Bricks Best Quotes

Your mind is working at its best when you're being paranoid. You explore every avenue and possibility of your situation at high speed with total clarity.

The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, the effect of which is like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.

Your past is like a bag of bricks; set it down and walk away. Quit collecting every painful word, memory and mistake. Collect hope.

If you write, fix pipes, grade papers, lay bricks or drive a taxi - do it with a sense of pride. And do it the best you know how. Be cognizant and sympathetic to the guy alongside, because he wants a place in the sun, too. And always...always look past his color, his creed, his religion and the shape of his ears. Look for the whole person. Judge him as the whole person.

Fred: "Is that brick wall your boyfriend?" Doug: "Only in my dreams." Fred: "Oh, you too? I'm Fred." Doug: "Doug. I should mention, in all fairness though that Christy's boyfriend is my best friend. He's the brick wall you should be worried about.

Grown-ups love figures. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essentail matters. They never say to you, “What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?” Instead, they demand: “How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?” Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him. If you were to say to the grown-ups: “I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof,” they would not be able to get an idea of that house at all. You have have to say to them: “I saw a house that cost $20,000.” Then they would exclaim: “Oh, what a pretty house that is!

Life was built from the bricks of these connections and milestones and moments where you tell your two best friends that you’re about to have a child.

Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask: ‘What does his voice sound like?’ ‘What games does he like best?’ ‘Does he collect butterflies?’ They ask: ‘How old is he?’ ‘How many brothers does he have?’ ‘How much does he weigh?’ ‘How much money does he have?’ Only then do they think they know him. If you tell grown-ups, ‘I saw a beautiful red brick house, with geraniums at the windows and doves at the roof…,’ they won’t be able to imagine such a house. You have to tell them, ‘I saw a house worth a thousand francs.’ Then they exclaim, ‘What a pretty house!

"The wanderer in Manhattan must go forth with a certain innocence, because New York is best seen with innocent eyes. It doesn't matter if you are younger or old. Reading our rich history makes the experience more layered, but it is not a substitute for walking the streets themselves. For old-timer or newcomer, it is essential to absorb the city as it is now in order to shape your own nostalgias. That's why I always urge the newcomer to surrender to the city's magic. Forget the irritations and the occasional rudeness; they bother New Yorkers too. Instead, go down to the North River and the benches that run along the west side of Battery Park City. Watch the tides or the blocks of ice in winter; they have existed since the time when the island was empty of man. Gaze at the boats. Look across the water at the Statue of Liberty or Ellis Island, the place to which so many of the New York tribe came in order to truly live. Learn the tale of our tribe, because it's your tribe too, no matter where you were born. Listen to its music and its legends. Gaze at its ruins and monuments. Walk its sidewalks and run fingers upon the stone and bricks and steel of our right-angled streets. Breathe the air of the river breeze."

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.... Is there no other way the world may live?

It's a success story," said Chanu, exercising his shoulders. "But behind every story of immigration success there lies a deeper tragedy." Kindly explain this tragedy." I'm talking about the clash between Western values and our own. I'm talking about the struggle to assimilate and the need to preserve one's identity and heritage. I'm talking about children who don't know what their identity is. I'm talking about the feelings of alienation engendered by a society where racism is prevalent. I'm talking about the terrific struggle to preserve one's own sanity while striving to achieve the best for one's family. I'm talking--" p. 88

Mariângela says that the best way to work with dementia is to act as if the person you knew is still inside the wreckage. If you’re wrong, and the person you knew is gone, then no damage is done but the standards of care stay high; if you’re right, and the person you knew is still bricked up inside, then you are the lifeline.

How he was my teacher and my partner in so many key life areas. My best friend and my family and my pillow and my quilt. Each of them are like bricks laid in the house I built to love him, but the point is really that house I built isn’t a monument to a love I used to have. It’s a house I want to live inside of still.

Usually, the best way to find the yellow brick road of your life is to start out on the dusty, dirt one. And then let yourself become so preoccupied in making the best of it, having fun, and challenging yourself that you actually stop paying attention to the path. (Notes from the Universe: New Perspectives from an Old Friend, Mike Dooley)

Hospitals were to her a memento mori in bricks and mortar; an awful reminder of the inevitable end that was coming to all of us but which she felt was best ignored while one got on with the business of life.

The best way to work with dementia is to act as if the person you knew is still inside the wreckage. If you're wrong, and the person you know is gone, then no damage is done but the standards of care stay high; if you're right, and the person you knew is still bricked up inside, then you are the lifeline.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. It says that the effect of drinking a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick. The Guide also tells you on which planets the best Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters are mixed, how much you can expect to pay for one and what voluntary organizations exist to help you rehabilitate afterwards.

I figured the best way to stop feeling that tired was to stop fighting losing battles. Stop banging my head against a brick wall,

I close my eyes and feel the texture of brick on my fingers in my mind. I try to imagine the wall that surrounds your heart, so I can best devise a plan to breach it.

On the road to success, there is always room to share appreciation and gratitude for other people’s successes. Feeling gratitude for other people raises our own vibration, while adding cement to the bricks we lay. Finding the best qualities in others allows us to build those qualities within ourselves. And when we focus on our personal growth with open hearts and minds, the speed with which we construct dramatically increases, because all the while, we are attracting more like energy and like-minded people into our lives to assist us.

You know, I came to realize that the person that once treated me worse than anybody else, is the person that treats me the best. That the person that I feared more than anyone else has wound up being the person that I trust more than anyone else. That the person I once hated the most has wound up being the person that I've kind of fallen in love with. There's no way in this world i'm going to be disappointed in the person that i'm pretty much in awe of.

Here’s what the Encyclopedia Galáctica has to say about alcohol. It says that alcohol is a colorless volatile liquid formed by the fermentation of sugars and also notes its intoxicating effect on certain carbon-based life forms. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. It says that the effect of drinking a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.

There are many peaceful ways to get rid of a fascist government and economic war against such a government is the best way amongst all these ways! And what is the economic war? It is to stop feeding the economy that feeds the fascist government, it is to take out your own individual brick from the wall of pro-government economy. Halt the food of the devil! Don’t forget that it is you who is feeding the hyena that bites you!

The berth belongs to you too. It will always be there when—if you want to come back.” Inej could not speak. Her heart felt too full, a dry creek bed ill-prepared for such rain. “I don’t know what to say.” His bare hand flexed on the crow’s head of his cane. The sight was so strange Inej had trouble tearing her eyes from it. “Say you’ll return.” “I’m not done with Ketterdam.” She hadn’t known she meant it until she said the words. Kaz cast her a swift glance. “I thought you wanted to hunt slavers.” “I do. And I want your help.” Inej licked her lips, tasted the ocean on them. Her life had been a series of impossible moments, so why not ask for something impossible now? “It’s not just the slavers. It’s the procurers, the customers, the Barrel bosses, the politicians. It’s everyone who turns a blind eye to suffering when there’s money to be made.” “I’m a Barrel boss.” “You would never sell someone, Kaz. You know better than anyone that you’re not just one more boss scraping for the best margin.” “The bosses, the customers, the politicians,” he mused. “That could be half the people in Ketterdam—and you want to fight them all.” “Why not?” Inej asked. “One the seas and in the city. One by one.” “Brick by brick,” he said. Then he gave a single shake of his head, as if shrugging off the notion. “I wasn’t made to be a hero, Wraith. You should have learned that by now. You want me to be a better man, a good man. I—“ “This city doesn’t need a good man. It needs you.” “Inej—“ “How many times have you told me you’re a monster? So be a monster. Be the thing they all fear when they close their eyes at night. We don’t go after all the gangs. We don’t shut down the houses that treat fairly with their employees. We go after women like Tante Heleen, men like Pekka Rollins.” She paused. “And think about it this way…you’ll be thinning the competition.” He made a sound that might almost have been a laugh. One of his hands balanced on his cane. The other rested at his side next to her. She’d need only move the smallest amount and they’d be touching. He was that close. He was that far from reach. Cautiously, she let her knuckles brush against his, a slight weight, a bird’s feather. He stiffened, but he didn’t pull away. “I’m not ready to give up on this city, Kaz. I think it’s worth saving.” I think you’re worth saving. Once they’d stood on the deck of a ship and she’d waited just like this. He had not spoken then and he did not speak now. Inej felt him slipping away, dragged under, caught in an undertow that would take him farther and farther from shore. She understood suffering and knew it was a place she could not follow, not unless she wanted to drown too. Back on Black Veil, he’d told her they would fight their way out. Knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that’s what we do. She would fight for him, but she could not heal him. She would not waste her life trying. She felt his knuckles slide again hers. Then his hand was in her hand, his palm pressed against her own. A tremor moved through him. Slowly, he let their fingers entwine.

