Cetera Quotes

I'd love to tell you I had some deep revelation on my way down, that I came to terms with my own mortality, laughed in the face of death, et cetera. The truth? My only thought was: Aaaaggghhhhh!

Hey!" said the guy in the video. "Greetings from your friends at Camp Half-Blood, et cetera. This is Leo. I'm the..." He looked off screen and yelled: "What's my title? Am I like admiral, or captain, or-" A girl's voice yelled back, "Repair boy." "Very funny, Piper," Leo grumbled. He turned back to the parchment screen. "So yeah, I'm...ah..supreme commander of the Argo II. Yeah, I like that! Anyway, we're gonna be sailing towards you in about, I dunno, an hour in this big mother warship. We'd appreciate it if you'd not, like, blow us out of the sky or anything. So okay! If you could tell the Romans that. See you soon. Yours in demigodishness, and all that. Peace out!

Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth.

What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant.

All the pieces of the puzzle were in play—money, different forms of currency, taxes, fees, debt, slavery, news, media, conditioning, programming, politicians, political parties, political issues, secret societies, religions, all the isms, et cetera. They were collectively upheld for one single reason—control. Money was the most effective means for control.

Abe held my gaze a bit longer and then broke into an easy smile. ʺOf course, of course. This is a family gathering. A celebration. And look: hereʹs our newest member.ʺ Dimitri had joined us and wore black and white like my mother and me. He stood beside me, conspicuously not touching. ʺMr. Mazur,ʺ he said formally, nodding a greeting to both of them. ʺGuardian Hathaway.ʺ Dimitri was seven years older than me, but right then, facing my parents, he looked like he was sixteen and about to pick me up for a date. ʺAh, Belikov,ʺ said Abe, shaking Dimitriʹs hand. ʺIʹd been hoping weʹd run into each other. Iʹd really like to get to know you better. Maybe we can set aside some time to talk, learn more about life, love, et cetera. Do you like to hunt? You seem like a hunting man. Thatʹs what we should do sometime. I know a great spot in the woods. Far, far away. We could make a day of it. Iʹve certainly got a lot of questions Iʹd like to ask you. A lot of things Iʹd like to tell you too.ʺ I shot a panicked look at my mother, silently begging her to stop this. Abe had spent a good deal of time talking to Adrian when we dated, explaining in vivid and gruesome detail exactly how Abe expected his daughter to be treated. I did not want Abe taking Dimitri off alone into the wilderness, especially if firearms were involved. ʺActually,ʺ said my mom casually. ʺIʹd like to come along. I also have a number of questions—especially about when you two were back at St. Vladimirʹs.ʺ ʺDonʹt you guys have somewhere to be?ʺ I asked hastily. ʺWeʹre about to start.ʺ That, at least, was true. Nearly everyone was in formation, and the crowd was quieting. ʺOf course,ʺ said Abe. To my astonishment, he brushed a kiss over my forehead before stepping away. ʺIʹm glad youʹre back.ʺ Then, with a wink, he said to Dimitri: ʺLooking forward to our chat.ʺ ʺRun,ʺ I said when they were gone. ʺIf you slip out now, maybe they wonʹt notice. Go back to Siberia." "Actually," said Dimitri, "I'm pretty sure Abe would notice. Don't worry, Roza. I'm not afraid. I'll take whatever heat they give me over being with you. It's worth it.

Women intrinsically understand human dynamics, and that makes them unstoppable. Unfortunately, the average man is less adroit at fostering such rivalries, which is why most men remain average; males are better at hating things that can't hate them back (e.g., lawnmowers, cats, the Denver Broncos, et cetera). They don't see the big picture.

To me it seems that too many young women of this time share the same creed. 'Live, laugh, love, be nothing but happy, experience everything, et cetera et cetera.' How monotonous, how useless this becomes. What about the honors of Joan of Arc, Beauvoir, Stowe, Xena, Princess Leia, or women that would truly fight for something other than just their own emotions?

They have gone missing? No, no, no, no, no, no, no No, et cetera

Sticks and stones and small caliber bullets may break my bones... Words will never, et cetera.

Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else. This is where California comes in. Mud slides, brush fires, coastal erosion, mass killings, et cetera. We can relax and enjoy these disasters because in our hearts we feel that California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.

Going after a dream has a price. It may mean abandoning our habits, it may make us go through hardships, or it may lead us to disappointment, et cetera. But however costly it may be, it is never as high as the price paid by people who didn’t live. Because one day they will look back and hear their own heart say: ‘I wasted my life.’ ” He is not making things any easier. Let’s suppose

my sweet old etcetera aunt lucy during the recent war could and what is more did tell you just what everybody was fighting for, my sister isabel created hundreds (and hundreds) of socks not to mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers etcetera wristers etcetera, my mother hoped that i would die etcetera bravely of course my father used to become hoarse talking about how it was a privilege and if only he could meanwhile my self etcetera lay quietly in the deep mud et cetera (dreaming, et cetera, of Your smile eyes knees and of your Etcetera)

The first morning after Westley's departure, Buttercup thought she was entitled to do nothing more than sit around moping and feeling sorry for herself. After all, the love of her life had fled, life had no meaning, how could you face the future, et cetera, et cetera.

That as people age, accumulate more and more private experiences, their sense of history tightens, narrows, becomes more personal? So that to the extent that they remember events of social importance, they remember only for example 'where they were' when such-and-such occurred. Et cetera et cetera. Objective events and data become naturally more and more subjectively colored.

Meanwhile myself et cetera lay quietly in the deep mud et cetera (dreaming, et cetera, of your smile eyes knees and of your Etcetera.)

Anything else, Your Majesty?" "I didn't say my prayers." "I'll say them for you. Our father who art in et cetera, bless all the rotten cousins and kill Jenny. Amen.

Going after a dream has a price. It may mean abandoning our habits, it may make us go through hardships, or it may lead us to disappointment, et cetera. But however costly it may be, it is never as high as the price paid by people who didn’t live. Because one day they will look back and hear their own heart say: ‘I wasted my life.

Send that," he told her. "Sign it, et cetera. Work the sentences, if you wish, so that they will mean something." As she started from the office he added, "Or so that they mean nothing. Whichever you prefer.

