Chapters Wall Quotes

The figure in the doorway ducked; the brick hit the wall, and Luke straightened up and looked at her curiously. I hope when we're married, that's not the way you greet me every day when I come home, he said.

He belonged to a walled city of the fifteenth century, a city of narrow, cobbled streets, and thin spires, where the inhabitants wore pointed shoes and worsted hose. His face was arresting, sensitive, medieval in some strange inexplicable way, and I was reminded of a portrait seen in a gallery I had forgotten where, of a certain Gentleman Unknown. Could one but rob him of his English tweeds, and put him in black, with lace at his throat and wrists, he would stare down at us in our new world from a long distant past—a past where men walked cloaked at night, and stood in the shadow of old doorways, a past of narrow stairways and dim dungeons, a past of whispers in the dark, of shimmering rapier blades, of silent, exquisite courtesy.

He was reading the morning paper. She was giving their toddler pieces of toast and jam, which the little girl proceeded to wipe all over her face and the wall behind. The woman laughed as the toddler squealed, and he couldn't help peeking over the top of his paper every few seconds to watch them, admiring the view. That's what it was supposed to be like. Two people meet, fall in love, and then do normal things.

I pushed passed him. He grabbed my hand and swung me back towards him. Then he pushed me against the wall and... he kissed me. He ran his thumb along my jawline and down my throat, hips pinning me to the wall. He kissed me slowly and with intensity, and once I got over the mind-numbing shock and comprehended what was actually happening, it was incredible. I had never been kissed like that before. We melted together. Every movement of mine was somehow perfectly mirrored by his. My heart was pounding so hard I knew he must be able to feel it and I was sure my legs were giving way, but he held me up, pushed me harder against the wall. I grabbed a handful of his hair, remembering all the times I'd dreamed of doing it. I let my hand drift down his back and pulled him even closer to me. It all happened so quickly. I heard him make a low kind of growl and lean into me. His hand slid down my leg behind my knee, drawing it to him. I moaned and felt him tense.

It's going to be like an...aura, I guess." He looked down at me and raised an eyebrow. "Explain?" "Like even though there are outside forces pushing through the walls, in here it's like a bubble of goodness. Like coming home." I could feel him smiling and it encouraged me to elaborate. "When I think of how others would see it, I imagine them seeing a force of goodness overshadowing a force of evil, protecting it.

If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.

Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.

When writing fiction, memories still filter in, and these memories twist and distort and transform until they become living, breathing pieces of the story, as they have here.

I wanted to be with her, like all the time. Eliminate the obstacles, the people and things in our lives that were keeping us apart: Brandi, Seth, Kirsten, society, me. Me? Make that my fear. What was I afraid of, exactly? What other people would think? I guess, a little. But that wasn’t what was stopping me from acting on my feelings. It was the intensity of them. The desire for her. I knew if I gave into it, I’d have to surrender myself completely. I’d lose all control. Everything I knew, everything I was, the walls I’d built up to protect myself all these years would come crashing down. I might get lost in the rubble. Yet, she made me feel alive in a way I'd only ever imagined I could feel. Bells, whistles, music. (Chapter. 15)

Job, chapter fourteen, verse seven,” Aunt Al said. “ ‘For there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its tender shoots will not cease.’ 

What I mean is, it reminded me of one of the happiest moments of childhood, before broken wrists and purpling bruises and nasty names hissed when my mother’s back was turned. Before “Who do you think you are? You’re ugly. You’re nobody.

Volume II, Chapter 4 "How unwise had the wanderers been, who had deserted its shelter, entangled themselves in the web of society, and entered on what men of the world call "life,"—that labyrinth of evil, that scheme of mutual torture. To live, according to this sense of the word, we must not only observe and learn, we must also feel; we must not be mere spectators of action, we must act; we must not describe, but be subjects of description. Deep sorrow must have been the inmate of our bosoms; fraud must have lain in wait for us; the artful must have deceived us; sickening doubt and false hope must have chequered our days; hilarity and joy, that lap the soul in ecstasy, must at times have possessed us. Who that knows what "life" is, would pine for this feverish species of existence? I have lived. I have spent days and nights of festivity; I have joined in ambitious hopes, and exulted in victory: now,—shut the door on the world, and build high the wall that is to separate me from the troubled scene enacted within its precincts. Let us live for each other and for happiness; let us seek peace in our dear home, near the inland murmur of streams, and the gracious waving of trees, the beauteous vesture of earth, and sublime pageantry of the skies. Let us leave "life," that we may live.

Everything I know about bombs tells me they are built to explode. But something must set them off first. There must be a trigger before the noise goes off, before the big burst of bright, choking smoke. Otherwise a girl could stay quiet for years.

Between takeoff and landing, we are each in suspended animation, a pause between chapters of our lives. When we stare out the window into the sun's glare, the landscape is only a flat projection with mountain ranges reduced to wrinkles in the continental skin. Oblivious to our passage overhead, other stories are unfolding beneath us. Blackberries ripen in the August sun, a woman packs a suitcase and hesitates at her doorway, a letter is opened and the most surprising photograph slides from between the pages. But we are moving too fast and we are too far away; all the stories escape us, except our own. When I turn away from the window, the stories recede into the two-dimensional map of green and brown below. Like a trout disappearing into the shade of an overhanging bank, leaving you staring at the flat surface of the water and wondering if you saw it at all.

Though completely irrelevant to the story, seventeen minutes and thirty-two seconds later, every instance of the word “the” that appeared in this chapter transmogrified into a tiny, blue, pineapple-headed bat that flew away to France to start a brand new life even though they all hated France (except for French fries, guillotines, and that place in France where the naked ladies dance). Regarding the latter, apparently there’s a hole in the wall where tiny, blue, pineapple-headed bats can see it all.

After lunch, he rose and gave me the tips of his fingers, saying he would like to show me over his flat; but I snatched away my hand and gave a cry. What I had touched was cold and, at the same time, bony; and I remembered that his hands smelt of death. ‘Oh, forgive me!’ he moaned. And he opened a door before me. ‘This is my bedroom, if you care to see it. It is rather curious.’ His manners, his words, his attitude gave me confidence and I went in without hesitation. I felt as if I were entering the room of a dead person. The walls were all hung with black, but, instead of the white trimmings that usually set off that funereal upholstery, there was an enormous stave of music with the notes of the DIES IRAE, many times repeated. In the middle of the room was a canopy, from which hung curtains of red brocaded stuff, and, under the canopy, an open coffin. 'That is where I sleep,’ said Erik. 'One has to get used to everything in life, even to eternity.’ The sight upset me so much that I turned away my head” - Chapter 12: Apollo’s Lyre

Forcing children causes three problems: First, it undermines their intrinsic motivation—that is, it erodes a children’s natural drive to voluntarily do a task (see chapter 6). Second, it can damage your relationship with your child. When you force a child to do something, you run the risk of starting fights and creating anger on both sides. You can build walls. Third, you remove the opportunity for the child to learn and make decisions on their own.

Volume II: Chapter 5 The God sends down his angry plagues from high, Famine and pestilence in heaps they die. Again in vengeance of his wrath he falls On their great hosts, and breaks their tottering walls; Arrests their navies on the ocean's plain, And whelms their strength with mountains of the main.

Just beyond the ticket booth Father had painted on a wall in bright red letters the question: DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN THE ZOO? An arrow pointed to a small curtain. There were so many eager, curious hands that pulled at the curtain that we had to replace it regularly. Behind it was a mirror. (1.8.4)

Sometimes,’ she said, ‘I think I must have invented him.’ I know all I want to about your child,’ Chauvin said harshly. Anne Desbaresdes moaned again, louder than before. Again she put her hand on the table. His eyes followed her movement and finally, painfully, he understood and lifted his own leaden hand and placed it on hers. Their hands were so cold they were touching only in intention, an illusion, in order for this to be fulfilled, for the sole reason that it should be fulfilled, none other, it was no longer possible. And yet, with their hands frozen in this funereal pose, Anne Desbaresdes stopped moaning. One last time,’ she begged, ‘tell me about it one last time.’ Chauvin hesitated, his eyes somewhere else, still fixed on the back wall. Then he decided to tell her about it as if it were a memory. He had never dreamed, before meeting her, that he would one day want anything so badly.’ And she acquiesced completely?’ Wonderfully.’ Anne Desbaresdes looked at Chauvin absently. Her voice became thin, almost childlike. I'd like to understand why his desire to have it happen one day was so wonderful?’ Chauvin still avoided looking at her. Her voice was steady, wooden, the voice of a deaf person. There's no use trying to understand. It's beyond understanding.’ You mean there are some things like that that can't be gone into?’ I think so.’ Anne Desbaresdes' expression became dull, almost stupid. Her lips had turned pale, they were gray and trembled as though she were on the verge of tears. She does nothing t try and stop him?’ she whispered. No. Have a little more wine.’ She sipped her wine. He also drank, and his lips on the glass were also trembling. Time,’ he said Does it take a long time, a very long time?’ Yes, a very long time. But I don't know anything.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Like you, I don't know anything. Nothing at all.’ Anne Desbaresdes forced back her tears. Her voice was normal, momentarily awake. She will never speak again,’ she said.

Chapter One In Which We Learn of the Village of Wall, and of the Curious Thing That Occurs There Every Nine Years

There was no getting through to him. She had allowed him to beat, use and abuse her, and still… there was no breaking down his walls.

Mirror mirror on the wall, I am my mother after all.

