never complain about the price of a gift from your spouse--accept it with love and gratitude. You can’t put a price on romance. Take lots of videos, even of the mundane. You will forget the sound of your children’s voices and you will miss your youth as much as theirs. Celebrate every wedding anniversary. Make time for dates. Hug your spouse every single morning. And always, ALWAYS, say “I love you.” Believe in your partner. When you hit hard times as a couple, take a weekend away or at least a night out. The times that you least feel like doing it are likely the times that you need it the most. Write love notes to your spouse, your children, and keep the ones they give you. Don’t expect a miniature pig to be an “easy” pet. Live life looking forward with a goal of no regrets, so you can look back without them. Be the friend you will need some day. Often the most important thing you can do for another person is just showing up. Question less and listen more. Don’t get too tied up in your plans for the future. No one really knows their future anyway. Laugh at yourself, and with life. People don’t change their core character. Be humble, genuine, and gracious. Before you get into business with someone, look at their history. Expect them to be with you for the long haul, even if you don’t think they will be. If they aren’t someone you could take a road trip across the country with, don’t do business with them in the first place. Real families and real sacrifices live in the fabric of the Red, White, and Blue; stand for the national anthem.

In books, the hero was gone after the big blowup. He didn’t stick around in the vicinity doing mysterious shit, sending messages to the heroine by a third party. He hauled his ass into oblivion. And that was the way things should be, as far as I was concerned. Life should imitate romance literature far more often.

Dad would haul down a book and we’d look it up. Then he would try four or five more with other opinions. Dad doesn’t hold with the idea that it-must-be-true-or-they-wouldn’t-have-printed-it; he doesn’t consider any opinion sacred—it shocked me the first time he took out a pen and changed something in one of my math books.

What are you two doing?” Her uncle’s teasing voice came into the room before he did. But his voice was the second warning that they were no longer alone, since Violet had tasted his presence long before he’d actually stepped into her house. Ever since saving her and Jay at Homecoming, her uncle carried an imprint of his own. The bitter taste of dandelions still smoldered on Violet’s tongue whenever he was near. A taste that Violet had grown to accept. And even, to some degree, to appreciate. “Nothing your parents wouldn’t approve of, I hope,” he added. Violet flashed Jay a wicked grin. “We were just making out, so if you could make this quick, we’d really appreciate it.” Jay jumped up from beside her. “She’s kidding,” he blurted out. “We weren’t doing anything.” Her uncle Stephen stopped where he was and eyed them both carefully. Violet could’ve sworn she felt Jay squirming, even though every single muscle in his body was frozen in place. Violet smiled at her uncle, trying her best to look guilty-as-charged. Finally he raised his eyebrows, every bit the suspicious police officer. “Your parents asked me to stop by and check on you on my way home. They won’t be back until late. Can I trust the two of you here . . . alone?” “Of course you can—” Jay started to say. “Probably not—“ Violet answers at the same time. And then she caught a glimpse of the horror-stricken expression on Jay’s face, and she laughed. “Relax, Uncle Stephen, we’re fine. We were just doing homework.” Her uncle looked at the pile of discarded books on the table in front of the couch. Not one of them was open. He glanced skeptically at Violet but didn’t say a word. “We may have gotten a little distracted,” she responded, and again she saw Jay shifting nervously. After several warnings, and a promise from Violet that she would lock the doors behind him, Uncle Stephen finally left the two of them alone again. Jay was glaring at Violet when she peeked at him as innocently as she could manage. “Why would you do that to me?” “Why do you care what he thinks we’re doing?” Violet had been trying to get Jay to admit his new hero worship of her uncle for months, but he was too stubborn—or maybe he honestly didn’t realize it himself—to confess it to her. “Because, Violet,” he said dangerously, taking a threatening step toward her. But his scolding was ruined by the playful glint in his eyes. “He’s your uncle, and he’s the police chief. Why poke the bear?” Violet took a step back, away from him, and he matched it, moving toward her. He was stalking her around the coffee table now, and Violet couldn’t help giggling as she retreated. But it was too late for her to escape. Jay was faster than she was, and his arms captured her before she’d ever had a chance. Not that she’d really tried. He hauled her back down onto the couch, the two of them falling into the cushions, and this time he pinned her beneath him. “Stop it!” she shrieked, not meaning a single word. He was the last person in the world she wanted to get away from. “I don’t know . . .” he answered hesitantly. “I think you deserve to be punished.” His breath was balmy against her cheek, and she found herself leaning toward him rather than away. “Maybe we should do some more homework.” Homework had been their code word for making out before they’d realized that they hadn’t been fooling anyone. But Jay was true to his word, especially his code word, and his lips settled over hers. Violet suddenly forgot that she was pretending to break free from his grip. Her frail resolve crumbled. She reached out, wrapping her arms around his neck, and pulled him closer to her. Jay growled from deep in his throat. “Okay, homework it is.

Already - beetle, bumblebee, earthworm, spider - words are getting attached to things. In a few years, words will proliferate and swarm and carry off the pictures in the books she reads, black ants hauling off the butterfly. Eventually just words will be left. The things themselves will have been devoured. What a loss! All creation. To be stuck reading instead of looking.