The following year the house was substantially remodeled, and the conservatory removed. As the walls of the now crumbling wall were being torn down, one of the workmen chanced upon a small leatherbound book that had apparently been concealed behind a loose brick or in a crevice in the wall. By this time Emily Dickinson was a household name in Amherst. It happened that this carpenter was a lover of poetry- and hers in particular- and when he opened the little book and realized that that he had found her diary, he was “seized with a violent trembling,” as he later told his grandson. Both electrified and terrified by the discovery, he hid the book in his lunch bucket until the workday ended and then took it home. He told himself that after he had read and savored every page, he would turn the diary over to someone who would know how to best share it with the public. But as he read, he fell more and more deeply under the poet’s spell and began to imagine that he was her confidant. He convinced himself that in his new role he was no longer obliged to give up the diary. Finally, having brushed away the light taps of conscience, he hid the book at the back of an oak chest in his bedroom, from which he would draw it out periodically over the course of the next sixty-four years until he had virtually memorized its contents. Even his family never knew of its existence. Shortly before his death in 1980 at the age of eighty-nine, the old man finally showed his most prized possession to his grandson (his only son having preceded him in death), confessing that his delight in it had always been tempered by a nagging guilt and asking that the young man now attempt to atone for his grandfather’s sin. The grandson, however, having inherited both the old man’s passion for poetry and his tendency towards paralysis of conscience, and he readily succumbed to the temptation to hold onto the diary indefinitely while trying to decide what ought to be done with it.

Some three or four years before this Dr. Sloper had moved his household gods up town, as they say in New York. He had been living ever since his marriage in an edifice of red brick, with granite copings and an enormous fanlight over the door, standing in a street within five minutes' walk of the City Hall, which saw its best days (from the social point of view) about 1820. After this, the tide of fashion began to set steadily northward, as, indeed, in New York, thanks to the narrow channel in which it flows, it is obliged to do, and the great hum of traffic rolled farther to the right and left of Broadway.

Spring had come early that year, with warm quick rains and sudden frothing of pink peach blossoms and dogwood dappling with white stars the dark river swamp and far-off hills. Already the plowing was nearly finished, and the bloody glory of the sunset colored the fresh-cut furrows of red Georgia clay to even redder hues. The moist hungry earth, waiting upturned for the cotton seeds, showed pinkish on the sandy tops of furrows, vermilion and scarlet and maroon where shadows lay along the sides of the trenches. The whitewashed brick plantation house seemed an island set in a wild red sea, a sea of spiraling, curving, crescent billows petrified suddenly at the moment when the pink-tipped waves were breaking into surf. For here were no long, straight furrows, such as could be seen in the yellow clay fields of the flat middle Georgia country or in the lush black earth of the coastal plantations. The rolling foothill country of north Georgia was plowed in a million curves to keep the rich earth from washing down into the river bottoms. It was a savagely red land, blood-colored after rains, brick dust in droughts, the best cotton land in the world. It was a pleasant land of white houses, peaceful plowed fields and sluggish yellow rivers, but a land of contrasts, of brightest sun glare and densest shade. The plantation clearings and miles of cotton fields smiled up to a warm sun, placid, complacent. At their edges rose the virgin forests, dark and cool even in the hottest noons, mysterious, a little sinister, the soughing pines seeming to wait with an age-old patience, to threaten with soft sighs: "Be careful! Be careful! We had you once. We can take you back again.

In the morning this light breasts your windowpane and, having pried your eye open like a shell, runs ahead of you, strumming its lengthy rays - like a hot-footed schoolboy running his stick along the iron grate of the park or garden - along arcades, colonnades, red-brick chimneys, saints and lions. "Depict! Depict!" it cries to you, either mistaking you for some Canaletto or Carpaccio or Guardi, or because it doesn't trust your retina's ability to retain what it makes available, not to mention your brain's capacity to absorb it. Perhaps art is simply an organism's reaction against its retentive limitations. At any rate, you obey the command and grab your camera, supplementing both your brain cells and your pupil. Should this city ever be short of cash, it can go straight to Kodak for assistance - or else tax its products savagely. By the same token, as long as this place exists, as long as winter light shines upon it, Kodak shares are the best investment.

Still. Mariângela says that the best way to work with dementia is to act as if the person you knew is still inside the wreckage. If you’re wrong, and the person you knew is gone, then no damage is done but the standards of care stay high; if you’re right, and the person you knew is still bricked up inside, then you are the lifeline.

He had a little single-story house, three bedrooms, a full bathroom and a half bathroom, a combined kitchen-living room-dining room with windows that faced west, a small brick porch where there was a wooden bench worn by the wind that came down from the mountains and the sea, the wind from the north, the wind through the gaps, the wind that smelled like smoke and came from the south. He had books he'd kept for more than twenty-five years. Not many. All of them old. He had books he'd bought in the last ten years, books he didn't mind lending, books that could've been lost or stolen for all he cared. He had books that he sometimes received neatly packaged and with unfamiliar return addresses, books he didn't even open anymore. He had a yard perfect for growing grass and planting flowers, but he didn't know what flowers would do best there--flowers, as opposed to cacti or succulents. There would be time (so he thought) for gardening. He had a wooden gate that needed a coat of paint. He had a monthly salary.

A brick could be used in a levitation demonstration. The best way to keep it afloat, along with the American Dream, is with debt and denial.


Avoid overthinking and instead concentrate on the critical steps you need to take to perform at your best.

Shop where you stay, shop where you see smile, shop such so they sustain.

Our best friends and our worst enemies are our thoughts. A thought can do us more good than a doctor or a banker or a faithful friend. It can also do us more harm than a brick.

A brick could be used to gauge the level of reciprocated sexual interest of the person or object of your desire. A brick works best, however, when the focus of your lust is the brick itself. 


A brick could be covered in black fur, cradled, pet, and called Mr. Fizzlebush. The best part is that since it’ll sit still and silent on the bed, it won’t meow or run away when you want to snuggle.


Look at the path ahead of you. I want you to keep your eyes dead ahead, stay on path, and not take your eyes off your end goal. Following that path with focus and dedication will be your best route to the top.

My eye was caught by movement from behind the automaton. Just a flicker, but my heart clenched with surprise and fear, and I tapped Dean on the arm, pointing. “Something’s over there.” He followed my finger, and we both saw the flicker of red on the unbroken gray brick of the foundry walls. “Son of a bitch,” Dean growled, jamming his hand in his pocket and pulling out his switchblade. “Hey!” he bellowed at the moving shadow. “Hey, you!” “Dean …,” I started, thinking that perhaps shouting at the figure wasn’t the best idea. “I see you!” Dean shouted. “No point in hiding.” “Dean, we don’t know what it is,” I whispered, worried that if he made a move, whoever or whatever lurked beyond the automaton would take it badly. Dean shook his head. “Relax, princess. It’s a kid.” He advanced on the shadow. “Aren’t you?” “Up yours, mister!” the shadow shouted back. I pressed a hand over my mouth, both to stifle a laugh and from relief. To find another person in this wasteland was ten times more unexpected than finding a creature like the nightjars and ghouls that populated Lovecraft’s underground. “Say,” Dean drawled, brows drawing together. “I know you, kid.” “I know your mother!” the kid retorted. “And she has some disappointing things to say about you.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point the hope that come with this spring of 1953.

Showers" The child tells me, put a brick in the tank, don’t wear leather, don’t eat brisket, snapper, or farmed salmon—not tells, orders—doesn’t she know the sluice gates are wide open and a trillion gallons wasted just for the dare of it? Until the staring eye shares that thrill, witnessing: I am just iris and cornea, blind spot where brain meets mind, the place where the image forms itself from a spark—image of the coming storm. Still the child waits outside the bathroom with the watch she got for Best Essay, muttering, two minutes too long. Half measures, I say. She says, action. I: I’m one man. She: Seven billion. If you choose, the sea goes back.

The enormity of this started to sink in and I all but collapsed back into my chair. This, here, was life. This was life beginning for us: weddings and families and deciding to step up and be a man for someone. It wasn't about the fucking jobs we had or the random thrills we sought or any of that. Life was built from the bricks of these connections and milestone and moments where you tell your two best friends that you're about to have a child.

Not all was as it seemed, he realized in the simple rendering of a child’s comprehension. Not all was good and honorable in this world. And for young Robrecht, there was something thrilling in this simple fact. For him, it was as if on that morning long ago the colors of the sky and earth—the dirt road, the brick and plaster buildings, the gleaming sea—had suddenly become not just brighter and more vibrant but also richer—the deeper shades of a complex and multifarious world.