No amount of angry protest will get a true asshole to listen. As we explained in chapter 1, he is entrenched in his outlook; he is exceedingly good at walling out complaints, and, in this, he will most likely never change. Although neither resignation nor all-out resistance seems finally acceptable, we often have only the faintest sense of an ever-elusive better way.

buildings—faded brick buildings enclosed by a faded brick wall. A school, perhaps, or the estate of a dull family. The buildings had once been elegant, but many of the windows were shattered

These changes, I believe, can be the basis of a true Islamic Reformation, one that progresses to the twenty-first century rather than regresses to the seventh. Some of these changes may strike readers as too fundamental to Islamic belief to be feasible. But like the partition walls or superfluous stairways that a successful renovation removes, they can in fact be modified without causing the entire structure to collapse. Indeed, I believe these modifications will actually strengthen Islam by making it easier for Muslims to live in harmony with the modern world. It is those hell-bent on restoring it to its original state who are much more likely to lead Islam to destruction. Here again are my five theses, nailed to a virtual door: 1. Ensure that Muhammad and the Qur’an are open to interpretation and criticism. 2. Give priority to this life, not the afterlife. 3. Shackle sharia and end its supremacy over secular law. 4. End the practice of “commanding right, forbidding wrong.” 5. Abandon the call to jihad. In the chapters that follow, I will explore the source of the ideas and doctrines in question and evaluate the prospects for reforming them. For now, we may simply note that they are closely interrelated.

Although I was deliberately dismissive of this idea at the beginning of the chapter, the real answer is, “Well, yes, sort of.” Nathan DeWall, together with Naomi Eisenberger and other social rejection researchers, conducted a series of studies to test out the idea that over-the-counter painkillers would reduce social pain, not just physical pain. In the first study, they looked at two groups of people. Half of them took 1,000 milligrams a day of acetaminophen (that is, Tylenol), and half of them took equivalently sized placebo pills with no active substances in them. Both groups took their pills every day for three weeks. Each night, the participants answered questions by e-mail regarding the amount of social pain they had felt that day. By the ninth day of the study, the Tylenol group was reporting feeling less social pain than the placebo group.

It was the great Russian author Chekhov who wrote, “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.

The five of them (and the robot cow head) all looked at the endless dark tunnel in front of them. The walls were made from gray stone brick, and there were occasional redstone lights embedded into the ceiling, although most of them had stopped working, and the others were flickering on and off. “Well, I guess we’re going through the tunnel,” said Dave. “Yay,” said Carl sarcastically. “I’m sure nothing bad will happen in this dark, scary tunnel. Nothing bad at all.” CHAPTER SIXTEEN Something Bad Happens in the Dark, Scary Tunnel The

When you infiltrate the enemy line and come to a naturally fortified place, use the appropriate tools to gain entrance successfully. To get into an impregnable castle with a high stone wall, a high fence, a barrier, or a castle not naturally fortified but well constructed, or even one fortified with water such as a river, it is essential for you to prepare yourself with useful tools before you embark on a shinobi mission. In addition, you need to use the appropriate weapons when you invade the enemy's residence. This chapter shows how you create these tools.

Most citizens of Leo Mega consider the ARK rebels an urban legend—the fable of a community beyond the walls, deep in the jungle, it has been told for the last sixty to eighty years. However, with a recent increase in gossip on the subject, more citizens have been enticed to escape.

The summer getting is good, but no amount of talk or trade will encourage Mary to let any of the family up the trail, not today, today is important. The tables arranged in a circle. A bell placed under a special chair in the centre. Those lucky four allowed to come are dressed all in black like Mary and her husband. Mary stands on a box staring through a wall. It was her idea to remove the eyes from the white wolf portrait. It was beautiful and if Mary had of paid she might have thought twice before putting a knife to it, but it was a gift, Tabbot's has a secret admirer.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN BELOW STAIRS As Hal descended a narrow flight of stone steps, the warm smell of baking bread greeted him. Gladys led him into a cavernous steam-filled kitchen with a range of stoves along one wall. Copper and silver pots and pans hung from ceiling hooks. A giant oak table in the middle of the floor was set with four places. A thick-set

I fell back against the wall and he came up to me, grinding his teeth, and, as I fell upon my knees, he hissed mad, incoherent words and curses at me. Leaning over me, he cried, ‘Look! You want to see! See! Feast your eyes, glut your soul on my cursed ugliness! Look at Erik’s face! Now you know the face of the voice! You were not content to hear me, eh? You wanted to know what I looked like! Oh, you women are so inquisitive! Well, are you satisfied? I’m a very good-looking fellow, eh? … When a woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to me. She loves me for ever. I am a kind of Don Juan, you know!’ And, drawing himself up to his full height, with his hand on his hip, wagging the hideous thing that was his head on his shoulders, he roared, ‘Look at me! I AM DON JUAN TRIUMPHANT!’ And, when I turned away my head and begged for mercy, he drew it to him, brutally, twisting his dead fingers into my hair.” “Enough! Enough!” cried Raoul. “I will kill him. In Heaven’s name, Christine, tell me where the dining-room on the lake is! I must kill him!” “Oh, be quiet, Raoul, if you want to know!” “Yes, I want to know how and why you went back; I must know! … But, in any case, I will kill him!” “Oh, Raoul, listen, listen! … He dragged me by my hair and then … and then … Oh, it is too horrible!” “Well, what? Out with it!” exclaimed Raoul fiercely. “Out with it, quick!” “Then he hissed at me. 'Ah, I frighten you, do I? … I dare say! … Perhaps you think that I have another mask, eh, and that this … this … my head is a mask? Well,’ he roared, 'tear it off as you did the other! Come! Come along! I insist! Your hands! Your hands! Give me your hands!’ And he seized my hands and dug them into his awful face. He tore his flesh with my nails, tore his terrible dead flesh with my nails! … 'Know,’ he shouted, while his throat throbbed and panted like a furnace, 'know that I am built up of death from head to foot and that it is a corpse that loves you and adores you and will never, never leave you! … Look, I am not laughing now, I am crying, crying for you, Christine, who have torn off my mask and who therefore can never leave me again! … As long as you thought me handsome, you could have come back, I know you would have come back … but, now that you know my hideousness, you would run away for good… So I shall keep you here! … Why did you want to see me? Oh, mad Christine, who wanted to see me! … When my own father never saw me and when my mother, so as not to see me, made me a present of my first mask!’ - Chapter 12: Apollo’s Lyre

I spent nine hard, exasperating, concentrated months on the first chapter of Liars’ Club alone, which was essentially time developing that voice—a watchmaker’s minuscule efforts, noodling with syntax and diction. Were I to add on the time I spent trying to recount that book’s events in poetry and a novel, I could argue that concocting that mode of speech actually occupied some thirteen years (seventeen, if you count the requisite years in therapy getting the nerve up). What was I doing during those nine months? Mostly I just shoved words around the page. I’d get up at four or five when my son was asleep, then work. I’d try telling something one way, then another. If a paragraph seemed half decent, I’d cut it out and tape it to the wall.

The benefit of capturing the entire return of each asset class through low-cost index funds is that, in addition to the positive impact it will have on your financial wealth over the decades (quite possibly to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, as we will find out in chapter 4), it is certain to have a profound influence on your emotional health as well.   Never

No more peeping through keyholes! No more mas turbating in the dark! No more public confessions! Unscrew the doors from their jambs! I want a world where the vagina is represented by a crude, honest slit, a world that has feeling for bone and contour, for raw, primary colors, a world that has fear and respect for its animal origins. I’m sick of looking at cunts all tickled up, disguised, deformed, idealized. Cunts with nerve ends exposed. I don’t want to watch young virgins masturbating in the privacy of their boudoirs or biting their nails or tearing their hair or lying on a bed full of bread crumbs for a whole chapter. I want Madagascan funeral poles, with animal upon animal and at the top Adam and Eve, and Eve with a crude, honest slit between the legs. I want hermaphrodites who are real hermaphrodites, and not make-believes walking around with an atrophied penis or a dried-up cunt. I want a classic purity, where dung is dung and angels are angels. The Bible a la King James, for example. Not the Bible of Wycliffe, not the Vulgate, not the Greek, not the Hebrew, but the glorious, death-dealing Bible that was created when the English language was in flower, when a vocabulary of twenty thousand words sufficed to build a monument for all time. A Bible written in Svenska or Tegalic, a Bible for the Hottentots or the Chinese, a Bible that has to meander through the trickling sands of French is no Bible-it is a counterfeit and a fraud. The King James Version was created by a race of bone-crushers. It revives the primitive mysteries, revives rape, murder, incest, revives epilepsy, sadism, megalomania, revives demons, angels, dragons, leviathans, revives magic, exorcism, contagion, incantation, revives fratricide, regicide, patricide, suicide, revives hypnotism, anarchism, somnambulism, revives the song, the dance, the act, revives the mantic, the chthonian, the arcane, the mysterious, revives the power, the evil, and the glory that is God. All brought into the open on a colossal scale, and so salted and spiced that it will last until the next Ice Age. A classic purity, then-and to hell with the Post Office authorities! For what is it enables the classics to live at all, if indeed they be living on and not dying as we and all about us are dying? What preserves them against the ravages of time if it be not the salt that is in them? When I read Petronius or Apuleius or Rabelais, how close they seem! That salty tang! That odor of the menagerie! The smell of horse piss and lion’s dung, of tiger’s breath and elephant’s hide. Obscenity, lust, cruelty, boredom, wit. Real eunuchs. Real hermaphrodites. Real pricks. Real cunts. Real banquets! Rabelais rebuilds the walls of Paris with human cunts. Trimalchio tickles his own throat, pukes up his own guts, wallows in his own swill. In the amphitheater, where a big, sleepy pervert of a Caesar lolls dejectedly, the lions and the jackals, the hyenas, the tigers, the spotted leopards are crunching real human boneswhilst the coming men, the martyrs and imbeciles, are walking up the golden stairs shouting Hallelujah!