No," the Boss (Willie) corrected, "I'm not a lawyer. I know some law. In fact, I know a lot of law. And I made me some money out of law. That's why I can see what the law is like. It's like a single-bed blanket on a double bed and three folks in the bed and a cold night. There ain't ever enough blanket to cover the case, no matter how much pulling and hauling, and somebody is always going to nigh catch pneumonia. Hell, the law is like the pants you bought last year for a growing boy, but it is always this year and the seams are popped and the shankbone's to the breeze. The law is too short and too tight for growing humankind. The best you can do is do something and then make up some law to fit and by the time that law gets onto the books you would have done something different..." Willie Stark; All the King's Men

Something not going well, Mr. Boxley?" The novelist looked back at him in thunderous silence. "I read your letter," said Stahr. The tone of the pleasant young headmaster was gone. He spoke as to an equal, but with a faint two-edged deference. "I can't get what I write on paper," broke out Boxley. "You've all been very decent, but it's a sort of conspiracy. Those two hacks you've teamed me with listen to what I say, but they spoil it--they seem to have a vocabulary of about a hundred words." "Why don't you write it yourself?" asked Stahr. "I have. I sent you some." "But it was just talk, back and forth," said Stahr mildly. "Interesting talk but nothing more." Now it was all the two ghostly attendants could do to hold Boxley in the deep chair. He struggled to get up; he uttered a single quiet bark which had some relation to laughter but non to amusement, and said: "I don't think you people read things. The men are duelling when the conversation takes place. At the end one of them falls into a well and has to be hauled up in a bucket." He barked again and subsided. Would you write that in a book of your own, Mr. Boxley?" "What? Naturally not." "You'd consider it too cheap." "Movie standards are different," said Boxley, hedging. "Do you ever go to them?" "No--almost never." "Isn't it because people are always duelling and falling down wells?" Yes--and wearing strained facial expressions and talking incredible and unnatural dialogue." "Skip the dialogue for a minute," said Stahr. "Granted your dialogue is more graceful than what these hacks can write--that's why we brought you out here. But let's imagine something that isn't either bad dialogue or jumping down a well.

J.K. watches a storm rage into the crimson afternoon. The sky is electric. Rain whips her bare arms and legs. Dustbins are hauled into the air, caught on the wind’s curve. Bags and pillowcase unpacked for a while, toothbrush, perfume, books, a little pile of yellow feathers, J.K. knows she too is caught in the wind. She is Europe’s eerie child, and she is part of the storm." (from "Swallowing Geography" by Deborah Levy)

After we had loaded the last one, I backed the pickup around and drove down the twisting road to the big truck. As we rounded the final curve, we noticed there was a strange pickup parked near the U-Haul. Two men got out of it and looked around furtively, but did not see us. They tiptoed over to the truck, their curiosity piqued by an apparently abandoned U-Haul. They tried the sliding back door gingerly, and found it would open. They gave it a push. The loose bees inside rushed out toward the light and enveloped the two men in a furious buzzing cloud. The men were both heavy, with ample beer bellies, but they ran like jackrabbits to their pickup and drove off at top speed, careening from one side of the road to the other as they tried to brush bees from their heads. I’ll wager that is the last time either of them meddled with an abandoned truck.

The Aftermath When the fierce pure pleasure has clawed through, ripped open my tent of separateness, I lay in my lover's arms, weeping and exposed. I can't help seeing my sister, new widow whose heart hangs heavy, a side of beef in the ice box of her chest. I imagine her entering a bedroom like this, maples flaming beyond the window against a perfectly useless blue sky. And then my mother-in-law stops at the library on the way home from her husband’s funeral, picks up the book they've been holding. It sits in the passenger seat while she stares at the windshield, stunned, a bird flown into glass. Even my friend whose wife hasn’t died yet appears in this sex-drenched air. Tears pool in the shallows under his eyes. If his soul were a tin can, it would be sliced, the thick soup leaking out. The night is soaked with suffering. My dumb body, sprung open, can’t tell the difference between this blaze of pleasure and the sorrow it drags in. As I gaze out into the gathering darkness it seems I almost comprehend the mystery, glimpse the water of life pouring through my form into theirs, theirs back to mine, misery and ecstasy swirled like the blue white planet seen from space, but it lasts less than a moment-- the arms of my own dear one haul me back into my body, her flesh so ostentatiously alive.

Starting is the hardest part, both in the moment and in the early days of habit-building. Initially, you will see limited results. After a hard workout you will feel sore, but look in the mirror and see no change. After eating broccoli, you will feel about the same. After writing on day one, you will not have a full book. But when you do these things over the long haul, you can end up with a fit and healthy body and several full-length novels.

A few more years of the same, though, and I got used to it: I would load entire libraries from country castles and city mansions, fine, rare, leather- and Morroco-bound books, load whole trains full, and as soon as a train had thirty cars, off it would go to Switzerland or Austria, one kilogram of rare books for the equivalent of one crown of convertible currency, and nobody blinked an eye, nobody shed a tear, not even I myself, no, all I did was stand there smiling as I watched the train hauling those priceless libraries off to Switzerland and Austria for one crown in convertible currency a kilo. By then I had mustered the strength to look upon misfortune with composure, to still my emotions, by then I had begun to understand the beauty of destruction and I loaded more and more freight cars, and more and more trains left the station heading west at one crown per kilogram, and as I stood there staring after the red lantern hanging from the last car, as I stood there leaning on a lamppost like Leonardo da Vinci, who stood leaning on a column and looking on while French soldiers used his statue for target practice, shooting away horse and rider bit by bit, I thought how Leonardo, like me, standing and witnessing such horrors with complete composure, had realized even than that neither the heavens are humane nor is any man with a head on his shoulders.

