Character Lost Everything Lost Quotes

You should date a girl who reads. Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve. Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn. She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book. Buy her another cup of coffee. Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice. It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does. She has to give it a shot somehow. Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world. Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two. Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series. If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are. You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype. You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots. Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads. Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

There will be a time when I will answer everything, Avelyn. But it is far in the future for you.

The abuser’s mood changes are especially perplexing. He can be a different person from day to day, or even from hour to hour. At times he is aggressive and intimidating, his tone harsh, insults spewing from his mouth, ridicule dripping from him like oil from a drum. When he’s in this mode, nothing she says seems to have any impact on him, except to make him even angrier. Her side of the argument counts for nothing in his eyes, and everything is her fault. He twists her words around so that she always ends up on the defensive. As so many partners of my clients have said to me, “I just can’t seem to do anything right.” At other moments, he sounds wounded and lost, hungering for love and for someone to take care of him. When this side of him emerges, he appears open and ready to heal. He seems to let down his guard, his hard exterior softens, and he may take on the quality of a hurt child, difficult and frustrating but lovable. Looking at him in this deflated state, his partner has trouble imagining that the abuser inside of him will ever be back. The beast that takes him over at other times looks completely unrelated to the tender person she now sees. Sooner or later, though, the shadow comes back over him, as if it had a life of its own. Weeks of peace may go by, but eventually she finds herself under assault once again. Then her head spins with the arduous effort of untangling the many threads of his character, until she begins to wonder whether she is the one whose head isn’t quite right.

And he who wields white, wild magic gold is a paradox For he is everything and nothing Hero and fool Potent, helpless And with one word of truth or treachery He will save or damn the earth Because he is mad and sane Cold and passionate Lost and found

Character is what you have left when you've lost everything you can lose.

Just think how happy you'd be if you lost everything you have right now & then got it back.

Parables are told only because they are true, not because the actions of the characters in them can be recommended for imitation. Good Samaritans are regularly sued. Fathers who give parties for wayward sons are rightly rebuked, Employers who pay equal wages for unequal work have labor-relations problems. And any Shepherd who makes a practice of leaving ninety-nine sheep to chase after a lost one quickly goes out of the sheep-ranching business. The parables are true only because they are like what God is like, not because they are models for us to copy. It is simply a fact that the one thing we dare not under any circumstances imitate is the only thing that can save us. The parables are, one and all, about the foolishness by which Grace raises the dead. They apply to no sensible process at all - only to the divine insanity that brings everything out of nothing.

Oh yes, how terrible for you. Having to have a staff wait on you, having the world for yours to take due to being born into privilege and being so unbelievably bored at the prospect of living a life of leisure thanks to the genetic lottery you won that you threw it all away for a pursuit of a career that, quite frankly, is not your strong suit, shall we say. Yes. Poor little rich girl. Everything you have now, everything you had lost and walked away from, is of your doing. You just had to maintain a life of decorum. Sorry if the expectations of being proper were unattainable for you. I hadn’t expected that to be outside of your reach.

Character is what you have when you've lost everything you can loose.

Personal discontent and lost illusion is the catalysis and the principal theme for every book ever written. The sign of maturity is when a person finally realizes that they would rather live truthfully than persist indulging his or her comforting delusions.

People who self-select into finance often share character traits: they enjoy working with numbers and predicting the economic implications of everything from current events to playing lacrosse.

So why bother investing in one’s memory in an age of externalized memories? The best answer I can give is the one I received unwittingly from EP, whose memory had been so completely lost that he could not place himself in time or space, or relative to other people. That is: How we perceive the world and how we act in it are products of how and what we remember. We’re all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks of our memories. No lasting joke, invention, insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory. Not yet, at least. Our ability to find humor in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in a common culture: All these essentially human acts depend on memory. Now more than ever, as the role of memory in our culture erodes at a faster pace than ever before, we need to cultivate our ability to remember. Our memories make us who we are. They are the seat of our values and source of our character.

For before I met my friend there had been a period when I was prey to a morbid melancholy, if not depression, when I really believed I was lost, when for years I did no proper work but spent most of my days in a state of total apathy and often came close to putting an end to my life by my own hand. For years I had taken refuge in a terrible suicidal brooding, which deadened my mind and made everything unendurable, above all myself—brooding on the utter futility all around me, into which I had been plunged by my general weakness, but above all my weakness of character. For a long time I could not imagine being able to go on living, or even existing. I was no longer capable of seizing upon any purpose in life that would have given me control over myself. Every morning on waking I was inevitably caught up in this mechanism of suicidal brooding, and I remained in its grip throughout the day. And I was deserted by everyone because I had deserted everyone—that is the truth—because I no longer wanted anyone. I no longer wanted anything, but I was too much of a coward to make an end of it all. It was probably at the height of my despair—a word that I am not ashamed to use, as I no longer intend to deceive myself or gloss over anything, since nothing can be glossed over in a society and a world that perpetually seeks to gloss over everything in the most sickening manner—that Paul appeared on the scene at Irina’s apartment in the Blumenstockgasse.