The marathon is less a physical event than a spiritual encounter. In infinite wisdom, God built into us a 32-km racing limit, a limit imposed by inadequate sources of the marathoner's prime racing fuel - carbohydrates. But we, in our human wisdom, decreed that the standard marathon be raced over 42 km. So it is in that physical no-man's-land, which begins after the 32-km mark, that the irresistible appeal of the marathon lies. It is at that stage, as the limits to human running endurance are approached, that the marathon ceases to be a physical event. It is there that you, the runner, discover the basis for the ancient proverb: "When you have gone so far that you cannot manage one more step, then you have gone just half the distance that you are capable of." It is there that you learn something about yourself and your view of life." Marathon runners have termed it the wall. (Chapter 10)

And now they had arrived at an independent opinion that it was better far, and would be more advantageous both for themselves and for the whole body of the allies, that their city should have a wall; when any member of a confederacy had not equal military advantages, his counsel could not be of equal weight or worth.Either all the allies should pull down their walls, or they should acknowledge that the Athenians were in the right. (Book 1 Chapter 91.6-7)

The several tribes cultivated their own soil just enough to obtain a maintenance from it. But they had no accumulations of wealth, and did not plant the ground; for, being without walls, they were never sure that an invader might not come and despoil them. Living in this manner and knowing that they could anywhere obtain a bare subsistence, they were always ready to migrate; so that they had neither great cities nor any considerable resources. (Book 1 Chapter 2.2)

If ever it seems good to God that the Turk should fall upon Germany, those mounds piled up at great expense and toil will not protect us, and in that case I would certainly not like to stay in this town; I would rather crawl out. But when we bend our knees and cry out to our Creator, He will be able to surround us with walls of fire, as is testified in Ps. 125:2: “As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people, from this time forth and for-evermore.

Sitting in the bathroom, reading the book again, he became so involved in the story that his legs fell asleep. He kept reading, intending to get up at the end of this page, then at the end of this page, if only because he would feel more comfortable with his pants up and buttoned, but he read on. He rose finally at the end of a chapter, although he read a little into the next chapter before he made himself stop. His legs were buoyant with saws and needles as he buttoned up, and he had to hold a hand against the wall not to sway from balance. Then he checked the thickness of pages he had read between his fingers, and experienced something he had never experienced before. Some of it was pride—he was reading a book—and some of it was a preciousness the book had assumed. Feeling relaxed, unthreatened, he wanted to keep the book in his hands, for what it offered. He did not want to turn the pages, for then they would be gone and spent; nor did he want to do anything but turn the pages.

Everything has changed. And yet nothing has. The politics of white supremacy, which defined our original constitution, have continued unabated—repeatedly and predictably engendering new systems of racial and social control. Just a few decades ago, politicians vowed to build more prison walls. Today, they promise border walls. As the first chapter of this book describes, the political strategy of divide, demonize, and conquer has worked for centuries in the United States—since the days of slavery—

All of the solutions to our growth-based problems involve some form of self-restraint. That’s why most of those solutions remain just good ideas. That’s also why we will probably hit the wall, and why the outcomes described in the previous chapters of this book are likely. The sustainability revolution will occur. The depletion of nonrenewable resources ensures that humankind will eventually base its economy on renewable resources harvested at rates of natural replenishment. But that revolution will be driven by crisis.

Chapter 1 14th November 1940: Coventry, England. Boom. Boom. The ground vibrated with each explosion. Unfamiliar sounds surrounded Rose Sherbourne as her body received blow after blow from displaced items of furniture. She jumped when shattering glass hit falling bricks, and everything around her crashed under their weight. Boom. Another explosion, followed by the sound of metal hitting metal, echoed out around Rose’s ears and her breath came thick and fast. Through the opening of what was once the front room, a sudden blast of hot air blew both her and her mother off their feet. Rose’s body fell against something hard and a searing pain shot through her back. For a few seconds she could not see, and she blinked, only to feel fine dust fall on her cheeks and into her eyes yet again. She wiped it away with the back of her hand and prepared herself to scrabble upright. Boom. A wall fell around her and, unable to move both with fear and because something was pinning down her right leg, Rose took a moment to catch her breath. Above her an intense whistling sound screamed from the sky, followed by an eerie whooshing sound. A continuous whistle followed. Rose held her breath.

[H]is (Archidamus) reputation was most affected by his halt at Oenoè. For the Athenians employed the interval in getting away their property; and the Peloponnesians fancied that, if they had advanced quickly and he had not lingered, they could have seized everything before it was conveyed within the walls. Such were the feelings entertained towards Archidamus by his troops during the halt. He is said to have held back in the belief that the Athenians, while their lands were still unravaged, would yield, and that the thought of allowing them to be devastated would be too much for them. (Book 2 Chapter 18.3-5)

Cowperwood, who saw things in the large, could scarcely endure this minutae. He was but little interested in the affairs of bygone men and women, being so intensely engaged with the living present. And after a time he slipped outside, preferring the wide sweep of gardens, with their flower-lined walks and views of the cathedral. Its arches and towers and stained-glass windows, this whole carefully executed shrine, still held glamor, but all because of the hands and brains, aspirations and dreams of selfish and self-preserving creatures like himself. And so many of these, as he now mused, walking about, had warred over possession of this church. And now they were within its walls, graced and made respectable, the noble dead! Was any man noble? Had there ever been such a thing as an indubitably noble soul? He was scarcely prepared to believe it. Men killed to live—all of them —and wallowed in lust in order to reproduce themselves. In fact, wars, vanities, pretenses, cruelties, greeds, lusts, murder, spelled their true history, with only the weak running to a mythical saviour or god for aid. And the strong using this belief in a god to further the conquest of the weak. And by such temples or shrines as this. He looked, meditated, and was somehow touched with the futility of so

First Edition: January 2018 In honor of Martin Nils “Marty” Richert, my uncle and a retired Air Force colonel.  A kind and humble man, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery during the rescue of a Marine pilot in the Vietnam War.  Marty later served with distinction in Berlin, Germany before the Berlin Wall came down.  He regularly traveled into the former East Germany and has told me many fascinating tales that captivate me to this day.  I credit Marty for planting the initial seeds of my love and fascination for Germany.  He’s a great man. Never was anything great achieved without danger. ​-Niccolo Machiavelli PART ONE The Call CHAPTER

But is the timing of a thing supposed to be everything? I do, I do want all my ends and beginnings to be with you. But are you supposed to be one brick in the wall of my life and not the brick that completes it? Are you supposed to be one chapter in my book and the insignificant corner of my jigsaw puzzle? Did you and I collapse into each other for this one big pool of tears? Or is there more to it? I still think we could make the world a better place together and be strong for each other, and go till the ends of the world with each other. But at what cost? Please don't say at the cost of our peace. Because that's when you will give up and that's when you'll break my heart.

the agonisingly stilted telephone call with George. Chapter 5 Disturbing Siesta Time Marigold deigned to join me for a stroll around the village in lieu of the promised dip. An enormous pair of rather glamorous sunglasses paired with a jaunty wide-brimmed straw sunhat, obscured her face, making it impossible to read her expression though I guessed she was still miffed at being deprived of her swim. As we walked past the church and the village square the leafy branches of the plane trees offered a shaded canopy against the sun. Our steps turned towards one of the narrow lanes that edged upwards through the village, the ancient cobbles worn smooth and slippery from the tread of donkeys and people. The sound of a moped disturbed the peace of the afternoon and we hastily jumped backwards at its approach, pressing our bodies against a wall as the vehicle zapped past us, the pensioned-off rider’s shouted greeting muffled by the noisy exhaust. Carrier bags of shopping dangling from the handlebars made me reflect the moped was the modern day equivalent of the donkey, though less useful; the old man was forced to dismount and cart the bags of shopping on foot when the cobbled lane gave way to steps. Since adapting to village life we had become less reliant on wheels. Back in Manchester we would have thought nothing of driving to the corner shop, but here in Meli we delighted in exploring on foot, never tiring of discovering

That peculiar feeling—it was only a feeling, you couldn’t describe it as an activity—that we used to call “Church.” The sweet corpsy smell, the rustle of Sunday dresses, the wheeze of the organ and the roaring voices, the spot of light from the hole in the window creeping slowly up the nave. In some way the grown-ups could put it across that this extraordinary performance was necessary. You took it for granted, just as you took the Bible, which you got in big doses in those days. There were texts on every wall and you knew whole chapters of the O.T. by heart. Even now my head’s stuffed full of bits out of the Bible. And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord. And Asher abode in his breaches. Followed them from Dan until thou come unto Beersheba. Smote him under the fifth rib, so that he died. You never understood it, you didn’t try to or want to, it was just a kind of medicine, a queer-tasting stuff that you had to swallow and knew to be in some way necessary. An extraordinary rigmarole about people with names like Shimei and Nebuchadnezzar and Ahithophel and Hash-badada; people with long stiff garments and Assyrian beards, riding up and down on camels among temples and cedar trees and doing extraordinary things. Sacrificing burnt offerings, walking about in fiery furnaces, getting nailed on crosses, getting swallowed by whales. And all mixed up with the sweet graveyard smell and the serge dresses and the wheeze of the organ.

His unfinished book had become his obsession. He rarely left his room, which he insulated with sheaves of paper scribbled with beginnings and endings, nailing ideas to the walls and stretching long strips of sentences from the window to the door. Tall stacks of scenes and chapters sprouted from the floor, as if the papers had reincarnated themselves back into trees. The paper forest around him glimmered in the sun from the windows, weaving rays of light in yellow and purple and blue. Hunger squeezed his throat, but he turned his ravenousness toward writing. He almost never slept. During the shortages, he wrote between the columns of old newspapers, or on pieces of cardboard, or on bark pulled from trees. He traded potatoes for ink.

A description of nature is what we are concerned with here. From this point of view, then, a gas, and indeed all matter, is a myriad of moving particles. Thus many of the things we saw while standing at the seashore can immediately be connected. First the pressure: this comes from the collisions of the atoms with the walls or whatever; the drift of the atoms, if they are all moving in one direc- tion on the average, is wind; the random internal motions are the heat. There are waves of excess density, where too many particles have collected, and so as they Tush off they push up piles of particles farther out, and so on. This wave of excess density is sound. It is a tremendous achievement to be able to understand so much. Some of these things were described in the previous chapter.