There was something to be said for the stoicism of a native New Englander. Not much riled them besides a World Series loss or another region claiming to have the best pizza—everyone knew the best was from New Haven’s brick ovens in Wooster Square.

we talk about building brick walls around them to protect them. You know what the best part of a brick wall is? The fact it can be torn down one brick at a time. So, tonight, dear readers, I leave you with this question… How tall is your brick wall?

Studying in a developing/third-world country is way more intense and formative than studying in a first-world fancy country. It makes you so much more open-minded, adaptive, and confident. You become so much more real. When you have to shit on two little bricks into a hole the size of a tennis ball at an elementary school in the countryside, or sleep in a farmer's yurt after not bathing for five days, you become a much more easygoing person. It teaches you to value experience over material things real fast.

For a hundred years, every Thornhill girl has scratched her name into the brickwork, along with her best friend’s name, hundreds of pairs of names scraped into the red brick. All the other girls I have known at Thornhill are on that porch. Only my name is missing.

Don't you want to preserve old things? But you can't, Anthony. Beautiful things grow to a certain height and then they fail and fade off, breathing out memories as they decay. And just as any period decays in our minds, the things of that period should decay too, and in that way they're preserved for a while in the few hearts like mine that react to them. That graveyard at Tarrytown, for instance. The asses who give money to preserve things have spoiled that too. Sleepy Hollow's gone; Washington Irving's dead and his books are rotting in our estimation year by year - then let the graveyard rot too, as it should, as all things should. Trying to preserve a century by keeping its relics up to date is like keeping a dying man alive by stimulants. So you think that just as time goes to pieces its houses ought to go too? Of course! Would you value your Keats letter if the signature was traced over to make it last longer? It's just because I love the past that I want this house to look back on its glamorous moment of youth and beauty, and I want its stars to creak as if to the footsteps of women with hoop-skirts and men in boots and spurs. But they've made it into a blondined, rouged-up old woman of sixty. It hasn't any right to look so prosperous. It might care enough for Lee to drop a brick now and then. How many of these - these animals - get anything from this, for all the histories and guide-books and restorations in existence? How many of them who think that, at best, appreciation is talking in undertones and walking on tiptoes would even come here if it was any trouble? I want it to smell of magnolias instead of peanuts and I want my shoes to crunch on the same gravel that Lee's boots crunched on. There's no beauty without poignancy and there's no poignancy without the feeling that it's going, men, names, books, houses - bound for dust - mortal-

Ethan’s parents constantly told him how brainy he was. “You’re so smart! You can do anything, Ethan. We are so proud of you, they would say every time he sailed through a math test. Or a spelling test. Or any test. With the best of intentions, they consistently tethered Ethan’s accomplishment to some innate characteristic of his intellectual prowess. Researchers call this “appealing to fixed mindsets.” The parents had no idea that this form of praise was toxic. 　　Little Ethan quickly learned that any academic achievement that required no effort was the behavior that defined his gift. When he hit junior high school, he ran into subjects that did require effort. He could no longer sail through, and, for the first time, he started making mistakes. But he did not see these errors as opportunities for improvement. After all, he was smart because he could mysteriously grasp things quickly. And if he could no longer grasp things quickly, what did that imply? That he was no longer smart. Since he didn’t know the ingredients making him successful, he didn’t know what to do when he failed. You don’t have to hit that brick wall very often before you get discouraged, then depressed. Quite simply, Ethan quit trying. His grades collapsed. What happens when you say, ‘You’re so smart’ 　　Research shows that Ethan’s unfortunate story is typical of kids regularly praised for some fixed characteristic. If you praise your child this way, three things are statistically likely to happen: 　　First, your child will begin to perceive mistakes as failures. Because you told her that success was due to some static ability over which she had no control, she will start to think of failure (such as a bad grade) as a static thing, too—now perceived as a lack of ability. Successes are thought of as gifts rather than the governable product of effort. 　　Second, perhaps as a reaction to the first, she will become more concerned with looking smart than with actually learning something. (Though Ethan was intelligent, he was more preoccupied with breezing through and appearing smart to the people who mattered to him. He developed little regard for learning.) 　　Third, she will be less willing to confront the reasons behind any deficiencies, less willing to make an effort. Such kids have a difficult time admitting errors. There is simply too much at stake for failure. 　　  　　What to say instead: ‘You really worked hard’ 　　What should Ethan’s parents have done? Research shows a simple solution. Rather than praising him for being smart, they should have praised him for working hard. On the successful completion of a test, they should not have said,“I’m so proud of you. You’re so smart. They should have said, “I’m so proud of you. You must have really studied hard”. This appeals to controllable effort rather than to unchangeable talent. It’s called “growth mindset” praise.

the best way to work with dementia is to act as if the person you knew is still inside the wreckage. If you’re wrong, and the person you knew is gone, then no damage is done but the standards of care stay high; if you’re right, and the person you knew is still bricked up inside, then you are the lifeline.

It was a savagely red land, blood-coloured after rains, brick dust in droughts, the best cotton land in the world. It was a pleasant land of white houses, peaceful plowed fields and sluggish yellow rivers, but a land of contrasts, of brightest sun glare and densest shade. The plantation clearings and miles of cotton fields smiled up to a warm sun, placid, complacent. At their edges rose the virgin forests, dark and cool even in the hottest noons, mysterious, a little sinister, the soughing pines seemed to wait with age-old patience, to threaten with soft sights: "Be careful! Be careful! We had you once. We can take you back again.

I'VE SAVED THE BEST FOR LAST: There is ONE technique that can work to both find the risk, and close the deal. BUT it's a delicate one that requires mastery through preparation and practice. The strategy is called: What's the risk? What's the reward? When a prospect hesitates, you simply ask him or her to list the risks of purchase. Actually write them down. Prompt others. If the prospect says "I'm not sure," you ask, "Could it be ..." After you feel the list is complete, ask the prospect to list the rewards. Write them down, and embellish as much as possible without puking on the prospect. Then eliminate the risks one by one with lead in phrases like: Suppose we could ... did you know that ... I think we can ... Then you simply ask, "can you see any other reasons not to proceed?" One at a time, brick by brick, remove the risks that the buyer perceives as fatal mistakes in his decision-making process. Then drive home the rewards, both emotionally and logically.

God is God of history and of nations. Also of nature. Originally Yahweh was probably a volcanic deity. But he periodically enters history, the best example being when he intervened to bring the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt and to the Promised Land. They were shepherds and accustomed to freedom; it was terrible for them to be making bricks. And the Pharaoh had them gathering the straw as well and still being required to meet their quota of bricks per day. It is an archetypal timeless situation. God bringing men out of slavery and into freedom. Pharaoh represents all tyrants at all times." Her voice was calm and reasonable; Asher felt impressed.

Every train station has magic in it, not that Ala can feel it. Some of her kind swear they can smell it, and maybe they can; all zmory have good noses, but hers is average at best. It’s because of how they were built—the train stations, that is, not the noses. They were hoisted above Chicago’s brick buildings in the mid-1910s, with the city refusing to close down cross streets for their construction, so the builders had to get creative. It took them over a decade to complete just the Red Line. There’s always sacrifice in building something that’s never been built before, and sacrifice creates a debt, and debts create a space for magic to rush in. So if the Thorndale Red Line stop hums with it, well—that makes sense to her.

One day a friend came by the job site and asked them separately what they were doing. The first said, “Aw, we’re just laying brick. We’ve been doing this for thirty years. It’s so boring. One brick on top of the other.” Then the friend asked the second bricklayer. He just lit up. “Why, we’re building a magnificent skyscraper,” he said. “This structure is going to stand tall for generations to come. I’m just so excited that I could be a part of it.” Each bricklayer’s happiness or lack of it was based on their perspective. You can be laying a brick or you can be building a beautiful skyscraper. The choice is up to you. You can go to work each day and just punch in on the clock and dread being there and do as little as possible. Or you can show up with enthusiasm and give it your best, knowing that you’re making the world a better place.

Mayakovsky" 1 My heart’s aflutter! I am standing in the bath tub crying. Mother, mother who am I? If he will just come back once and kiss me on the face his coarse hair brush my temple, it’s throbbing! then I can put on my clothes I guess, and walk the streets. 2 I love you. I love you, but I’m turning to my verses and my heart is closing like a fist. Words! be sick as I am sick, swoon, roll back your eyes, a pool, and I’ll stare down at my wounded beauty which at best is only a talent for poetry. Cannot please, cannot charm or win what a poet! and the clear water is thick with bloody blows on its head. I embrace a cloud, but when I soared it rained. 3 That’s funny! there’s blood on my chest oh yes, I’ve been carrying bricks what a funny place to rupture! and now it is raining on the ailanthus as I step out onto the window ledge the tracks below me are smoky and glistening with a passion for running I leap into the leaves, green like the sea 4 Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern. The country is grey and brown and white in trees, snows and skies of laughter always diminishing, less funny not just darker, not just grey. It may be the coldest day of the year, what does he think of that? I mean, what do I? And if I do, perhaps I am myself again.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. It says that the effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick. The Guide also tells you on which planets the best Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters are mixed, how much you can expect to pay for one and what voluntary organizations exist to help you rehabilitate afterwards.