That something I cannot yet define completely but the feeling comes when you write well and truly of something and know impersonally you have written in that way and those who are paid to read it and report on it do not like the subject so they say it is all a fake, yet you know its value absolutely; or when you do something which people do not consider a serious occupation and yet you know, truly, that it is as important and has always been as important as all th things that are in fashion, and when, on the sea, you are alone with it and know that this Gulf Stream you are living with, knowing, learning about, and loving, has moved, as it moves, since before man and that it has gone by the shoreline of that long, beautiful, unhappy island since before Columbus sighted it and that the things you find out about it, and those that have always lived in it are permanent and of value because that stream will flow, as it has flowed, after the Indians, after the Spaniards, after the British, after the Americans and after all the Cubans and all the systems of governments, the richness, the poverty, the martyrdom, the sacrifice and the venality and the cruelty are all gone as the high-piled scow of garbage, bright-colored, white-flecked, ill-smelling, now tilted on its side, spills off its load into the blue water, turning it a pale green to a depth of four or five fathoms as the load spreads across the surface, the sinkable part going down and the flotsam of palm fronds, corks, bottles, and used electric light globes, seasoned with an occasional condom or a deep floating corset, the torn leaves of a student's exercise book, a well-inflated dog, the occasional rat, the no-longer-distinguished cat; well shepherded by the boats of the garbage pickers who pluck their prizes with long poles, as interested, as intelligent, and as accurate as historians; they have the viewpoint; the stream, with no visible flow, takes five loads of this a day when things are going well in La Habana and in ten miles along the coast it is as clear and blue and unimpressed as it was ever before the tug hauled out the scow; and the palm fronds of our victories, the worn light bulbs of our discoveries and the empty condoms of our great loves float with no significance against one single, lasting thing - the stream.

I did it again, Robert Childan informed himself. Impossible to avoid the topic. Because it's everywhere, in a book I happen to pick up or a record collection, in these bone napkin rings -- loot piled up by the conquerors. Pillage from my people. Face facts. I'm trying to pretend that the Japanese and I are alike. But observe: even when I burst out as to my gratification that they won the war, that my nation is lost -- there's still no common ground. What words mean to me is a sharp contrast vis-à-vis them. Their brains are different. Souls likewise. Witness them drinking from English bone china cups, eating with U.S. silver, listening to Negro style of music. It's all on the surface. Advantage of wealth and power makes this available to them, but it's ersatz as the day is long. Even the I Ching, which they've forced down our throats; it's Chinese. Borrowed from way back when. Whom are they fooling? Themselves? Pilfer customs right and left, wear, eat, talk, walk, as for instance consuming with gusto baked potato served with sour cream and chives, old-fashioned American dish added to their haul. But nobody fooled, I can tell you; me least of all.

Sparkling fair weather like that makes me think up outside work to do—work that didn’t seem strictly necessary the day before, during a snowstorm. On those days, I’ll sometimes pack up a lunch, fix a thermos of coffee and drive around to my beeyards to see how the bees are wintering. It is good to assure myself that all the telescoping covers are tightly in place, and to check whether cows have knocked over any hives. But the truth is I just miss the bees, and I want to see them. The snow has drifted up against the hives, and I stoop to brush it away from the entrances. In one yard, a tree limb has fallen across a hive, knocking the cover askew. I haul off the limb, adjust the cover.

But compared with much of the rest of the world, Europe is a beacon of enlightenment. Among the many amazing and depressing facts in his book, Roberts gives a list of all the aquatic life incidentally killed—the bycatch, as it is known—by a fishing boat in the Pacific Ocean in the process of legally catching 211 mahi-mahi. Among the aquatic animals hauled aboard and tossed back dead after a single sweep were: 488 turtles 455 stingrays and devil rays 460 sharks 68 sailfish 34 marlin 32 tuna 11 wahoo 8 swordfish 4 giant sunfish This was legal under international protocols. The hooks on the longlines were certified as “turtle friendly.” All this was to give 211 people a dinner of mahi-mahi. —

Who built the seven gates of Thebes? The books are filled with names of kings. Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone? And Babylon, so many times destroyed. Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima’s houses, That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it? In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song. Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend The night the seas rushed in, The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves. Young Alexander conquered India. He alone? Caesar beat the Gauls. Was there not even a cook in his army? Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears? Frederick the Great triumphed in the Seven Years War. Who triumphed with him? Each page a victory At whose expense the victory ball? Every ten years a great man, Who paid the piper? So many particulars. So many questions.

Scientific works and entire libraries were set to torch kindled by the insane religious fanatics. We have already mentioned the Bishop of Yucatan, who burned the entire native literature of the Maya in the 1560's, and Bishop Theophilus, who destroyed much of the remnants of the Library of Alexandria (391). The Christian Roman emperor Valens ordered the burning of non-Christian books in 373. In 1109, the crusaders captured Tripoli, and after the usual orgy of butchery typifying the crusades (through this one did not yet include the murderous Teutonic Knights), they burned over 100,000 books of Muslim learning. In 1204, the fourth crusade captured Constantinople and sacked it with horrors unparalleled even in the bloody age of the crusades; the classical works that had survived until then were put to the torch by crusaders in what is generally considered the biggest single loss to classical literature. In the early 15th century, Cardinal Ximenes (Jimenez), who succeeded Torquemada as Grand Inquisitor and was directly responsible for the cruel deaths of 2,500 persons, had a haul of 24,000 books burned at Granada.

Oh, without the brigade one could still somehow manage to survive the camp! Without the brigade you are an individual, you yourself choose your own line of conduct. Without the brigade you can at least die proudly, but in the brigade the only way they allow you even to die is in humiliation, on your belly. From the chief, from the camp foreman, from the jailer, from the convoy guard, from all of them you can hide and catch a moment of rest; you can ease up a bit here on hauling, shirk a bit there on lifting. But from the driving belts, from your comrades in the brigade, there is neither a hiding place, nor salvation, nor mercy. You cannot not want to work. You cannot, conscious of being a political [prisoner], prefer death from hunger to work. No! Once you have been marched outside the compound, once you have been registered as going out to work, everything the brigade does today will be divided not by twenty-five but by twenty-six, and because of you the entire brigade's percentage of norm will fall from 123 to 119, which makes the difference between the ration allotted to record breakers and ordinary rations, and everyone will lose a millet cake and three and a half ounces of bread. And that is why your comrades keep watch on you better than any jailers! And the brigade leader's fist will punish you far more effectively than the whole People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. Now that is what spontaneous initiative in re-education means! That is psychological enrichment of the personality by the collective!