In Chapter 77, you had people of totally different worldviews and ideas joined together,” says Patrik. “You had, for example, democratic socialists on the one side and fervent Catholics on the other side. It was totally normal for me that as a small child, I was being raised in a community of people with very different opinions. So it shattered the bubble around me.” The lesson of valuing diversity within a broader unity of shared goals is something that Christians today need to embrace. “When we look at what’s happening in America today, we see that you are building walls and creating gaps between people,” he says. “For us, we are always willing to speak, to talk with the other side to avoid building walls between people. You know, it is much easier to indoctrinate someone who is enclosed within a set of walls.

The name Mary Jo Quinn was written neatly in faded blue marker on the front of the scrapbook, its gray edges frayed with age and wear, as though it had been handled often. Such a memento was a strange thing to find in a used bookstore, especially when one considered its contents. I’d discovered the handmade tome buried on the bottom shelf on the back wall of a little musty-smelling shop in the tiny resort town of Copper Harbor. This picturesque community is the gateway to Isle Royale National Park, an island in the western quarter of Lake Superior that beckoned to hikers, kayakers and canoers. Copper Harbor is the northern-most bastion of civilization in Michigan on a crooked finger of land called the Keweenaw Peninsula. Its remote, pristine shoreline provided an excellent respite from a hellacious year for my best friend from high school and me on a late September weekend.

(From Chapter 9: Hearts and Gizzards) When I came back out there was a strange light in the kitchen, as if there was a film of silver over everything, like frost only smoother, like water running thinly down over flat stones; and then my eyes were opened and I knew it was because God had come into the house and this was the silver that covered Heaven. God had come in because God is everywhere, you can’t keep him out, he is part of everything there is, so how could you ever build a wall or four walls or a door or a shut window, that he could not walk right through as if it was air. I said, What do you want here, but he did not answer, he just kept on being silver, so I went out to milk the cow; because the only thing to do about God is to go on with what you were doing anyway, since you can’t ever stop him or get any reasons out of him. There is a Do this or a Do that with God, but not any Because.

(From Chapter 9: Hearts and Gizzards) I’m lying on the hard and narrow bed, on the mattress made of coarse ticking, which is what they call the covering of a mattress, though why do they call it that as it is not a clock. The mattress is filled with dry straw that crackles like a fire when I turn over, and when I shift it whispers to me, hush hush. It’s dark as a stone in this room, and hot as a roasting heart; if you stare into the darkness with your eyes open you are sure to see something after a time. I hope it will not be flowers. But this is the time they like to grow, the red flowers, the shining red peonies which are like satin, which are like splashes of paint. The soil for them is emptiness, it is empty space and silence. I whisper, Talk to me; because I would rather have talking than the slow gardening that takes place in silence, with the red satin petals dripping down the wall. I think I sleep. [...] I’m outside, at night. There are the trees, there is the pathway, and the snake fence with half a moon shining, and my bare feet on the gravel. But when I come around to the front of the house, the sun is just going down; and the white pillars of the house are pink, and the white peonies are glowing red in the fading light. My hands are numb, I can’t feel the ends of my fingers. There’s the smell of fresh meat, coming up from the ground and all around, although I told the butcher we wanted none. On the palm of my hand there’s a disaster. I must have been born with it. I carry it with me wherever I go. When he touched me, the bad luck came off on him. I think I sleep. I wake up at cock crow and I know where I am. I’m in the parlour. I’m in the scullery. I’m in the cellar. I’m in my cell, under the coarse prison blanket, which I likely hemmed myself. We make everything we wear or use here, awake or asleep; so I have made this bed, and now I am lying in it.

The Art of Subtraction If there is one habit that all of the investors in this chapter have in common, it’s this: They focus almost exclusively on what they’re best at and what matters most to them. Their success derives from this fierce insistence on concentrating deeply in a relatively narrow area while disregarding countless distractions that could interfere with their pursuit of excellence. Jason Zweig, an old friend who is a personal finance columnist at the Wall Street Journal and the editor of a revised edition of The Intelligent Investor, once wrote to me, “Think of Munger and Miller and Buffett: guys who just won’t spend a minute of time or an iota of mental energy doing or thinking about anything that doesn’t make them better. . . . Their skill is self-honesty. They don’t lie to themselves about what they are and aren’t good at. Being honest with yourself like that has to be part of the secret. It’s so hard and so painful to do, but so important.

As to the general situation, he (Pericles) repeated his previous advice; they must prepare for war and bring their property from the country into the city; they must defend their walls but not go out to battle; they should also equip for service the fleet in which lay their strength.Their allies should be kept well in hand, for their power depended on the revenues which they derived from them; military successes were generally gained by a wise policy and command of money.The state of their finances was encouraging; they had on an average six hundred talents of tribute coming in annually from their allies, to say nothing of their other revenue; and there were still remaining in the Acropolis six thousand talents of coined silver.(The whole amount had once been as much as nine thousand seven hundred talents, but from this had to be deducted a sum of three thousand seven hundred expended on various buildings, such as the Propylaea of the Acropolis, and also on the siege of Potidaea.) Moreover there was uncoined gold and silver in the form of private and public offerings, sacred vessels used in processions and games, the Persian spoil and other things of the like nature, worth at least five hundred talents more. (Book 2 Chapter 13.2-4)

The walls were lined with books from floor to ceiling. Stacks of books stood neatly arranged on every horizontal surface—tables, windowsills, even the top of an unplugged television. Since Sophie had been forbidden to explore the library at home, her only real experience with books had come at school and from the few children's books that lay on the bottom shelf of a cabinet in the nursery. She sensed immediately that this was something altogether different. It was a library, yes, but she knew these books had been read. They weren't arranged in long lines of matching bindings like the ones in Bayfield House, and almost every volume had slips of paper protruding from the top. she wondered if Uncle Bertram had marked all the best bits. "Shall we have a story?" said her uncle, when he had hung up their coats. "Yes, please," said Sophie. "What would you like?" he asked. "You pick." And so he did. They settled onto the couch, Bertram with a cup of tea and Sophie with a mug of cocoa. He began to read and Sophie's world was transformed—this was not like the insubstantial children's stories her mother read to her at bedtime. This was ever so much more. "The Wind in the Willows," read Uncle Bertram. "Chapter One, The River Bank. The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home." Sophie closed her eyes and fell into the story.

(From Chapter 9: Hearts and Gizzards) When I came back out there was a strange light in the kitchen, as if there was a film of silver over everything, like frost only smoother, like water running thinly down over flat stones; and then my eyes were opened and I knew it was because God had come into the house and this was the silver that covered Heaven. God had come in because God is everywhere, you can’t keep him out, he is part of everything there is, so how could you ever build a wall or four walls or a door or a shut window, that he could not walk right through as if it was air. I said, What do you want here, but he did not answer, he just kept on being silver, so I went out to milk the cow; because the only thing to do about God is to go on with what you were doing anyway, since you can’t ever stop him or get any reasons out of him. There is a Do this or a Do that with God, but not any Because. [...] But why did I need to pray, when God was right there, hovering above us like the Angel of Death over the Egyptians, I could feel his cold breath, I could hear the beating of his dark wings, inside my heart. God is everywhere, I thought, so God is in the kitchen, and God is in Nancy, and God is in McDermott, and in McDermott’s hands, and God is in the axe too. Then I heard a dull sound from within, like a heavy door closing shut, and after that I can remember no more for a time.

After turning their backs on working-class issues, traditionally one of the core concerns of left parties, Democrats stood by while right-wing demagoguery took root and thrived. Then, after the people absorbed a fifty-year blizzard of fake populist propaganda, Democrats turned against the idea of “the people” altogether.17 America was founded with the phrase “We the People,” but William Galston, co-inventor of the concept of the Learning Class, urges us to get over our obsession with popular sovereignty. As he writes in Anti-Pluralism, his 2018 attack on populism, “We should set aside this narrow and complacent conviction; there are viable alternatives to the people as sources of legitimacy.”18 There certainly are. In the pages of this book, we have seen anti-populists explain that they deserve to rule because they are better educated, or wealthier, or more rational, or harder working. The contemporary culture of constant moral scolding is in perfect accordance with this way of thinking; it is a new iteration of the old elitist fantasy. The liberal establishment I am describing in this chapter is anti-populist not merely because it dislikes Donald Trump—who is in no way a genuine populist—but because it is populism’s opposite in nearly every particular. Its political ambition for the people is not to bring them together in a reform movement but to scold them, to shame them, and to teach them to defer to their superiors. It doesn’t seek to punish Wall Street or Silicon Valley; indeed, the same bunch that now rebukes and cancels and blacklists could not find a way to punish elite bankers after the global financial crisis back in 2009. This liberalism desires to merge with these institutions of private privilege, to enlist their power for what it imagines to be “good.