For Gracias, the Tesla and SpaceX investor and Musk’s friend, the 2008 period told him everything he would ever need to know about Musk’s character. He saw a man who arrived in the United States with nothing, who had lost a child, who was being pilloried in the press by reporters and his ex-wife and who verged on having his life’s work destroyed. “He has the ability to work harder and endure more stress than anyone I’ve ever met,” Gracias said. “What he went through in 2008 would have broken anyone else. He didn’t just survive. He kept working and stayed focused.” That ability to stay focused in the midst of a crisis stands as one of Musk’s main advantages over other executives and competitors. “Most people who are under that sort of pressure fray,” Gracias said. “Their decisions go bad. Elon gets hyperrational. He’s still able to make very clear, long-term decisions. The harder it gets, the better he gets. Anyone who saw what he went through firsthand came away with more respect for the guy. I’ve just never seen anything like his ability to take pain.

Two traits of Albertine’s character came back to me at that moment, one to comfort and the other to appall me, for we can find everything in our memory: it is a kind of pharmacy or chemical laboratory, where one’s hand may fall at any moment on a sedative drug or a dangerous poison.

Religious devotion is for the individual. Character is for all. There is no loss if there is no devotion. Everything is lost if there is no character.

It's the characters, mostly, not the world. It's how people are when they've lost everything or when it's dangerous to think for themselves.

the makeshift character that springs from speaking and looking on and letting everything pass and then the loneliness of being left here endless lost to my lethargy like a dripping tap

Every witch or wizard with a wand has held in his or her hands more power than we will ever know. With the right spell or potion, they can fabricate love, travel through time, change physical form and even extinguish life. In the wrong hands, power and magic can be dark, lethal, and consuming. Lord Voldemort showed us that; he sought power so viciously that he tore apart the fabric of his soul and lost everything that made him human. He is the ultimate villain, motivated by an ice-cold desire for power and destruction. Obviously few people could match Voldemort in general evil intent (though Bellatrix Lestrange and Dolores Umbridge indeed try), but there are certainly other characters attracted to power.

His was one of those well-groomed reputations that get the most out of everything; any unusual holiday acquires the character of an exploration, and though the explorer takes care to do nothing really original, the public does not know this

How difficult is the perseverance of one person? All of the Gu Immortals here could answer that question. Because among them, some persevered because of responsibility, some persevered because of hatred, some persevered because of excitement, and some persevered because of love… And Fang Yuan’s answer? He was still expressionless, he continued to move forward relentlessly. I had once screamed, gradually, I lost my voice. I had once cried, gradually, I lost my tears. I had once grieved, gradually, I became able to withstand everything. I had once rejoiced, gradually, I became unmoved by the world. And now! All I have left is an expressionless face, my gaze is as tough as a monolith, only perseverance remains in my heart. This is my own, an insignificant character, Fang Yuan’s — Perseverance!