It wasn’t easy at first. He had expected difficulties with his parents and he wasn’t mistaken. His mother had a terrible fear of the bush—which had developed in the weeks when he had disappeared and she had had to believe he was dead. They talked many nights before she relented. He was older now, more seasoned, and she knew that. He had done well the past summer, when he had returned with Derek. With Caleb’s help, his mother came around. “How will you find the Smallhorns?” she asked. “The pilot, the man who flew me out, will know where they are.” Brian had kept the pilot’s name. The man had a one-plane operation working out of International Falls, on the Minnesota-Canada border, and Brian called. “The Smallhorns? Yeah—they’re up in the Williams Lake area in a fish camp but I’m not due to go up there until fall. I’m booked solid all summer with fishing charters. I can’t take the time to run you up there.” “How about getting me close? I can make my own way in a canoe.” “Just a minute.” Brian heard papers shuffling as the pilot went through his records. “Yeah, here. I’m due to take a couple of guys fishing in ten days. We’re going to the Granite Lake area and with my fuel I can take you maybe another hundred miles. That’s still a hundred miles short of the Smallhorns’ camp but it’s all chain lakes up there and you can do it without any really bad portages. I’ll give you a good map. How heavy is your gear?” “Maybe two hundred pounds, plus me and a canoe. Can you haul a canoe?” “Sure. On the floats. We’re taking one canoe and I can fit yours on the other float. When are you figuring on coming out?” “I’m not … sure.” “I’m due to make a supply run to them in the fall before trapping

And Mowgli had not the faintest idea of the difference that caste makes between man and man. When the potter’s donkey slipped in the clay pit, Mowgli hauled it out by the tail, and helped to stack the pots for their journey to the market at Khanhiwara. That was very shocking, too, for the potter is a low-caste man, and his donkey is worse. When the priest scolded him, Mowgli threatened to put him on the donkey too, and the priest told Messua’s husband that Mowgli had better be set to work as soon as possible; and the village head-man told Mowgli that he would have to go out with the buffaloes next day, and herd them while they grazed. No one was more pleased than Mowgli; and that night, because he had been appointed a servant of the village, as it were, he went off to a circle that met every evening on a masonry platform under a great fig-tree. It was the village club, and the head-man and the watchman and the barber, who knew all the gossip of the village, and old Buldeo, the village hunter, who had a Tower musket, met and smoked. The monkeys sat and talked in the upper branches, and there was a hole under the platform where a cobra lived, and he had his little platter of milk every night because he was sacred; and the old men sat around the tree and talked, and pulled at the big huqas (the water-pipes) till far into the night. They told wonderful tales of gods and men and ghosts; and Buldeo told even more wonderful ones of the ways of beasts in the jungle, till the eyes of the children sitting outside the circle bulged out of their heads. Most of the tales were about animals, for the jungle was always at their door. The deer and the wild pig grubbed up their crops, and now and again the tiger carried off a man at twilight, within sight of the village gates.

I had this book when I was a little kid," Eddie said at last. He spoke in the flat tones of utter surety. "Then we moved from Queens to Brooklyn--I wasn't even four years old--and I lost it. But I remember the picture on the cover. And I felt the same way you do, Jake. I didn't like it. I didn't trust it." Susannah raised her eyes to look at Eddie. "I had it, too--how could I ever forget the little girl with my name...although of course it was my middle name back in those days. And I felt the same way about the train. I didn't like it and I didn't trust it." She tapped the front of the book with her finger before passing it on to Roland. "I thought that smile was a great big fake." Roland gave it only a cursory glance before returning his eyes to Susannah. "Did you lose yours, too?" "Yes." "And I'll bet I know when," Eddie said. Susannah nodded. "I'll bet you do. It was after that man dropped the brick on my head. I had it when we went north to my Aunt Blue's wedding. I had it on the train. I remember, because I kept asking my dad if Charlie the Choo-Choo was pulling us. I didn't WANT it to be Charlie, because we were supposed to go to Elizabeth, New Jersey, and I thought Charlie might take us anywhere. Didn't he end up pulling folks around a toy village or something like that, Jake?" "An amusement park." "Yes, of course it was. There's a picture of him hauling kids around that place at the end, isn't there? They're all smiling and laughing, except I always thought they looked like they were screaming to be let off." "Yes!" Jake cried. "Yes, that's right! That's JUST right!" "I thought Charlie might take us to HIS place--wherever he lived--instead of to my aunt's wedding, and never let us go home again." "You can't go home again," Eddie muttered, and ran his hands nervously through his hair. "All the time we were on that train I wouldn't let go of the book. I even remember thinking, 'If he tries to steal us, I'll rip out his pages until he quits.' But of course we arrived right where we were supposed to, and on time, too. Daddy even took me up front, so I could see the engine. It was a diesel, not a steam engine, and I remember that made me happy. Then, after the wedding, that man Mort dropped the brick on me and I was in a coma for a long time. I never saw Charlie the Choo-Choo after that. Not until now." She hesitated, then added: "This could be my copy, for all I know--or Eddie's." "Yeah, and probably is," Eddie said.

