Burns Famous Quotes

And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles. So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.

If I say your voice is an amber waterfall in which I yearn to burn each day, if you eat my mouth like a mystical rose with powers of healing and damnation, If I confess that your body is the only civilization I long to experience… would it mean that we are close to knowing something about love?

Everywhere we shine death and life burn into something new…

The same hot lightning that burns your blood with passion–– cools your fears with peace.

Ever since my famous battle with Python, I've had a phobia of scaly reptilian creatures. (Especially if you include my stepmother, Hera. BOOM!)

I want you to remember something. Zo. It's important, and it'll make more sense when you have yourself together again. I'm gonna leave here and get another chance at life.You're gonna be a big, famous vamp High Priestess. That means you're gonna live like a gazillion years. I'll find you again. Even if it takes a hundred of those years. I promise you, Zoey Redbird, we'll be together again." Heath pulled her into his arms and kissed her trying through touch to show her that his love was never-ending. When he finally forced himself to let her go, he thought he saw understanding in her haunted, shocked gaze. "I'll love you forever, Zo." Then Heath turned and walked away from his true love. The air before him opened, curtainlike, and he stepped from one realm to another and disappeared completely.

I felt her story in every line: her struggle as the neglected child of a famous movie star; her mixed feelings about discovering she was a daughter of Aphrodite; most hurtful of all, her realization that the supposed love of her life, Jason Grace, was not someone she wanted to be with romantically.

Karl Marx famously called religion 'the opiate of the masses'. Buddhism, particularly as it is popularly practiced, promises improvement through karma. Islam and Christianity promise eternal life to the faithful. And that is a powerful opiate, certainly, the hope of a better life to come. But there's a Sufi story that challenges the notion that people believe only because they need an opiate. Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God.

It was a famous old hotel called the Overlook. It burned down ten years ago. The caretaker burned it down. He was crazy. Everybody in town said so. But never mind: he's dead.

The library is not a shrine for the worship of books. It is not a temple where literary incense must be burned or where one's devotion to the bound book is expressed in ritual. A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life. — Cited in ALA Bulletin, Oct. 1954, p.475

In the naivete of their youth, they believed Fate to be a kind mistress. None of them were prepared for the beast that was about to pick them up by the throats and shake them until their teeth rattled.

A person’s shadow stood for his legacy, his impact on the world. Some people cast hardly any shadow at all. Some cast long, deep shadows that endured for centuries. I thought about what the ghost Setne had said—how he and I had each grown up in the shadow of a famous father. I realized now that he hadn’t just meant it as a figure of speech. My dad cast a powerful shadow that still affected me and the whole world. If a person cast no shadow at all, he couldn’t be alive. His existence became meaningless. Execrating Apophis by destroying his shadow would cut his connection to the mortal world completely. He’d never be able to rise again. I finally understood why he’d been so anxious to burn Setne’s scrolls, and why he was afraid of this spell.

Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.

Lots of famous chefs today don’t look whacked, because they don’t work. They have a healthy glow and a clear complexion. There is blood in their cheeks. They haven’t got burns on their wrists and cuts on their hands.

You burn to have your photograph in a tennis magazine.” “I’m afraid so.” “Why again exactly, now?” “I guess to be felt about as I feel about those players with their pictures in magazines.” “Why?” “Why? I guess to give my life some sort of meaning, Lyle.” “And how would this do this again?” “Lyle, I don’t know. I do not know. It just does. Would. Why else would I burn like this, clip secret pictures, not take risks, not sleep or pee?” “You feel these men with their photographs in magazines care deeply about having their photographs in magazines. Derive immense meaning.” “I do. They must. I would. Else why would I burn like this to feel as they feel?” “The meaning they feel, you mean. From the fame.” “Lyle, don’t they?” “LaMont, perhaps they did at first. The first photograph, the first magazine, the gratified surge, the seeing themselves as others see them, the hagiography of image, perhaps. Perhaps the first time: enjoyment. After that, do you trust me, trust me: they do not feel what you burn for. After the first surge, they care only that their photographs seem awkward or unflattering, or untrue, or that their privacy, this thing you burn to escape, what they call their privacy is being violated. Something changes. After the first photograph has been in a magazine, the famous men do not enjoy their photographs in magazines so much as they fear that their photographs will cease to appear in magazines. They are trapped, just as you are.” “Is this supposed to be good news? This is awful news.” “LaMont, are you willing to listen to a Remark about what is true?” “Okey-dokey.” “The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.” “Maybe I ought to be getting back.” “LaMont, the world is very old. You have been snared by something untrue. You are deluded. But this is good news. You have been snared by the delusion that envy has a reciprocal. You assume that there is a flip-side to your painful envy of Michael Chang: namely Michael Chang’s enjoyable feeling of being-envied-by-LaMont-Chu. No such animal.” “Animal?” “You burn with hunger for food that does not exist.” “This is good news?” “It is the truth. To be envied, admired, is not a feeling. Nor is fame a feeling. There are feelings associated with fame, but few of them are any more enjoyable than the feelings associated with envy of fame.” “The burning doesn’t go away?” “What fire dies when you feed it? It is not fame itself they wish to deny you here. Trust them. There is much fear in fame. Terrible and heavy fear to be pulled and held, carried. Perhaps they want only to keep it off you until you weigh enough to pull toward yourself.” “Would I sound ungrateful if I said this doesn’t make me feel very much better at all?” “LaMont, the truth is that the world is incredibly, incredibly, unbelievably old. You suffer with the stunted desire caused by one of its oldest lies. Do not believe the photographs. Fame is not the exit from any cage.” “So I’m stuck in the cage from either side. Fame or tortured envy of fame. There’s no way out.” “You might consider how escape from a cage must surely require, foremost, awareness of the fact of the cage.

Cam says, “Look at me, lass. Look at this body.” He throws out his arms, juts out his chin, and puffs out his chest. “You think I got this perfect physique by starvin’ myself? You think I became the world’s most famous, beloved athlete by tryin’ to be skinny?” “I’m sorry, could you repeat the question? Your ego is blocking my ears.” “The human body is a complex machine. A temple, as they say. You have to treat it like one!” “Yeah, well, my temple is more like an abandoned ruin the jungle has taken over and a herd of billy goats is living in.

Across from the famous jewelry store on Fifth Avenue at Fifty-Seventh Street, we sat in the back of a graffiti-covered white box truck watching the world go by on the surveillance vehicle’s hidden high-def camera. So far there had been no sign of the thieves. Or even Audrey Hepburn.

The day they brought him forth to die they feared he might incite the crowd (the man was famous for his eloquence). And so his captors placed upon his face an iron mask in which he could not speak. That is how they burned him. That is how he died, without a word, in front of everyone.

In Sarajevo in 1992, while being shown around the starved, bombarded city by the incomparable John Burns, I experienced four near misses in all, three of them in the course of one day. I certainly thought that the Bosnian cause was worth fighting for and worth defending, but I could not take myself seriously enough to imagine that my own demise would have forwarded the cause. (I also discovered that a famous jaunty Churchillism had its limits: the old war-lover wrote in one of his more youthful reminiscences that there is nothing so exhilarating as being shot at without result. In my case, the experience of a whirring, whizzing horror just missing my ear was indeed briefly exciting, but on reflection made me want above all to get to the airport. Catching the plane out with a whole skin is the best part by far.) Or suppose I had been hit by that mortar that burst with an awful shriek so near to me, and turned into a Catherine wheel of body-parts and (even worse) body-ingredients? Once again, I was moved above all not by the thought that my death would 'count,' but that it would not count in the least.

You got a little bit famous. Even a little bit of fame can mess with your head. It’s a cognitive disease, you know, fame? It used to only be for royalty and we know what they’re like. I’m not much of a Freudian, but something about fame makes the id and the superego devour the ego like anacondas in a cage, right before they cannibalize each other. Fame warps your identity, metastasizes your anxieties, and hollows you out like a jack-o’-lantern. It’s sparkly pixie dust that burns whatever it touches like acid.

Any bridge you refuse to burn gives Satan an invitation and re-entry point into your life.

It was a famous old hotel called the Overlook. It burned down ten years ago. The caretaker burned it down. He was crazy.

There are a holyfuckton of women crowing about your unapologetic fucking. They even named your famous positions." Oh Jesus, she knew about that. "Don't-" "The Limp Away From Jay Lay

In 1908, in a wild and remote area of the North Caucasus, Leo Tolstoy, the greatest writer of the age, was the guest of a tribal chief “living far away from civilized life in the mountains.” Gathering his family and neighbors, the chief asked Tolstoy to tell stories about the famous men of history. Tolstoy told how he entertained the eager crowd for hours with tales of Alexander, Caesar, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon. When he was winding to a close, the chief stood and said, “But you have not told us a syllable about the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world. We want to know something about him. He was a hero. He spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were strong as the rock….His name was Lincoln and the country in which he lived is called America, which is so far away that if a youth should journey to reach it he would be an old man when he arrived. Tell us of that man.” “I looked at them,” Tolstoy recalled, “and saw their faces all aglow, while their eyes were burning. I saw that those rude barbarians were really interested in a man whose name and deeds had already become a legend.” He told them everything he knew about Lincoln’s “home life and youth…his habits, his influence upon the people and his physical strength.” When he finished, they were so grateful for the story that they presented him with “a wonderful Arabian horse.” The next morning, as Tolstoy prepared to leave, they asked if he could possibly acquire for them a picture of Lincoln. Thinking that he might find one at a friend’s house in the neighboring town, Tolstoy asked one of the riders to accompany him. “I was successful in getting a large photograph from my friend,” recalled Tolstoy. As he handed it to the rider, he noted that the man’s hand trembled as he took it. “He gazed for several minutes silently, like one in a reverent prayer, his eyes filled with tears.” Tolstoy went on to observe, “This little incident proves how largely the name of Lincoln is worshipped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now, why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skilful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character. “Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country—bigger than all the Presidents together. “We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.