When he wrote back, he pretended to be his old self, he lied his way into sanity. For fear of his psychiatrist who was also their censor, they could never be sensual, or even emotional. His was considered a modern, enlightened prison, despite its Victorian chill. He had been diagnosed, with clinical precision, as morbidly oversexed, and in need of help as well as correction. He was not to be stimulated. Some letters—both his and hers—were confiscated for some timid expression of affection. So they wrote about literature, and used characters as codes. All those books, those happy or tragic couples they had never met to discuss! Tristan and Isolde the Duke Orsino and Olivia (and Malvolio too), Troilus and Criseyde, Once, in despair, he referred to Prometheus, chained to a rock, his liver devoured daily by a vulture. Sometimes she was patient Griselde. Mention of “a quiet corner in a library” was a code for sexual ecstasy. They charted the daily round too, in boring, loving detail. He described the prison routine in every aspect, but he never told her of its stupidity. That was plain enough. He never told her that he feared he might go under. That too was clear. She never wrote that she loved him, though she would have if she thought it would get through. But he knew it. She told him she had cut herself off from her family. She would never speak to her parents, brother or sister again. He followed closely all her steps along the way toward her nurse’s qualification. When she wrote, “I went to the library today to get the anatomy book I told you about. I found a quiet corner and pretended to read,” he knew she was feeding on the same memories that consumed him “They sat down, looked at each other, smiled and looked away. Robbie and Cecilia had been making love for years—by post. In their coded exchanges they had drawn close, but how artificial that closeness seemed now as they embarked on their small talk, their helpless catechism of polite query and response. As the distance opened up between them, they understood how far they had run ahead of themselves in their letters. This moment had been imagined and desired for too long, and could not measure up. He had been out of the world, and lacked the confidence to step back and reach for the larger thought. I love you, and you saved my life. He asked about her lodgings. She told him. “And do you get along all right with your landlady?” He could think of nothing better, and feared the silence that might come down, and the awkwardness that would be a prelude to her telling him that it had been nice to meet up again. Now she must be getting back to work. Everything they had, rested on a few minutes in a library years ago. Was it too frail? She could easily slip back into being a kind of sister. Was she disappointed? He had lost weight. He had shrunk in every sense. Prison made him despise himself, while she looked as adorable as he remembered her, especially in a nurse’s uniform. But she was miserably nervous too, incapable of stepping around the inanities. Instead, she was trying to be lighthearted about her landlady’s temper. After a few more such exchanges, she really was looking at the little watch that hung above her left breast, and telling him that her lunch break would soon be over.

There was magic. Some kind of alchemy. I don't remember the moment you transformed from a prop into a main character. No, that's not what happened. I don't remember when you shape- shifted from an elf into a Prince. No, that isn't it either. What I really mean is: I don't know if we were meant to fall into each other all along or if you were just in the right place at the right time. Yes, I found safety in your arms in the middle of a hurricane I chose to escape, and I still don't know how it would have turned out if someone else came to my door that day. Or if you never held me. Or if I never cried. Or if everything hadn't been so fairy tale. Until it wasn't. Do you see the magic now, now that it's too late? Do you still remember me? Do I still remember you? And what, in the end, have we learned? Is it really better to have loved and lost? Was it love for you? Who now is dying faster from the lonely?

One of the signs of a great society is the diligence with which it passes culture from one generation to the next. This culture is the embodiment of everything the people of that society hold dear: its religious faith, its heroes.....when one generation no longer esteems it's own heritage and fails to pass the torch to its children, it is saying in essence that the very foundational principles and experiences that make the society what it is are no longer valid. This leaves that generation without any sense of definition or direction, making them the fulfillment of Karl Marx's dictum, 'A people without a heritage are easily persuaded.' What is required when this happens and the society has lost its way, is for leaders to arise, who have not forgotten the discarded legacy and who love it with all their hearts. They can then become the voice of that lost generation, wooing an errant generation back to the faith of their fathers, back to the ancient foundations and bedrock values.... (Allegendly cited in Stephen Mansfield - Never Give In, The Extraordinary Character of Winston Churchill)

Speaking through one of his characters in the novel Foucault’s Pendulum, Umberto Eco makes the following alltoo-true observation: “For him, everything proves everything else. The Lunatic is all idée fixé, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.

Not long ago I was watching the film A Story Worth Living with my sons. The film concludes with everyone enjoying a lovely Colorado evening at twilight. The characters sit in a circle around a fire. The discussion is about wholeness and the soul’s longing for a time of complete restoration and what that might be like. “That nothing is between me and any other person—no misunderstanding” was how one character described this wholeness. Another added, “That everything I have lost will be returned.” Nods of approval and expressions of affirmation filled in the space. Then another spoke: “That nothing is lost and that there are no more good-byes.” This is shalom. This is what we were made for. It is how life is supposed to be for us. This is humanity in its glory, but it waits. It cannot be while we live fallen. And perhaps it cannot fully be realized until the Savior’s return—but we can have so much more right now than we might realize.

Oh, I will. If I truly love the book, I’ll buy it so I can reread it.” “You’d reread a book?” “Heck yes.” I grinned. “A story your mind gets lost in, where you feel what the characters feel isn’t enough to read just once. It’s something you want to experience over and over. The love, lust, betrayal, loss… everything. A good book can get your heart pumping, your belly dipping, and your body tingling. It’s something a person can experience, no matter how many times you read it.