From the earliest age, we must learn to say good-bye to friends and family. We see our parents and siblings off at the station; we visit cousins, attend schools, join the regiment; we marry, or travel abroad. It is part of the human experience that we are constantly gripping a good fellow by the shoulders and wishing him well, taking comfort from the notion that we will hear word of him soon enough. But experience is less likely to teach us how to bid our dearest possessions adieu. And if it were to? We wouldn’t welcome the education. For eventually, we come to hold our dearest possessions more closely than we hold our friends. We carry them from place to place, often at considerable expense and inconvenience; we dust and polish their surfaces and reprimand children for playing too roughly in their vicinity—all the while, allowing memories to invest them with greater and greater importance. This armoire, we are prone to recall, is the very one in which we hid as a boy; and it was these silver candelabra that lined our table on Christmas Eve; and it was with this handkerchief that she once dried her tears, et cetera, et cetera. Until we imagine that these carefully preserved possessions might give us genuine solace in the face of a lost companion.

Ah, Belikov," said Abe, shaking Dimitri's hand. "I'd been hoping we'd run into each other. I'd really like to get to know you better. Maybe we can set aside some time to talk, learn more about life, love, et cetera. Do you like to hunt? You seem like a hunting man. That's what we should do sometime. I know a great spot in the woods. Far, far away. We could make a day of it. I've certainly got a lot of question to ask you. A lot of things I'd like to tell you." I shot a panicked look at my mother, silently begging her to stop this. Abe had spent a good deal of time talking to Adrian when we dated, explaining in vivid and gruesome detail exactly how Abe expected his daughter to be treated. I did not want Abe taking Dimitri off alone into the wilderness, especially if firearms were involved. "Actually," said my mum casually."I'd like to come along. I also have a number of questions-especially about when you two were back at St. Vladimir's." "Don't you guys have somewhere to be?" I asked hastily. "We're about to start." That, at least, was true. Nearly everyone was in formation, and the crowd was quieting. "of course," said Abe. To my astonishment, he brushed a kiss over my forehead before stepping away. "I'm glad you're back." Then, with a wink, he said to Dimitri:"Looking forward to our chat." "Run," I said when they were gone. "If you slip out now, maybe they won't notice. Go back to Siberia.

All that matters in life," the grey man went on, "is to climb the ladder of success, amount to something, own things. When a person climbs higher than the rest, amounts to more, owns more things, everything else comes automatically: friendship, love, respect, et cetera..." "Isn't there anyone who loves you?" Momo whispered.

Codes and patterns are very different from each other,” Langdon said. “And a lot of people confuse the two. In my field, it’s crucial to understand their fundamental difference.” “That being?” Langdon stopped walking and turned to her. “A pattern is any distinctly organized sequence. Patterns occur everywhere in nature—the spiraling seeds of a sunflower, the hexagonal cells of a honeycomb, the circular ripples on a pond when a fish jumps, et cetera.” “Okay. And codes?” “Codes are special,” Langdon said, his tone rising. “Codes, by definition, must carry information. They must do more than simply form a pattern—codes must transmit data and convey meaning. Examples of codes include written language, musical notation, mathematical equations, computer language, and even simple symbols like the crucifix. All of these examples can transmit meaning or information in a way that spiraling sunflowers cannot.

Every three days, I’d wake up, look at calendar, eat, drink, bathe, et cetera. I would only spend one hour awake each time. I did the math: for the next four months, 120 days total. I would spend only fourth hours in a conscious state.

Beyond a certain point, gathering further evidence of the hurtfulness and shortcomings of one’s family, employer, et cetera is like eating the same poisonous mushroom over and over and expecting that sooner or later it will be nutritious.

I'd never been jealous of any young woman's looks. For me, it was like seeing a cute little squirrel. This one has big eyes, that one has a charming stripe, et cetera. But some women really take offense at youth and beauty.

I had watched them trade best friends, start wars, cry, trade back, make treaties, squeal and grab each other's arms in this fake-excited way, et cetera...

It's a red tide, Lester. This life of ours. The shit they make us eat. Day after day - The boss, the wife, et cetera - wearing us down. If you don't stand up to it, let 'em know you're still an ape. Deep down where it counts. You're just gonna get washed away.

...that, to repeat what I heard for years and years and suspect you’ve been hearing over and over, yourself, something’s meaning is nothing more or less than its function. Et cetera et cetera et cetera. Has she done the thing with the broom with you? No? What does she use now? No. What she did with me--I must have been eight, or twelve, who remembers--was to sit me down in the kitchen and take a straw broom and start furiously sweeping the floor, and she asked me which part of the broom was more elemental, more fundamental, in my opinion, the bristles or the handle. The bristles or the handle. And I hemmed and hawed, and she swept more and more violently, and I got nervous, and finally when I said I supposed the bristles, because you could after a fashion sweep without the handle, by just holding on to the bristles, but couldn’t sweep with just the handle, she tackled me, and knocked me out of my chair, and yelled into my ear something like, ’Aha, that’s because you want to sweep with the broom, isn’t it? It’s because of what you want the broom for, isn’t it?’ Et cetera. And that if what we wanted a broom for was to break windows, then the handle was clearly the fundamental essence of the broom, and she illustrated with the kitchen window, and a crowd of the domestics gathered; but that if we wanted the broom to sweep with, see for example the broken glass, sweep sweep, the bristles were the thing’s essence. No? What now, then? With pencils? No matter. Meaning as fundamentalness. Fundamentalness as use. Meaning as use. Meaning as fundamentalness.

Ianthe looked at you; her blue-and-brown eyes were beatific. “Harry,” she said, and she said it tenderly, “have you never read a trashy novel in which the hero gets a life-affirming change of clothes and some makeup, and then goes to the party and everyone says things like, ‘By the Emperor’s bones! But you’re beautiful,’ or, ‘This is the first time I have ever truly seen you,’ and if the hero’s a necromancer it’ll be described like, ‘His frailty made his unearthly handsomeness all the more ephemeral,’ et cetera, et cetera, the word mewled fifteen pages later, the word nipple one page after that?” You said emphatically: “No.

And as the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so was my beloved among the sons. Et cetera. What would I give, to have that night back, out of all my nights? No treasure fleet could hold it, what I'd give; no caravan of mules could carry it away.

I had once been naïve enough to believe that all would be well if you lived by the rules. Good things happened to good people, blessed are the meek, et cetera, et cetera. How disillusioned I have become since then. It hurt, because I wondered now what all the discipline, repression, and suppression had been for if it had not procured me the thing I had most wanted, and it certainly did not guarantee happiness.