Strauss’s, for instance, which begins in the heavens. The artist doesn’t ascend to glory, he appears in it, he already has it and the world is prepared to recognize him. Meteoric, like a comet—those are the phrases we apply, and it’s true, it is a kind of burning. It makes them highly visible, and at the same time it consumes them, and it’s only afterwards, when the brilliance is gone, when their bones are lying alongside those of lesser men, that one can really judge. I mean, there are famous works, renowned in antiquity, and today absolutely forgotten: books, buildings, works of art.

I don’t know what ‘the big time’ is really, except that it’s probably some terrible place you can’t get out of, you know… or you fall from it and break all your bones, or you try to go further and burn up.

Robert Burns House is a small sandstone house just outside Dumfries city centre. It is where he wrote many of his most famous poems, such as that one about the thingy, and that other one about that place. The man who worked

Orwell’s famous lesson, “Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.

Inhaling fumes directly from burning foliage, either in a confined space such as a cave or a tent, or scooping up and breathing in the vapors from psychoactive plant materials scattered on a bowl full of hot coals, must be an extremely ancient practice. Herodotus's account from the fifth-century BCE, describing the use of small tents by the Scythians (a northwestern Iranian tribe) for inhaling the smoke of cannabis, is probably the most famous account that confirms the antiquity of the use of cannabis as a ritual intoxicant.

The other two famous accidents, at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Fukushima in 2011, killed no one. Yet vast numbers of people are killed day in, day out by the pollution from burning combustibles and by accidents in mining and transporting them, none of which make headlines.

I had a burning desire in me to win and started to get him on the back foot. I was looking for that one special shot when I put him down with the famous Horsley Muckspreader right hand… an unstoppable force. Incredibly, he got up and took the count and the ref waved us to continue.

He told me it was for men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortune on the other, who when abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprize, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all either too far above me, or to far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found by long experience was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries of hardships, the labour and sufferings of the mechanick part of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind. He told me I might judge of the happiness of this state by this one thing, viz. that this was the state of life which all other people envied, that kings had frequently lamented the miserable consequences of being born to great things, and wished they had been placed in the middle of the two extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise man gave his testimony to this as the just standard of true felicity, when he prayed to have neither poverty or riches. He bid me observe it, and I should always find, that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind; but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind; nay, they were so subjected to so many distempers and uneasiness, either of body or mind, as those were who, by vicious living, luxury, and extravagancies on one hand, and by hard labour, want of necessaries, and mean or insufficient diet on the other hand, bring distempers upon themselves by the natural consequences of their way of living; that the middle station of life was calculated for all kinds of vertues and all kinds of enjoyments; that peace and plenty were the hand-maids of a middle fortune; that temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversion, and all desirable pleasures, were the blessing attending the middle station of life; that this way men went silently and smoothly thro’ the world, and comfortably out of it, not embarrassed with the labour of their hands or of the head, not sold to the life of slavery for daily bread, or harrast with perplexed circumstances, which rob the soul of peace and the body of rest; not enraged with the passion of envy, or secret burning lust of ambition for great things; but in easy circumstances sliding gently thro’ the world, and sensibly tasting the sweets of living without the bitter, feeling that they are happy and learning by every day’s experience to know it more sensibly.

Why are all sociopaths not in positions of great power? … Why do they not win all the time? … most of them are obscure people, and limited to dominating their young children, or a depressed spouse, or perhaps a few employees or coworkers. Not an insignificant number of them are in jail, … or in danger for their careers or their lives. Very few are fabulously wealthy. Even fewer are famous. Having never made much of a mark on the world, the majority are on a downward life course, and by late middle age will be burned out completely. They can rob and torment us temporarily; yes, but they are, in effect, failed lives.

Mexican poet Octavio Paz famously said that while citizens of Western cities like New York, Paris, and London would "burn their lips" if they so much as uttered the word "death," "the Mexican, on the other hand, frequents it, mocks it, caresses it, sleeps with it, entertains it; it is one of his favorite playthings and his most enduring love.

Tell me, what kind of functions does pain have when one is convicted to 100 whippings in Saudie Arabia? You claim pain has a function, I claim that's scientific rubbish. The only thing pain really does is cause an instant reaction that is not rational and usually quite erratic. The famous example of the hand in boiling water, for example. You say it proves pain has a function. But exactly because of the spasmic reaction lots and lots of people will drop the bowl with boiling water over their entire bodies causing serious burns. So what was the 'function' of this pain? Pain and fear cause confusion and trauma. If pain actually did have a rational function, chronic pain would not exist.

You burn down an entire town, and don’t even invoke me?” an angry female voice asked from behind me. “I didn’t think you’d be interested,” I shrugged, bending back to my work. “It was a huge whopping fire!” she snorted. “I’m a fire goddess! That’s my primal function! Flaming hells, you were using thermite! Thermite!” she repeated. “How would I not be interested?” “Did no one else invoke you?” I asked, as I continued to work. “Certainly! Hundreds did! There was a fire elemental rolling around in there for a while! I showed up personally! But did my most famous lay worshipper bother to invoke me, and share the exquisite bliss of thousands of degrees of pure combustible magic? Minalan!” she pleaded. “Are you losing interest in me?” “Now, now,” I chuckled, “the truth is I was just busy. Astyral was showing off, and I had to give him my full attention. Having a pretty goddess around, making sex noises while she watched the blaze, might have been distracting.” “I don’t make sex noises!” she declared, defensively. “I . . . I just . . I’m a fire goddess, it’s what I do!” she said, nearly whining.

Methinks I am a prophet new inspired And thus expiring do foretell of him: His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last, For violent fires soon burn out themselves; Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short; He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes; With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder: Light vanity, insatiate cormorant, Consuming means, soon preys upon itself. This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands, This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, Fear'd by their breed and famous by their birth, Renowned for their deeds as far from home, For Christian service and true chivalry, As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry, Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son, This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land, Dear for her reputation through the world, Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it, Like to a tenement or pelting farm: England, bound in with the triumphant sea Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame, With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds: That England, that was wont to conquer others, Hath made a shameful conquest of itself. Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life, How happy then were my ensuing death!

A moth flying into the flame says with its wingfire, 'Try this.' The wick with its knotted neck broken, tells you the same. A candle as it diminishes explains, 'Gathering more and more is not the way. Burn, become light and heat and help. Melt.' The ocean sits in the sand letting its lap fill with pearls and shells, then empty. A bittersalt taste hums, 'This.' The phoenix gives up on good-and-bad, flies to rest on Mt. Qaf, no more burning and rising from ash. It sends out one message. The rose purifies its face, drops the soft petals, shows its thorn, and points. Wine abandons thousands of famous names, the vintage years and delightful bouquets, to run wild and anonymous through your brain. The flute closes its eyes and gives its lips to Hamza’s emptiness. Everything begs with the silent rocks for you to be flung out like light over this plain, the presence of Shams.

She pulled the shawl closer as a tall, lithe figure cut across the parking lot and joined her at the passenger door. “You’re already famous,” Colby Lane told her, his dark eyes twinkling in his lean, scarred face. “You’ll see yourself on the evening news, if you live long enough to watch it.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Tate’s on his way right now.” “Unlock this thing and get me out of here!” she squeaked. He chuckled. “Coward.” He unlocked the door and let her climb in. By the time he got behind the wheel and took off, Tate was striding across the parking lot with blood in his eye. Cecily blew him a kiss as Colby gunned the engine down the busy street. “You’re living dangerously tonight,” Colby told her. “He knows where you live,” he added. “He should. He paid for the apartment,” she added in a sharp, hurt tone. She wrapped her arms closer around her. “I don’t want to go home, Colby. Can I stay with you tonight?” She knew, as few other people did, that Colby Lane was still passionately in love with his ex-wife, Maureen. He had nothing to do with other women even two years after his divorce was final. He drank to excess from time to time, but he wasn’t dangerous. Cecily trusted no one more. He’d been a good friend to her, as well as to Tate, over the years. “He won’t like it,” he said. She let out a long breath. “What does it matter now?” she asked wearily. “I’ve burned my bridges.” “I don’t know why that socialite Audrey had to tell you,” he muttered irritably. “It was none of her business.” “Maybe she wants a big diamond engagement ring, and Tate can’t afford it because he’s keeping me,” she said bitterly. He glanced at her rigid profile. “He won’t marry her.” She made a sound deep in her throat. “Why not? She’s got everything…money, power, position and beauty-and a degree from Vassar.” “In psychology,” Colby mused. “She’s been going around with Tate for several months.” “He goes around with a lot of women. He won’t marry any of them.” “Well, he certainly won’t marry me,” she assured him. “I’m white.” “More of a nice, soft tan,” he told her. “You can marry me. I’ll take care of you.” She made a face at him. “You’d call me Maureen in your sleep and I’d lay your head open with the lamp. It would never work.

When Marsyas was 'torn from the scabbard of his limbs' - DELLA VAGINA DELLA MEMBRE SUE, to use one of Dante's most terrible Tacitean phrases - he had no more song, the Greek said. Apollo had been victor. The lyre had vanquished the reed. But perhaps the Greeks were mistaken. I hear in much modern Art the cry of Marsyas. It is bitter in Baudelaire, sweet and plaintive in Lamartine, mystic in Verlaine. It is in the deferred resolutions of Chopin's music. It is in the discontent that haunts Burne- Jones's women. Even Matthew Arnold, whose song of Callicles tells of 'the triumph of the sweet persuasive lyre,' and the 'famous final victory,' in such a clear note of lyrical beauty, has not a little of it; in the troubled undertone of doubt and distress that haunts his verses, neither Goethe nor Wordsworth could help him, though he followed each in turn, and when he seeks to mourn for THYRSIS or to sing of the SCHOLAR GIPSY, it is the reed that he has to take for the rendering of his strain. But whether or not the Phrygian Faun was silent, I cannot be. Expression is as necessary to me as leaf and blossoms are to the black branches of the trees that show themselves above the prison walls and are so restless in the wind. Between my art and the world there is now a wide gulf, but between art and myself there is none. I hope at least that there is none.