The situation appeared to be convenient, and the Acharnians, being a considerable section of the city and furnishing three thousand hoplites, were likely to be impatient at the destruction of their property, and would communicate to the whole people a desire to fight. Or if the Athenians did not come out to meet him during this invasion, he could henceforward ravage the plain with more confidence, and march right up to the walls of the city. The Acharnians, having lost their own possessions, would be less willing to hazard their lives on behalf of their neighours, and so there would be a division in the Athenian counsels. Such was the motive of Archidamus in remaining at Acharnae. (Book 2 Chapter 20.4-5) But when they (Athenians) saw the army in the neighbourhood of Acharnae, and barely seven miles from the city, they felt the presence of the invader to be intolerable. The devastation of their country before their eyes, which the younger men had never seen at all, nor the elder except in the Persian invasion, naturally appeared to them a horrible thing, and the whole people, the young men especially, were anxious to go forth and put a stop to it. Knots were formed in the streets, and there were loud disputes, some eager to go out, a minority resisting. Soothsayers were repeating oracles of the most different kinds, which all found in some one or other enthusiastic listeners. The Acharnians, who in their own estimation were no small part of the Athenian state, seeing their land ravaged, strongly insisted that they should go out and fight.The excitement in the city was universal; the people were furious with Pericles, and, forgetting all his previous warnings, they abused him for not leading them to battle, as their general should, and laid all their miseries to his charge. (Ibid Chapter 21.2-3)

Over To Candleford Chapter XXVIII: Growing Pains "This accumulated depression of months slid from her at last in a moment. She had run out into the fields one day in a pet and was standing on a small stone bridge looking down on brown running water flecked with cream-coloured foam. It was a dull November day with grey sky and mist. The little brook was scarcely more than a trench to drain the fields; but overhanging it were thorn bushes with a lacework of leafless twigs; ivy had sent trails down the steep banks to dip in the stream, and from every thorn on the leafless twigs and from every point of the ivy leaves water hung in bright drops, like beads. A flock of starlings had whirred up from the bushes at her approach and the clip, clop of a cart-horse's hoofs could be heard on the nearest road, but these were the only sounds. Of the hamlet, only a few hundred yards away, she could hear no sound, or see as much as a chimney-pot, walled in as she was by the mist. Laura looked and looked again. The small scene, so commonplace and yet so lovely, delighted her." It was so near the homes men and yet so far removed from their thoughts. The fresh green moss, the glistening ivy, and the reddish twigs with their sparkling drops seemed to have been made for her alone and the hurrying, foam-flecked water seemed to have some message for her. She felt suddenly uplifted. The things which had troubled her troubled her no more. She did not reason. She had already done plenty of reasoning. Too much, perhaps. She simply stood there and let it all sink in until she felt that her own small affairs did not matter. Whatever happened to her, this, and thousands of other such small, lovely sights would remain and people would come suddenly upon them and look and be glad. A wave of pure happiness pervaded her being, and, although it soon receded, it carried away with it her burden of care. Her first reaction was to laugh aloud at herself. What a fool she had been to make so much of so little.

OTHER RELAXATION TECHNIQUES There are many other stress management techniques that can help you to “bring yourself down” quickly when you are highly stressed. You can use them before a situation where anticipation raises tensions that do not automatically subside after a few minutes. You also can use them during an interaction or when a surprise threatens to escalate your stress out of control. Or use them after an encounter has raised your stress level, if it is not subsiding naturally. Mental Imagery You experimented with mental imagery in the previous chapter on goal-setting. The use of mental imagery also can be an effective tool for anxiety control. Think of it as a new application of skills you already have: memory and imagination. When I asked you earlier to recall how many windows there are in your bedroom, you used imagery to retrieve the information. Mentally, you went into the room, looked from wall to wall, and counted. That process is mental imagery. From a relaxation perspective, your nervous system cannot distinguish between reality and imagery. Material passed from the body to the senses, whether real or imagined, is processed the same way. Therefore, imagery can play an important role in inducing internal self-regulation and relaxation. If there is a particular image—such as the warm, sandy beach of the previous exercise, a cool forest clearing covered with a blanket of pine needles, or even a clear blue sky—that represents relaxation to you, it would be valuable for you to be able to tune in to it whenever stress threatens to interfere with your life. Be sure to conjure up the reactions of all five senses: Imagine the look, sound, smell, taste, and feel of your surroundings. Mental gateways are a valuable part of the relaxation exercise we just went through. And it is important to be aware that your nervous system—which is what overreacts in a stressful situation—cannot distinguish between reality and imagination. Here’s how to use mental imagery to create a mental getaway: (a) Choose a favorite place, a pleasant, relaxing setting that you have enjoyed in the past or one you would enjoy visiting in the future. (b) Close your eyes and think about the scene. Use your senses of hearing, smell, sight, taste, and touch to develop the scene. Put yourself there. If your mind wanders a bit, that’s okay. You’ll drift back to the scene after a short while.

You want me to fuck you?” I leaned down, bringing her face to mine so our noses crushed together. I grabbed the front of her dress, twisting, tightening it against her skin until the fabric began pulling apart and tearing. “You want me to knock you up?” “Yes,” she breathed out. “Yes.” I dropped to the marble, resting my back against the vanity. “Ask nicely.” “Please.” “Nicer.” She crawled toward me on all fours, straddled my lap, and grabbed my hand, bringing it between her legs. Her fingers guided mine into her slick pussy, two of hers joining mine inside her warmth. My lips found her nipple, biting down through her dress. Together, we fucked her cunt down to our knuckles, curling until her walls pulsed. I watched our fingers disappear inside her. She arched her back, trying to accommodate as much of us as she could. Her lips drifted to the shell of my ear. “Please, please, please.” I tore my fingers out of her, ripped her dress down the middle, and captured both sides of her waist, sinking her onto my cock, down to the hilt. Her head fell forward. She bit my shoulder, drawing blood, her hips bucking. She was so tight it felt like I was fucking her ass. Her walls squeezed around me, milking my dick for cum. I let her ride my length until my impatience won over, and I pulled her off me, flipped her over, and lowered her on all fours. The marble was cold and hard against her knees. I love seeing that spoiled little brat take all of my cock, feeling the discomfort of it. My silver-spooned nymph. I entered her from behind. She drove back, meeting each of my thrusts. My fingers curled around her neck and steered her upward until her back plastered against my front. She craned her head around and captured my lips, slipping her tongue past my teeth. Her back arched, fingers dipping between her legs, searching for her clit. I smacked them away, then landed a palm on her ass. “Rom,” she whined. “I need to come.” “What you need is to be fucking grateful.” My blood brought my point home, covering every inch of her back, arms, and tits, matting her hair in clumps. I released her throat and pet the crown of her head, whispering praises into her ear. “Such a good girl.” Words I never thought I’d say. Especially to this particular girl, who was anything but good two hundred percent of the time. “If only you took directions so well when you’re not filled with my cock.” I reached around her and found her clit, rewarding her with a single flick. She cried out and fell forward, on her hands and knees again, pushing onto my cock. More crimson drops splattered onto her back. I’d reopened my wound, and fresh red painted her spine. I dipped a finger into it, then spelled my name across her back dimples. “Who owns your ass?” I growled. “You.” “Louder.” “You.” “Now crawl forward and show me your cunt from behind. I want to see if it’s worth my cum.” With a reluctant moan, she inched away from my cock, writhing about two feet away. She started to turn when I hissed, “I don’t want to see your face, Mrs. Costa. Just the cunt I stole from my enemy.” She spread her thighs apart, exposing her pussy. It dripped on my floor, her juices mixing with my blood, creating a pink puddle at her feet. I stroked my cock, coated with her wetness, scented by the wife I couldn’t get enough of. I grinned, the release tickling my shaft. “Embarrassed?” “No. Empty.” Fuck me sideways. How this woman would ever end up with a wuss like Madison, I had no idea. She would make meatballs out of him before the reception. (Chapter 55)

ONCE YOU’VE HOOKED readers, your next task is to put your early chapters to work introducing your characters, settings, and stakes. The first 20-25% of the book comprises your setup. At first glance, this can seem like a tremendous chunk of story to devote to introductions. But if you expect readers to stick with you throughout the story, you first have to give them a reason to care. This important stretch is where you accomplish just that. Mere curiosity can only carry readers so far. Once you’ve hooked that sense of curiosity, you then have to deepen the pull by creating an emotional connection between them and your characters. These “introductions” include far more than just the actual moment of introducing the characters and settings or explaining the stakes. In themselves, the presentations of the characters probably won’t take more than a few scenes. After the introduction is when your task of deepening the characters and establishing the stakes really begins. The first quarter of the book is the place to compile all the necessary components of your story. Anton Chekhov’s famous advice that “if in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired” is just as important in reverse: if you’re going to have a character fire a gun later in the book, that gun should be introduced in the First Act. The story you create in the following acts can only be assembled from the parts you’ve shown readers in this First Act. That’s your first duty in this section. Your second duty is to allow readers the opportunity to learn about your characters. Who are these people? What is the essence of their personalities? What are their core beliefs (even more particularly, what are the beliefs that will be challenged or strengthened throughout the book)? If you can introduce a character in a “characteristic moment,” as we talked about earlier, you’ll be able to immediately show readers who this person is. From there, the plot builds as you deepen the stakes and set up the conflict that will eventually explode in the Inciting and Key Events. Authors sometimes feel pressured to dive right into the action of their stories, at the expense of important character development. Because none of us wants to write a boring story, we can overreact by piling on the explosions, fight sequences, and high-speed car chases to the point we’re unable to spend important time developing our characters. Character development is especially important in this first part of the story, since readers need to understand and sympathize with the characters before they’re hit with the major plot revelations at the quarter mark, halfway mark, and three-quarters mark. Summer blockbusters are often guilty of neglecting character development, but one enduring exception worth considering is Stephen Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. No one would claim the film is a leisurely character study, but it rises far above the monster movie genre through its expert use of pacing and its loving attention to character, especially in its First Act. It may surprise some viewers to realize the action in this movie doesn’t heat up until a quarter of the way into the film—and even then we have no scream-worthy moments, no adrenaline, and no extended action scenes until halfway through the Second Act. Spielberg used the First Act to build suspense and encourage viewer loyalty to the characters. By the time the main characters arrive at the park, we care about them, and our fear for their safety is beginning to manifest thanks to a magnificent use of foreshadowing. We understand that what is at stake for these characters is their very lives. Spielberg knew if he could hook viewers with his characters, he could take his time building his story to an artful Climax.

Even the way we describe seemingly straightforward tasks can make a difference in how people perform. In one experiment, subjects were asked to play either the “Wall Street Game” or the “Community Game,” a task designed to measure people’s willingness to cooperate under different conditions.19 In reality, they were the exact same game. But those who had been primed to think of community were more likely to be cooperative than those thinking of Wall Street. What we expect from people (and from ourselves) manifests itself in the words we use, and those words can have a powerful effect on end results. This means, as you will continue to see in the coming chapters, that the best managers and leaders view each interaction as an opportunity to prime their employees for excellence.