I’m not interested in you. I will never be interested in you. In fact, I’m fucking allergic,” he says, his jaw clenched. “To you. I’m allergic to your big silver eyes and your pouty pink lips. To your blushing cheeks and your breathy voice. I’m allergic to the way you can’t stop watching me. I told you I’m not interested in Disney movies, didn’t I? I meant it. So I suggest you find someone else to play damsel in distress with. Someone else to solve your teenage problems. Someone your age, someone who’s probably still going through a fucking growth spurt or someone who spends his weekends playing video games and jerking off. From now on, if I catch you looking at me across the hallway or if I find you within ten feet of my office or me without reason, my sister’s best friend or not, I’ll personally make sure you never see the outside of that brick wall and those black metal gates for the rest of the year.” And then before he straightens up, he adds, “And I might be closer to your dad’s age than yours, but I do remember what people call you. And I also know what your name is, Bronwyn.

... You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed. You’re responsible for your rose. ----- I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that has not much improved my opinion of them. ---- I am who I am and I have the need to be. ---- It is far more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself correctly, then you are truly a man of wisdom. ----- Straight ahead you can not go very far. ----- Grown-ups love figures... When you tell them you've made a new friend they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you "What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies? " Instead they demand "How old is he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make? " Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him. If you say to the grown-ups: 'I've seen a lovely house made of pink brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the rood', they are unable to picture such a house. You must say: I saw a house that come a hundred thousand francs.' Then they cry out: 'How pretty!' ---- One runs the risk of crying a bit if one allows oneself to be tamed.

Best friends forever. They’d believed it would last, that vow, that someday they’d be old women, sitting in their rocking chairs on a creaking deck, talking about the times of their lives, and laughing. Now she knew better, of course. For more than a year she’d been telling herself it was okay, that she could go on without a best friend. Sometimes she even believed it. Then she would hear the music. Their music. “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” “Material Girl.” “Bohemian Rhapsody.” “Purple Rain.” Yesterday, while she’d been shopping, a bad Muzak version of “You’ve Got a Friend” had made her cry, right there next to the radishes.

be apart. Despite getting rejected by my top-choice school, I was starting to really believe in myself again based on all the positive feedback we continued to get on our videos. And besides, I knew I could always reapply to Emerson the following year and transfer. • • • College started out great, with the best part being my newly found freedom. I was finally on my own and able to make my own schedule. And not only was Amanda with me, I’d already made a new friend before the first day of classes from a Facebook page that was set up for incoming freshmen. I started chatting with a pretty girl named Chloe who mentioned that she was also going to do the film and video concentration. Fitchburg isn’t located in the greatest neighborhood, but the campus has lots of green lawns and old brick buildings that look like mansions. My dorm room was a forced triple—basically a double that the school added bunk beds to in order to squeeze one extra person in. I arrived first and got to call dibs on the bunk bed that had an empty space beneath it. I moved my desk under it and created a little home office for myself. I plastered the walls with Futurama posters and made up the bed with a new bright green comforter and matching pillows. My roommates were classic male college stereotypes—the football player and the stoner. Their idea of decorating was slapping a Bob Marley poster and a giant ad for Jack Daniels on the wall.

Here’s what the Encyclopedia Galactica has to say about alcohol. It says that alcohol is a colorless volatile liquid formed by the fermentation of sugars and also notes its intoxicating effect on certain carbon-based life forms. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. It says that the effect of drinking a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick. The Guide also tells you on which planets the best Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters are mixed, how much you can expect to pay for one and what voluntary organizations exist to help you rehabilitate afterward. The Guide even tells you how you can mix one yourself. Take the juice from one bottle of the Ol’ Janx Spirit, it says. Pour into it one measure of water from the seas of Santraginus V—Oh, that Santraginean seawater, it says. Oh, those Santraginean fish! Allow three cubes of Arcturan Mega-gin to melt into the mixture (it must be properly iced or the benzine is lost). Allow four liters of Fallian marsh gas to bubble through it, in memory of all those happy bikers who have died of pleasure in the Marshes of Pallia. Over the back of a silver spoon float a measure of Qualactin Hypermint extract, redolent of all the heady odors of the dark Qualactin Zones, subtle, sweet and mystic. Drop in the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger. Watch it dissolve, spreading the fires of the Algolian Suns deep into the heart of the drink. Sprinkle Zamphuor. Add an olive. Drink…but…very carefully… The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy sells rather better than the Encyclopedia Galactica.

There once was a town. It was a quaint little town, in a quiet valley, where life moved at the pace of snails and the only road in was the only way out, too. There was a candy store that sold the sweetest honey taffy you ever tasted, and a garden store that grew exotic, beautiful blooms year-round. The local café was named after a possum that tormented its owner for years, and the chef there made the best honey French toast in the Northeast. There was a bar where the bartender always knew your name, and always served your burgers slightly burnt, though the local hot sauce always disguised the taste. If you wanted to stay the weekend, you could check-in at the new bed-and-breakfast in town--- just as soon as its renovations were finished, and just a pleasant hike up Honeybee Trail was a waterfall there, rumor had it, if you made a wish underneath it, the wish would come true. There was a drugstore, a grocer, a jewelry store that was open only when Mercury was in of retrograde--- And, oh, there was a bookstore. It was tucked into an unassuming corner of an old brick building fitted with a labyrinthine maze of shelves stocked with hundreds of books. In the back corner was a reading space with a fireplace, and chairs so cozy you could sink into them for hours while you read. The rafters were filled with glass chimes that, when the sunlight came in through the top windows, would send dapples of colors flooding across the stacks of books, painting them in rainbows. A family of starlings roosted in the eaves, and sang different songs every morning, in time with the tolls of the clock tower. The town was quiet in that cozy, sleepy way that if you closed your eyes, you could almost hear the valley breathe as wind crept through it, between the buildings, and was sighed out again.

We didn’t speak again for seven years after that phone call. There comes a point where you realize you’re just banging your head against a brick wall: no matter how many times you do it, you’re never going to break through, you’re just going to end up with a constant headache. I still made sure she was looked after financially. When she said she wanted to move to Worthing, I bought her a new house. I paid for everything; made sure she had the best care when she needed a hip operation. She auctioned every gift I’d ever given her – everything from jewellery to platinum discs I’d had specially inscribed with her name – but she didn’t need money. She told the papers she was downsizing, but it was just another way of telling me to fuck off – like hiring an Elton John tribute act for her ninetieth birthday party. I ended up buying back some of the jewellery myself, stuff that had sentimental value to me, even if it no longer had for Mum.

... You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed. You’re responsible for your rose. ----- I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that has not much improved my opinion of them. ---- I am who I am and I have the need to be. ---- It is far more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself correctly, then you are truly a man of wisdom. ----- Straight ahead you can not go very far. ----- Grown-ups love figures... When you tell them you've made a new friend they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you "What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies? " Instead they demand "How old is he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make? " Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him. If you say to the grown-ups: 'I've seen a lovely house made of pink brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the rood', they are unable to picture such a house. You must say: I saw a house that come a hundred thousand francs.' Then they cry out: 'How pretty!' ---- One runs the risk of crying a bit if one allows oneself to be tamed.