C. M. Knaphle, Jr., of Philadelphia had tried for years to sell fuel to a large chain-store organization. But the chain-store company continued to purchase its fuel from an out-of-town dealer and haul it right past the door of Knaphle’s office. Mr. Knaphle made a speech one night before one of my classes, pouring out his hot wrath upon chain stores, branding them as a curse to the nation. And still he wondered why he couldn’t sell them. I suggested that he try different tactics. To put it briefly, this is what happened. We staged a debate between members of the course on whether the spread of the chain store is doing the country more harm than good. Knaphle, at my suggestion, took the negative side; he agreed to defend the chain stores, and then went straight to an executive of the chain-store organization that he despised and said: “I am not here to try to sell fuel. I have come to ask you to do me a favor.” He then told about his debate and said, “I have come to you for help because I can’t think of anyone else who would be more capable of giving me the facts I want. I’m anxious to win this debate, and I’ll deeply appreciate whatever help you can give me.” Here is the rest of the story in Mr. Knaphle’s own words: I had asked this man for precisely one minute of his time. It was with that understanding that he consented to see me. After I had stated my case, he motioned me to a chair and talked to me for exactly one hour and forty-seven minutes. He called in another executive who had written a book on chain stores. He wrote to the National Chain Store Association and secured for me a copy of a debate on the subject. He feels that the chain store is rendering a real service to humanity. He is proud of what he is doing for hundreds of communities. His eyes fairly glowed as he talked, and I must confess that he opened my eyes to things I had never even dreamed of. He changed my whole mental attitude. As I was leaving, he walked with me to the door, put his arm around my shoulder, wished me well in my debate, and asked me to stop in and see him again and let him know how I made out. The last words he said to me were: “Please see me again later in the spring. I should like to place an order with you for fuel.” To me that was almost a miracle. Here he was offering to buy fuel without my even suggesting it. I had made more headway in two hours by becoming genuinely interested in him and his problems than I could have made in ten years trying to get him interested in me and my product.

when I was near your ages, my dad told me about this huge construction project that was going on out here. The federal government didn’t allow any local, or even any nationally owned, construction companies to build it. It was considered completely off-limits to everyone,” “Who was building it?” Alicia asked. “My dad found out it was the Chinese who got the contract for it, and they were the ones who built it. I think it took them ten years to do it too,” “Why that long?” asked Greg. “They were building it underground and all that dirt had to be hauled away somewhere. According to my dad, they didn’t want anyone to see the construction if a satellite happened to take a picture from above, and then for the masses to see it on Google Earth, which is partially why it was built underground. I’ve heard rumors that each state has at least two, but I don’t know that for sure,

the people who want to cast his choice to enter the family business as the easy, or natural one, don’t get it. It’s in many ways the toughest life he could have chosen for himself. Although given how he was raised, maybe the only career where he could ever feel at home. “I always knew that this was his destiny, but I don’t think he believed that for a really long time,” says Walker. “He was a wonderful teacher, but it never felt like the right place. And he had a short attention span for those other things. But with politics, you really get the sense that he’s in it for the long haul.

After checking the manual again, she located the mat in the trunk and peeled it back, then unscrewed the big winged nut holding down a sort of cardboard cover. Beneath it—shazaam!—lay the spare tire and pieces of what the instructions assured her was the jack. If only she had the faintest notion how to assemble it. She removed the metal components and shivered again. She’d packed a set of long johns, but she wasn’t eager to spend time removing boots or stripping off jeans. Activity would warm her. Keep moving. Next the tire, which was determined not to leave its cocoon. She was strong for her size from years of hauling around big pots, but never had she cursed her small stature more. The thing weighed a ton, and it was wedged in there so tightly she couldn’t get it to budge. She’d go to the next step, then come back to the stupid spare. Nothing went better after that. Jacking up the car was a nightmare, and trying to loosen what the book called lug nuts simply wasn’t happening. Cold and scared and frustrated, Scarlett forced herself to think hard about the alternative: walking back to Sweetgrass Springs. But the town had been deserted except for Ruby’s,

Talk turned to current affairs. When the Bush-Gore election came up, Michael noted, “We discovered that to the credit of Gore he said his favourite book was Le Rouge et Le Noir.” Stendhal was one of Michael’s all-time favourites. “That settled things for Michael,” I said. “Yes,” he quickly agreed. “How’s Plymouth Argyle doing Michael?” Peter asked. “It’s dreadful. We’ve had the worst beginning of a season for years,” Michael replied, dropping his voice in disgust. “So we don’t need to press that subject.” We all laughed. Michael started to rise with his usual stagger. “Are you all right, Michael?” Emma asked. “Just let people help you,” Celine suggested. “I know,” Michael said. “You must do it,” Celine insisted. “You’ve always been independent, but it’s not in your best interests.” Celine was the only one of Michael’s friends who was quite this direct with him. While in Bermuda, Celine and Peter had provided a wheelchair for Michael, so that he could get around more quickly. Celine pressed her case in a jolly way, nearly always punctuating her remarks with laughter. A former centrefold, she was short and zaftig. She recommended that Michael find a nice girl with long hair to give him a massage. “It might work,” Michael agreed. He kept saying his legs had been getting better in Dubrovnik. I saw no sign of that, but I did marvel at how he negotiated the three sets of stairs from the kitchen to the living room (at street level) and then up another flight to where Jill’s study and his library are and then yet another all the way up to his bedroom. It was a very long haul that he laboriously

Many of us have watched people become uneasy, if not positively furious, when they believe some offense—including one committed by a child—has not been punished severely enough. Later in this book I will argue that a child’s misbehavior is best construed as a “teachable moment,” a problem to be solved together rather than an infraction that calls for a punitive response. I will try to show that this approach is not only more respectful and humane but also much more effective over the long haul at helping children develop a sense of responsibility.