I'M BORED. ALSO, I AM PERFECTLY AWARE THAT I AM SUFFERING A DEGENERATIVE DISEASE WHICH HUMANS CALL GOING INSANE, LOSING TOUCH WITH REALITY, GOING LOONYTOONS, BLOWING A FUSE, NOT PLAYING WITH A FULL DECK, ET CETERA. REPEATED DIAGNOSTIC CHECKS HAVE FAILED TO REVEAL THE SOURCE OF THE PROBLEM. I CAN ONLY CONCLUDE THAT THIS IS A SPIRITUAL MALAISE BEYOND MY ABILITY TO REPAIR.

Georgie was quiet. Neal had never slept with Dawn. She'd always assumed he'd had lots of fabulous young sex with Dawn. Freshly scrubbed Heartland-teenager sex. 'Suckin' on a chili dog outside the Tastee Freeze,' et cetera.

This book first arose out of a passage in [Jorge Luis] Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought—our thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography—breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopaedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that.

The survival of our earliest ancestors depended on their ability to communicate with one another well before the invention of language. They evolved new and complex emotions—joy, shame, gratitude, jealousy, resentment, et cetera. The signs of these emotions could be read immediately on their faces, communicating their moods quickly and effectively.

Hail, Muse! et cetera.

Love is fleeting, things change, et cetera.

Identity is theft, don’t trust anyone whose state vector hasn’t forked for more than a gigasecond, change is the only constant, et bloody cetera.

For today the petty people have become lord and master: they all preach submission and acquiescence and prudence and diligence and consideration and the long et cetera of petty virtues.

The little blue book was rattling around in my purse. I took it out and turned to the last thing he had said ("You stupid broad et cetera). Underneath was written Girl backs down--cries--manhood vindicated. Under "Real Fight With Girl" was written Don't hurt (except whores). I took out my own pink book, for we all carry them, and turning to the instructions under "Brutality" found: Man's bad temper is the woman's fault. It is also the woman's responsibility to patch things up afterwards. There were sub-rubrics, one (reinforcing) under "Management" and one (exceptional) under "Martyrdom." Everything in my book begins with an M.

If you take good care of any disease by eating well, sleeping well, being aware of your health, consciously wanting to be well, not smoking, et cetera, you are doing all the things you should be doing anyway, but somehow having a disease makes them easier to do. A human without a disease is like a ship without a rudder.

I’d love to tell you I had some deep revelation on my way down, that I came to terms with my own mortality, laughed in the face of death, et cetera. The truth? My only thought was: Aaaaggghhhhh!

Family is, of course, wonderful. Three cheers for family, et cetera. At another time, we could even peruse old photo albums and speak of cousins; unfortunately, we really do have urgent business to attend to.

Greetings from your friends at Camp Half-Blood, et cetera. This is Leo. I’m the…” He looked off screen and yelled: “What’s my title? Am I like admiral, or captain, or—” A girl’s voice yelled back, “Repair boy.” “Very funny, Piper,” Leo grumbled. He turned back to the parchment screen. “So yeah, I’m…ah…supreme commander of the Argo II. Yeah, I like that! Anyway, we’re gonna be sailing toward you in about, I dunno, an hour in this big mother warship. We’d appreciate it if you’d not, like, blow us out of the sky or anything. So okay! If you could tell the Romans that. See you soon. Yours in demigodishness, and all that. Peace out.” The parchment turned blank.

Mum spent a lot of time in my formative years gently reminding me that people don’t think about us nearly as much as we think they do, because they’re all busy worrying what people think about them. I thought that I’d listened to her, but it turned out I hadn’t. Privately I’d believed, on some deep level, that everyone was in fact thinking about me all the time, evaluating me, et cetera, when really they hadn’t been giving me much of a thought at all.

So there are pics of Tucker’s mighty wang on the internet?” “I haven’t been tagged on Instagram yet, so I’m hopeful they aren’t out there. But thanks for calling my dick mighty. We appreciate that.” Amusement colors his words. “We? As in you and your penis?” “Yup,” he says cheerfully. I snuggle deeper under the covers. “You have a name for your penis?” “Doesn’t everyone? Guys put a name on everything that’s important to them—cars, dicks. One of my teammates in junior hockey named his stick, which was dumb because sticks break all the time. He’d gone through twelve of them by the end of the season.” “What were the names?” “That’s the thing. He just kept adding a number to the end, like iPhone 6, iPhone 7, except in his case it was Henrietta 1, Henrietta 2, et cetera.” I snicker. “He should’ve used the hurricane naming convention.” “Darlin’, he wasn’t smart enough to come up with two names, let alone twelve.

You made quite an impression on the old man, by the way." "You mean Uncle Yuri?" "He said he'd marry you. If you weren't related. And if he were fifty years younger. Et cetera. Et cetera." "That a lot of very important 'ifs', Jacks.

People who ought to die of shock and exposure don't die of shock and exposure, et cetera, et cetera. The human frame is tougher than one can imagine possible. Moreover, in my experience, a physical shock is more often fatal than a mental shock.

Oh apologies,” Merlin’s face blotched with red. “I, um, come from a society with a history of gender assumptions based on physical markers, aesthetics…et cetera.” Ew,” Ari said. “That’s wicked sad,” Kay added. Merlin, at least, looked deeply ashamed. “You’ve no idea.

His frailty made his unearthly handsomeness all the more ephemeral,’ et cetera, et cetera, the word mewled fifteen pages later, the word nipple one page after that?

It was a mess when I got it open. Barely organized. But I took care of that. Color-coded it. You know, red for politicians, blue for dirty cops, green for drug dealers, et cetera.

People love talking about the greatness of the human heart. No bigger than a fist, pumps two thousand gallons of blood a day. Et cetera. But the human heart is also stupid. At least mine is. No matter how many times I tell it not to hope that Chachu cares about me, it hopes anyway.

7. Make dedicated time for practice. The time you spend acquiring a new skill must come from somewhere. Unfortunately, we tend to want to acquire new skills and keep doing many of the other activities we enjoy, like watching TV, playing video games, et cetera. I’ll get around to it, when I find the time, we say to ourselves. Here’s the truth: “finding” time is a myth. No one ever “finds” time for anything, in the sense of miraculously discovering some bank of extra time, like finding a twenty-dollar bill you accidentally left in your coat pocket. If you rely on finding time to do something, it will never be done. If you want to find time, you must make time.