March 2, 1944 Love, what is love? I don't think you can really put it into words. Love is understanding someone, caring for him, sharing his joys and sorrows. This eventually includes physical love. You've shared something, given something away and received something in return...Losing your virtue doesn't matter, as long as you know that for as long as you live you'll have someone at your side who understands you, and who doesn't have to be shared with anyone else! March 7, 1944 ...I'd like to live that seemingly carefree and happy life for an evening, a few days, a week. At the end of that week I'd be exhausted, and would be grateful to the first person to talk to me about something meaningful. I want friends, not admirers. People who respect me for my character and my deeds, not my flattering smile. The circle around me would be smaller, but that does that matter, as long as they're sincere? ... At such moments I don't think about all the misery, but about the beauty that still remains. This is where Mother and I differ greatly. Her advice in the face of melancholy is: "Think about all the suffering in the world and be thankful you're not part of it." My advice is: "Go outside, to the country, enjoy the sun and all nature has to offer. Go outside and try to recapture the happiness within yourself; think of all the beauty in yourself and in everything around you and be happy." I don't think Mother's advice can be right, because what are you supposed to do if you become part of the suffering? You'd be completely lost. On the contrary, beauty remains, even in misfortune. If you just look for it, you discover more and more happiness and regain your balance. A person who's happy will make others happy; a person who has courage and faith will never die in misery!

So it was that Mister Povondra started his collection of newspaper cuttings about the newts. Without his passion as a collector much of the material we now have would otherwise have been lost. He cut out and saved everything written about the newts that he could find; it should even be said that after some initial fumblings he learned to plunder the newspapers in his favourite café wherever there was mention of the newts and even developed an unusual, almost magical, virtuosity in tearing the appropriate article out of the paper and putting it in his pocket right under the nose of the head waiter. It is well known that all collectors are willing to steal and murder if that is what's needed to add a certain item to their collection, but that is not in any way a stain on their moral character. His life was now the life of a collector, and that gave it meaning. Evening after evening he would count and arrange his cuttings under the indulgent eyes of Mrs. Povondra who knew that every man is partly mad and partly a little child; it was better for him to play with his cuttings than to go out drinking and playing cards. She even made some space in the scullery for all the boxes he had made himself for his collection; could anything more be asked of a wife?

Literary Fiction and Reality Towards the beginning of his novel The Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil announces that 'no serious attempt will be made to... enter into competition with reality.' And yet it is an element in the situation he cannot ignore. How good it would be, he suggests, if one could find in life ' the simplicity inherent in narrative order. 'This is the simple order that consists in being able to say: "When that had happened, then this happened." What puts our mind at rest is the simple sequence, the overwhelming variegation of life now represented in, as a mathematician would say, a unidimensional order.' We like the illusions of this sequence, its acceptable appearance of causality: 'it has the look of necessity.' But the look is illusory; Musil's hero Ulrich has 'lost this elementary narrative element' and so has Musil. The Man Without Qualities is multidimensional, fragmentary, without the possibility of a narrative end. Why could he not have his narrative order? Because 'everything has now become nonnarrative.' The illusion would be too gross and absurd. Musil belonged to the great epoch of experiment; after Joyce and Proust, though perhaps a long way after, he is the novelist of early modernism. And as you see he was prepared to spend most of his life struggling with the problems created by the divergence of comfortable story and the non-narrative contingencies of modern reality. Even in the earlier stories he concerned himself with this disagreeable but necessary dissociation; in his big novel he tries to create a new genre in which, by all manner of dazzling devices and metaphors and stratagems, fiction and reality can be brought together again. He fails; but the point is that he had to try, a sceptic to the point of mysticism and caught in a world in which, as one of his early characters notices, no curtain descends to conceal 'the bleak matter-of-factness of things.

How many characters in each word does a person read when his mind is on other things and when he is already sure that he knows who the letter is from? How many words in each sentence? We guess as we read, we invent; everything stems from one initial error; those that follow (and this not only in reading letters and telegrams, not even only in all acts of reading), however extraordinary they may seem to someone who does not share the same starting-point, are natural enough. Thus it is that a great deal of what we believe to be true, not to mention the ultimate conclusions that, with equal perseverance and good faith, we draw from it, results from an initial misconception of the premiss.