In fact, it is unlikely that all the men on the island went in search of food and water. While some went foraging, others would have set about building rough shelters, thatched with palm fronds, above the high-water mark. At the same time, sailors, probably under the watchful eye of Sir George Somers, made repeated trips to the grounded vessel, salvaging anything that might be of service. Planks above the waterline were torn from the ship’s oaken frames and hauled ashore along with hatches and any undamaged spars that could be removed and metal fittings and canvas and cordage and tools and even books and the important charts from Newport’s cabin and, of course, the instructions and a copy of the new Virginia charter given to Gates by the officers of the Virginia Company in London. Somehow the heavy ship’s bell was hauled ashore, as were several heavy cooking kettles and at least one of the smallest cannon. Within days, though, the salvage operation came to an end as the Sea Venture slipped beneath the waves, to rest where her bones still lie, between the two coral outcroppings that trapped her. Even though the survivors must have known the ship was lost once it struck the reef,

Kids . . . were hustled through basic training and speedily deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, only to find another army already there—the shadow army of private for-profit defense contractors. Most of them were contracted to do a long list of chores that uniformed soldiers used to do for themselves when, courtesy of conscription, there were a lot more of them. To maximize their profits and minimize their work, however, the private contractors hired subcontractors who, in turn, hired subcontractors from third world countries to ship in laborers to do on the cheap the actual grunt work of hauling water and food supplies, cleaning latrines, collecting garbage, burning trash, preparing food, washing laundry, fixing electrical grids, doing construction, and staffing the fast food stands and beauty salons that sold tacos and pedicures to the troops.

Bookmark at location 22 | Added on Saturday, 27 December 2014 10:59:10 ========== The Long Haul (Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 9) (Kinney, Jeff) - Your Bookmark at location 25 | Added on Saturday, 27 December 2014 13:06:39 ========== The Long Haul (Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 9) (Kinney, Jeff) - Your Bookmark at location 31 | Added on Saturday, 27 December 2014 13:15:48 ========== The Long Haul (Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 9) (Kinney, Jeff) ========== ========== Diary of a 6th Grade Ninja (a hilarious adventure for children

One of Michael’s favourite pastimes was hauling books down from his shelves and reading to me, or pointing out comments he had made on the flyleaves. The astringent Brigid Brophy never failed to amuse him. Her invective, he claimed, “would put anybody in a good temper. It’s my favourite cure for any kind of depression.” Michael read out a newspaper clipping reporting an apology concerning something Brophy had written that the press council deemed pornographic. A reader had complained about her article on Lucretius, the newspaper report noted: “Referring to the Latin language Ms. Brophy wrote, ‘yet, though non-colloquial Latin is rhetorical and declamatory because its sounds ooze forth, though its meaning has to be teased out, tension and internal contradiction are inherent in the language. I can’t believe it didn’t create in its users a psychological predisposition to tension like masturbating with one hand while playing chess with the other.” We roared. “It’s hard to beat. It makes me laugh like anything,” Michael said. He spoke of Brigid Brophy constantly. “It’s wonderful,” he chortled.

Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers and one-armed Captain Newport were certainly among the first to board the Sea Venture, followed by mariners hauling the officers’ sea chests, heavy with clothes, books, charts, weapons, nautical instruments, and, it is safe to say, special food to supplement the shipboard diet as well as some aqua vitae and wines to liven the table and conversation in the admiral’s quarters. Gates also brought on board some fruit and vegetable seeds he hoped to plant in Jamestown.

He’d lugged his fair share of those exact same bags in MI, though they’d all been khaki or olive drab. But he knew the type. It was a portable weapons locker. Sure enough, when she removed a small but sturdy lock from the zippers and hauled down on them, then flung the bag open, he could see a veritable armory inside. There were handguns and submachine guns and shotguns and some sort of sniper rifle, very high-tech-looking with a folding stock and a sleek body. But there were other weapons in there as well, knives and swords and axes and clubs and even an honest-to-God crossbow. It was like Dirty Harry meets King Arthur, and all in a seedy motel room!

Peter remained silent, so Nicola took charge. “Let’s start by grabbing whatever we can as it goes by,” she said. “Maybe there’s something useful in there.” Over the next five minutes, they amassed quite a collection. They had pulled out pails, empty pop bottles, a tire, some shoes, and even a small shovel. They looked at their haul, but nothing seemed to hint at a way to get across a ferocious whirlpool. Peter got the impression they were waiting for him to suggest something. But instead of giving instructions, he asked for help. “I’m not seeing it,” he said. “I mean, like, how can any of this junk help us get across?” Neil noticed something move near the exit. He grabbed Nicola and Peter, and quickly pointed it out to them. None of them saw what, or who, was just there. But what was left behind was clear. Next to the exit, a digital clock was now hanging on the wall. The timer on the clock was set to five minutes. Before anyone had a chance to comment on how short five minutes was, it began to count down. “Neil, Pete, look!” Nicola said hurriedly. “Only five minutes! What are we gonna do?

The horses, reluctant and excited from the first, become furious and wild. At the next shoal-personal nastiness being past consideration-we dismount, at knee-deep, to give them a moment's rest, shifting the mule's saddle to the trembling long-legged mare, and turning Mr. Brown loose, to follow as he could. After a breathing-spell we resume our splashed seats and the line of wade. Experience has taught us something, and we are more shrewd in choice of footing, the slopes around large trees being attractively high ground, until, by a stumble on a covered root, a knee is nearly crushed against a cypress trunk. Gullies now commence, cut by the rapid course of waters flowing off before north winds, in which it is good luck to escape instant drowning. Then quag again; the pony bogs; the mare, quivering and unmanageable, jumps sidelong among loose corduroy; and here are two riders standing waist-deep in mud and water between two frantic, plunging-horses, fortunately not beneath them. Nack soon extricates himself, and joins the mule, looking on terrified from behind. Fanny, delirious, believes all her legs broken and strewn about her, and falls, with a whining snort, upon her side. With incessant struggles she makes herself a mud bath, in which, with blood-shot eyes, she furiously rotates, striking, now and then, some stump, against which she rises only to fall upon the other side, or upon her back, until her powers are exhausted, and her head sinks beneath the surface. Mingled with our uppermost sympathy are thoughts of the soaked note-books, and other contents of the saddle-bags, and of the.hundred dollars that drown with her. What of dense soil there was beneath her is now stirred to porridge, and it is a dangerous exploit to approach. But, with joint hands, we length succeed in grappling her bridle, and then in hauling her nostrils above water. She revives only for a new tumult of dizzy pawing, before which we hastily retreat. At a second pause her lariat is secured, and the saddle cut adrift. For a half-hour the alternate resuscitation continues, until we are able to drag the head of the poor beast, half strangled by the rope, as well as the mud and water, toward firmer ground, where she recovers slowly her senses and her footing. Any further attempts at crossing the somewhat "wet" Neches bottoms are, of course, abandoned, and even the return to the ferry is a serious sort of joke. However, we congratulate ourselves that we are leaving, not entering the State.