Oskar Schell: My father died at 9-11. After he died I wouldn't go into his room for a year because it was too hard and it made me want to cry. But one day, I put on heavy boots and went in his room anyway. I miss doing taekwondo with him because it always made me laugh. When I went into his closet, where his clothes and stuff were, I reached up to get his old camera. It spun around and dropped about a hundred stairs, and I broke a blue vase! Inside was a key in an envelope with black written on it and I knew that dad left something somewhere for me that the key opened and I had to find. So I take it to Walt, the locksmith. I give it to Stan, the doorman, who tells me keys can open anything. He gave me the phone book for all the five boroughs. I count there are 472 people with the last name black. There are 216 addresses. Some of the blacks live together, obviously. I calculated that if I go to 2 every Saturday plus holidays, minus my hamlet school plays, my minerals, coins, and comic convention, it's going to take me 3 years to go through all of them. But that's what I'm going to do! Go to every single person named black and find out what the key fits and see what dad needed me to find. I made the very best possible plan but using the last four digits of each phone number, I divide the people by zones. I had to tell my mother another lie, because she wouldn't understand how I need to go out and find what the key fits and help me make sense of things that don't even make sense like him being killed in the building by people that didn't even know him at all! And I see some people who don't speak English, who are hiding, one black said that she spoke to God. If she spoke to god how come she didn't tell him not to kill her son or not to let people fly planes into buildings and maybe she spoke to a different god than them! And I met a man who was a woman who a man who was a woman all at the same time and he didn't want to get hurt because he/she was scared that she/he was so different. And I still wonder if she/he ever beat up himself, but what does it matter? Thomas Schell: What would this place be if everyone had the same haircut? Oskar Schell: And I see Mr. Black who hasn't heard a sound in 24 years which I can understand because I miss dad's voice that much. Like when he would say, "are you up yet?" or... Thomas Schell: Let's go do something. Oskar Schell: And I see the twin brothers who paint together and there's a shed that has to be clue, but it's just a shed! Another black drew the same drawing of the same person over and over and over again! Forest black, the doorman, was a school teacher in Russia but now says his brain is dying! Seamus black who has a coin collection, but doesn't have enough money to eat everyday! You see olive black was a gate guard but didn't have the key to it which makes him feel like he's looking at a brick wall. And I feel like I'm looking at a brick wall because I tried the key in 148 different places, but the key didn't fit. And open anything it hasn't that dad needed me to find so I know that without him everything is going to be alright. Thomas Schell: Let's leave it there then. Oskar Schell: And I still feel scared every time I go into a strange place. I'm so scared I have to hold myself around my waist or I think I'll just break all apart! But I never forget what I heard him tell mom about the sixth borough. That if things were easy to find... Thomas Schell: ...they wouldn't be worth finding. Oskar Schell: And I'm so scared every time I leave home. Every time I hear a door open. And I don't know a single thing that I didn't know when I started! It's these times I miss my dad more than ever even if this whole thing is to stop missing him at all! It hurts too much. Sometimes I'm afraid I'll do something very bad.

Joe had always pretended indifference to flowers. He preferred fruit trees, herbs and vegetables, things to be picked and harvested, stored, dried, pickled, bottled, pulped, made into wine. But there were always flowers in his garden all thee same. Planted as if on an afterthought: dahlias, poppies, lavender, hollyhocks. Roses twined among the tomatoes. Sweet peas among the bean poles. Part of it was camouflage, of course. Part of it a lure for bees. But the truth was that Joe liked flowers, and was reluctant even to pull weeds. Jay would not have seen the rose garden if he had not known where to look. The wall against which the roses had once been trained had been partly knocked down, leaving an irregular section of brick about fifteen feet long. Greenery had shot up it, almost reaching the top, creating a dense thicket in which he hardly recognized the roses themselves. With the shears he clipped a few briars free and revealed a single large red rose almost touching the ground. "Old rose," remarked Joe, peering closer. "Best kind for cookin'. You should try makin' some rose petal jam. Champion." Jay wielded the shears again, pulling the tendrils away from the bush. He could see more rosebuds now, tight and green away from the sun. The scent from the open flower was light and earthy.

When Dad pulled up in front of the house, the three of us sat still for a moment and stared at the gloomy pile of bricks my great-aunt called home. Up close, it looked even worse than it had from a distance. Ivy clung to the walls, spreading over windows and doors. A wisteria vine heavy with bunches of purple blossoms twisted around the porch columns. Paint peeled, loose shutters banged in the wind, slates from the roof littered the overgrown lawn. Charles Addams would have loved it. So would Edgar Allan Poe. But not me. No, sir, definitely not me. Just looking at the place made my skin prickle. Dad was the first to speak. “This is your ancestral home, Drew,” he said, once more doing his best to sound excited. “It was built by your great-great-grandfather way back in 1865, right after the Civil War. Tylers have lived here ever since.” While Dad babbled about family history and finding your roots and things like that, I let my thoughts drift to Camp Tecumseh again. Maybe Martin wasn’t so bad after all, maybe he and I could have come to terms this summer, maybe we-- My fantasies were interrupted by Great-aunt Blythe. Flinging the front door open, she came bounding down the steps. The wind ballooned her T-shirt and swirled her gray hair. If she spread her arms, she might fly up into the sky like Mary Poppins.

I got interested in reading very early, because a story was read to me, by Hans Christian Andersen, which was The Little Mermaid, and I don't know if you remember The Little Mermaid, but it's dreadfully sad. The little mermaid falls in love with this prince, but she cannot marry him, because she is a mermaid. And it's so sad I can't tell you the details because I might weep. But anyway, as soon as I had finished this story I got outside and walked around and around the house where we lived, at the brick house, and I made up a story with a happy ending, because I thought that was due to the little mermaid, and it sort of slipped my mind that it was only made up to be a different story for me, it wasn't going to go all around the world, but I felt I had done my best, and from now on the little mermaid would marry the prince and live happily ever after, which was certainly her dessert, because she had done awful things to win the prince's power, his ease. She had had to change her limbs. She had had to get limbs that ordinary people have and walk, but every step she took, agonizing pain! This is what she was willing to go through, to get the prince. So I thought she deserved more than death on the water. And I didn't worry about the fact that maybe the rest of the world wouldn't know the new story, because I felt it had been published once I thought about it.

In Amsterdam, I took a room in a small hotel located in the Jordann District and after lunch in a café went for a walk in the western parts of the city. In Flaubert’s Alexandria, the exotic had collected around camels, Arabs peacefully fishing and guttural cries. Modern Amsterdam provided different but analogous examples: buildings with elongated pale-pink bricks stuck together with curiously white mortar, long rows of narrow apartment blocks from the early twentieth century, with large ground-floor windows, bicycles parked outside every house, street furniture displaying a certain demographic scruffiness, an absence of ostentatious buildings, straight streets interspersed with small parks…..In one street lines with uniform apartment buildings, I stopped by a red front door and felt an intense longing to spend the rest of my life there. Above me, on the second floor, I could see an apartment with three large windows and no curtains. The walls were painted white and decorated with a single large painting covered with small blue and red dots. There was an oaken desk against a wall, a large bookshelf and an armchair. I wanted the life that this space implied. I wanted a bicycle; I wanted to put my key in that red front door every evening. Why be seduced by something as small as a front door in another country? Why fall in love with a place because it has trams and its people seldom have curtains in their homes? However absurd the intense reactions provoked by such small (and mute) foreign elements my seem, the pattern is at least familiar from our personal lives. My love for the apartment building was based on what I perceived to be its modesty. The building was comfortable but not grand. It suggested a society attracted to the financial mean. There was an honesty in its design. Whereas front doorways in London are prone to ape the look of classical temples, in Amsterdam they accept their status, avoiding pillars and plaster in favor of neat, undecorated brick. The building was modern in the best sense, speaking of order, cleanliness, and light. In the more fugitive, trivial associations of the word exotic, the charm of a foreign place arises from the simple idea of novelty and change-from finding camels where at home there are horses, for example, or unadorned apartment buildings where at home there are pillared ones. But there may be a more profound pleasure as well: we may value foreign elements not only because they are new but because they seem to accord more faithfully with our identity and commitments than anything our homeland can provide. And so it was with my enthusiasms in Amsterdam, which were connected to my dissatisfactions with my own country, including its lack of modernity and aesthetic simplicity, its resistance to urban life and its net-curtained mentality. What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.

University Hospital, Boston The trees on the hospital lawn are lush and thriving. They too are getting the best of care, like you, and the anonymous many, in the clean rooms high above this city, where day and night the doctors keep arriving, where intricate machines chart with cool devotion the murmur of the blood, the slow patching-up of bone, the despair of the mind. When I come to visit and we walk out into the light of a summer day, we sit under the trees- buckeyes, as sycamore and one black walnut brooding high over a hedge of lilacs as old as the red-brick building behind them, the original hospital built before the Civil War. We sit on the law together, holding hands while you tell me: you are better. How many young men, I wonder, came here, wheeled on cots off the slow trains from th red and hideous battlefields to lie all summer in the small and stuffy chambers while doctors did what they could, longing for tools still unimagined, medicines still unfound, wisdoms still unguessed at, and how many died staring at the leaves of the trees, blind to the terrible effort around them to keep them alive? I look into your eyes which are sometimes green and sometimes gray, and sometimes full of humor, but often not, and tell myself, you are better, because my life without you would be a place of parched and broken trees. Later, walking the corridors down to the street, I turn and step inside an emty room. Yesterday someone was here with a gasping face. Now the bed is made all new, the machines have been rolled away. The silence continues, deep and neutral, as I stand there, loving you.