If Paul brought the first generation of Christians the useful skills of a trained theologian, Origen was the first great philosopher to rethink the new religion from first principles. As his philosophical enemy, the anti-Christian Porphyry, summed it up, he 'introduced Greek ideas to foreign fables' -- that is, gave a barbarous eastern religion the intellectual respectability of a philosophical defense. Origen was also a phenomenon. As Eusebius put it admiringly, 'even the facts from his cradle are worth mentioning'. Origen came from Alexandria, the second city of the empire and then it's intellectual centre; his father's martyrdom left him an orphan at seventeen with six younger brothers. He was a hard working prodigy, at eighteen head of the Catechetical School, and already trained as a literary scholar and teacher. But at this point, probably in 203, he became a religious fanatic and remained one for the next fifty years. He gave up his job and sold his books to concentrate on religion. he slept on the floor, ate no meat, drank no wine, had only one coat and no shoes. He almost certainly castrated himself, in obedience to the notorious text, Matthew 19:12, 'there are some who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake.' Origen's learning was massive and it was of a highly original kind: he always went back to the sources and thought through the whole process himself. This he learned Hebrew and, according to Eusebius, 'got into his possession the original writings extant among the Jews in the actual Hebrew character'. These included the discovery of lost texts; in the case of the psalms, Origen collected not only the four known texts but three others unearthed, including 'one he found at Jericho in a jar'. The result was an enormous tome, the Hexapla, which probably existed in only one manuscript now lost, setting out the seven alternative texts in parallel columns. He applied the same principles of original research to every aspect of Christianity and sacred literature. He seems to have worked all day and though most of the night, and was a compulsive writer. Even the hardy Jerome later complained: 'Has anyone read everything Origen wrote?'

This is one of the great charms of Poirot’s investigations, for they reveal a world where manners and morals are quite different from today. There are no overt and unnecessary sex scenes, no alcoholic, haunted detectives in Poirot’s world. He lives in a simpler, some would say more human, era: a lost England, seen through the admiring eyes of this foreigner, this little Belgian detective. For me, that makes the stories all the more appealing, for although the days he lives in seem far away, they are all the more enchanting because of it." "In those first days after the series had begun on ITV, I realised for the first time that Poirot touches people’s hearts in a way that I had never anticipated when I started to play him. I cannot put my finger on precisely how he does it, but somehow he makes those who watch him feel secure. People see him and feel better. I don’t know exactly why that is, but there is something about him. My performance had touched that nerve." "The more Poirot welcomes his fellow characters, the more the audience sympathise with him, and the more he extends his gentle control over everything around him, as if wrapping it all in his own personal glow. I believe he is unique in fictional detectives in that respect, because he carefully welcomes everyone – be they reader, viewer, or participant character – into his drama. He then quietly explains what it all means and, in doing so, he becomes what one critic called ‘our dearest friend’.

For Gracias, the Tesla and SpaceX investor and Musk’s friend, the 2008 period told him everything he would ever need to know about Musk’s character. He saw a man who arrived in the United States with nothing, who had lost a child, who was being pilloried in the press by reporters and his ex-wife and who verged on having his life’s work destroyed. “He has the ability to work harder and endure more stress than anyone I’ve ever met,” Gracias said. “What he went through in 2008 would have broken anyone else. He didn’t just survive. He kept working and stayed focused.” That ability to stay focused in the midst of a crisis stands as one of Musk’s main advantages over other executives and competitors. “Most people who are under that sort of pressure fray,” Gracias said. “Their decisions go bad.

5. Be the Most Enthusiastic Person You Know My mum and dad gave me a few bits of great advice as a young boy (along with a fair amount of scolding for being an idiot, but that’s another story!), but there is one thing my late father told me that has affected my outlook and approach to life more than almost anything else, and it was this: If you can be the most enthusiastic person you know, then you won’t go far wrong. It was always said to me with a wry smile, as if I was being told something of infinite power. And he was right. Enthusiasm so often makes the critical difference: it sustains you when times are tough, it encourages those around you, it is totally infectious and it rapidly becomes a habit! In turn, that enthusiasm adds the extra 5 per cent sparkle to everything we do - and life is so often won or lost in that little extra bit that carries us home over the finish line.

...everything that was not connected with the immediate task of keeping oneself and one's closest friends alive lost its value. Everything was sacrificed to this end. A man's character became involved to the point that he was caught in a mental turmoil which threatened all the values he held and threw them into doubt. Under the influence of a world which no longer recognized the value of human life and human dignity, which had robbed man of his will and had made him an object to be exterminated (having planned, however, to make full use of him first—to the last ounce of his physical resources)—under this influence the personal ego finally suffered a loss of values. If the man in the concentration camp did not struggle against this in a last effort to save his self-respect, he lost the feeling of being an individual, a being with a mind, with inner freedom and personal value. He thought of himself then as only a part of an enormous mass of people; his existence descended to the level of animal life.