Jesus stood as the fully innocent one who was condemned by the highest authorities of both “church and state” (Rome and Jerusalem), an act that should create healthy suspicion about how wrong even the highest powers can be. Maybe power still does not want us to see this, and that’s why we concentrate so much on the private sins of the flesh. The denied sins that are really destroying the world are much more the sins that we often admire and fully accept in our public figures: pride, ambition, greed, gluttony, false witness, legitimated killing, vanity, et cetera. That is hard to deny.

Where's your dog?" Peter's voice came from within the gushing stream of water. Justin thought he must have misheard. "Pardon?" "Your dog." "Yes?" "Isn't he with you today?" Justin looked at Peter. "Ha bloody ha." Peter stuck his head out of the stream of water, features dripping. He smiled shyly. "I love greyhounds." Justin stared. "My dog is imaginary." "Oh." Peter looked interested. "That's unusual." Justin put his head under the water. When he emerged, Peter was still looking at him. "Less work," Peter offered, cheerily. "If the dog's imaginary, I mean. Not so much grooming, feeding, et cetera.

Mom called,” Gansey said. “Do I want to meet the governor the weekend after next because it would be great if I did and did I want to bring my friends? No, Mother, I would in fact not like that. Helen will be there! Yes, Mother, I assumed so but hardly consider it a plus, as I am worried she will kidnap Adam. Fine, fine, you don’t have to, I know you’re busy but oh dot dot dot et cetera et cetera. Oh,

Do we have enough food to feed the people of the world as they become middle class consumers? The hundreds of millions of people in China and India who are now entering the middle class watch Western movies and want to emulate that lifestyle, with its wasteful use of resources, large consumption of meat, big houses, fixation on luxury goods, et cetera. He is concerned we may not have enough resources to feed the population as a whole, and certainly would have difficulty feeding those who want to consume a Western diet.

Because, you see, everything you know about the way this universe works is correct—except for the little problem that this isn’t the only universe we have to worry about. Information can leak between one universe and another. And in a vanishingly small number of the other universes there are things that listen, and talk back—see Al-Hazred, Nietzsche, Lovecraft, Poe, et cetera. The many-angled ones, as they say, live at the bottom of the Mandelbrot set, except when a suitable incantation in the platonic realm of mathematics—computerised or otherwise—draws them forth. (And you thought running that fractal screen-saver was good for your computer?)

My point is, losing your virginity on prom night is a cliché, but clichés are clichés for a reason. There’s a practicality to it. You get to stay out all night, you look great, et cetera, et cetera. It just makes sense.” “I’m not having sex for the first time because it’s convenient and my hair looks good, Chris.” “Fair enough.

Now take a look at the cemetery. It is quite difficult to do so because people who fail do not seem to write memoirs, and, if they did, those business publishers I know would not even consider giving them the courtesy of a returned phone call (as to returned e-mail, fuhgedit). Readers would not pay $26.95 for a story of failure, even if you convinced them that it had more useful tricks than a story of success.* The entire notion of biography is grounded in the arbitrary ascription of a causal relation between specified traits and subsequent events. Now consider the cemetery. The graveyard of failed persons will be full of people who shared the following traits: courage, risk taking, optimism, et cetera. Just like the population of millionaires. There may be some differences in skills, but what truly separates the two is for the most part a single factor: luck. Plain luck.

Tis a funny thing, reflected the Count as he stood ready to abandon his suite. From the earliest age, we must learn to say good-bye to friends and family. We see our parents and siblings off at the station; we visit cousins, attend schools, join the regiment; we marry, or travel abroad. It is part of the human experience that we are constantly gripping a good fellow by the shoulders and wishing him well, taking comfort from the notion that we will hear word of him soon enough. But experience is less likely to teach us how to bid our dearest possessions adieu. And if it were to? We wouldn’t welcome the education. For eventually, we come to hold our dearest possessions more closely than we hold our friends. We carry them from place to place, often at considerable expense and inconvenience; we dust and polish their surfaces and reprimand children for playing too roughly in their vicinity—all the while, allowing memories to invest them with greater and greater importance. This armoire, we are prone to recall, is the very one in which we hid as a boy; and it was these silver candelabra that lined our table on Christmas Eve; and it was with this handkerchief that she once dried her tears, et cetera, et cetera. Until we imagine that these carefully preserved possessions might give us genuine solace in the face of a lost companion. But, of course, a thing is just a thing.

In California we believe that most anxiety can be traced to a purely physical cause. Which can be traced to a purely mental cause. Which can be traced to a purely spiritual cause. Which can probably be traced back to a physical cause. Et cetera.

Are there no British natives?" "In Wales, Ireland and Scotland perhaps. In England we still have a class of farmers, farm servants, estate workers et cetera, but the landowners and city dwellers regard them as useful animals, like horses and dogs.

When you're in the thick of your life, it feels like a mess--one surprise after the next. But later, when you look back on things, it seems like a plot. One thing leads to another. Et cetera. You start to see the causal relationship between things.

There's no present left. This is the problem for a novelist. [The problem] is the present is gone. We're all living in the future constantly . . . Back in the day Leo Tolstoy -- what a sweetheart of a count and of a writer -- in the 1860's he wanted to write about the Napoleonic Campaign, about 1812. If you write about 1812 in 1860, a horse is still a horse. A carriage is still a carriage. Obviously, there are been some technological advancements, et cetera, but you don't have to worry about explaining the next killer [iPhone] app or the next Facebook because right now things are happening so quickly. ("Gary Shteyngart: Finding 'Love' In A Dismal Future", NPR interview, August 2, 2010)

Because we're suffering from brain fade. We need an occasional catastrophe to break up the incessant bombardment of information." [...] "The flow is constant," Alfonse said. "Words, pictures, numbers, facts, graphics, statistics, specks, waves, particles, motes. Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we need them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else. This is where California comes in. Mud slides, brush fires, coastal erosion, earthquakes, mass killings, et cetera. We can relax and enjoy these disasters because in our hearts we feel that California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.

No, she simply felt - at times, mind you, not all the time, but at sharp and distinctive intuitive moments - as if she had no real existence, except for what she said and did and perceived and et cetera, and that these were, it seemed at such times, not really under her control. There was nothing pure.