He’s a murdering chud,” Zil was yelling. “What do you want to do? Lynch him?” Astrid demanded. That stopped the flow for a second as kids tried to figure out what “lynch” meant. But Zil quickly recovered. “I saw him do it. He used his powers to kill Harry.” “I was trying to stop you from smashing my head in!” Hunter shouted. “You’re a lying mutant freak!” “They think they can do anything they want,” another voice shouted. Astrid said, as calmly as she could while still pitching her voice to be heard, “We are not going down that path, people, dividing up between freaks and normals.” “They already did it!” Zil cried. “It’s the freaks acting all special and like their farts don’t stink.” That earned a laugh. “And now they’re starting to kill us,” Zil cried. Angry cheers. Edilio squared his shoulders and stepped into the crowd. He went first to Hank, the kid with the shotgun. He tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Give me that thing.” “No way,” Hank said. But he didn’t seem too certain. “You want to have that thing fire by accident and blow someone’s face off?” Edilio held his hand out. “Give it to me, man.” Zil rounded on Edilio. “You going to make Hunter give up his weapon? Huh? He’s got powers, man, and that’s okay, but the normals can’t have any weapon? How are we supposed to defend ourselves from the freaks?” “Man, give it a rest, huh?” Edilio said. He was doing his best to sound more weary than angry or scared. Things were already bad enough. “Zil, you want to be responsible if that gauge goes off and kills Astrid? You want to maybe give that some thought?” Zil blinked. But he said, “Dude, I’m not scared of Sam.” “Sam won’t be your problem, I will be,” Edilio snapped, losing patience. “Anything happens to her, I’ll take you down before Sam ever gets the chance.” Zil snorted derisively. “Ah, good little boy, Edilio, kissing up to the chuds. I got news for you, dilly dilly, you’re a lowly normal, just like me and the rest of us." “I’m going to let that go,” Edilio said evenly, striving to regain his cool, trying to sound calm and in control, even though he could hardly take his eyes off the twin barrels of the shotgun. “But now I’m taking that shotgun.” “No way!” Hank cried, and the next thing was an explosion so loud, Edilio thought a bomb had gone off. The muzzle flash blinded him, like camera flash going off in his face. Someone yelled in pain. Edilio staggered back, squeezed his eyes shut, trying to adjust. When he opened them again the shotgun was on the ground and the boy who’d accidentally fired it was holding his bruised hand, obviously shocked. Zil bent to grab the gun. Edilio took two steps forward and kicked Zil in the face. As Zil fell back Edilio made a grab for the shotgun. He never saw the blow that turned his knees to water and filled his head with stars. He fell like a sack of bricks, but even as he fell he lurched forward to cover the shotgun. Astrid screamed and launched herself down the stairs to protect Edilio. Antoine, the one who had hit Edilio, was raising his bat to hit Edilio again, but on the back swing he caught Astrid in the face. Antoine cursed, suddenly fearful. Zil yelled, “No, no, no!” There was a sudden rush of running feet. Down the walkway, into the street, echoing down the block.

I also gained a deeper appreciation of what it must have been like for my mother to be in a foreign country unable to speak the language (in her case, unable to read or write any language). As I walked around by myself, however, it was obvious that based on my body language people perceived me as American but at the same time different enough from other Americans that they felt free to come up and ask me all kinds of personal questions about where I came from, what kind of work I did, whether I was married, how many people there were in my family. Back in the 1930s when I asked personal questions like these of a Chinese student at Bryn Mawr, she reprimanded me for being too personal. I’m not sure whether that was because she came from a higher social class or because the revolution has opened things up. I answered their questions as best as I could in my limited Chinese. The ingenuity and energy of the Chinese reminded me of my father, for example, the way that they used bicycles, often transformed into tricycles, for transporting all kinds of things: little children (sometimes in a sidecar), bricks and concrete, beds and furniture. I was amazed at the number of entrepreneurs lining the sidewalks with little sewing machines ready to alter or make a garment, barbers with stools and scissors, knife sharpeners, shoe repairmen, vendors selling food and other kinds of merchandise from carts. Everywhere I went I saw women knitting, as they waited for a bus or walked along the street, as if they couldn’t waste a minute. I had never seen such an industrious people. It was unlike anything that I had witnessed in England, France, the West Indies, Africa, or the United States.

We've been here three days already, and I've yet to cook a single meal. The night we arrived, my dad ordered Chinese takeout from the old Cantonese restaurant around the corner, where they still serve the best egg foo yung, light and fluffy and swimming in rich, brown gravy. Then there had been Mineo's pizza and corned beef sandwiches from the kosher deli on Murray, all my childhood favorites. But last night I'd fallen asleep reading Arthur Schwartz's Naples at Table and had dreamed of pizza rustica, so when I awoke early on Saturday morning with a powerful craving for Italian peasant food, I decided to go shopping. Besides, I don't ever really feel at home anywhere until I've cooked a meal. The Strip is down by the Allegheny River, a five- or six-block stretch filled with produce markets, old-fashioned butcher shops, fishmongers, cheese shops, flower stalls, and a shop that sells coffee that's been roasted on the premises. It used to be, and perhaps still is, where chefs pick up their produce and order cheeses, meats, and fish. The side streets and alleys are littered with moldering vegetables, fruits, and discarded lettuce leaves, and the smell in places is vaguely unpleasant. There are lots of beautiful, old warehouse buildings, brick with lovely arched windows, some of which are now, to my surprise, being converted into trendy loft apartments. If you're a restaurateur you get here early, four or five in the morning. Around seven or eight o'clock, home cooks, tourists, and various passers-through begin to clog the Strip, aggressively vying for the precious few available parking spaces, not to mention tables at Pamela's, a retro diner that serves the best hotcakes in Pittsburgh. On weekends, street vendors crowd the sidewalks, selling beaded necklaces, used CDs, bandanas in exotic colors, cheap, plastic running shoes, and Steelers paraphernalia by the ton. It's a loud, jostling, carnivalesque experience and one of the best things about Pittsburgh. There's even a bakery called Bruno's that sells only biscotti- at least fifteen different varieties daily. Bruno used to be an accountant until he retired from Mellon Bank at the age of sixty-five to bake biscotti full-time. There's a little hand-scrawled sign in the front of window that says, GET IN HERE! You can't pass it without smiling. It's a little after eight when Chloe and I finish up at the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company where, in addition to the prosciutto, soppressata, both hot and sweet sausages, fresh ricotta, mozzarella, and imported Parmigiano Reggiano, all essential ingredients for pizza rustica, I've also picked up a couple of cans of San Marzano tomatoes, which I happily note are thirty-nine cents cheaper here than in New York.

Our worst can become our best if mistakes are gathered like twigs of a bird's nest, giving one true foundation. Each mistake is a brick of wisdom to build our lives upon.

● Pursuing online courses with pre-recorded videos? ● Not able to communicate with the instructor while in an online lecture? ● Online lectures seem boring and disengaging? Not anymore. Technology has been able to advance an already transformative concept. Online learning has made its way into almost every professional’s career life. However, there is a new concept which not many people are aware of - LIVE & interactive learning. As the name suggests, it’s just like traditional classroom learning but entirely online. Let’s see what it is, how it works, and how it can benefit your career. LIVE Learning: The Better, More Interactive Learning Method LIVE & interactive learning entails experienced tutors and instructors delivering lectures via LIVE online learning platforms that are built with features to aid in engaging educational learnings. Furthermore, Online Courses are delivered in a similar format that is found in a traditional classroom. With interactivity, teachers can not only deliver lectures, take LIVE questions, and respond, but also the students can interact with one another - just like they would in a brick and mortar classroom. Taking Online Courses Up a Notch Instead of sitting through a pre-recorded lecture, you can now attend the session LIVE. And the best part about this type of learning is that both tutors and students can interact with each other, so query resolution is instant, students can voice out their thoughts, collaboration becomes easy, and the face-to-face interaction definitely makes it more interactive. Reasons Why LIVE & Interactive Learning is Taking the Lead ● Comfortable Learning Pace Students pursuing LIVE & interactive online courses get the opportunity to learn at their own pace. They can discuss their questions in LIVE lectures and interact with the faculty as well. ● Focus on Tougher Modules In a regular classroom, the teacher always decides which modules require special focus. However, with LIVE & interactive learning, you can choose how much time you want to spend on a particular module. ● Extensive Study Materials Another added benefit of LIVE & interactive online courses is that you have access to study material 24*7 and from anywhere. This gives you control and ample time to go through the material more than once or as required. ● Opportunity for More Interaction Ranging from Online Data Analytics Courses to finance, marketing, and sales, online courses allow students to involve themselves in class discussions and chat with more ease. This is just not possible in regular face-to-face interactions where teachers can ask questions and embarrass you in front of the entire class if you are wrong or don’t know the answer. It’s Not a Roadblock, Rather an Accelerant to Your Career The best part - you don’t have to leave your current job to pursue a degree program. Passion to gain knowledge and upskill and a search engine that will take you the right online course is all you need. So whether you are scouting for online data analytics courses, machine learning courses, or digital marketing, LIVE & interactive learning can help you gain the education you deserve.