On undetached people who are full of self-will.4 People say: ‘O Lord, I wish that I stood as well with God and that I had as much devotion and peace with God as other people, and that I could be like them or could be as poor as they are.’ Or they say: ‘It never works for me unless I am in this or that particular place and do this or that particular thing. I must go to somewhere remote or live in a hermitage or a monastery.’ Truly, it is you who are the cause of this yourself, and nothing else. It is your own self-will, even if you don’t know it or this doesn’t seem to you to be the case. The lack of peace that you feel can only come from your own self-will, whether you are aware of this or not. Whatever we think – that we should avoid certain things and seek out others, whether these be places or people, particular forms of devotion, this group of people or this kind of activity – these are not to blame for the fact that you are held back by devotional practices and by things; rather it is you as you exist in these things who hold yourself back, for you do not stand in the proper relation to them. Start with yourself therefore and take leave of yourself. Truly, if you do not depart from yourself, then wherever you take refuge, you will find obstacles and unrest, wherever it may be. Those who seek peace in external things, whether in places or devotional practices, people or works, in withdrawal from the world or poverty or self-abasement: however great these things may be or whatever their character, they are still nothing at all and cannot be the source of peace. Those who seek in this way, seek wrongly, and the farther they range, the less they find what they are looking for. They proceed like someone who has lost their way: the farther they go, the more lost they become. But what then should they do? First of all, they should renounce themselves, and then they will have renounced all things. Truly, if someone were to renounce a kingdom or the whole world while still holding on to themselves, then they would have renounced nothing at all. And indeed, if someone renounces themselves, then whatever they might keep, whether it be a kingdom or honour or whatever it may be, they will still have renounced all things. St Peter said, ‘See, Lord, we have left everything’ (Matt. 19:27), when he had left nothing more than a mere net and his little boat, and a saint5 comments that whoever willingly renounces what is small, renounces not only this but also everything which worldly people can possess or indeed even desire. Whoever renounces their own will and their own self, renounces all things as surely as if all things were in that person’s possession to do with as they pleased, for what you do not wish to desire, you have given over and given up to God. Therefore our Lord said, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’ (Matt. 5:3), which is to say those who are poor in will. Let no one be in any doubt about this: if there were a better way, then our Lord would have told us, who said, ‘If anyone would follow me, he must first deny himself’ (Matt 16:24). This is the point which counts. Examine yourself, and wherever you find yourself, then take leave of yourself. This is the best way of all.

Sometimes, though not that often, I wish I were still a writer, since so much goes through anybody’s mind and right out the window, whereas, for a writer—even a shitty writer—so much less is lost. If you get divorced from your wife, for instance, and later think back to a time, say, twelve years before, when you almost broke up the first time but didn’t because you decided you loved each other too much or were too smart, or because you both had gumption and a shred of good character, then later after everything was finished, you decided you actually should’ve gotten divorced long before because you think now you missed something wonderful and irreplaceable and as a result are filled with whistling longing you can’t seem to shake—if you were a writer, even a half-baked short-story writer, you’d have someplace to put that fact buildup so you wouldn’t have to think about it all the time. You’d just write it all down, put quotes around the most gruesome and rueful lines, stick them in somebody’s mouth who doesn’t exist (or better, a thinly disguised enemy of yours), turn it into pathos and get it all off your ledger for the enjoyment of others.

Our feelings belong to one world, our ability to name things and our thoughts belong to another; we can establish a concordance between the two, but not bridge the gap. And it was something like this gap, this fault, that I had to cross when, the first time I went to see La Berma act, and after straining to catch her every word, I had found some difficulty in connecting my ideas of “nobility of interpretation” and “originality” and had broken into applause only after a moment’s blankness, and as if my applause did not spring from my actual impression but was somehow linked to my preconceived ideas and to the pleasure I felt in saying to myself, “At last I am listening to La Berma.” And the difference that exists between a person or a work of art of strongly individual character and the idea of beauty exists just as much between what it makes us feel and the idea of love or admiration. Listening to La Berma had given me no pleasure (any more than seeing Gilberte). I had said to myself, “So I don’t admire her.” Yet all the while I was thinking only about deepening my understanding of her acting, I was preoccupied with that alone, and I was trying to open my mind as wide as possible to grasp everything that was involved in her acting; I now understood that this was exactly what admiration was.

So why bother investing in one's memory in the age of externalized memories? The best answer I can give is the one that I received unwittingly from EP, whose memory had been so completely lost that he could not place himself rin time or space, or relative to other people. That is: How we perceive the world and how we act in it are products of how and what we remember. We're all just a bundle of of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks or our memory. No lasting joke, invention, insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory. Not yet, at least. Or ability to find humour in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in a common culture: All these essentially human acts depend on memory. Now more than ever, as the role of memory in our culture erodes at a faster pace than ever before, we need to cultivate our ability to remember. Our memories make us who we are. They are the seat of our values ad source of our character. [...] That's what Ed had been trying to impart to me from the beginning: that memory training is not just fro the sake of performing partyb tricks; it's about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human.