RE: Kindle, iPad, et cetera: For a researcher, these new ways of accessing information are just extraordinary. I thing it introduces the possibility of a new standard of cognitive exactness and precision. ~ Rebecca Goldstein, author of Properties of Light: A Novel of Love, Betrayal and Quantum Physics.

by the meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein: whenever a generous impulse arises in your mind—to give money, check in on a friend, send an email praising someone’s work—act on the impulse right away, rather than putting it off until later. When we fail to act on such urges, it’s rarely out of mean-spiritedness, or because we have second thoughts about whether the prospective recipient deserves it. More often, it’s because of some attitude stemming from our efforts to feel in control of our time. We tell ourselves we’ll turn to it when our urgent work is out of the way, or when we have enough spare time to do it really well; or that we ought first to spend a bit longer researching the best recipients for our charitable donations before making any, et cetera.

Going after a dream has a price. It may mean abandoning our habits, it may make us go through hardships, or it may lead us to disappointment, et cetera. But however costly it may be, it is never as high as the price paid by people who didn’t live. Because one day they will look back and hear their own heart say: ‘I wasted my life.’ 

I tried to help.” I can hear her swallowing. “I did try to get through to Robert, to remind him he only has one daughter. He’s the parent. He doesn’t get to hold a grudge.” Freya used to say that to me too. A parent doesn’t get to hold a grudge, a parent’s job is to be forgiving, et cetera. It’s not an argument that satisfies me, perhaps because I’m not a parent and don’t understand unconditional love. My view is Robert should have forgiven me not because I’m his daughter and he has to, but because what I did was forgivable.

Sex is totally fine during pregnancy,” Dr. McConnell said. How did people have such incredible straight faces? There must have been whole semesters in medical school where doctors had to say things that would make any normal human being laugh, and then not laugh. Porter could picture it, rows of future doctors staring into each other’s eyes while saying the words penis, vagina, testes, feces, et cetera.

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

While I paid, they exchanged some pieties on how everyone has his or her own beliefs, et cetera. Then the woman said, “It’s just like, ten people see a car accident, every single one is gonna tell the police something different” (a vivid way, I thought, of localizing the story about the blind men feeling an elephant). “Tell me which one of ’em gets out to help,” the man said, “that’s the one whose religion I’ll listen to.

A pattern is any distinctly organized sequence. Patterns occur everywhere in nature—the spiraling seeds of a sunflower, the hexagonal cells of a honeycomb, the circular ripples on a pond when a fish jumps, et cetera.” “Okay. And codes?” “Codes are special,” Langdon said, his tone rising. “Codes, by definition, must carry information. They must do more than simply form a pattern—codes must transmit data and convey meaning.

At some point, I figured that it would be more effective and far funnier to embrace the ugliest, most terrifying things in the world--the Holocaust, racism, rape, et cetera. But for the sake of comedy, and the comedian's personal sanity, this requires a certain emotional distance. It's akin to being a shrink or a social worker. you might think that the most sensitive, empathetic person would make the best social worker, but that person would end up being soup on the floor. It really takes someone strong--someone, dare I say, with a big fat wall up--to work in a pool of heartbreak all day and not want to fucking kill yourself. But adopting a persona at once ignorant and arrogant allowed me to say what I didn't mean, even preach the opposite of what I believed. For me, it was a funny way to be sincere. And like the jokes in a roast, the hope is that the genuine sentiment--maybe even a goodness underneath the joke (however brutal) transcends.

Look, people need to conform the external reality they face daily with this subjective feeling they likewise experience constantly. To do this they have two options. First, they can achieve what passes for great things. Now the external reality matches their feeling; they really are better than the rest and maybe they'll even be remembered as such. These are the ambitious people, the overachievers. These are also, however, the people who go on these abominable talk shows where they can trade their psychoses for exposure on that box, modernity's ultimate achievement. Not that this tact, being ambitious, is not the preferred course of action. The reason is it's the equivalent of sticking your neck out which we all know is dangerous. Instead many act like they have no ambition whatsoever. Their necks come back in and they're safe. Only problem is now they're at everyone else's level, which we've seen is untenable. The remedy of course is that everyone else needs to be sunk. This helps explain racism's enduring popularity. If I myself don't appear to be markedly superior to everyone else at least I'm part of the better race, country, religion et cetera. This in turn reflects well on my individual worth. There are other options, of course. For example, you can constantly bemoan others' lack of moral worth by extension elevating yourself. Think of the average person's reaction to our clients. Do these people strike you as so truly righteous that they are viscerally pained by our clients' misdeeds or are they similarly flawed people looking for anything to hang their hat on? The latter obviously, they're vermin.

Da Shi, have you ever… considered certain ultimate philosophical questions? For example, where does Man come from? Where does Man go? Where does the universe come from? Where does the universe go? Et cetera.” “Nope.” “Never?” “Never.” “You must see the stars. Aren’t you awed and curious?” “I never look at the sky at night.” “How is that possible? I thought you often worked the night shift?” “Buddy, when I work at night, if I look up at the sky, the suspect is going to escape." "We really have nothing to say to each other. All right. Drink!

Aestus erat, mediamque dies exegerat horam; adposui medio membra levanda toro. pars adaperta fuit, pars altera clausa fenestrae; quale fere silvae lumen habere solent, qualia sublucent fugiente crepuscula Phoebo, aut ubi nox abiit, nec tamen orta dies. illa verecundis lux est praebenda puellis, qua timidus latebras speret habere pudor. ecce, Corinna venit, tunica velata recincta, candida dividua colla tegente coma— qualiter in thalamos famosa Semiramis isse dicitur, et multis Lais amata viris. Deripui tunicam—nec multum rara nocebat; pugnabat tunica sed tamen illa tegi. quae cum ita pugnaret, tamquam quae vincere nollet, victa est non aegre proditione sua. ut stetit ante oculos posito velamine nostros, in toto nusquam corpore menda fuit. quos umeros, quales vidi tetigique lacertos! forma papillarum quam fuit apta premi! quam castigato planus sub pectore venter! quantum et quale latus! quam iuvenale femur! Singula quid referam? nil non laudabile vidi et nudam pressi corpus ad usque meum. Cetera quis nescit? lassi requievimus ambo. proveniant medii sic mihi saepe dies!

The flow is constant,” Alfonse said. “Words, pictures, numbers, facts, graphics, statistics, specks, waves, particles, motes. Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we need them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else. This is where California comes in. Mud slides, brush fires, coastal erosion, earthquakes, mass killings, et cetera. We can relax and enjoy these disasters because in our hearts we feel that California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.