We saw our second surrender leaflet around the end of the year. A Boeing B-17 flew over our hideout and dropped a lot of big, thick pieces of paper. On the front were printed the surrender order from General Yamashita of the Fourteenth Area Army and a directive from the chief of staff. On the back was a map of Lubang on which the place where the leaflets were dropped was marked with a circle. We gathered together and considered whether the orders printed on the leaflet were genuine. I had my doubts about a sentence saying that those who surrendered would be given “hygienic succor” and “hauled” to Japan.

​Thankfully, I’m single. Very single. It’s a choice I love making. Who wants to be thirty years old and hiding their book hauls? It’s honestly no way to live.

I give a nod to indicate her grocery bags. "Good haul?" "Capital," she says. "Just capital." She gives a nod to indicate my exposed genitals. "You wax?" "No, ma'am. Razor." "Gets that close?" "Five blades. Pivoting head. marvel of the modern age.

Whipped or ice cream on your dumplings?" she asked them, once the crust browned and the filling bubbled. She sprinkled additional cinnamon sugar on top. Grace and Cade responded as one, "Ice cream." Cade leaned his elbows on the table, cut her a curious look. "I didn't think we had a thing in common." She gave him a repressive look. "Ice cream doesn't make us friends." Amelia scooped vanilla bean into the bowls with the dumplings. Her smile was small, secret, when she served their dessert, and she commented, "Friendships are born of likes and dislikes. Ice cream is binding." Not as far as Grace was concerned. Cade dug into his dessert. Amelia kept the conversation going. "I bet you're more alike than you realize." Why would that matter? Grace thought. She had no interest in this man. A simultaneous "doubtful" surprised them both. Amelia kept after them, Grace noted, pointing out, "You were both born, grew up, and never left Moonbright." "It's a great town," Cade said. "Family and friends are here." "You're here," Grace emphasized. Amelia patted her arm. "I'm very glad you've stayed. Cade, too. You're equally civic-minded." Grace blinked. We are? "The city council initiated Beautify Moonbright this spring, and you both volunteered." We did? Grace was surprised. Cade scratched his stubbled chin, said, "Mondays, I transport trees and mulch from Wholesale Gardens to grassy medians between roadways. Flower beds were planted along the nature trails to the public park." Grace hadn't realized he was part of the community effort. "I help with the planting. Most Wednesdays." Amelia was thoughtful. "You're both active at the senior center." Cade acknowledged, "I've thrown evening horseshoes against the Benson brothers. Lost. Turned around and beat them at cards." "I've never seen you there," Grace puzzled. "I stop by in the afternoons, drop off large-print library books and set up audio cassettes for those unable to read because of poor eyesight." "There's also Build a Future," Amelia went on to say. "Cade recently hauled scaffolding and worked on the roof at the latest home for single parents. Grace painted the bedrooms in record time." "The Sutter House," they said together. Once again. "Like minds," Amelia mused, as she sipped her sparkling water.

The final step in the process of foundation building is deciding what you are willing to commit to over the long haul.

They had just released the third edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, an illustrated, 450-page book more lavish than any they had undertaken before, and their coffers were empty. Thayer and Eldridge defaulted on all their contracts and hauled in their sidewalk shingle. Unfortunately, the debut of the Calamus poems, one of the most explicit gay works to be published in the United States for the next half century, had prevented the appearance of the country’s first self-authored female slave narrative.

That wasn’t how memory worked, of course. Just willing herself to remember something, pushing herself, was much more likely to generate a false recollection and add bad data to the set than it was to haul up some telling detail she’d failed to mention.

her chest had been hollowed out. But they were no closer to a good plan for overturning Taft’s censorship policy, either. “You know, I heard about a place the other day,” Harrison said, his vowels all relaxed now with the liquor. “Maybe it would be worth a visit. Though it is quite the haul to Brooklyn.” He reached into his pocket for a pen and notepad and scribbled out an address. “What’s in Brooklyn?” Viv asked, trying to peer over his shoulder. Harrison grinned as he slid her the paper. “Inspiration.” Weak tendrils of hope bloomed from the ash of her defeat

The rest of this book is an exploration of a saner way of relating to time and a toolbox of practical ideas for doing so, drawn from the work of philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers who all rejected the struggle to dominate or master it. I believe it sketches a kind of life that’s vastly more peaceful and meaningful—while also, it turns out, being better for sustained productivity over the long haul.

A man hauls in the fish he baits for and at the depth at which he fishes.

Grampa pulled off his lucky hat and sank into the recliner. Before long, he was snoring like a rusty hymn. 'Zzzzzz . . .' Uncle Leonard tossed Ray over one shoulder and hauled him into the kitchen, where the smell of frying bacon filled the air. 'Any fish today?” Aunt Wilhelmina asked. 'Yes, ma’am,” Ray said, 'but that’s not all we caught.' Uncle Leonard sat Ray down. 'What else was there?” 'Something bigger' is all that Ray would say.