I mentioned earlier how everything that was not connected with the immediate task of keeping oneself and one's closest friends alive lost its value. Everything was sacrificed to this end. A man's character became involved to the point that he was caught in a mental turmoil which threatened all the values he held and threw them into doubt. Under the influence of a world which no longer recognized the value of human life and human dignity, which had robbed man of his will and had made him an object to be exterminated (having planned, however, to make full use of him first-to the last ounce of his physical resources)-under this influence the personal ego finally suffered a loss of values. If the man in the concentration camp did not struggle against this in a last effort to save his self-respect, he lost the feeling of being an individual, a being with a mind, with inner freedom and personal value. He thought of himself then as only a part of an enormous mass of people; his existence descended to the level of animal life. The men were herded-sometimes to one place then to another; sometimes driven together, then apart-like a flock of sheep without a thought or a will of their own. A small but dangerous pack watched them from all sides, well versed in methods of torture and sadism. They drove the herd incessantly, backwards an forwards, with shouts, kicks and blows. And we, the sheep, thought of two things only-how to evade the bad dogs and how to get a little food.

She was a good person and a beautiful woman, but what she was for me was my own creation. I needed her to be perfect and couldn’t allow her to be anything less. I attributed to her everything I didn’t find in life, but without which I couldn’t live. I even belittled myself to her, so that she should appear greater and I, too, only through her. I gave to her generously, so I might take. Where I was frustrated, she was realised, and this was my compensation. She returned what I’d lost, and I gained more than I thought to gain. My desires had been obscure and disparate, now they were united in a single name, in a single character, more real and more attractive than imagination. I recognised in her everything I was not, yet in rejecting myself I lost nothing. Weak and helpless when faced with people and the world, I gained significance through my creation, which was more valuable than either. Uneasy before the uncertainty of all things, I was sure in the love that was self-creating, for it was need transformed into feeling. Love is both sacrifice and violence; it offers and demands, it begs and scolds. I needed this woman, my entire world, to admire and feel my power over her. I’d created her, as a savage creates his idol, to stand above his cave fire, his defence from thunder, enemies, wild beasts, people, the heavens, and loneliness, from whom he might seek the usual things but also demand the impossible, feel ecstasy, but also bitterness, whom he might both thank and scold, ever aware that, without it, his fears would be unbearable, his hopes without foundation, his joys without permanence. Solely because of her, even people seemed closer to me.

And you must appear willing to marry me,” Oliver said. “I understand.” “Do you? It means you’ll have to act as if you enjoy my company.” To his surprise, a small smile curved her lips. “I believe I can manage that.” Then, as if realizing she was softening, she wiped the smile from her face. “But you must behave responsibly, too.” “By not trying to seduce you, you mean.” She started. “No! I mean, yes…I mean, you already said you have more urgent concerns.” Alarm rose in her cheeks. “Oh dear, I forgot that you also said you have no honor or morals.” He’d made similar assertions half his life, yet tonight he regretted making them. Shocking young ladies seemed to have lost some of its appeal. “All the same, Miss Butterfield, I promise that your virtue is safe from me.” When she looked skeptical, he added, “You’re not the sort of woman I prefer.” A respectable woman came with strings attached. “Of course I’m not,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “Anyone can see that.” That took him aback. She went on. “A man with no morals isn’t going to want a woman who has them. She’d never let him do anything wicked.” Freddy coughed, as if choking on something. Oliver understood why. Miss Butterfield had an unnerving way of cutting everything down to its essence. “Yes,” he said, for lack of a better response. “Quite.” Then he narrowed his gaze on her. “So what did you mean when you said I had to ‘behave responsibly’?” “You promised to find my fiancé, and I expect you to hold to your word.” “Ah, right. Your fiancé?” He kept forgetting about that. It was hard to imagine any woman sailing off across the ocean to hunt down her fiancé. No female would ever do such a thing for him. Not that he’d want her to. That would mean someone cared for him more than was wise, given his character.