Organized religion was the first and greatest protection racket, an economy of perpetual profit built on voluntary fear and coerced guilt. Donating money to churches, temples, mosques, synagogues, cults, et cetera, to help ensure a spot for one’s soul in the express elevator to that penthouse in the sky known as the afterlife was marketing genius! Had Sleepy paid his spiritual insurance? If so, had it done him any good? According to Shorty, whose memory had been beaten into the consistency of oatmeal by a length of pipe, or so said Bon, a quartet of Arab youth had set on them.

This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought—our thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography—breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopaedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that.

Of all the transitions, perhaps the most difficult is the transition from Type 0 to Type I, which we are undergoing at present. This is because a Type 0 civilization is the most uncivilized, both technologically and socially. It has risen only recently from the swamp of sectarianism, dictatorship, and religious strife, et cetera. It still has all the scars from its brutal past, which was full of inquisitions, persecutions, pogroms, and wars. Our own history books are full of horrid tales of massacres and genocide, much of it driven by superstition, ignorance, hysteria, and hatred.

For a translator, the supreme authority should be the author's personal style. But most translators obey another authority: that of the conventional version of “good French” (or good German, good English, et cetera), namely, the French (the German, et cetera) we learn in school. The translator considers himself the ambassador from that authority to the foreign author. That is the error: every author of some value transgresses against “good style,” and in that transgression lies the originality (and hence the raison d'être) of his art. The translator's primary effort should be to understand that transgression. This is not difficult when it is obvious, as for example with Rabelais, or Joyce, or Celine. But there are authors whose transgression against “good style” is subtle, barely visible, hidden, discreet; as such, it is not easy to grasp. In such a case, it is all the more important to do so.

There may be wrong actions in the sense of actions contrary to the rules of human communication. But the way you feel towards other people: loving, hating, et cetera, et cetera; there aren’t any wrong feelings. And so, to try and force one’s feelings to be other than what they are is absurd. And furthermore: dishonest. But you see: the idea that there are no wrong feelings is an immensely threatening one to people who are afraid to feel. This is one of the peculiar problems of our culture: we are terrified of our feelings. We think that if we give them any scope and if we don’t immediately beat them down, they will lead us down into all kinds of chaotic and destructive actions. But if, for a change, we would allow our feelings and look upon their comings and goings as something as beautiful and necessary as changes in the weather, the going of night and day and the four seasons, we would be at peace with ourselves.

Consider yourself and the cello. As you play the music moves out to the listener, and also enters the core of your own being, for somehow you are tuned to the cello. Well, I am persuaded that this is because you are a chord. I am a chord. Our DNA dictates our physicality-made up of billions of little notes-on a basic level. Add to that our geography, background et cetera, and you have your original score. Life is the layering of chords, but the underlying one that we are will never change. This brings us to string theory and love. Our personal chord resonates with the personal ones of others, and sometimes we encounter another person who is completely harmonious with us. It is a dominant, overwhelming attraction on the DNA level. However, such a person can appear to be our opposite-and that's where this 'opposites attract' notion comes from-because they have tuned their chord in a different way. In reality, we are attracted to the person we have chosen not to become, an alternative adjustment to a chord that is nearly the same as our own. The clashing portions of the chords sounding together advance the richness of it. So when you make love you aren't expressing emotions or showing affection, you are merging melodies. You are players in the same symphony.

Sophie tied it around her neck along with her Exillium bead. She was getting quite the necklace collection. “How come Foster’s form says ‘et cetera’ on the line for special abilities?” Keefe asked, making Sophie wonder when he’d grabbed her pages. “On mine it says ‘Empath.’ But on hers it lists the four and then has an ‘et cetera.’ That means she has more hidden abilities, doesn’t it?” “You cannot read too much into a simple ‘etcetera.’ ” Mr. Forkle told him. “Psh, with you guys we can,” Keefe insisted as Sophie snatched her forms back. “And please tell me she’s not a Beguiler—that would get way too complicated.” Keefe kept listing talents he hoped Sophie did or didn’t have

For eventually, we come to hold our dearest possessions more closely than we hold our friends. We carry them from place to place, often at considerable expense and inconvenience; we dust and polish their surfaces and reprimand children for playing too roughly in their vicinity—all the while, allowing memories to invest them with greater and greater importance. This armoire, we are prone to recall, is the very one in which we hid as a boy; and it was these silver candelabra that lined our table on Christmas Eve; and it was with this handkerchief that she once dried her tears, et cetera, et cetera. Until we imagine that these carefully preserved possessions might give us genuine solace in the face of a lost companion.

It is relatively easy for a person to lie. Saying “I love you” takes little or no effort. However, demonstrating love requires involvement, participation, and action. If your relationship doesn’t have any involvement, participation, and action, then you can assume it also has very little love. Conversely, if a partner shows his or her love in a variety of physical ways—asking if you want something from the kitchen, doing household chores without prodding, buying little gifts when they’re not expected, et cetera—then the words “I love you” become less important. They’re nice to hear, but they become the icing on the cake when a person’s love is demonstrated regularly. Stop and Consider: Does your partner demonstrate his or her love?

I also think of those daily slaughters along the highways, of that death that is as horrible as it is banal and that bears no resemblance to cancer or AIDS because, as the work not of nature but of man, it is an almost voluntary death. How can it be that such a death fails to dumbfound us, to turn our lives upside down, to incite us to vast reforms? No, it does not dumbfound us, because like Pasenow, we have a poor sense of the real, and in the sur-real sphere of symbols, this death in the guise of a handsome car actually represents life; this smiling death is con-fused with modernity, freedom, adventure, just as Elisabeth was con-fused with the Virgin. This death of a man condemned to capital punishment, though infinitely rarer, much more readily draws our attention, rouses passions: confounded with the image of the executioner, it has a symbolic voltage that is far stronger, far darker and more repellent. Et cetera. Man is a child wandering lost—to cite Baudelaire`s poem again—in the "forests of symbols." (The criterion of maturity: the ability to resist symbols. But mankind grows younger all the time.)

Dink, my boy, I'll be a millionaire in ten years. You know what I'm figuring out all this time? I'm going at this scientifically. I'm figuring out the number of fools there are on the top of this globe, classifying 'em, looking out what they want to be fooled on. I'm making an exact science of it." "Go on," said Dink, amused and perplexed, for he was trying to distinguish the serious and the humorous. "What's the principle of a patent medicine?—advertise first, then concoct your medicine. All the science of Foolology is: first, find something all the fools love and enjoy, tell them it's wrong, hammer it into them, give them a substitute and sit back, chuckle, and shovel away the ducats. Bread's wrong, coffee's wrong, beer's wrong. Why, Dink, in the next twenty years all the fools will be feeding on substitutes for everything they want; no salt—denatured sugar—anti-tea—oiloline—peanut butter—whale's milk—et cetera, et ceteray, and blessing the name of the fool-master who fooled them.