Determine Motivating Factors Other than Price In addition to determining motivation and trying to get as much information as possible from the seller, you’ll also want to use this discussion to determine if there are motivating factors other than price, or other requirements the seller has. For example, you might ask: Investor: “Assuming we can agree to a price, is there anything else you want or need out of this deal?” This gives seller the opportunity to give you more information about her situation—information that could be used to help formulate an offer and then later be able to better negotiate that offer. For example, the seller might respond in a half-joking manner with: Seller: “Price is the most important thing… But, if you know anyone who can haul all of our furniture to Nebraska for us, that would help too!

I don’t know why it’s you, I just know that it is, Seneca,” he said. “So, before I lay you out on my bed and do my best to ruin you, I want you to understand that I’m in this for the long haul. This is real for me.” “I…” I had to clear my throat. “I’m not sure what to say to that.” “I’m not expecting you to say anything,” he replied. “I’m just telling you what the expectation is when it comes to our relationship.” “Mine or yours?” His lips twitched in a smirk. “Yours,” he answered. “I already know what’s expected of me.” “Oh, yeah? And what is expected of you?” “I’m expected to love you, protect you, provide for you, and do whatever else it is that you might need me to do,” he said, and I could feel my knees weaken. “You might as well know now how this works, baby.” “And how does it work?” “We might as well be married,” he said right before his lips found mine.

Fuck the book,” he muses, and then hauls me forward. “Just like I shall fuck your cunt with my tongue.” “Oh Jesus,” I breathe. He’s dirty talking again. “How does a man like you have such a filthy mouth?” “Sit on it and find out,” he cajoles.

Eventually, I bought a Michael Clay Thompson Practice Voyage teacher’s book, and we started evaluating sentences according to four different criteria. Still, only one sentence a day. I wish we had done this from the beginning. It takes less than five minutes a day. Suddenly the English sentence began to make beautiful sense. Imagine how many sentences you can evaluate over the long haul?

I have the worst feeling Lars and I are in a relationship. Has that honestly only just occurred to you? The idea may have dawned on me a few days ago. Well done. Your dramatic run through the hospital ward last weekend kind of gave it away. I run for no man. Hauled ass like your pants were on fire.

Luke was about to grab Windy and haul him out of the cave when he heard a man clearing his throat. Both boys turned their heads fast to see a hooded figure standing outside the cave. He was wearing a dark brown robe and holding a staff that was topped by a slender glowrod. The figure pulled back his hood to reveal the weathered face of a white-haired, bearded man. “I’m Ben Kenobi,” the man said. “We don’t have much time if I’m going to get you boys home.

Everything in and around us is negatively affected when we lose integrity. And because our true nature is serious about restoring us to wholeness, it hauls out the one tool that reliably gets our attention: suffering. Personally, I do not enjoy suffering. It hurts me. If you’re into it, I don’t judge you—but I do want to make a crucial point: suffering is different from pain, at least in my lexicon. I once saw a sign in a medical clinic that read “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” Physical pain comes from events. Psychological suffering comes from the way we deal with those events.

Down and down, around and around and around. Step to step to step. She didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. As if she had been freed from a cage she hadn’t realized she’d been held in. Every step downward, she heard the words. Never again. She had escaped the kelpie by pure luck. But she had been terrified. As terrified as when she’d been hauled into the depths of the Cauldron, as terrified as she’d been with Tomas. At least with Tomas, she had fought. With the kelpie, she had barely done anything until the Mask had spared her. She had become so afraid. So meek and trembling. It was unacceptable. Unacceptable that she had let herself balk and cower and curl inward.

Yes, ‘Rhys is the greatest lover a female can hope for’ is undoubtedly how I learned to read.” “I was only trying to tell you what you now know.” My blood heated a bit. “Hmmm,” was all I said, pulling a book toward me. “I’ll take that hmmm as a challenge.” His hand slid down my thigh, then cupped my knee, his thumb brushing along its side. Even through my leathers, the heat of him seeped to my very bones. “Maybe I’ll haul you between the stacks and see how quiet you can be.” “Hmmm.” I flipped through the pages, not seeing any of the text. His hand began a lethal, taunting exploration up my thigh, his fingers grazing along the sensitive inside. Higher, higher. He leaned in to drag a book toward himself, but whispered in my ear, “Or maybe I’ll spread you out on this desk and lick you until you scream loud enough to wake whatever is at the bottom of the library.” I whipped my head toward him. His eyes were glazed—almost sleepy.

They hauled out two huge, blocky Jotun class mechs designed for deliberate, steady progress on a battlefield. One was their very own Cronus. The other was named Craig, and no one knew quite why.

Pretty sure someone’s out there driving a U-Haul in my honor ... Fucking crazy sons of bitches.

The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson runs less than one hundred pages and ends when he becomes US secretary of state in 1790. In this work, Jefferson attempted once again to secure his antislavery credentials, after training for a lifetime as a slaveholder: “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free,” he wrote. “Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.” In forty years, nothing had diminished his need to produce racist ideas—not the Black exhibits, uplift suasion, letters from abolitionists, Sally Hemings, or the loyalty or the resistance of enslaved Africans. Jefferson shared the same view in his Autobiography in 1821 that he had in Notes in 1781. He promoted the colonization idea, that freed Blacks be hauled away to Africa in the same manner that enslaved Blacks had been hauled to America.

used to raise the dog from the creek. Goosebumps stood out on Dante's neck and arms. He packed away the book and hauled the heavy gravestone

While their mother told Mrs. Bettle and Bett about her trip to France when she was a girl- 'Oh, Champs-Elysées!'- Milly hauled out a bottle of milk from the refrigerator and a sack of dried kidney beans from the pantry. She opened her recipe book, looking for something to make out of the available ingredients: milk, flour, butter, and kidney beans. When she didn't find a recipe, she decided to do what every woman in the country did when she lacked materials: bake a pie. Not every woman would have made a kidney bean pie, though.