To have a goddess like you in his arms and not appreciate it…” He kissed her, unable to resist the lush, succulent mouth so close to his. He put everything he felt into it, so he could wipe out any hurt the Neds of the world had given her. When he broke away, realizing he was treading dangerous ground, she said hoarsely, “You weren’t always so…appreciative. When I said that men enjoyed my company, you said you found that hard to believe.” “What?” he retorted with a scowl. “I never said any such thing.” “Yes, you did, the day that I asked you to investigate my suitors. I remember it clearly.” “There’s no way in hell I ever…” The conversation came back to him suddenly, and he shook his head. “You’re remembering only part, sweeting. You said that men enjoyed your company and considered you easy to talk to. It was the last part I found hard to believe.” “Oh.” She eyed him askance. “Why? You never seem to have trouble talking to me. Or rather, lecturing me.” “It’s either lecture you or stop up your mouth with kisses,” he said dryly. “Talking to you isn’t easy, because every time I’m near you I burn to carry you off to some secluded spot and do any number of wicked things with you.” She blinked, then gazed at him with such softness that at made his chest hurt. “Then why don’t you?” “Because you’re a marquess’s daughter and my employer’s sister.” “What does that signify? You’re an assistant magistrate and a famous Bow Street Runner-“ “And the bastard of nobody knows whom.” “Which merely makes you a fitting companion for a hellion with a reputation for recklessness.” The word companion resonated in his brain. What did she mean by it? Then she pressed a kiss to his jaw, eroding his resistance and his reason, and he knew precisely what she meant. He tried to set her off of him before he lost his mind entirely, but she looped her arms about his neck and wouldn’t let go. “Show me.” “Show you what?” “All the wicked things you want to do with me.” Desire bolted in a fever through his vein. “My God, Celia-“ “I won’t believe a word you’ve said if you don’t.” Her gaze grew troubled. “I don’t think you know what you want. Yesterday you gave me such lovely kisses and caresses and then at the ball you acted like you’d never met me.” “You were with your suitors,” he said hoarsely. “You could have danced with me. You didn’t even ask me for one dance.” Having her on his lap was rousing him to a painful hardness. “Because I knew if I did, I would want…I would need…” She kissed a path down his throat, turning his blood to fire. “Show me,” she whispered, “Show me now what you want. What you need.” “I refuse to ruin you,” he said, half as a caution to himself. “You already have.

The Nook is an under-appreciated genius of a lovemark. The team at Barnes & Noble got a lot right with the Nook, and from a lovemark perspective, I think they created a more intimate product than any other dedicated e-reader. The rubber back behind the Nook is soft and pliable—not hard metal like the later Kindles—making it sensual and intimate. Barnes & Noble also recreated the engraved faces of famous authors from their stores and used them as Nook screensavers. It’s brilliant, not just because it makes reading more intimate, but also because it solidifies the Barnes & Noble brand itself.

One of the towering figures of the age of Enlightenment was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, known to this day in German-speaking lands as the poet of princes and prince of poets. Unlike Voltaire, he openly practiced esoteric disciplines, particularly alchemy. He wrote a famous verse about the Cathars, which translated says: “There were those who knew the Father. What became of them? Oh, they took them and burned them!” Goethe's chief work, of course, is his Faust. As noted in chapter 8, the figure of Faust was inspired by the image of the early Gnostic teacher Simon Magus, one of whose honorific names was Faustus. While in Christopher Marlowe's sixteenth-century play,

Now come on, we’re off.” He marched out of the room. They heard the front door open, but Dudley did not move and after a few faltering steps Aunt Petunia stopped too. “What now?” barked Uncle Vernon, reappearing in the doorway. It seemed that Dudley was struggling with concepts too difficult to put into words. After several moments of apparently painful internal struggle he said, “But where’s he going to go?” Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon looked at each other. It was clear that Dudley was frightening them. Hestia Jones broke the silence. “But…surely you know where your nephew is going?” she asked, looking bewildered. “Certainly we know,” said Vernon Dursley. “He’s off with some of your lot, isn’t he? Right, Dudley, let’s get in the car, you heard the man, we’re in a hurry.” Again, Vernon Dursley marched as far as the front door, but Dudley did not follow. “Off with some of our lot?” Hestia looked outraged. Harry had met this attitude before: Witches and wizards seemed stunned that his closest living relatives took so little interest in the famous Harry Potter. “It’s fine,” Harry assured her. “It doesn’t matter, honestly.” “Doesn’t matter?” repeated Hestia, her voice rising ominously. “Don’t these people realize what you’ve been through? What danger you are in? The unique position you hold in the hearts of the anti-Voldemort movement?” “Er--no, they don’t,” said Harry. “They think I’m a waste of space, actually, but I’m used to--” “I don’t think you’re a waste of space.” If Harry had not seen Dudley’s lips move, he might not have believed it. As it was, he stared at Dudley for several seconds before accepting that it must have been his cousin who had spoken; for one thing, Dudley had turned red. Harry was embarrassed and astonished himself. “Well…er…thanks, Dudley.” Again, Dudley appeared to grapple with thoughts too unwieldy for expression before mumbling, “You saved my life.” “Not really,” said Harry. “It was your soul the dementor would have taken…” He looked curiously at his cousin. They had had virtually no contact during this summer or last, as Harry had come back to Privet Drive so briefly and kept to his room so much. It now dawned on Harry, however, that the cup of cold tea on which he had trodden that morning might not have been a booby trap at all. Although rather touched, he was nevertheless quite relieved that Dudley appeared to have exhausted his ability to express his feelings. After opening his mouth once or twice more, Dudley subsided into scarlet-faced silence. Aunt Petunia burst into tears. Hestia Jones gave her an approving look that changed to outrage as Aunt Petunia ran forward and embraced Dudley rather than Harry. “S-so sweet, Dudders…” she sobbed into his massive chest. “S-such a lovely b-boy…s-saying thank you…” “But he hasn’t said thank you at all!” said Hestia indignantly. “He only said he didn’t think Harry was a waste of space!” “Yeah, but coming from Dudley that’s like ‘I love you,’” said Harry, torn between annoyance and a desire to laugh as Aunt Petunia continued to clutch at Dudley as if he had just saved Harry from a burning building.

Speaking before a joint session of Congress, President Johnson said: “This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through . . . a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.” It’s remarkable to note that, more than fifty years ago, an American president was already aware of, and acknowledging, human-created climate change. Johnson had been briefed on the dangers of CO 2 increases by the famous climate scientists Charles Keeling and Roger Revelle, among others. So, not only was Johnson aware of the issue, but he was already concerned enough to raise it before Congress. That single sentence in his address gives the lie to the claims of so many climate-change deniers that global warming is some kind of recent hoax.

But Dr. Hyde was telling a different story, one that I'd skipped. "Karl Marx famously called religion 'the opiate of the masses'. Buddhism, particularly as it is popularly practiced, promises improvement through karma. Islam and Christianity promise eternal paradise to the faithful. And that is a powerful opiate, certainly, the hope of a better life to come. But there's a Sufi story that challenges the notion that people believe only because they need an opiate. Rabe'al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God.

That pain of wanting, the burning desire to possess what you lack, is one of the greatest allies you have. It is a force you can harness to create whatever you want in your life. When you took an honest look at your life back in the previous chapter and rated yourself as being either on the up curve or the down curve in seven different areas, you were painting a picture of where you are now. This diagram shows that as point A. Where you could be tomorrow, your vision of what’s possible for you in your life, is point B. And to the extent that there is a “wanting” gap between points A and B, there is a natural tension between those two poles. It’s like holding a magnet near a piece of iron: you can feel the pull of that magnet tugging at the iron. Wanting is exactly like that; it’s magnetic. You can palpably feel your dreams (B) tugging at your present circumstances (A). Tension is uncomfortable. That’s why it sometimes makes people uncomfortable to hear about how things could be. One of the reasons Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I have a dream” speech made such a huge impact on the world and carved such a vivid place in our cultural memory is that it made the world of August 1963 very uncomfortable. John Lennon painted his vision of a more harmonious world in the song Imagine. Within the decade, he was shot to death. Gandhi, Jesus, Socrates … our world can be harsh on people who talk about an improved reality. Visions and visionaries make people uncomfortable. These are especially dramatic examples, of course, but the same principle applies to the personal dreams and goals of people we’ve never heard of. The same principle applies to everyone, including you and me. Let’s say you have a brother, or sister, or old friend with whom you had a falling out years ago. You wish you had a better relationship, that you talked more often, that you shared more personal experiences and conversations together. Between where you are today and where you can imagine being, there is a gap. Can you feel it?

The Poet" The riches of the poet are equal to his poetry His power is his left hand It is idle weak and precious His poverty is his wealth, a wealth which may destroy him like Midas Because it is that laziness which is a form of impatience And this he may be destroyed by the gold of the light which never was On land or sea. He may be drunken to death, draining the casks of excess That extreme form of success. He may suffer Narcissus' destiny Unable to live except with the image which is infatuation Love, blind, adoring, overflowing Unable to respond to anything which does not bring love quickly or immediately. ...The poet must be innocent and ignorant But he cannot be innocent since stupidity is not his strong point Therefore Cocteau said, "What would I not give To have the poems of my youth withdrawn from existence? I would give to Satan my immortal soul." This metaphor is wrong, for it is his immortal soul which he wished to redeem, Lifting it and sifting it, free and white, from the actuality of youth's banality, vulgarity, pomp and affectation of his early works of poetry. So too in the same way a Famous American Poet When fame at last had come to him sought out the fifty copies of his first book of poems which had been privately printed by himself at his own expense. He succeeded in securing 48 of the 50 copies, burned them And learned then how the last copies were extant, As the law of the land required, stashed away in the national capital, at the Library of Congress. Therefore he went to Washington, therefore he took out the last two copies Placed them in his pocket, planned to depart Only to be halted and apprehended. Since he was the author, Since they were his books and his property he was reproached But forgiven. But the two copies were taken away from him Thus setting a national precedent. For neither amnesty nor forgiveness is bestowed upon poets, poetry and poems, For William James, the lovable genius of Harvard spoke the terrifying truth: "Your friends may forget, God may forgive you, But the brain cells record your acts for the rest of eternity." What a terrifying thing to say! This is the endless doom, without remedy, of poetry. This is also the joy everlasting of poetry. Delmore Schwartz

A short while later, they were all covered in flour. "Anna, do you have to use so much flour?" her mother asked, waving a cloud of dust away from her face. "I hate when the cookies stick, Ma, you know that." Anna sifted more flour onto the wooden table that doubled as a workspace. She loved flour and she used it liberally, but it did make cleanup much harder. The bakery wasn't large and it wasn't bright; the windows were high up, just below the ceiling eaves. Anna had to squint to see her measurements. Spoons and pots hung on the walls, and the large wooden table stood in the middle of the room, where Anna and her mom baked bread, cinnamon rolls, and Anna's famous cookies. The majority of the bakery was taken up by the cast-iron stove. It was as beautiful as it was functional, and Anna was constantly tripping over it- or falling into it, hence the small burn marks on her forearms. Those also came from paddling the bread into and out of the oven. Her parents said she was the best at knowing when the temperature of the stove was just right for baking the softest bread. Maybe she was a little messy when she baked, but it didn't bother her.