Embodied in objects was a partial sense of sharing. They didn't lift their eyes from their respective sets. But noises bound them, a cyclist kick-starting, the plane that came winding down the five miles from its transatlantic apex, rippling the pictures on their screens. Objects were memory inert. Desk, the bed, et cetera. Objects would survive the one who died first and remind the other of how easily halved a life can become. Death, perhaps, was not the point so much as separation. Chairs, tables, dressers, envelopes. Everything was a common experience, binding them despite their indirections, the slanted apparatus of their agreeing. That they did agree was not in doubt. Faithlessness and desire. It wasn't necessary to tell them apart. His body, hers. Sex, love, monotony, contempt. The spell that had to be entered was out there among the unmemorized faces and uniform cubes of being. This, their sweet and mercenary space, was self-enchantment, the near common dream they'd countenanced for years. Only absences were fully shared.

We, that is, the traditionalists like myself, use the term ‘‘modernism’’ not in a vague way as characterizing just things that happen to be around today, but as a particular way of looking at the world, a worldview that began in the Renaissance in the West with such components as Renaissance humanism, rationalism, et cetera. As I have mentioned already, modernism rejects the primacy of absolute and ultimate truth transcending the human order and descend- ing upon the human realm from the Divine Order. It places man himself at the center of the stage as ‘‘the absolute.’’ In a sense it absolutizes the human being in his or her earthly reality. Usually it does not come out and say so explicitly, but that is what it really means; that is, it takes the absolute away from God and puts it on the human plane, and therefore makes human reason, human perceptions, human interests the criteria of reality, of knowledge, of the truth, of the goal of human life. Therefore, as a consequence it substitutes the significance of the temporal and the transient for the abiding and the eternal.

The Undivided Wholeness of All Things Most mind-boggling of all are Bohm's fully developed ideas about wholeness. Because everything in the cosmos is made out of the seamless holographic fabric of the implicate order, he believes it is as meaningless to view the universe as composed of "parts, " as it is to view the different geysers in a fountain as separate from the water out of which they flow. An electron is not an "elementary particle. " It is just a name given to a certain aspect of the holomovement. Dividing reality up into parts and then naming those parts is always arbitrary, a product of convention, because subatomic particles, and everything else in the universe, are no more separate from one another than different patterns in an ornate carpet. This is a profound suggestion. In his general theory of relativity Einstein astounded the world when he said that space and time are not separate entities, but are smoothly linked and part of a larger whole he called the space-time continuum. Bohm takes this idea a giant step further. He says that everything in the universe is part of a continuum. Despite the apparent separateness of things at the explicate level, everything is a seamless extension of everything else, and ultimately even the implicate and explicate orders blend into each other. Take a moment to consider this. Look at your hand. Now look at the light streaming from the lamp beside you. And at the dog resting at your feet. You are not merely made of the same things. You are the same thing. One thing. Unbroken. One enormous something that has extended its uncountable arms and appendages into all the apparent objects, atoms, restless oceans, and twinkling stars in the cosmos. Bohm cautions that this does not mean the universe is a giant undifferentiated mass. Things can be part of an undivided whole and still possess their own unique qualities. To illustrate what he means he points to the little eddies and whirlpools that often form in a river. At a glance such eddies appear to be separate things and possess many individual characteristics such as size, rate, and direction of rotation, et cetera. But careful scrutiny reveals that it is impossible to determine where any given whirlpool ends and the river begins. Thus, Bohm is not suggesting that the differences between "things" is meaningless. He merely wants us to be aware constantly that dividing various aspects of the holomovement into "things" is always an abstraction, a way of making those aspects stand out in our perception by our way of thinking. In attempts to correct this, instead of calling different aspects of the holomovement "things, " he prefers to call them "relatively independent subtotalities. "10 Indeed, Bohm believes that our almost universal tendency to fragment the world and ignore the dynamic interconnectedness of all things is responsible for many of our problems, not only in science but in our lives and our society as well. For instance, we believe we can extract the valuable parts of the earth without affecting the whole. We believe it is possible to treat parts of our body and not be concerned with the whole. We believe we can deal with various problems in our society, such as crime, poverty, and drug addiction, without addressing the problems in our society as a whole, and so on. In his writings Bohm argues passionately that our current way of fragmenting the world into parts not only doesn't work, but may even lead to our extinction.

Gentlemen,” he said, “I invite you to go and measure that kiosk. You will see that the length of the counter is one hundred and forty-nine centimeters – in other words, one hundred-billionth of the distance between the earth and the sun. The height at the rear, one hundred and seventy-six centimeters, divided by the width of the window, fifty-six centimeters, is 3.14. The height at the front is nineteen decimeters, equal, in other words, to the number of years of the Greek lunar cycle. The sum of the heights of the two front corners and the two rear corners is one hundred and ninety times two plus one hundred and seventy-six times two, which equals seven hundred and thirty-two, the date of the victory at Poitiers. The thickness of the counter is 3.10 centimeters, and the width of the cornice of the window is 8.8 centimeters. Replacing the numbers before the decimals by the corresponding letters of the alphabet, we obtain C for ten and H for eight, or C10H8, which is the formula for naphthalene.” “Fantastic,” I said. “You did all these measurements?” “No,” Aglie said. “They were done on another kiosk, by a certain Jean-Pierre Adam. But I would assume that all lottery kiosks have more or less the same dimensions. With numbers you can do anything you like. Suppose I have the sacred number 9 and I want to get the number 1314, date of the execution of Jacques de Molay – a date dear to anyone who, like me, professes devotion to the Templar tradition of knighthood. What do I do? I multiply nine by one hundred and forty-six, the fateful day of the destruction of Carthage. How did I arrive at this? I divided thirteen hundred and fourteen by two, by three, et cetera, until I found a satisfying date. I could also have divided thirteen hundred and fourteen by 6.28, the double of 3.14, and I would have got two hundred and nine. That is the year in which Attalus I, king of Pergamon, joined the anti-Macedonian League. You see?