She decided at that moment that she wanted Gina for a friend... if Gina wasn't already a friend. She rather hoped that the Champion was. The more she thought about it, the more she hoped. Really, Gina had been very nice to someone that she'd had no real reason to like. After all, if it wasn't for Andie, where would she be now? 'On some other uncomfortable Quest?' Well, maybe. Or maybe still at the Chapter-House. And Andie was the one who had thrust herself on a reluctant Gina. The Champion had no reason to be happy about that. 'But she said herself that having me along made getting around the countryside easier.' Still, when it came right down to it, Andie had been an inconvenience. Yet Gina had never made things uncomfortable for Andie. And once she'd been revealed as being another girl- 'I'd really like her for a friend.' She looked around at the other young women clustered about the makeshift table, which looked as if someone had taken a slab of the fallen stone of the fortress walls and set it on four stumpy columns. Actually, someone probably had- that someone being one of the dragons. 'I'd like to have all of them for friends,' she found herself deciding in surprise. Uncommon trial and hardship, danger and uncertainty had brought them together, but they were making the most of it, and even seemed to be finding ways to enjoy themselves. They'd come to some sort of understanding, it seemed, because she honestly couldn't tell any differences of rank among them by the way they behaved toward one another.

suggested to the entire workforce that they read Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” one of the most important things I ever read. Inspired in part by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, King’s letter is about seeking justice in a deeply flawed world. I have reread it several times since first encountering it in college. Because I knew that the FBI’s interaction with the civil rights movement, and Dr. King in particular, was a dark chapter in the Bureau’s history, I wanted to do something more. I ordered the creation of a curriculum at the FBI’s Quantico training academy. I wanted all agent and analyst trainees to learn the history of the FBI’s interaction with King, how the legitimate counterintelligence mission against Communist infiltration of our government had morphed into an unchecked, vicious campaign of harassment and extralegal attack on the civil rights leader and others. I wanted them to remember that well-meaning people lost their way. I wanted them to know that the FBI sent King a letter blackmailing him and suggesting he commit suicide. I wanted them to stare at that history, visit the inspiring King Memorial in Washington, D.C., with its long arcs of stone bearing King’s words, and reflect on the FBI’s values and our responsibility to always do better. The FBI Training Division created a curriculum that does just that. All FBI trainees study that painful history and complete the course by visiting the memorial. There, they choose one of Dr. King’s quotations from the wall—maybe “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” or “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy”—and then write an essay about the intersection of that quotation and the FBI’s values. The course doesn’t tell the trainees what to think. It only tells them they must think, about history and institutional values. Last I checked, the course remains one of the highest-rated portions of their many weeks at Quantico.

to Memphis." So Abi returned to the white-walled city of Memphis and sat there sullenly, putting it about that a plot was on foot to deprive him of his heritage. But Kaku shook his head, saying in secret that the Star, Neter-Tua, would arise, for so it was decreed by Amen, father of the gods. CHAPTER III RAMES, THE PRINCESS, AND THE CROCODILE At the appointed time to Ahura, the royal wife, was born a child, a girl with a fresh and lovely face and waving hair and eyes that from the first were blue like the summer sky at even. Also on her breast was a mole of the length of a finger nail, which mole was shaped like the holy Sign of Life. Now Pharaoh and his house and the priests in every temple, and indeed all Egypt went mad with joy, though there were many who in secret mourned over the sex of the infant, whispering that a man and not a woman should wear the Double Crown. But in public they said nothing, since the story of this child had gone abroad and folk declared that it was sent by the gods, and divine, and that the goddesses, Isis, Nepthys, and Hathor, with Khemu, the Maker of Mankind, were seen in the birth chamber, glowing like gold. Also Pharaoh issued a decree that wherever the name of the Queen Ahura was graven in all the land, to it should be added the title "By the will of Amen, Mother of his Morning Star," and that a new hall should be built in the temple of Amen in the Northern Apt, and all about it carved the story of the coming of Prince Abi and of the vision of the Queen. But Ahura never lived to see this glorious place, since from the hour of her daughter's birth she began to sink. On the fourteenth day, the day

Leave tomorrow for the cowards. Today you must be fearless.”       Chapter Twenty       My favorite part about the plan for taking the southern Colony is that I’m not in it. Not really. We have over three hundred people here ready and willing to fight to the death to overthrow these pompous, pampered zealots, and we don’t need more than twenty-five of them to lift a

Like in the time of Esther, God has a Jewish girl hidden in the palace! She was born a Jew, then adopted and grafted into the commonwealth of Israel. She lived in every foreign land, hid her Jewish identity, took a Gentile name, and followed the celebrations of the nations where she lived. She grew in beauty and majesty, and she’s married to the King. Do you know her name? That’s right—the Church is her name. And now that the plot to destroy all the Jews has been revealed…her uncle, Mordecai (Messianic Jews), is begging her (the Church) to go before the King and intercede for the lives of her relatives. But will she do it? Will she fast and pray? Will she cry out as a watchman on the walls? Or will she remain silent, hoping the curse will somehow disappear, saying, “I am not of those people any longer; they rejected their King and I am married to Him; they brought these troubles on their own heads; why should I stick my neck out for them? If they are God’s chosen people, then He will certainly take care of them!” Listen to the words of Mordecai when Hadassah, Esther, was concerned for her own safety above the salvation of her people. Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this? (Esther 4:12-14) Yes, that’s right, Church! You are God’s hidden plan for the salvation of Israel and the blessing of all the peoples on Earth! Will you fast and pray? Will you go before the King and cry out for your people? Or will you continue to give comfort and aid to Haman, embrace replacement theology (discussed in chapter 8), support BDS, and refuse shelter and supply to the Jews? For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you will have missed the day of your visitation—even the very purpose for which you were brought to the Kingdom. The adversary, the usurper, is seeking to destroy the whole house of Israel again because… a King is coming!

Amari swung around in her seat to look back and there was indeed a small girl sitting on the boundary wall. She didn’t seem to be looking at the car that had just passed but up ahead. Amari turned around to see what she was looking at and she saw it, up ahead, the farm house that she could only assume was their new home.

Gaining insight or awareness is an important part of the getting-well process. Chapter 7 offers several exercises in self-awareness, designed to put you in touch with your strong points and help to clarify your goals further. People vary in their ability to become aware, and, once they have gained insight, in their ability to use this information effectively. And--this warning comes from my years of practice as a psychotherapist--beware the “I-Don’t-Know” disease! When people seek help, part of the goal is to change the negative balance that exists in their lives. Much of this unhealthy balance has arisen because of a lack of awareness, and a tendency not to take responsibility for various aspects of their lives. Self-awareness can be a difficult thing to attain, and the learned reflex--the answer to any even vaguely threatening question--is “I don’t know.” But “I don’t know” is not a brick wall. It is a door to be opened. Find out what’s behind it. If you’re having trouble, keep knocking until you get an answer.

Amari swung around in her seat to look back and there was indeed a small girl sitting on the boundary wall. She didn’t seem to be looking at the car that had just passed but up ahead. Amari turned around to see what she was looking at and she saw it, up ahead, the farm house that she could only assume was their new home.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, suppose an investor still believed that superior investment management really does exist. Two issues remain: First, it is clear that such skill is very rare; and second, there appears to be no effective way to find such skill before it has been demonstrated. As I indicated in chapter 7, the best-performing funds in one period of time are not the best performers in the next period. The top performers of the 1990s had dreadful returns in the first decade of the 2000s. Paul Samuelson summed up the difficulty in the following parable. Suppose it was demonstrated that one out of twenty alcoholics could learn to become a moderate social drinker. The experienced clinician would answer, “Even if true, act as if it were false, for you will never identify that one in twenty, and in the attempt five in twenty will be ruined.” Samuelson concluded that investors should forsake the search for such tiny needles in huge haystacks.

Jon Huntsman’s 2015 autobiography devoted a full chapter to the Apollo saga, entitling it simply “The Double Cross.” It offered such lines as, “Our earlier experiences with Bain and Blackstone proved there is no honor among thieves or among Wall Street shops. Apollo was no exception…Matlin [a Huntsman board member] had warned us Apollo would attempt to shaft us and Apollo did not disappoint…the route Apollo chose for saving itself was duplicity.

The bedroom door bursts open, bouncing off the wall with a sharp bang. Mallory and I shoot straight up. Andrew grins at us. “Are ya fuckin’?” I’m too stunned to answer or yell for him to get out. Shocked from the intrusion and the fact that he’s wearing nothing but what appears to be a black leather thong. The material seems to be having trouble containing him. Why is everyone flashing their crotch tonight? Pamela’s pussy earlier had been one thing. But I’m in no way interested in getting an eyeful of Andrew Lane’s log and berries. “What the fuck, man?” I bite out.

Take whatever job you can at one of those companies. Don’t worry too much about the title—focus on the work. If you get a foot in the door at a growing company, you’ll find opportunities to grow, too. Just whatever you do, don’t become a “management consultant” at a behemoth like McKinsey or Bain or one of the other eight consultancies that dominate the industry. They all have thousands upon thousands of employees and work almost exclusively with Fortune 5000 companies. These corporations, typically led by tentative, risk-averse CEOs, call in the management consultants to do a massive audit, find the flaws, and present leadership with a new plan that will magically “fix” everything. What a fairy tale—don’t get me started. But to many new grads, it sounds perfect: you get paid incredibly well to travel around the world, work with powerful companies and executives, and learn exactly how to make a business successful. It’s an alluring promise. Parts of it are even true. Yes, you get a nice paycheck. And yes, you get plenty of practice pitching important clients. But you don’t learn how to build or run a company. Not really. Steve Jobs once said of management consulting, “You do get a broad cut at companies but it’s very thin. It’s like a picture of a banana: you might get a very accurate picture but it’s only two dimensions, and without the experience of actually doing it you never get three dimensional. So you might have a lot of pictures on your walls, you can show it off to your friends—I’ve worked in bananas, I’ve worked in peaches, I’ve worked in grapes—but you never really taste it.” If you do choose to go that route and find yourself at one of the Big Four or the other top six firms, then that is of course your choice. Just know before you go what you want to learn and the experiences you need for your next chapter. Don’t get stuck. Management consulting should never be your endpoint—it should be a way station, a brief pause on your journey to actually doing something. Making something. To do great things, to really learn, you can’t shout suggestions from the rooftop then move on while someone else does the work. You have to get your hands dirty. You have to care about every step, lovingly craft every detail. You have to be there when it falls apart so you can put it back together. You have to actually do the job. You have to love the job.