Harper walked over to her reception desk. “What’s with the Tyson look-alikes out there? I almost couldn’t get in here.” Pixie frowned. “Better go ask your boy-o. Famous rock star in the house.” Pixie accentuated her comment with the poke of her pen. Jeez, he was huge. And built. And shirtless. Okay, enough staring. Well, maybe just for another second. Trent was leaning over the guy, and she could tell from the wide-reaching spread of purple transfer lines that he was just beginning a sleeve on the other man’s lower arm. The guy in the chair might well be a rock star— although Harper would never admit she had no clue who he was— but he was wincing. Harper could totally feel for him. Trent was in his usual position— hat on backward, gloves on, and perched on a stool. Harper approached them nervously. The big guy’s size and presence were a little intimidating. “I don’t bite.” Oh God. He was talking to her. “Excuse me?” He sucked air in between clenched teeth. “I said I don’t bite. You can come closer.” His blue eyes were sparkling as he studied her closely. Trent looked up. “Hey, darlin’,” he said, putting the tattoo machine down and reaching for her hand. “Dred, this is my girl, Harper. Harper, this is Dred Zander from the band Preload. He’s one of the other judges I told you about.” Wow. Not that she knew much about the kind of music that Trent listened to, but even she had heard of Preload. That certainly explained the security outside. Dred reached out his hand and shook hers. “Nice to meet you, Harper. And a pity. For a minute, I thought you were coming over to see me.” “No,” Harper exclaimed quickly, looking over at Trent, who was grinning at her. “I mean, no, I was just bringing Trent some cookies.” Holy shit. Was she really that lame? It was like that moment in Dirty Dancing when Baby told Johnny she carried a watermelon. Dred turned and smiled enigmatically at Trent. “I see what you mean, man.” “Give.” Smiling, Trent held out his hand. Reaching inside her bag, she pulled out the cookies and handed the container to him. “Seriously, dude, she’s the best fucking cook on the planet.” Trent paused to take a giant bite. “You got to try one,” he mumbled, offering the container over. Harper watched, mortified, as a modern-day rock legend bit into one of her cookies. Dred chewed and groaned. “These are almost as good as sex.” Harper laughed. “Not quite,” Trent responded, giving her a look that made her burn. “You should try her pot roast. Could bring a grown man to his knees.

I write because of the fragility of our existence. I write because it's my answer to impermanence. I write because it helps me stay connected to my heart. I write because we’re all different, and so much the same. I write because the world needs more tenderness. I write because I'm tired of secrets. I write because it’s my path to redemption. I write because I've forsaken those that I love. I write because I want to know myself. I write because I want to know you. I write because I'm drawn towards things I shouldn't do. I write because every flower is meant to bloom. I write because life is full of paradoxes. I write because I’ve had to leave friends behind. I write because it's my form of prayer. I write because, when I write, I lose track of time. I write because I've walked dark streets looking for love. I write because of the way the sublime slips away from words. I write because of the twice shy part of once burned. I write because it helps me learn. I write because there are plenty of people who have written, famous well-published people, literary figures, literary giants, and I didn't like what they wrote. I write because I'm always telling myself stories anyhow. I write because I don't know all of the reasons I write. I write for you. I write. I write. I write.

The Republican Roosevelt wanted to fight plutocrats as well as anarchists. Their plunder of oil, coal, minerals, and timber on federal lands appalled him, in his role as the founder of America’s national parks. Corporate criminals, carving up public property for their private profit, paid bribes to politicians to protect their land rackets. Using thousand-dollar bills as weapons, they ransacked millions of acres of the last American frontiers. In 1905, a federal investigation, led in part by a scurrilous Secret Service agent named William J. Burns, had led to the indictment and conviction of Senator John H. Mitchell and Representative John H. Williamson of Oregon, both Republicans, for their roles in the pillage of the great forests of the Cascade Range. An Oregon newspaper editorial correctly asserted that Burns and his government investigators had used “the methods of Russian spies and detectives.” The senator died while his case was on appeal; the congressman’s conviction was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court on grounds of “outrageous conduct,” including Burns’s brazen tampering with jurors and witnesses. Burns left the government and became a famous private eye; his skills at tapping telephones and bugging hotel rooms eventually won him a job as J. Edgar Hoover’s

I always had trouble with the feet of Jón the First, or Pre-Jón, as I called him later. He would frequently put them in front of me in the evening and tell me to take off his socks and rub his toes, soles, heels and calves. It was quite impossible for me to love these Icelandic men's feet that were shaped like birch stumps, hard and chunky, and screaming white as the wood when the bark is stripped from it. Yes, and as cold and damp, too. The toes had horny nails that resembled dead buds in a frosty spring. Nor can I forget the smell, for malodorous feet were very common in the post-war years when men wore nylon socks and practically slept in their shoes. How was it possible to love these Icelandic men? Who belched at the meal table and farted constantly. After four Icelandic husbands and a whole load of casual lovers I had become a vrai connaisseur of flatulence, could describe its species and varieties in the way that a wine-taster knows his wines. The howling backfire, the load, the gas bomb and the Luftwaffe were names I used most. The coffee belch and the silencer were also well-known quantities, but the worst were the date farts, a speciality of Bæring of Westfjord. Icelandic men don’t know how to behave: they never have and never will, but they are generally good fun. At least, Icelandic women think so. They seem to come with this inner emergency box, filled with humour and irony, which they always carry around with them and can open for useful items if things get too rough, and it must be a hereditary gift of the generations. Anyone who loses their way in the mountains and gets snowed in or spends the whole weekend stuck in a lift can always open this special Icelandic emergency box and get out of the situation with a good story. After wandering the world and living on the Continent I had long tired of well-behaved, fart-free gentlemen who opened the door and paid the bills but never had a story to tell and were either completely asexual or demanded skin-burning action until the morning light. Swiss watch salesmen who only knew of “sechs” as their wake-up hour, or hairy French apes who always required their twelve rounds of screwing after the six-course meal. I suppose I liked German men the best. They were a suitable mixture of belching northerner and cultivated southerner, of orderly westerner and crazy easterner, but in the post-war years they were of course broken men. There was little you could do with them except try to put them right first. And who had the time for that? Londoners are positive and jolly, but their famous irony struck me as mechanical and wearisome in the long run. As if that irony machine had eaten away their real essence. The French machine, on the other hand, is fuelled by seriousness alone, and the Frogs can drive you beyond the limit when they get going with their philosophical noun-dropping. The Italian worships every woman like a queen until he gets her home, when she suddenly turns into a slut. The Yank is one hell of a guy who thinks big: he always wants to take you the moon. At the same time, however, he is as smug and petty as the meanest seamstress, and has a fit if someone eats his peanut butter sandwich aboard the space shuttle. I found Russians interesting. In fact they were the most Icelandic of all: drank every glass to the bottom and threw themselves into any jollity, knew countless stories and never talked seriously unless at the bottom of the bottle, when they began to wail for their mother who lived a thousand miles away but came on foot to bring them their clean laundry once a month. They were completely crazy and were better athletes in bed than my dear countrymen, but in the end I had enough of all their pommel-horse routines. Nordic men are all as tactless as Icelanders. They get drunk over dinner, laugh loudly and fart, eventually start “singing” even in public restaurants where people have paid to escape the tumult of

After wandering the world and living on the Continent I had long tired of well-behaved, fart-free gentlemen who opened the door and paid the bills but never had a story to tell and were either completely asexual or demanded skin-burning action until the morning light. Swiss watch salesmen who only knew of “sechs” as their wake-up hour, or hairy French apes who always required their twelve rounds of screwing after the six-course meal. I suppose I liked German men the best. They were a suitable mixture of belching northerner and cultivated southerner, of orderly westerner and crazy easterner, but in the post-war years they were of course broken men. There was little you could do with them except try to put them right first. And who had the time for that? Londoners are positive and jolly, but their famous irony struck me as mechanical and wearisome in the long run. As if that irony machine had eaten away their real essence. The French machine, on the other hand, is fuelled by seriousness alone, and the Frogs can drive you beyond the limit when they get going with their philosophical noun-dropping. The Italian worships every woman like a queen until he gets her home, when she suddenly turns into a slut. The Yank is one hell of a guy who thinks big: he always wants to take you the moon. At the same time, however, he is as smug and petty as the meanest seamstress, and has a fit if someone eats his peanut butter sandwich aboard the space shuttle. I found Russians interesting. In fact they were the most Icelandic of all: drank every glass to the bottom and threw themselves into any jollity, knew countless stories and never talked seriously unless at the bottom of the bottle, when they began to wail for their mother who lived a thousand miles away but came on foot to bring them their clean laundry once a month. They were completely crazy and were better athletes in bed than my dear countrymen, but in the end I had enough of all their pommel-horse routines. Nordic men are all as tactless as Icelanders. They get drunk over dinner, laugh loudly and fart, eventually start “singing” even in public restaurants where people have paid to escape the tumult of the world. But their wallets always waited cold sober in the cloakroom while the Icelandic purse lay open for all in the middle of the table. Our men were the greater Vikings in this regard. “Reputation is king, the rest is crap!” my Bæring from Bolungarvík used to say. Every evening had to be legendary, anything else was a defeat. But the morning after they turned into weak-willed doughboys. But all the same I did succeed in loving them, those Icelandic clodhoppers, at least down as far as their knees. Below there, things did not go as well. And when the feet of Jón Pre-Jón popped out of me in the maternity ward, it was enough. The resemblances were small and exact: Jón’s feet in bonsai form. I instantly acquired a physical intolerance for the father, and forbade him to come in and see the baby. All I heard was the note of surprise in the bass voice out in the corridor when the midwife told him she had ordered him a taxi. From that day on I made it a rule: I sacked my men by calling a car. ‘The taxi is here,’ became my favourite sentence.