For some of my online or asynchronous classes, I can use live or in person tools such as streaming, or recorded video feedback emailed to the student to let your students know that you are more than just words in an email or on a website.

Learning comes best in chunking. The more complex the learning skill, the more time it will take. SHORT BURSTS of learning. FOCUSED learning are the strategies to use going forward.

WHEN YOU ARE FRUSTRATED, STOP. Should I say this again? When you are frustrated, stop. Walk away. Take a break. Try again.

You will decide if you will deliver your online curriculum in synchrony (in real time using a webinar format such as, Adobe Connect, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, & Google Classrooms, etc.) or asynchronous (learners work independently and submit their work to you on a specific day and time).

Coronavirus does not scare you. Working or teaching online does not scare you. It is what you tell yourself, what you assume or believe, about coronavirus and teaching online, that scares you.

ALL TOOLS OF LIFE............I FOUND IN GOOD BOOKS. PARADISE TOO, HAS A SMALL LIBRARY BY THE LAKE. I see many nowadays, on TV shows..a library behind. A book is not furniture but is antique for the scholar. The class of books you read- showcase your brain Not to Glorify books- but sure they have value All that craziness about books..scares some. Be an intelligent reader. Not a book worm or addict. A peasant that reads is a prince in waiting.”– Walter Mosley “There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.”– Walt Disney “No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.”– Mary Wortley Montagu Books are the best pets. Easy to manage too. .You can never pay and thank enough for a book. Books are good at multiple love affairs..they are the most reliable friends. 'The bricks of a book are small, they are called words '- Dr. Kamal Murdia "The Reader I believe, Robs an Author." - Dr. Kamal Murdia If 'his' words don't create a beautiful scandal, he is useless as an author - Dr. Kamal Murdia The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” – Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The temple might seem marvelous compared to living and sleeping in heaps of dozens—but believe me—walls squeeze the people who live inside them, sooner or later.” “They don’t bother me,” said Locke quickly. “It’s not so much the walls, though, Locke, it’s the people. This will be your home for many years to come, gods willing, and you and Sabetha and the Sanzas are going to be as close as family. You’ll strike sparks off one another. I can’t have you shoving your thumb up your ass and doing your best impression of a brick wall every time you get annoyed. Crooked Warden help us, we’ve got to be ready and willing to talk, or we’re all going to wake up with cut throats sooner or later.

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To truly be prepared for violence, it helps to study how it works. We need to understand how it happens and what factors can improve our ability to prepare for, pre-empt, detect, defuse, minimize, contain, resolve, and deal with the aftermath of it long before we face it. If we do have to defend ourselves physically, we don’t have to go all out in seek and destroy mode like I did in third grade. We can learn to do just what is needed to evade and escape or develop the ability to contain and control violence so it doesn’t boil over. At our best, we develop ourselves into the kind of person who is unlikely to attract altercations.

It occurs to me that Cyrus is having the best time of all. Jules and Gaby are worrying about things like runway, and I’m building the platform brick by brick, but Cyrus is just being Cyrus—feted by Rupert, making decisions about the color of the banner on our website, interviewing people who will then go on to beg us to hire them. I’m trying to enjoy the fact that Cyrus is having a grand time, that I’ve been able to give him something he might have been looking for without knowing it, but a part of me is also a tiny bit envious, wondering how I’ve managed to set up a situation where I’m doing all the work and he’s having all the fun. Never mind, I tell myself, I’m having fun too. I must have been a Spartan in my previous life, because nothing pleases me more than work.

Extensive background in public accounting. I can also stand on my head!" Too many E-numbers. "I perform my job with effortless efficiency, effectiveness, efficacy, and expertise." There are not too many of them about. "Personal: Married 20 years; own a home, along with a friendly mortgage company." The first rule of projects is: You don't talk about projects. "My intensity and focus are at inordinately high levels, and my ability to complete projects on time is unspeakable." Learning a language. "Exposure to German for two years, but many words are inappropriate for business." Congratulations! "Accomplishments: Completed 11 years of high school."  No really, how is your memory? "Excellent memory; strong math aptitude; excellent memory; effective management skills; and very good at math." I think bricks would work better personally, but hey go for it. "Personal Goal: To hand-build a classic cottage from the ground up using my father-in-law. To be fair the job on offer was to play Snow White in a Christmas production. "Thank you for your consideration. Hope to hear from you shorty!" . Very I would say. "Enclosed is a ruff draft of my resume." Delete. "I saw your ad on the information highway, and I came to a screeching halt." Then why attach it? "Please disregard the attached resume -- it is terribly out of date." Lone wolf. "It's best for employers that I not work with people.

REMEMBER THIS Insatiability—the desire to constantly want more and better of everything—must be understood and questioned. Social conformity reinforces problematic beliefs and habits. Positive conformity can change this paradigm. We have too much complacency around low-value tasks and wasteful work, which are extremely expensive in terms of human energy and talent time. Adding mortar (behavioral changes) to the bricks (logistical changes) makes the house of efficiency we are building more stable.

Here’s a research study that shows just how differently teens’ brains function: In a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) study, teenagers and adults were presented pictures of people who looked scared or anxious. The adults recognized the fear in the faces but placed the experiences in a larger context, so it didn’t affect them personally. The opposite was true of the teens: they did not report that the faces were fearful, but they became emotionally involved and reported more fear and anxiety themselves. In teens, the parts of the brain that process gut reactions and primitive emotions — the amygdala and insula — were active. But in adults, the frontal lobes were activated as well. In other words, the teenagers’ brains responded emotionally. They felt upset but their brains did not identify the source of those feelings. The adults’ brains added reason to that response. Remember this when your teen gets upset “for no reason.” He may not be able to say why he’s feeling that way, but his feelings are still valid. He doesn’t have the connections between his rational brain and his emotional brain that would allow him to explain it. Logic doesn’t help because the teen’s brain cannot follow abstract logic. They are doing the best they can with the brain connections they have. This is especially true if your teen is a boy. As we see later, girls have more connections between their emotional and executive centers. Astrocytes: Functional and structural support Astrocytes are another class of glial cells. They are star-shaped, hence their name, and provide structural and functional support for the neuron. Astrocytes form the matrix that keeps neurons in place. But they are more than inert bricks in a passive wall. Rather, they function more like the mother who ensures her children have brushed their teeth, are wearing their coats in winter, and are eating good meals. An astrocyte is pictured in Figure 3.3. Astrocytes sit between blood vessels and neurons and breakdown glucose from the capillaries into lactic acid, which the mitochondria of the neurons use for energy. As a wise mother, they do not break down all of the glycogen they receive from the blood, but create a reserve for times when the metabolic need of neurons are especially high.

Seth Capella: FUN game. Let's flip it around and play two lies and one truth @Tyler Corbin. Your mom was the best lay of my life. Your dad was the second. Your face is going through a brick wall the next time I see you. (hint: both of your parents suck in bed).

No, said a little voice in the back of her head, you can’t. She knew that voice quite well. She didn’t like it much, mostly because it told her the truth, a commodity whose supply had a tendency to exceed demand. For a genuine free spirit, the very best the truth can ever be is a starting point, a fixer-upper in need of a great deal of tender loving imagination. At its worst – like now, for example – it’s a brick wall across the highway, with barbed wire, searchlights and dogs. No, you can’t.

Meet one of the leading creative directors Roger Hooks, Jr. He is a renowned “S&P 500 Creative Executive”, who has successfully established his name in the creative industry. He possesses a boasted portfolio in package design of Pacific-Rim makers of entertainment PC peripherals and add-on cards with category best sellers up in down the aisles of Fry's Electronics, Micro Center, Ritz Camera, Best Buy, and Good Guys in their brick-and Mortar Hey-Day. Also, he is a Platinum Award winner in copywriting, a Gold Award winner in advertising campaigns, and a Gold Award winner in special events. So, if you are searching for a professional creative strategist, you must contact Roger Hooks, Jr. Feel free to reach out.

At night, before he went to sleep, he imagined numbers on bricks, and years later, he gained his wealth in real estate. His friends told him he was out of his mind to invest his savings in bricks. He told them all, 'I came here with nothing. The worst that can happen is that I leave here with nothing.