Chapter Eight Jack shifted his gaze between the packet and Fabien’s pale face, then slowly got to his feet. Go to the police, that was what they should do. Let them deal with it. But what kind of trouble would that land Fabien in? “I’ll sort it.” Jack made his way up to the chimney, stuffed the packet into the black bin liner he found up there, and wedged it between the pots. That would buy them some time to think about how to help Fabien. He returned to the others. Fabien was still looking green and shaky, but was on his feet and putting on his hat. “I’ll help you get down to the street,” said Beth. “It’s okay. I’ll go back through the attic. Grandad will be wondering where I am.” The boy hobbled up the incline, back the way he’d come, and they heard him stagger down the other side. Jack banged his fist against the chimney wall, sending loose cement dust showering onto the tiles. “I wish he’d told me what was going on. I could have helped. I wondered why he wanted me to teach him shadow jumping.” “He’s scared,” said Beth. “Don’t be too hard on him. Kai’s got him where he wants him. It’s Kai you should be angry with, not Fabien.” “Who’s Kai working for?” Jack let out a worried breath. “I mean, he might be a thug, but he’s not got a lot of brains, has he?” Beth pressed her lips together in thought. “You’re right. He can’t be doing this alone.” Jack’s encounter with Kai from a few months ago was inked on his memory like a tattoo. He touched his ribs as if the bruising was still there, but of course the physical injuries were gone. Not so for Fabien, Jack thought, remembering the livid mark blooming on the

As Mom clicks and clucks and coos, I know that one of these shots will wind up in a gallery frame on the wall upstairs. Long after the continuing saga of Kate and Ben reaches its next chapter, I will find her in the hallway, gazing at the glass with shiny eyes and a full heart. These will be her fossils in bedrock, her coral clues to a bygone era. A strange lump forms in my throat as Mom gently tucks a strand of my loose updo behind my ear. I was once your little girl. Iowa was once an ocean.

The movers arrive at my new apartment as I close the door on this chapter. And just as this story started with you, so it shall end. May it cut through kilometres to find you. May it shelter you from the rain. May it find you nestled at the end of my voice.

By and large the apostolic function has passed into disuse among us today. This is a calamitous loss as it leaves the local church attempting to do everything. This loss causes confusion and a sense of failure among our people. For example, when average believers think of getting involved with the lost, they think they have to emulate Paul. They interpret “being a witness” as becoming one-person assault squads with the gospel, and that is just too daunting. As a result they give up and focus on safer “in-house” chores that need to be done within the church. No one has ever told them there might be another mode of outreach that would fit them far better, and would allow them to participate fruitfully in God’s purposes throughout their lifetime. We will expand on this in the final chapters.

We saw in chapter 4 how the church of the first century was multiform in its expressions and how the combined effects of the gathering and scattering of God’s people—together with the “traveling functions”—resulted in the expansion and penetration of the gospel. If we have any hope of accomplishing the task before us today, we must recover that kind of mobility.

Why’re you still here?” She yawned. “Go away. Jared will be here any moment, and I’ll be nothing but an unfortunate memory.” I should go. Pivot and leave. To my relief, I started doing just that. The echo of my footsteps bounced on the bare walls. I did not look back. Knew that if I caught a glimpse of her again, I’d make a mistake. This was for the best. It was time to cut my losses, admit my one mistake in my thirty-one years of life, and move on. My life would return to normal. Peaceful. Tidy. Noiseless. Unexpensive. My hand curled around the doorknob, about to push it open. “Hey, asshole.” I stopped but didn’t turn around. I refused to answer to the word. “What do you say—one last time for the road?” I glanced behind my shoulder, knowing I shouldn’t, and found my soon-to-be ex-wife propped on the hood of my Maybach, her dress hiked up her waist, revealing she’d worn no panties. Her bare pussy glistened, ready for me. A dare. I never shied away from those. Throwing caution to the wind (and the remaining few brain cells she hadn’t fried with her mindless conversation), I marched to her. When I reached the car, she lifted her hand to stop me, slapping her palm against my chest. “Not so fast.” It is going to be fast and a half, seeing as I’m about to come just from watching you like this. I arched an eyebrow. “Cold feet?” “Nah, low temperature is your thing. Don’t wanna steal your thunder. Either we go all the way, or we go nowhere at all. It’s all or nothing.” It infuriated me that each time I gave her a choice, she fabricated another. If I gave her an option, she swapped it with one of her creation. And now, on the heels of my ultimatum, she’d dished out her own. And like a doomed fool, I chose everything. I chose my downfall. We exploded together in a filthy, frustrated kiss full of tongue and teeth. She latched on to my neck, half-choking me, half-hugging me. I fumbled with the zipper of my suit pants, freeing my cock, which by this point gleamed with precum, so heavy and so hard it was uncomfortable to stand. My teeth grazed down her chin, trailing her throat before I did what I hadn’t done in five fucking years and pushed into her, all at once. Bare. My cock disappeared inside her, hitting a hot spot, squeezed to death by her muscles. Oh, fuck. My forehead fell against hers. A thin coat of sweat glued us together. Never in my life had anything felt quite so good. I wanted to evaporate into mist, seep into her, and never come back. I wanted to live, breathe, and exist inside my beautiful, maddening, conniving, infuriating curse of a wife. She was the one thing I never wanted and the only thing I craved. Worst, still, was the fact that I knew I couldn’t deny her a single thing she desired, be it a frock or piece of jewelry. Or, unfortunately, my heart on a platter, speared straight through with a skewer for her to devour. Still beating and as vibrant red as candied apples. I retreated, then slammed into her harder. Pulled and rushed back in. My fingers gripped her by the waist, pinning her down, wild with lust and desire. I drove into her in jerky, frenzied movements of a man starved for sex, fucking the ever-living shit out of her. Now that I’d officially filed a restraining order against my logic, I grabbed the front of her throat, sinking my teeth onto her lower lip. My spearmint breath skated over her face. The hood of the car warmed her thighs, still hot from the engine, jacking up the temperature between us even further. Small, desperate yelps fled her mouth. The only sounds in the cavernous space came from my grunts, our skin slapping together, and her tiny gasps of pleasure. The car rocked back and forth to the rhythm of my thrusts... (chapter 44)

Dallas latched on to the forearm of my hand curled around her throat and plastered her back against the hood of the car as I continued fucking her hard. The door behind us opened, and Jared walked in. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to—” “Get the fuck out,” I roared. My demand shook the walls so hard I was surprised they hadn’t cracked. The door promptly closed. Perhaps because it was, by far, the most pleasurable experience I’d ever had, the orgasm wasn’t instant. It skulked forward, gripping each of my limbs with its claws, taking over me like a drug. I knew I’d regret what was about to happen. Yet, I could not even entertain the idea of stopping. Dallas quaked beneath me. The muscles of her thighs strained. Sliding into her hot tightness a few more times, I finally erupted inside her. It was glorious. And at the same time, felt as if someone had sucked my chest empty. I came, and I came, and I came into Dallas’s cunt. When I finally pulled out, everything between us was sticky. I peered down between her legs. My thick white cum dripped from her swollen red slit to the hood of my car. Pink flakes of blood scattered inside the cloudy, milky liquid. Panting and out of breath, I realized this marked the first time that I’d lost myself to a moment. That I’d forgotten everything. Including the fact that she was present. My gaze rode up her bruised pussy to her torso. Sometime during sex, I’d torn the top of her dress without even noticing. Red marks covered her exposed breasts. Full of scratches and bites. Her neck still bore the imprints of my fingers—how hard had I grabbed her? And though I dreaded seeing the aftermath on her face, I couldn’t stop myself. I looked up and nearly keeled over to vomit. Flushed pink cloaked her face. A single silent tear traveled down her cheek. A glossy sheen coated her hazel eyes, almost golden in their tone and empty as my chest. The corner of her lips had produced a thin line of blood. Her doing. Not mine. She’d bitten them to tamp down her pained cries. Shortbread wanted me to fuck her bareback so badly, she’d suffered through the entire ordeal. Incomparable guilt slammed into me. Bitterness hit the back of my throat. I’d taken her without considering her pleasure. Against my better judgment. And in the process, I’d ruined her first genuine experience of sex. “Sorry.” I jerked away from Dallas, shoved my dripping half-mast cock back into my pants, and zipped up. “Jesus. Fuck. I’m so—” The rest of the sentence vanished in my throat. I shook my head, still in disbelief that I’d fucked her to the point of blood and tears. Without even sparing her a glance. She sat up. That lone tear still shimmered from her cheek, somehow even worse than a loud sob. “Do you have any gum?” The perfect, even composure braided into her voice rattled me. In fact, everything about Dallas rattled me. On autopilot, I produced two pieces of gum from my tin container, forking them over to her. She tucked both into her pretty pink mouth that I would never kiss and fuck again. “Shortbread…” I stopped. An apology wouldn’t even begin to cover it. “No. It’s my time to speak.” She made no move to flee. To slap me. To call the police, her parents, her sister. My cum still dripped fat white drops through her exposed pussy. A single streak of blood smeared across the hood of my car. I stood far enough from her that I wasn’t a threat and listened.(Chapter 44)

With its glass walls, you can enjoy the view even when it’s raining. It has a huge outdoor terrace with a panoramic view across the city, but the big draw is that you are up high, directly in front of the ‘cricket cage’ balustrade of Brunelleschi’s dome. Just between you and me, the Folco Portinari–Dante connection had me sold before I even arrived. It could have had a view of the men’s toilets and I still would have been thrilled, just because I love the Alighieri-Portinari story! (See Chapter 23: A Walk With Dante.) My first time here was with the city archivist I told you about in the chapter on the Duomo, so I associate this place with cool local 30-somethings with fascinating jobs in the city and endless stories about Florence, dating back to Julius Caesar. Caffeteria della Oblate is a little tricky to find, but that means the tourist crowd can’t find it either, so walking around in circles trying to get here is worth it. And of course, there’s that view… Address: Via dell’ Oriuolo, 26

Paul Hiebert of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School calls this kind of thinking “bounded-set thinking.” That is, there is a boundary that sets the standard. One either qualifies or is rejected; it’s pass or fail. What I’m advocating in this chapter is that we move from bounded-set thinking to what Hiebert refers to as “centered-set thinking” in our understanding of the church.24 In a centered set, what counts is how each member is moving in relation to the center. The focus is on the center, and each individual is in dynamic relationship to it. Belonging, in this case, is not a matter of performing according to an agreed-upon profile; it is a matter of living and acting out of commitment to a common center. The focus is on the center and on pointing people to that center. Process is more important than definitions. Centered-set thinking affirms initiatives that would otherwise not find a place. It rewards creativity.