We cannot provide a definition of those products from which the age takes it name, the feuilletons. They seem to have formed an uncommonly popular section of the daily newspapers, were produced by the millions, and were a major source of mental pabulum for the reader in want of culture. They reported on, or rather "chatted" about, a thousand-and-one items of knowledge. The cleverer writers poked fun at their own work. Many such pieces are so incomprehensible that they can only be viewed as self-persiflage on the part of the authors. In some periods interviews with well-known personalities on current problems were particularly popular. Noted chemists or piano virtuosos would be queried about politics, for example, or popular actors, dancers, gymnasts, aviators, or even poets would be drawn out on the benefits and drawbacks of being a bachelor, or on the presumptive causes of financial crises, and so on. All that mattered in these pieces was to link a well-known name with a subject of current topical interest. It is very hard indeed for us to put ourselves in the place of those people so that we can truly understand them. But the great majority, who seem to have been strikingly fond of reading, must have accepted all these grotesque things with credulous earnestness. If a famous painting changed owners, if a precious manuscript was sold at auction, if an old palace burned down, the readers of many thousands of feature articles at once learned the facts. What is more, on that same day or by the next day at the latest they received an additional dose of anecdotal, historical, psychological, erotic, and other stuff on the catchword of the moment. A torrent of zealous scribbling poured out over every ephemeral incident, and in quality, assortment, and phraseology all this material bore the mark of mass goods rapidly and irresponsibly turned out. Incidentally, there appear to have been certain games which were regular concomitants of the feature article. The readers themselves took the active role in these games, which put to use some of their glut of information fodder. Thousands upon thousands spent their leisure hours sitting over squares and crosses made of letters of the alphabet, filling in the gaps according to certain rules. But let us be wary of seeing only the absurd or insane aspect of this, and let us abstain from ridiculing it. For these people with their childish puzzle games and their cultural feature articles were by no means innocuous children or playful Phaeacians. Rather, they dwelt anxiously among political, economic, and moral ferments and earthquakes, waged a number of frightful wars and civil wars, and their little cultural games were not just charming, meaningless childishness. These games sprang from their deep need to close their eyes and flee from unsolved problems and anxious forebodings of doom into an imaginary world as innocuous as possible. They assiduously learned to drive automobiles, to play difficult card games and lose themselves in crossword puzzles--for they faced death, fear, pain, and hunger almost without defenses, could no longer accept the consolations of the churches, and could obtain no useful advice from Reason. These people who read so many articles and listened to so many lectures did not take the time and trouble to strengthen themselves against fear, to combat the dread of death within themselves; they moved spasmodically on through life and had no belief in a tomorrow.

First off, demon, let’s get one thing straight. I. Am. Not. Weak. What you saw last night was another fucking subclause of Lucifer’s that makes me of the same strength physically and magically as when I died, but only when on the mortal plane in the presence of the souls I damned. Any other time, I am not to be messed with.” “If you’re so bad ass, how come I never heard of you?” “I prefer to stay out of the spotlight, unlike some sorceress’s I know,” she said with a smile as she came to stop in front of him. “But I do have a nickname.” “Hot on a stick?” “No.” “Spanks with magic?” “Most definitely not.” “I know, you must be the famous BJ Swallows.” “I am going to hurt you.” “I was right?” “No. And your made up names are just pissing me off.” “Made up? I’ll have you know those monikers are just a few of the more famous witch ones I know. Of course, I don’t know if their magical abilities extend beyond the pole they dance on, but still, they’re very well known in my circles.” “Why am I not surprised?” “Are you going to tell what your name is then? ‘Cause I’m gonna wager it isn’t Magical Pie.” He really needed to learn how to keep certain thoughts to himself, an easy thing to promise with the iron grip she had on his balls. Not exactly how he pictured their first time touching. She twisted. He winced. “Let this be a reminder not to fuck with me. And just so you know, while my nickname is the Blood Witch, my true title is Satan’s Assistant.” She was the one who had all the damned souls trembling? Hot damn. “I have heard of you.” “Good, then you know what I can do. And might I add it hurts.” She leaned up on tiptoe as she said it, her lips so close to his. But Ysabel wasn’t the only one with surprises. And truly, she’d pushed the boundaries of temptation too far. He snapped her magic binding and wrapped his arms around her, bringing her flush against his chest. “Did I mention, apart from ability with fire, I can unravel several forms of magic?” Then he kissed her, and by all the coals in the furnace of Hell, he’d never burned hotter.

As for the other experiences, the solitary ones, which people go through alone, in their bedrooms, in their offices, walking the fields and the streets of London, he had them; had left home, a mere boy, because of his mother; she lied; because he came down to tea for the fiftieth time with his hands unwashed; because he could see no future for a poet in Stroud; and so, making a confidant of his little sister, had gone to London leaving an absurd note behind him, such as great men have written, and the world has read later when the story of their struggles has become famous. London has swallowed up many millions of young men called Smith; thought nothing of fantastic Christian names like Septimus with which their parents have thought to distinguish them. Lodging off the Euston Road, there were experiences, again experiences, such as change a face in two years from a pink innocent oval to a face lean, contracted, hostile. But of all this what could the most observant of friends have said except what a gardener says when he opens the conservatory door in the morning and finds a new blossom on his plant: — It has flowered; flowered from vanity, ambition, idealism, passion, loneliness, courage, laziness, the usual seeds, which all muddled up (in a room off the Euston Road), made him shy, and stammering, made him anxious to improve himself, made him fall in love with Miss Isabel Pole, lecturing in the Waterloo Road upon Shakespeare. Was he not like Keats? she asked; and reflected how she might give him a taste of Antony and Cleopatra and the rest; lent him books; wrote him scraps of letters; and lit in him such a fire as burns only once in a lifetime, without heat, flickering a red gold flame infinitely ethereal and insubstantial over Miss Pole; Antony and Cleopatra; and the Waterloo Road. He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink; he saw her, one summer evening, walking in a green dress in a square. “It has flowered,” the gardener might have said, had he opened the door; had he come in, that is to say, any night about this time, and found him writing; found him tearing up his writing; found him finishing a masterpiece at three o’clock in the morning and running out to pace the streets, and visiting churches, and fasting one day, drinking another, devouring Shakespeare, Darwin, The History of Civilisation, and Bernard Shaw.

Looks like everybody's asleep. Don't they keep a light on for you?" "They probably figured I wouldn't be needing it." "Sorry to disappoint your cousins." "Not to mention me.I'm gravely disappointed at the way this evening has ended.You're going to ruin my reputation as a lady-killer." He flashed her one of his famous smiles. He opened the door and climbed down.When he rounded the front of the truck, he paused beside her open window. "Good night,Marilee. I appreciate the ride home. I just wish you didn't have to make that long drive back to town all alone." "I'll be fine.I've got my radio to keep me company." "You could always coe inside and bunk in my room." "What a generous offer.But once again, I'm afraid I'll have to decline,though I have to admit that I've had more fun in a few hours with you than I've had in years." The minute the words were out of her mouth,she wanted to call them back. What was it about Wyatt that had her trusting him enough to reveal such a thing? Though she barely knew him,he'd uncovered an inherent goodness in him that was rare and wonderful. This had been one of the best nights of her life. Still,he'd gone very quiet.As though digesting her words and searching for hidden meanings. As he turned away she called boldly, "What? No kiss good night? Just because I refused to spend the night with you?" He turned back with a smile, but it wasn't his usual silly grin.Instead, she noted,there was a hint of danger in that smile. He studied her intently before reaching out as though to touch her face. Then he seemed to think better of it and withdrew his hand as if he'd been burned. His eyes locked on hers. "I've already decided that I'll never be able to just kiss you and walk away.So a word of warning,pretty little Marilee. When I kiss you,and I fully intend to kiss you breathless,be prepared to go the distance. There's a powerful storm building up inside me,and when it's unleashed,it's going to be one hell of an earth-shattering explosion.For both of us." He walked away then and didn't look back until he'd reached the back door. Startled by the unexpected intensity of his words,Marilee put the truck in gear and started along the gravel lane. As her vehicle ate up the miles back to town,she couldn't put aside the look she'd seen in his eyes.The carefully banked passion she'd taken such pains to hide had left her more shaken than she cared to admit. In truth,she was still trembling. And he hadn't even touched her.

The new evangelical movement in the early 19th century was strongly focused on social justice and social equality. The famous English preacher Charles Spurgeon saw some of his sermons burned in America due to his censure of slavery before the Civil War, calling it “a soul-destroying sin,” “the foulest blot" which "may have to be washed out in blood.