I should be surprised you’re calling me. But I’m not,” she says. “How was practice?” “Not great. Darlene isn’t a great captain, and Ms. Small knows it. You shouldn’t quit.” “I’m not. I’m just taking a break for a little while. But I didn’t call to talk about poms. Listen, I wanted you to know I broke up with Colin today.” “And you’re telling me because…” That’s a good question, one I normally wouldn’t have answered. “I wanted to talk with someone about it, and I know I have friends who I can call, but I kinda wanted to go to someone who wouldn’t gossip about it. My friends have big mouths.” Sierra is the one person I’m closest to, but I lied to her about Alex. And her boyfriend, Doug, is best friends with Colin. “How do you know I won’t blab?” Isabel asks. “I don’t. But you didn’t tell me stuff about Alex when I asked, so I figure you’re good at keeping secrets.” “I am. So shoot.” “I don’t know how to say this.” “I haven’t got all day, you know.” “I kissed Alex,” I blurt out. “Alex? ¡Benditaǃ Was that before or after the Colin breakup?” I wince. “I didn’t plan it.” Isabel laughs so hard and loud, I have to take the phone away from my ear. “You sure he didn’t plan it?” she asks once she can get words out. “It just happened. We were at his house and then we were interrupted when his mom came home and saw us--” “What? His ma saw you guys? In his house? ¡Benditaǃ” She goes off in Spanish, and I have no clue what the hell she’s saying. “I don’t speak Spanish, Isabel. Help me out here.” “Oh, sorry. Carmen is gonna shit a brick when she finds out.” I clear my throat. “I won’t tell her,” Isabel is quick to say. “But Alex’s mom is one tough woman. When Alex dated Carmen, he kept her far away from his mama. Don’t get me wrong, she loves her sons. But she’s overprotective, just like most Mexican mothers. Did she kick you out?” “No, but she pretty much called me a whore.” More laughing from the other end of the line. “It wasn’t funny.” “I’m sorry.” More laughing. “I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when she walked in on you two.” “Thanks for your compassion,” I say dryly. “I’m hanging up now.” “No! I’m sorry for laughing. It’s just that the more we talk, the more I see you as a totally different person than I thought you were. I guess I can understand why Alex likes you.

Hardie Boys- Exterior Millwork That Provides Value Over Time The outdoor areas on your property and the features on it, become the perfect backdrop for your home’s structure. They are also one of the first things that visitors to your property notice. The manner in which these features are designed and the finishing that’s used in them, go a long way in enhancing the overall appeal and value of your property. And so it follows that you ensure resilient materials are used in the work and hire expert technicians for the installation. When you start researching products and materials for outdoor installations, you will find that wood; iron, aluminum, plaster, brick and foam are commonly used in exterior construction. And this may lead you to believe that they are the best option for these applications. It’s also natural for you to be unsure about using new materials such as the specialized cellular PVC materials we use in our millwork. Some comparisons But the fact is that there has been a significant advancement in the manufacture of exterior-grade, manmade materials and cellular PVC is one of them. However, the higher upfront cost can sometimes become the other deterrent for property owners, to opt for this innovative material. Take a look at how the cellular PVC material that we at Hardie Boys, Inc. use stands up against other traditionally-used materials: 1. Weather impact Materials such as hardwood and metal are strong and durable, but need a significant amount of treatments before they can be used in exterior applications. For instance, untreated and unfinished wood features get affected by moisture and the sun’s rays and eventually crack and crumble. They can also develop rot or moss; and if these conditions are very severe, extensive repairs or complete replacement of the feature is the only option you are left with. Metal too gets affected by moisture and exposure to rain and frost; and rusts and corrodes over time. In comparison the unique PVC cellular material that we use in our millwork is moisture and heat-resistant and doesn’t corrode over time. 2. Termite damage Termites are extremely destructive creatures and they can bore through wooden features and cause extensive damage to them. In most cases, replacement is the only option you are left with, which represents a significant expense. Concrete surfaces get affected by the freeze and thaw cycles and crack over a period of time, and you end up spending considerable amounts on repair and replacements. On the other hand, cellular PVC doesn’t get impacted by termites or weather fluctuations at all. 3. Maintenance While choosing materials for exterior applications, most property owners fail to factor the maintenance costs into the overall cost of the installation. For instance, wood, plaster, foam, brick and concrete require annual mold prevention maintenance as well as sanding and polishing or painting. Metal surfaces have to be sanded, and painted regularly too. In comparison, our cellular PVC material features require only basic cleaning and they won’t warp, crack, fade, corrode, develop rot or mold. In short, this is an extremely low-maintenance option that is worth every penny you spend on initial costs. We at Hardie Boys, Inc. are the leaders in this space and provide excellent, customized, cellular PVC millwork solutions for residential and commercial settings. For any more information about our exterior millwork,

Trust gets built in layers, brick by brick.

and they followed it as it wended its way downward. ‘Where do you suppose the light is coming from?’ asked Eric. ‘That’s actually a really good question.’ ‘There’s not much of it, granted, but we can see, so …’ ‘You’re right. It must be coming from somewhere.’ ‘Yes, but maybe …’ Eric tailed off, drawing a deep breath. ‘Maybe what?’ ‘Maybe it’s like this because it’s waiting to be filled by the you-know-what,’ said Eric, tapping Max on the shoulder and then pointing to the darkness far above them. ‘You could be right. Just as long as it stays all the way up there.’ They walked on, descending on a slight incline for the best part of an hour. During their walk they discussed the possibility of the path not having an end, and just continuing down and down into the earth. The hungrier and thirstier they grew, the more terrifying this possibility seemed, so both were relieved when Eric spotted a change in the rock on their left. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Up there, there’s a gap in the wall.’ They stopped walking and Max peered up at it. ‘I reckon you’re right,’ said Max, as Eric squeezed past him. ‘Look,’ continued Eric. ‘There’s another gap further down, and this one’s lower.’ They stood below this second gap in the stone, which was approximately three metres above them. As Max attempted to get a foothold in the rock, Eric walked on around a corner. ‘Max!’ he whispered urgently. ‘Come here! You’ll definitely want to see this!’ Max stepped back down to the ground and hurried around the bend. Eric was staring through a brick-sized gap in the wall, his mouth hanging

She smiled up at him, her precise expression inscrutable in the shadows, and Jake found his gaze drawn to the inviting curve of her lips. His thoughts swiftly took a more intimate turn as his imagination led him down a path he knew was best left untrod. And it didn’t help his resolve when she didn’t look away. He reached up and fingered a loose curl at her temple and heard her breath quicken. He leaned closer, cupping the side of her face, all but able to taste her kiss and the softness of her lips. “Captain Winston, I—” She took a hasty step backward, her breath coming hard. “I’d best be getting inside. It’s late, after all.” The fullness of the moment and of what he’d been about to do hit him brick hard. “Mrs. Prescott—” Jake winced. “Please. Forgive me, ma’am. I—” “There’s nothing to forgive, Captain.” Her smile was brief and unconvincing. “Good night.” Far more hastily than he would’ve liked, she slipped in through the kitchen door and closed it behind her. Wishing he could recall the last moment and do it differently, he strode back to his cabin. It wasn’t until later that evening, flipping through his sketchbook, that he realized just how much of his thoughts this woman occupied. Just as she did the pages of his notebook. More than was wise, he knew, given his circumstances. And hers.

When they’d filled the peppers and they were laid out in nice, neat, bacon-wrapped lines, she slid them into the oven. Then they went into the sitting room. David sat down next to Leah on the settee. “Now, we can’t fall asleep, waiting for them to finish cooking,” he said. Famous. Last. Words. They chatted for a moment about how melted cheese was probably the best invention on the planet, but it descended into quiet as their lids dropped and she wondered why she couldn’t think of anything more insightful to say. It had felt like only seconds that she rested her eyes, but Leah and David jumped to a start, the fire alarm beeping in the kitchen. The both looked at each other, their eyes big with surprise. “Oh no!” he laughed. They ran into the kitchen, David throwing on one of Nan’s oven mitts and yanking the smoking, sizzling peppers out of the oven. Leah opened the windows and the back door, but it seemed to let more cold air in than smoke out. She fanned the air, while David took the peppers outside and set them on the brick walkway. As they both stood in the freezing kitchen, the smoke billowing around the ceiling, they broke into laughter. “Maybe we should’ve just had the marshmallows,” he said. Leah rolled under the duvet to view the time, the gray morning barely giving her enough light to focus. It was still early—six o’clock. She closed her eyes and lay back on the pillow, the feel of the linens so familiar and comfortable that, at first, she’d almost forgotten about her troubles. This was the bed she’d slept in when she needed the security of family, and a retreat to ease her mind.

It was a popular and trendy neighborhood, but there was something bland about the bars and restaurants we visited. San Diego was nice - nice weather, nice beaches, and nice people - but it wasn't great. The diversity and texture I'd come to appreciate on the East Coast seemed to have been smoothed away by the surf and sand in sunny SoCal. I missed the tiny Ecuadorian restaurant a block from our Baltimor row home that served the best fried plantains, and our tiny local pub where we knew all the bartenders and they knew what we liked to drink. I missed houses built from bricks, and when summer changed into fall, most surprisingly, rain.

She said, “‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked…’” She parted the curtains, looked out at the brick wall opposite and the street below. “Never really understood the poem, but I like the way the words taste.