11. Lack of controlled sexual urge. Sex energy is the most powerful of all the stimuli which move people into action. Because it is the most powerful of the emotions, it must be controlled, through transmutation, and converted into other channels. 12. Uncontrolled desire for “something for nothing.” The gambling instinct drives millions of people to failure. Evidence of this may be found in a study of the Wall Street crash of ’29, during which millions of people tried to make money by gambling on stock margins. 13. Lack of a well defined power of decision. Men who succeed reach decisions promptly, and change them, if at all, very slowly. Men who fail reach decisions, if at all, very slowly, and change them frequently, and quickly. Indecision and procrastination are twin brothers. Where one is found, the other may usually be found also. Kill off this pair before they completely “hog-tie” you to the treadmill of failure. 14. One or more of the six basic fears. These fears have been analyzed for you in a later chapter. They must be mastered before you can market your services effectively. 15. Wrong selection of a mate in marriage. This is a most common cause of failure. The relationship of marriage brings people intimately into contact. Unless this relationship is harmonious, failure is likely to follow. Moreover, it will be a form of failure that is marked by misery and unhappiness, destroying all signs of ambition. 16. Over-caution. The person who takes no chances generally has to take whatever is left when others are through choosing. Over-caution is as bad as under-caution. Both are extremes to be guarded against. Life itself is filled with the element of chance. 17. Wrong selection of associates in business. This is one of the most common causes of failure in business. In marketing personal services, one should use great care to select an employer who will be an inspiration, and who is, himself, intelligent and successful. We emulate those with whom we associate most closely. Pick an employer who is worth emulating. 18. Superstition and prejudice. Superstition is a form of fear. It is also a sign of ignorance. Men who succeed keep open minds and are afraid of nothing. 19. Wrong selection of a vocation. No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like. The most essential step in the marketing of personal services is that of selecting an occupation into which you can throw yourself wholeheartedly. 20. Lack of concentration of effort. The jack-of-all-trades seldom is good at any. Concentrate all of your efforts on one definite chief aim.

For those in their twenties, a very aggressive investment portfolio is recommended. At this age, there is lots of time to ride out the peaks and valleys of investment cycles, and you have a lifetime of earnings from employment ahead of you. The portfolio is not only heavy in common stocks but also contains a substantial proportion of international stocks, including the higher-risk emerging markets. As mentioned in chapter 8, one important advantage of international diversification is risk reduction. Plus, international diversification enables an investor to gain exposure to other growth areas in the world even as world markets become more closely correlated.

God dipped his fingers in black ink and inked my whole body. can’t you see it? i have poetry and history written all over my skin. can’t you see it? come closer and see how every melanin is a letter and every curve is a chapter. i am the sequel of a story with no ending in sight. | drawings on the wall.

And this ghost believed he was in the last phase of life. He considered his anesthesia an inevitable chapter of a human being. After a certain amount of naked bodies, blood on the walls, and vomit on the floor, the color white will look gray. Once he surrendered to gray, the uncaring world proved his worldview. He walked the sunny streets and knew no passerby would ever save him from his rainstorm. He could cry all the way to work and back unstopped. The unconcern of the world confirmed to him that he was a ghost, not only because he was deadened from the hotel, but because when he left and stepped outside it, he knew, indisputably, everyone else was dead to everyone else. To be alive is to play the role of ghost.

Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity John Gribbin, Random House (2005) F.F.I.A.S.C.O.: The Inside Story of a Wall Street Trader Frank Partnoy, Penguin Books (1999) Ice Age John & Mary Gribbin, Barnes & Noble (2002) How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It Arthur Herman, Three Rivers Press (2002) Models of My Life Herbert A. Simon The MIT Press (1996) A Matter of Degrees: What Temperature Reveals About the Past and Future of Our Species, Planet, and Universe Gino Segre, Viking Books (2002) Andrew Carnegie Joseph Frazier Wall, Oxford University Press (1970) Guns Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies Jared M. Diamond, W. W. Norton & Company The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal Jared Nt[. Diamond, Perennial (1992) Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Robert B. Cialdini, Perennial Currents (1998) The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Benjamin franklin, Yale Nota Bene (2003) Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos Garrett Hardin, Oxford University Press (1995) The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins, Oxford University Press (1990) Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr. Ron Chernow, Vintage (2004) The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor David Sandes, W. W Norton & Company (1998) The Warren Buffett Portfolio: Mastering the Power of the Focus Investment Strategist Robert G. Hagstrom, Wiley (2000) Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters Matt Ridley, Harper Collins Publishers (2000) Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giz.ting In Roger Fisher, William, and Bruce Patton, Penguin Books Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning in an Age of Information Robert Wright, Harper Collins Publishers (1989) Only the Paranoid Survive Andy Grove, Currency (1996 And a few from your editor... Les Schwab: Pride in Performance Les Schwab, Pacific Northwest Books (1986) Men and Rubber: The Story of Business Harvey S. Firestone, Kessinger Publishing (2003) Men to Match My Mountains: The Opening of the Far West, 1840-1900 Irving Stone, Book Sales (2001)

Why is something always coming to get us?” sighed Carl. “No one’s ever chasing us to give us a hug or to give us free baked potatoes. For once in my life, I’d like to see fewer killer monsters and more baked potatoes. Is that too much to ask?” Chapter 4 Jimmy startled awake. At first, he drifted in a dream fog, but then he began to recall the details of his peculiar dream and the strange magical old man who had appeared in it. As his dream fog continued to clear, he realized he was no longer on the beach at the Surf ‘n Snack. He lurched up to a sitting position. He was sitting on a bed in a small room with no windows and only a single door. The walls of the room were made out of wood blocks,

Upon Evangeline and Jacks's initial return to the inn, the Hollow had actually been quite frosty. Doors often slammed shut. Windows stuck. Wardrobes refused to open. Faucets yielded only icy water. 'I think it's cross with us,' Jacks had said. 'Give it a few days. It will warm up.' The walls had rattled then. 'If it doesn't, we'll leave,' Jacks added, tossing a dart up in the air as he spoke. 'We can build a new inn- a better one.' Jacks caught his dart, then threw it, purposefully missing the board and sinking the dart's sharp tip into the wall instead. Doors stopped slamming after that. Windows no longer stuck, and wardrobes were more eager to open. As the days went on, the Hollow became friendlier and friendlier. Fresh flowers started to appear on tables. Evangeline found new logs in the fireplaces every morning at dawn, and whenever she drew a bath, the water was always perfectly warm. The Hollow wanted them to stay. (Indigo Exclusive Edition Alternate Ending).

In AD 392, the same year Emperor Theodosius outlawed the Mysteries, Bishop Theophilus of Alexandria led a rabid mob into “the most beautiful building in the world” and razed it to the ground.2 It’s unclear if Theophilus (Greek for “beloved of God”) and the Christians he urged on were really after the glimmering statue of the Greco-Egyptian god Serapis, or the vast library collection that was cached in his temple precinct. Either way, Catherine Nixey’s The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World—which framed this investigation in the first chapter—lends exquisite detail to the annihilation of the “world’s first public library” and its “hundreds of thousands of volumes.” The Christians “roared with delight” as a “double-headed axe” split Serapis’s face. The body of the pagan statue was then barbecued in the central amphitheater as a form of “public humiliation”—“burned to ashes before the eyes of the Alexandria which had worshipped him.” Insatiate, the “warlike” mercenaries for Jesus then tore the temple apart stone by stone, “toppling the immense marble columns, causing the walls themselves to collapse.”3 We don’t know exactly what happened to the contents of the Great Library, but they were never seen again. As Nixey concludes,

As painters, our brushes are our magic wands, and every room is our canvas. We transform each home into a masterpiece that reflects your dreams and style. From the colorful streets of Amager to the serene corners of Copenhagen, our passion for painting creates beautiful spaces that invite life and joy. Visit our website to explore our wide range of services and let us paint your next chapter. And if you're seeking inspiration specifically from Amager, check out our page to see how we've transformed some of the most beautiful homes in this area. Let's paint the stories of our lives, wall by wall.

All journalists stand on the shoulders of giants, whether they admit it or not. In many cases, my book was vastly enhanced by the superlative work of other journalists, writers, and financial historians, who have themselves explored some of the subjects and themes I have tried to knit together in one sweeping narrative. Peter Bernstein is a huge inspiration, and his books were of tremendous help for some of the earlier chapters, as was Colin Read’s The Efficient Market Hypothesists. Lewis Braham’s biography of Jack Bogle is essential reading for anyone interested in the tumultuous life of Vanguard’s founder. Ralph Lehman’s The Elusive Trade was exhaustively detailed on the genesis of ETFs, and Anthony Bianco’s The Big Lie vividly tells the story of WFIA/BGI in the Pattie Dunn era. I have also learned an enormous amount from working with or admiring from afar financial journalists like John Authers, Gillian Tett, James Mackintosh, Philip Coggan, and Jason Zweig, as well as industry experts such as Deborah Fuhr, Ben Johnson, Eric Balchunas, and David Nadig. They are all titans upon whose shoulders I nervously perch.

If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on a wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.