Elvis Pie Named for the famous crooner’s love of peanut butter and bananas, this decadent dessert is as filling as it is delicious. Serve in small slices, and top with shredded coconut for even more fun.   Difficulty Level: 1 Preparation Time: 30 minutes Yields: 12 servings   Ingredients          8 oz. chocolate cookies          4 Tblsp butter, melted          4 oz. semisweet chocolate chips          2 bananas, sliced thinly          1 cup heavy cream          8 oz. cream cheese          1 cup creamy peanut butter          1 cup powdered sugar          14 oz. sweetened condensed milk          1 tsp vanilla extract          1 tsp lemon juice   1.        In a food processor, grind cookies into fine crumbs. 2.       Combine melted butter and cookie crumbs in a small bowl, and stir with a fork to mix well. 3.       Press mixture into the bottom and 1” up the sides of 9” pie tin. 4.      In a small saucepan over low heat, melt the chocolate chips, stirring often to prevent burning. 5.       Pour melted chocolate over bottom of cookie crust and spread to the edges using a spatula. 6.       Layer banana slices over the melted chocolate. 7.       Place pan in the refrigerator to chill. 8.      Meanwhile, beat heavy cream until stiff peaks form. 9.       Chill in refrigerator until ready to use. 10.    Beat together the cream cheese and peanut butter until light and fluffy. 11.     Stir in powdered sugar until fully incorporated. 12.    Mix in the sweetened condensed milk, vanilla extract, and lemon juice until filling is smooth. 13.    Fold the whipped cream into the filling mixture. 14.   Pour the filling into the prepared pie pan, smoothing top. 15.    Refrigerate for at least 3 hours, preferably overnight. 16.    Serve chilled.

Hence Dante’s famous “inverted” image of the cosmos in the twenty-eighth canto of the Paradiso, in which the poet, granted a temporary glimpse of creation’s spiritual form, sees God’s burning light as the center of all things, with the primum mobile revolving around it as the smallest, swiftest, and inmost sphere and with all the other spheres radiating out in “reverse” order and proportion from there, all of them filled with their differing orders of angels, and with our world at the farthest remove from the center of that eternal heavenly dance. To many, what was most startling about the new cosmology was not that humanity had been expelled from the heart of reality, but that change and disorder had been introduced into the beautiful harmonies above.

Fennel Spell Hang fennel from doors and windows to ward off evil energy and entities. Fiery Wall of Protection Spells Fiery Wall of Protection is among the most famous classic condition formulas. Its name invokes the power of Archangel Michael’s protective flaming sword. The formula may be consecrated to the archangel. Fiery Wall’s basic ingredients include such powerful protective agents as salt, frankincense and myrrh. Its red color, the color of protection, derives from dragon’s blood powder. See the Formulary for specific instructions: the dried powder may be used as incense or magic powder. When the powder is added to oil, Fiery Wall of Protection Oil is created. Fiery Wall of Protection Spell (1) Candle Carve a red or white candle with your name, identifying information, hopes, and desires. Dress it with Fiery Wall of Protection Oil and burn. Consecrate the candle to the Archangel Michael if desired. Fiery Wall of Protection Spell (2) Extra-strength Mojo Place a handful of Fiery Wall of Protection Powder in a charm bag. Drizzle it with Fiery Wall of Protection Oil and Protection Oil. Add a medallion depicting Michael the Archangel and/or a tiny doll-sized sword: a fancy tooth pick works well. Carry it in your pocket. Replace the powder weekly, dressing with fresh oil. Cleanse, charge, and consecrate the charms as needed. Fiery Wall of Protection Spell (3) Incense Protect against a threatened curse by burning Fiery Wall of Protection Powder as incense. To intensify the protection, add powdered agrimony and/or vervain. Fiery Wall of Protection Spell (4) Powder Circle Cast a circle of Fiery Wall of Protection Powder around yourself, your home, or whatever needs protection. Envision a circle of enchanted flames magically surrounding and protecting you, something like the magic fire encircling The Ring of the Nibelung’s valkyrie swan-maiden Brunhilde: the flames are cool and won’t harm those whom they protect yet serve as a burning boundary preventing the entrance of all evil. Stay within the circle for as long as necessary. Carry the powder within a charm bag so that circles and boundary lines may be spontaneously cast as needed. Fiery Wall of Protection Spell (5) Quick Fix Soak a cotton ball in Fiery Wall of Protection Oil and carry it in your pocket or tucked into your bra.

His achievements were not come by easily. It was costly in life and in loss of personal freedoms. It was achieved with the full enforcement of the now famous "Dale laws." He moved quickly to punish deserters and law breakers. George Percy related the results in graphic terms. Some "in a moste severe manner [he] cawsed to be executed. Some he appointed to be hanged, some burned, some to be broken upon wheles, others to be staked and some to be shott to deathe; all theis extreme and crewell tortures he used and inflicted upon them to terrefy the reste for attemptinge the like...." These were stern measures that produced results and few of his contemporary associates took issue including John Rolfe, Ralph Hamor, Reverend Alexander Whitaker and even Sir Edwin Sandys. To them, motivated by the spirit of the time, hard conditions required stern handling.

But like all moments trapped in time, that moment would end and Joey Boldt, as all the greats before him did, would begin to understand that clinging too tightly to anything results in Time and Fate shaking you until you can't hold on any longer. And then, when you are knocked for a six and lose your grip, they allow you to spiral into a freefall where men are broken and legends are made.

the most famous people in the world today don’t address the world’s most pressing needs. Rather, they distract us from them.They provide amusement, not sustenance. They

Richard Feynman famously said that the first step in discovering a new physical law is to guess it. It

SURE? The Case of the Knockout Artist Bugs Meany’s heart burned with a great desire. It was to get even with Encyclopedia. Bugs hated being outsmarted by the boy detective. He longed to punch Encyclopedia so hard on the jaw that the lump would come out the top of his head. Bugs never raised a fist, though. Whenever he felt like it, he remembered Sally Kimball. Sally was the prettiest girl in the fifth grade—and the best fighter. She had done what no boy under twelve had dreamed was possible. She had flattened Bugs Meany! When Sally became the boy detective’s junior partner, Bugs quit trying to use muscle on Encyclopedia. But he never stopped planning his day of revenge. “Bugs hates you more than he does me,” warned Encyclopedia. “He’ll never forgive you for whipping him.” Just then Ike Cassidy walked into the detective agency. Ike was one of Bugs’s pals. “I’m quitting the Tigers,” he announced. “I want to hire you. But you’ll have to take the quarter from my pocket. I can’t move my fingers.” “What’s this all about?” asked Encyclopedia. “Bugs’s cousin, Bearcat Meany, is spending the weekend with him,” said Ike. “Bearcat is only ten, but he’s built like a caveman. Bugs said he’d give me two dollars to box a few rounds with Bearcat. “Bearcat tripped you and stepped on your fingers?” guessed Encyclopedia. “No, he used his head,” said Ike. “I gave him my famous one-two: a left to the nose followed by a right to the chin. I must have broken both my hands hitting him.” “You should have worn boxing gloves,” said Sally. “We wore gloves,” said Ike. “Man, that Bearcat is something else!” “Did he knock you out?” asked Encyclopedia. “He did and he didn’t,” said Ike. “His first punch didn’t knock me out and it didn’t knock me down. But it hurt so much I just had to go down anyway.” “Good grief!” gasped Encyclopedia. “H-he licked you with one punch?” “With two,” corrected Ike. “When I got up, he hit me again. I was paralyzed. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move enough to fall down.” “Bearcat sounds like a coming champ,” observed Sally. “He’s training for the next Olympics,” said Ike. “Isn’t he a little young?” said Sally. “You tell him that,” said Ike. “He hurt me when he breathed on me.” The more Encyclopedia heard about Bearcat, the unhappier he became.

When he died, much was made of how singular Steve Jobs had been. For comparisons, observers needed to reach back to the mythic inventors and showmen of earlier eras, particularly Thomas Edison and Walt Disney. Jobs was singular, to be sure. But he also was of a type. He was what psychotherapist and business coach Michael Maccoby called a “productive narcissist.” In 2000, Maccoby published an insightful article in the Harvard Business Review that applies Freudian terminology to three categories of executives Maccoby had observed in corporate life. “Erotics” feel a need to be loved, value consensus, and as a result are not natural leaders. These are the people to whom a manager should assign tasks—and then heap praise for a job well done. “Obsessives” are by-the-books tacticians with a knack for making the trains run on time. An efficient head of logistics or bottom-line-oriented spreadsheet jockey is the classic obsessive. The greats of business history, however, are “productive narcissists,” visionary risk takers with a burning desire to “change the world.” Corporate narcissists are charismatic leaders willing to do whatever it takes to win and who couldn’t give a fig about being liked. Steve Jobs was the textbook example of a productive narcissist. An unimpressed Jobs was famous for calling other companies “bozos.” His own executives endured their rides on what one called the “bozo/hero rollercoaster,” often within the same marathon meeting.

Perhaps the most famous nonviolent militants of the time were Daniel and Philip Berrigan, Jesuit priests and tested pacifist warriors. The Berrigan brothers and seven other Catholic leftists burned almost four hundred draft files in Catonsville, Maryland, on May 17, 1968, using homemade napalm to protest its widespread use in Vietnam. Regarding the attack, Daniel Berrigan said, “Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise.

In addition to deliberately shooting more than 5,000 Belgian civilians and setting fire to thousands of buildings, they had poured gasoline into the famous university library at Louvain and burned it to the ground, along with its priceless collection of 230,000 books and 750 medieval manuscripts.

General Hood has betrayed us. This is not the kind of fighting he promised us at Tuscumbia and Florence, Alabama when we started into Tennessee. This was not a fight with equal numbers and choice of the ground.… The wails and cries of widows and orphans made at Franklin, Tennessee, November 30th, 1864 will heat up the fires of the bottomless pit to burn the soul of General J. B. Hood for murdering their husbands and fathers.” Hood’s actions “can’t be called anything else but murder,” he asserted. “He sacrificed those men to make the name of Hood famous; when [and] if the history of [Franklin] is ever written it will make him infamous.” The men had a right to be told the truth; therefore, “Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord, and it will surely overtake him.”38

Every New Year's Day, my parents had a big party, and their friends came over and bet on the Rose Bowl and argued about which of the players on either team were Jewish, and my mother served her famous lox and onions and eggs, which took her the entire first half to make. It took her so long, in fact, that I really don't have time to give you the recipe, because it takes up a lot of space to explain how slowly and painstakingly she did everything, sautéing the onions over a tiny flame so none of them would burn, throwing more and more butter into the pan, cooking the eggs so slowly that my father was always sure they wouldn't be ready until the game was completely over and everyone had gone home. We should have known my mother was crazy years before we did just because of the maniacal passion she brought to her lox and onions and eggs, but we didn't. Another thing my mother was famous for serving was a big ham along with her casserole of lima beans and pears. A couple of years ago, I was in Los Angeles promoting Uncle Seymour's Beef Borscht and a woman said to me at a party, "Wasn't your mother Bebe Samstat?" and when I said yes, she said, "I have her recipe for lima beans and pears. " I like to think it would have amused my mother to know that there is someone in Hollywood who remembers her only for her lima beans and pears, but it probably wouldn't have. Anyway, here's how you make it: Take 6 cups defrosted lima beans, 6 pears peeled and cut into slices, 1/2 cup molasses, 1/2 cup chicken stock, 1/2 onion chopped, put into a heavy casserole, cover and bake 12 hours at 200*. That's the sort of food she loved to serve, something that looked like plain old baked beans and then turned out to have pears up its sleeve. She also made a bouillabaisse with Swiss chard in it. Later on, she got too serious about food- started making egg rolls from scratch, things like that- and one night she resigned from the kitchen permanently over a lobster Cantonese that didn't work out, and that was the beginning of the end.