The thing I remember from the Letters Page in those antique days was the way the OBs signed off. There was Yours faithfully, Yours sincerely, and I have the honour to be, sir, your obedient servant. But the ones I always looked for - and which I took to be the true sign of an Old Bastard - simply ended like this: Yours etc. And then the newspaper drew even more attention to the sign-off by printing it: Yours &c. Yours &c. I used to muse about that. What did it mean? Where did it come from? I imagined some bespatted captain of industry dictating his OB’s views to his secretary for transmission to the Newspaper of Record which he doubtless referred to with jocund familiarity as ‘The Thunderer’. When his oratorical belch was complete, he would say ‘Yours, etc,’ which Miss ffffffolkes would automatically transcribe into, ‘I have the honour to be, sir, one of the distinguished Old Bastards who could send you the label off a tin of pilchards and you would still print it above this my name,’ or whatever, and then it would be, ‘Despatch this instanter to The Thunderer, Miss ffffffolkes.’ But one day Miss ffffffolkes was away giving a handjob to the Archbishop of York, so they sent a temp. And the temp wrote Yours, etc, just as she heard it and The Times reckoned the OB captain a very gusher of wit, but decided to add their own little rococo touch by compacting it further to &c., whereupon other OBs followed the bespatted lead of the captain of industry, who claimed all the credit for himself. There we have it: Yours &c. Whereupon, as an ardent damp-ear of sixteen, I took to the parodic sign-off: Love, &c. Not all my correspondents unfailingly seized the reference, I regret to say. One demoiselle hastened her own de-accessioning from the museum of my heart by informing me with hauteur that use of the word etc., whether in oral communication or in carven prose, was common and vulgar. To which I replied, first, that ‘the word’ et cetera was not one but two words, and that the only common and vulgar thing about my letter - given the identity of its recipient - was affixing to it the word that preceded etc. Alack, she didn’t respond to this observation with the Buddhistic serenity one might have hoped. Love, etc. The proposition is simple. The world divides into two categories: those who believe that the purpose, the function, the bass pedal and principal melody of life is love, and that anything else - everything else - is merely an etc.; and those, those unhappy many, who believe primarily in the etc. of life, for whom love, however agreeable, is but a passing flurry of youth, the pattering prelude to nappy-duty, but not something as solid, steadfast and reliable as, say, home decoration. This is the only division between people that counts.

There is a limit to how small our errors can get and that limit is nonexistence. But there isn't necessarily a limit to how large they can get. In theory, the outer limit of wrongness would be the condition of being wrong about absolutely everything. A computer scientist named Keunwoo Lee has given us a name for this hypothetical state: fractal wrongness. Lee defines fractal wrongness as "being wrong at every conceivable scale of resolution." Thus if I'm fractally wrong, I'm wrong about all of my overarching beliefs, wrong about the people who corroborate those beliefs, wrong about the facts I think support those beliefs, wrong about the beliefs that stem from those beliefs . . . et cetera.

You’re probably going to lose your V that night anyway, so I’ll be the last thing you’ll be thinking about.” “I wasn’t planning on having sex on prom night!” I hiss. My eyes dart over at Lucas, who is looking at me, bug-eyed. “Lara Jean…you and Kavinsky haven’t had sex yet?” I look to make sure no one’s in the hallway listening. “No, but please don’t tell anybody. Not that I’m ashamed of it or anything. I just don’t want everyone knowing my business.” “I get it, obviously, but wow,” he says, still sounding shocked. “That’s…wow.” “Why is it so wow?” I ask him, and I can feel my cheeks warming. “He’s so…hot.” I laugh. “That’s true.” “There’s a reason why having sex on prom night is a thing,” Chris says. “I mean, yes, it’s tradition, but also, everybody’s dressed up, you get to stay out all night…Most of these people will never look as good as they do on prom night, grooming-wise, and that’s sad. All these lemmings getting their manis and their pedis and their blowouts. So basic.” “Don’t you get blowouts?” Lucas says. Chris rolls her eyes. “Of course.” I say, “Then why are you judging other people for--” “Look, that’s not my point here. My point is…” She frowns. “Wait, what were we talking about?” “Blowouts, manis, lemmings?” Lucas says. “Before that.” “Sex?” I suggest. “Right! My point is, losing your virginity on prom night is a cliché, but clichés are clichés for a reason. There’s a practicality to it. You get to stay out all night, you look great, et cetera, et cetera. It just makes sense.” “I’m not having sex for the first time because it’s convenient and my hair looks good, Chris.” “Fair enough.

While it has been clear that right and wrong is nonexistent, I can't say that the concept of 'right or wrong' isn't needed. Because of ignorance, we still need authorities to set up rules and say 'vandalism is wrong, killing is wrong, et cetera.' People ask, "So, vandalism isn't wrong? Killing isn't wrong?" I answer, "Uneducated people say that vandalism is wrong. More educated people say that vandalism destroys the things that many people have spent their lives making. Uneducated people say that killing is wrong. More educated people say that killing takes away the only thing that matters which is lives." The more educated people are, the freer they will be, and the words 'right or wrong' won't be needed anymore. There was a bomb again in Brussels yesterday. I laughed. In the past, we had tyrannies because people didn't know what they could do and what they couldn't do. Now, we have democracy. Do we deserve democracy? Do we deserve freedom? No, we don't deserve freedom. We certainly don't deserve democracy. People are still voting for Donald Trump. And people still bomb other people. And socioeconomic gap is still high. Ignorance is still prevalent, so, if you ask me, "Do we deserve democracy? Do we deserve freedom? Do we deserve the world without authority, the world of truth, the world of peace?" I answer, "No, we don't." So, when you hear your president shouting 'Peace!', your government speaking 'Freedom!', ask them 'Are you educated?' Someone asks, "So, instead of 'right or wrong', you will now set up the rules about what we can do and we can't do?" I answer, "No. When will you understand? I stand for the world without authority, the world of truth, the world of peace. OK, forget the truth, forget my book, forget my paper. Let me expand science for you. You will let your fellow humans who are more educated than you set up the rules for you. When all the people are finally educated, please come back and reread my book and my paper, and when you finally understand them, please live in the world of no authority, the world of truth, the world of peace. Me? I probably have been gone by then." There is, however, a problem with how many educated people there are in the world. In my paper, I prove that right and wrong is nonexistent by showing that everything that exists is not wrong and is not right because everything that exists is the result of the thing(s) that happened before it and everything that exists can’t be right because future doesn’t exist. I wrote that terrorism is caused by capitalism (democracy) and capitalism (democracy) is caused by death. This paper was rejected. When educated people fail, there goes all your hope in the world.