The hearts of low men burn with jealous fire upon seeing the fame of others; unable to reach the famed status of others, they start to slander the famous others.

[You Ask Me to Talk About the Interior] You ask me to talk about the interior it was all roadside flowers & grasses growing over the cities was made of wilderness & sky with God washed out of it was the foreign prayer-word it was a list of missing persons was the solid bronze charging bull on the famous street was like the Roman method for making bees was its taken-down carcass & its bed of apple-branches & thyme was a new anatomy a beaten hide a skeleton sweetening to glowing fluids & the bee born out & the grist of them born glistening as coins it was anthem was the listening the way a searchlight listens over a lake it was the prayer-word out of your mouth your thousand-noun request it goes up up to the florescent weather was hurdle & burn burning through the infinite your overbright comet was made of stones made of berries & plastic & boxtops & eggshells it was like the word having reached the ear & the words pollinated the dark there was darkness there like the afterhours inside a library

The work was all-consuming that winter, and friends recalled the long hours he spent in the Spee Club library, toiling away, surrounded by stacks of books and documents, his Underwood typewriter in front of him, as the fireplace burned orange and red and the snow fell outside. “How’s your book coming?” they would ask him—in jest, as no one really believed it would become a published work. He would respond with a disquisition on whatever section he was working on. “We used to tease him about it all the time,” one of them remembered, “because it was sort of his King Charles head that he was carrying around all the time: his famous thesis. We got so sick of hearing about it that I think he finally shut up.

For as the fire’s embers darken into night, And the smoke that blinds, that burns, that fades, So shall the lives of those that play, The games of war, vanish in the coming light. Japarti, famous Calypsian poet

And when creatures behold this world and imagine that it is burning, even then my Buddhafield is teeming with gods and men.

Liz Gorman, a fiery redhead, had been one of the founding members of the Raven Brigade. During their first “mission”—a failed attempt to burn down a university chemistry lab—the police had picked up a code name on the scanner: CD. It was later revealed that the male members of the Brigade called her CD, short for Carpenter’s Dream, because she was “flat as a board and easy to screw.” Sixties radicals, for all their so-called progressive thoughts, were some of the world’s biggest sexists. Now the implants made sense. Everyone Myron had interviewed remembered one thing about “Carla”—her cup size. Liz Gorman had been famous for her flat chest—what better disguise than oversized breast implants? “The feds and cops are cooperating on this one,” Higgins said. “They’re trying to keep this quiet for a while.

Boyd concluded, “The prospect of being burned alive naturally terrified us, and, as a last resource, I contrived to get a message conveyed to the Federal officer in command. He exerted himself with effect, and had the incendiaries arrested before they could execute their horrible purpose. In the meantime it had been reported at head-quarters that I had shot a Yankee soldier, and great was the indignation at first felt and expressed against me. Soon, however, the commanding officer, with several of his staff, called at our house to investigate the affair. He examined the witnesses, and inquired into all the circumstances with strict impartiality, and finally said I had ‘done perfectly right.’" Spying

2,000–3,000 PEOPLE, NOT GENERAL FAME This is one of the messages Eric burned into my brain last year, and it’s guided many decisions since. We were sitting in a large soaking tub talking about the world (as mathematicians and human guinea pigs do in San Francisco), and he said: “General fame is overrated. You want to be famous to 2,000 to 3,000 people you handpick.” I’m paraphrasing, but the gist is that you don’t need or want mainstream fame. It brings more liabilities than benefits. However, if you’re known and respected by 2–3K high-caliber people (e.g., the live TED audience), you can do anything and everything you want in life. It provides maximal upside and minimal downside. GOOD QUESTION TO ASK YOURSELF WHEN TACKLING INCUMBENT COMPANIES (OR IDEAS) “How is their bread buttered?” “What is it that they can’t afford to say or think?” “CONSENSUS” SHOULD SET OFF YOUR SPIDEY SENSE “Somehow, people have to learn that consensus is a huge problem. There’s no ‘arithmetic consensus’ because it doesn’t require a consensus. But there is a Washington consensus. There is a climate consensus. In general, consensus is how we bully people into pretending that there’s nothing to see. ‘Move along, everyone.’ I think that, in part, you should learn that people don’t naturally come to high levels of agreement unless something is either absolutely clear, in which case consensus isn’t present, or there’s an implied threat of violence to livelihood or self.” TF: I start nearly every public presentation I give with a slide that contains one quote: “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.” —Mark Twain. This isn’t just for my audience. It’s also a reminder for me.

First, the huge United States Steel Corporation was born in the mind of Charles M. Schwab, in the form of an IDEA he created through his IMAGINATION! Second, he mixed FAITH with his IDEA. Third, he formulated a PLAN for the transformation of his IDEA into physical and financial reality. Fourth, he put his plan into action with his famous speech at the University Club. Fifth, he applied, and followed-through on his PLAN with PERSISTENCE, and backed it with firm DECISION until it had been fully carried out. Sixth, he prepared the way for success by a BURNING DESIRE for success. If you are one of those who have often wondered how great fortunes are accumulated, this story of the creation of the United States Steel Corporation will be enlightening.

In a famous letter of 1813, Thomas Jefferson compared the spread of knowledge to the way one candle is lit from another: ‘He who receives an idea from me’, wrote Jefferson, ‘receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lites his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.’24 Libraries and archives are institutions that fulfil the promise of Jefferson’s taper – an essential point of reference for ideas, facts and truth.

We are told at one point that a Hittite king named Mursili I, grandson and successor of the above-named Hattusili I, marched his army all the way to Mesopotamia, a journey of over one thousand miles, and attacked the city of Babylon in 1595 BC, burning it to the ground and ending the two-hundred-year-old dynasty made famous by Hammurabi “the Law-Giver.” Then, instead of occupying the city, he simply turned the Hittite army around and headed for home, thus effectively conducting the longest drive-by shooting in history.

You think I became the world’s most famous, beloved athlete by tryin’ to be skinny?” “I’m sorry, could you repeat the question? Your ego is blocking my ears.

Her body was more than burned flesh. Donating it to science was about taking control of the thing that was undeniably hers. Had

Shortly after the burial of the woman, I got sick with a burning fever. Late in the evening I started for Lamy Junction, the nearest store, a distance of 12 miles, to get a bottle of Carter’s little liver pills, my favorite remedy when feeling badly. I secured a room in the Harvey hotel and taking a dose of pills, went to bed for the night. Next morning I felt worse and was burning up with fever. Still

You feel these men with their photographs in magazines care deeply about having their photographs in magazines. Derive immense meaning.' 'I do. They must. I would. Else why would I burn like this to feel as they feel?' 'The meaning they feel, you mean. From the fame.' 'Lyle don't they?' ... 'LaMont, perhaps they did at first. The first photograph, the first magazine, the gratified surge, the seeing themselves as others see them, the hagiography of image, perhaps. Perhaps the first time: enjoyment. After that, do you trust me, trust me: they do not feel what you burn for. After the first surge, they care only that their photographs seem awkward or unflattering, or untrue, or that their privacy, this thing you burn to escape, what they call their privacy is being violated. Something changes. After the first photograph has been in a magazine, the famous men do not enjoy their photographs in magazines so much as they fear that their photographs will cease to appear in magazines. They are trapped, just as you are.' 'Is this supposed to be good news? This is awful news.' 'LaMont, are you willing to listen to a Remark about what is true?' 'Okey-dokey.' 'The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.' "maybe I ought to be getting back.' 'LaMont, the world is very old. You have been snared by something untrue. You are deluded. But this is good news. You have been snared by the delusion that envy has a reciprocal. You assume that there is a flip-side to your painful envy of Michael Change: namely Micheal Change's enjoyable feeling of being-envied-by-LaMong-Chu. No such animal.' 'Animal?' 'You burn with hunger for food that does not exist.' 'The burning doesn't go away?' 'What fire dies when you feed it?' ... 'Would I sound ungrateful if I said this doesn't make me feel very much better at all?' "LaMont, the truth is that the world is incredibly, incredibly, unbelievably old. You suffer with the stunted desire caused by one of its oldest lies. Do not believe the photographs. Fame is not the exit from any cage' 'So I'm stuck in the cage from either side Fame or tortured envy of fame. There's no way out.' 'You might consider how escape from a cage must surely require, foremost, awareness of the fact of the cage. And I believe I see a drop on your temple, right ... there ....' Etc.

That night after supper, Jimmy and I used up a whole jar of Noxzema. We had sunburned faces, necks and ears. Our ears hurt more than anything. “Why didn’t you use suntan lotion?” Mom asked. “I never burn,” Jimmy said. “Famous last words,” Grandma said.

While on the subject of burning books, I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, their powerful political connections or great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and destroyed records rather than have to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles. So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the media. The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

was commanded, in a dream naturally, to begin the epitaphs of thirty-three friends without using grand words like love pity pride sacrifice doom honor heaven hell earth: 1. O you deliquescent flower 2. O you always loved long naps 3. O you road-kill Georgia possum 4. O you broken red lightbulb 5. O you mosquito smudge fire 6. O you pitiless girl missing a toe 7. O you big fellow in pale-blue shoes 8. O you poet without a book 9. O you lichen without tree or stone 10. O you lion without a throat 11. O you homeless scholar with dirty feet 12. O you jungle bird without a jungle 13. O you city with a single street 14. O you tiny sun without an earth 15. Forgive me for saying good-night quietly 16. Forgive me for never answering the phone 17. Forgive me for sending too much money 18. Pardon me for fishing during your funeral 19. Forgive me for thinking of your lovely ass 20. Pardon me for burning your last book 21. Forgive me for making love to your widow 22. Pardon me for never mentioning you 23. Forgive me for not knowing where you’re buried 24. O you forgotten famous person 25. O you great singer of banal songs 26. O you shrike in the darkest thicket 27. O you river with too many dams 28. O you orphaned vulture with no meat 29. O you who sucked a shotgun to orgasm 30. Forgive me for raising your ghost so often 31. Forgive me for naming a bird after you 32. Forgive me for keeping a nude photo of you 33. We’ll all see God but not with our eyes

I want her so bad that I burn from the need to touch her, to worship her, to protect her. I’d give her everything I have if I thought she’d want or need what I can give her, which isn’t much compared to what she already has.

Fame is like a sequin-covered suit of armor that provides a holographic cover for actual me; most people, whether their opinion is positive or negative, are content to deal with the avatar, leaving me as tender as crabmeat within. Really, it’s an amplification of what happens if you’re not famous. I don’t imagine that we are often interacting on the pure frequency of essential nature; we usually have a preexisting set of conditions and coordinates that we project on to people we meet or circumstances we encounter. This is not just a psychological notion. Robert Lanza, in his concept-smashing book Biocentrism explains that our perception of all physical external phenomena is in fact an internal reconstruction, elaborating on the results of experiments in quantum physics, that particles behave differently when under observation—itself a universe-shattering piece of information—so that, and forgive my inelegant comprehension of the quantum world, electrons fired out of a tiny little cannon, when unobserved, make a pattern that reveals they have behaved as “a wave,” but when observed, the kinky little bastards behave as “particles.” That’s a bit fucking mad if you ask me. That’s like finding out that when you go out your dog stands up on its hind legs, lights a fag, and starts making phone calls. Or turns into a cloud. Lanza describes how our conception of a candle as a yellow flame burning on a wick is a kind of mentally constructed illusion. He says an unobserved candle would have no intrinsic “brightness” or “yellowness,” that these qualities require an interaction with consciousness. The bastard. A flame, he explains, is a hot gas. Like any light source, it emits photons, which are tiny packets of electromagnetic energy. Which means electrical and magnetic impulses. Lanza points out that we know from our simple, sexy everyday lives that electricity and magnetic energy have no visual properties. There is nothing inherently visual about a flame until the electromagnetic impulses—if measuring, between 400 and 700 nanometers in length from crest to crest—hit the cells in our retinas, at the back of the eye. This makes a complex matrix of neurons fire in our brains, and we subjectively perceive this as “yellow brightness” occurring in the external world. Other creatures would see gray. At most we can conclude, says Lanza, that there is a stream of electromagnetic energy that, if denied correlation with human consciousness, is impossible to conceptualize. So when Elton John said Marilyn Monroe lived her life “like a candle in the wind,” he was probably bloody right, and if he wasn’t we’ll never know. We apply reality from within. The world is our perception of the world. So what other people think of you, famous or not, is an independent construct taking place in their brain, and we shouldn’t worry too much about it.

Fame is like a sequin-covered suit of armor that provides a holographic cover for actual me; most people, whether their opinion is positive or negative, are content to deal with the avatar, leaving me as tender as crabmeat within. Really, it’s an amplification of what happens if you’re not famous. I don’t imagine that we are often interacting on the pure frequency of essential nature; we usually have a preexisting set of conditions and coordinates that we project on to people we meet or circumstances we encounter. This is not just a psychological notion. Robert Lanza, in his concept-smashing book Biocentrism explains that our perception of all physical external phenomena is in fact an internal reconstruction, elaborating on the results of experiments in quantum physics, that particles behave differently when under observation—itself a universe-shattering piece of information—so that, and forgive my inelegant comprehension of the quantum world, electrons fired out of a tiny little cannon, when unobserved, make a pattern that reveals they have behaved as “a wave,” but when observed, the kinky little bastards behave as “particles.” That’s a bit fucking mad if you ask me. That’s like finding out that when you go out your dog stands up on its hind legs, lights a fag, and starts making phone calls. Or turns into a cloud. Lanza describes how our conception of a candle as a yellow flame burning on a wick is a kind of mentally constructed illusion. He says an unobserved candle would have no intrinsic “brightness” or “yellowness,” that these qualities require an interaction with consciousness. The bastard. A flame, he explains, is a hot gas. Like any light source, it emits photons, which are tiny packets of electromagnetic energy. Which means electrical and magnetic impulses. Lanza points out that we know from our simple, sexy everyday lives that electricity and magnetic energy have no visual properties. There is nothing inherently visual about a flame until the electromagnetic impulses—if measuring, between 400 and 700 nanometers in length from crest to crest—hit the cells in our retinas, at the back of the eye. This makes a complex matrix of neurons fire in our brains, and we subjectively perceive this as “yellow brightness” occurring in the external world. Other creatures would see gray. At most we can conclude, says Lanza, that there is a stream of electromagnetic energy that, if denied correlation with human consciousness, is impossible to conceptualize.

In this little, wet, leaky hole, we were all quartered, in an atmosphere so bad that our lamp, which swung in the middle from the beams, sometimes actually burned blue, with a large circle of foul air about it.

Understanding how the climate system responds to human influences is, unfortunately, a lot like trying to understand the connection between human nutrition and weight loss, a subject famously unsettled to this day. Imagine an experiment where we fed someone an extra half cucumber each day. That would be about an extra twenty calories, a 1 percent increase to the average 2,000-calorie daily adult diet. We’d let that go on for a year and see how much weight they gained. Of course, we would need to know many other things to draw any meaningful conclusions from the results: What else did they eat? How much did they exercise? Were there any changes in health or hormones that affect the rate at which they burn calories? Many things would have to be measured precisely to understand the effect of the additional cucumbers, although we would expect that, all else being equal, the added calories would add some weight. The problem with human-caused carbon dioxide and the climate is that, as in the cucumber experiment, all else isn’t necessarily equal, as there are other influences (forcings) on the climate, both human and natural, that can confuse the picture. Among the other human influences on the climate are methane emissions into the atmosphere (from fossil fuels, but more importantly from agriculture) and other minor gases that together exert a warming influence almost as great as that of human-caused CO2.

To Jim, all of life’s horrors belong to him, to grind up and burn for his profit and pleasure, whether he’s personally experienced said horrors or not. A straight, cis, able-bodied white man is the only person on this planet who can travel almost anywhere (and, as the famous Louis CK bit goes, to almost any time in history), unless they’re literally dropping into a war zone, and feel fairly comfortable and safe (and, often, in charge). To the rest of us, horrors aren’t a thought experiment to be mined—they’re horrors.

still a blue-collar suburb, but after three decades of deunionization and stagnant wage growth, blue-collar suburbs like this one look and act very differently than before. Shawnee today burns hotter than nearly any place in the state to defund public education, to stamp out stem-cell research, to roll back taxes, and to abase itself before the throne of big business. The suburb is famous for having sent the most determined of the anti-evolutionists to the State Board of Education and for having chosen the most conservative of all Kansas state legislators,

At its core, town government is the closest government to the people and, accordingly, you truly get a flavor for the residents of the town by watching their best-and-brightest elected leaders reviewing rezoning applications peacefully during one meeting and cussing one another out at the next. Oftentimes, members conduct themselves just as professionally mundane as in any other form of government, but when they do flare up, it’s the sort of rocket launch that occasionally gets the cops and/or the courts involved, as I covered multiple times in Haymarket. (My favorite, of course, involved a town council member being found guilty of “using abusive language” following a dispute about what synonym for testicle he told the mayor to suck during a parade.) After all, nothing exemplifies former U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s famous observation that “All politics is local” like town government, especially with the more modern take that “All politics is personal.

Hours later, the King of Adarlan stood at the back of the dungeon chamber as his secret guards dragged Rena Goldsmith forward. The butcher’s block at the center of the room was already soaked with blood. Her companion’s headless corpse lay a few feet away, his blood trickling toward the drain in the floor. Perrington and Roland stood silent beside the king, watching, waiting. The guards shoved the singer to her knees before the stained stone. One of them grabbed a fistful of her red-gold hair and yanked, forcing her to look at the king as he stepped forward. “It is punishable by death to speak of or to encourage magic. It is an affront to the gods, and an affront to me that you sang such a song in my hall.” Rena Goldsmith just stared at him, her eyes bright. She hadn’t struggled when his men grabbed her after the performance or even screamed when they’d beheaded her companion. As if she’d been expecting this. “Any last words?” A queer, calm rage settled over her lined face, and she lifted her chin. “I have worked for ten years to become famous enough to gain an invitation to this castle. Ten years, so I could come here to sing the songs of magic that you tried to wipe out. So I could sing those songs, and you would know that we are still here—that you may outlaw magic, that you may slaughter thousands, but we who keep the old ways still remember.” Behind him, Roland snorted. “Enough,” the king said, and snapped his fingers. The guards shoved her head down on the block. “My daughter was sixteen,” she went on. Tears ran over the bridge of her nose and onto the block, but her voice remained strong and loud. “Sixteen, when you burned her. Her name was Kaleen, and she had eyes like thunderclouds. I still hear her voice in my dreams.” The king jerked his chin to the executioner, who stepped forward. “My sister was thirty-six. Her name was Liessa, and she had two boys who were her joy.” The executioner raised his ax. “My neighbor and his wife were seventy. Their names were Jon and Estrel. They were killed because they dared try to protect my daughter when your men came for her.” Rena Goldsmith was still reciting her list of the dead when the ax fell.