In this short philosophical novel he completely undermined the kind of optimism about humanity and the universe that Pope and Leibniz had expressed, and he did it in such an entertaining way that the book became an instant bestseller. Wisely Voltaire left his name off the title page, otherwise its publication would have landed him in prison again for making fun of religious beliefs. Candide is the central character. His name suggests innocence and purity. At the start of the book, he is a young servant who falls hopelessly in love with his master's daughter, Cunégonde, but is chased out of her father's castle when he is caught in a compromising position with her. From then on, in a fast-moving and often fantastical tale, he travels through real and imaginary countries with his philosophy tutor Dr Pangloss, until he finally meets up with his lost love Cunégonde again, though by now she is old and ugly. In a series of comical episodes Candide and Pangloss witness terrible events and encounter a range of characters along the way, all of whom have themselves suffered terrible misfortunes. Voltaire uses the philosophy tutor, Pangloss, to spout a caricatured version of Leibniz's philosophy, which the writer then pokes fun at. Whatever happens, whether it is a natural disaster, torture, war, rape, religious persecution or slavery, Pangloss treats it as further confirmation that they live in the best of all possible worlds. Rather than causing him to rethink his beliefs, each disaster just increases his confidence that everything is for the best and this is how things had to be to produce the most perfect situation. Voltaire takes great delight in revealing Pangloss' refusal to see what is in front of him, and this is meant to mock Leibniz's optimism. But to be fair to Leibniz, his point wasn't that evil doesn't occur, but rather that the evil that does exist was needed to bring about the best possible world. It does, however, suggest that there is so much evil in the world that it is hardly likely that Leibniz was right – this can't be the minimum needed to achieve a good result. There is just too much pain and suffering in the world for that to be true. In

OBAMA WENT THROUGH STAGES. That first day, I was in multiple meetings where he tried to lift everyone’s spirits. That evening, he interrupted the senior staff meeting in Denis McDonough’s office and gave a version of the speech that I’d now heard three times as we all sat there at the table. He was the only one standing. It was both admirable and heartbreaking watching him take everything in stride, working—still—to lift people’s spirits. When he was done, I spoke first. “It says a lot about you,” I said, “that you’ve spent the whole day trying to buck the rest of us up.” People applauded. Obama looked down. On the Thursday after the election, he had a long, amiable meeting with Trump. It left him somewhat stupefied. Trump had repeatedly steered the conversation back to the size of his rallies, noting that he and Obama could draw big crowds but Hillary couldn’t. He’d expressed openness to Obama’s arguments about healthcare, the Iran deal, immigration. He’d asked for recommendations for staff. He’d praised Obama publicly when the press was there. Afterward, Obama called a few of us up to the Oval Office to recap. “I’m trying to place him,” he said, “in American history.” He told us Trump had been perfectly cordial, but he’d almost taken pride in not being attached to a firm position on anything. “He peddles bullshit. That character has always been a part of the American story,” I said. “You can see it right back to some of the characters in Huckleberry Finn.” Obama chuckled. “Maybe that’s the best we can hope for.” In breaks between meetings in the coming days, he expressed disbelief that the election had been lost. With unemployment at 5 percent. With the economy humming. With the Affordable Care Act working. With graduation rates up. With most of our troops back home. But then again, maybe that’s why Trump could win. People would never have voted for him in a crisis. He kept talking it out, trying on different theories. He chalked it up to multiple car crashes at once. There was the letter from Comey shortly before the election, reopening the investigation into Clinton’s email server. There was the steady release of Podesta emails from Wikileaks through October. There was a rabid right-wing propaganda machine and a mainstream press that gorged on the story of Hillary’s emails, feeding Trump’s narrative of corruption.

Praise for THIS TENDER LAND “If you liked Where the Crawdads Sing, you’ll love This Tender Land by best-selling author William Kent Krueger. This story is as big-hearted as they come.” —Parade Magazine “If you’re among the millions who raced through Where the Crawdads Sing this year and are looking for another expansive, atmospheric American saga, look to the latest from Krueger.” —Entertainment Weekly “Rich with graceful writing and endearing characters… this is a book for the ages.” —The Denver Post “There are very few books (or movies, for that matter) that you can describe as ‘epic.’ But This Tender Land is just that.… This story will make you look at the world from a variety of viewpoints, as you watch these lost souls befriend one another in order to form their own unbreakable family unit.” —Suspense Magazine “[The characters’] adventures are heartstirring and their view of our complex nation, in particular the upper Midwest, is encyclopedic, if an encyclopedia could stir your heart as well as your brain.” —Sullivan County Democrat “Reminiscent of Huck and Jim and their trip down the Mississippi, the bedraggled youngsters encounter remarkable characters and learn life lessons as they escape by canoe down the Gilead River in Minnesota.” —Bookpage “Long, sprawling, and utterly captivating, readers will eat up every delicious word of it.” —New York Journal of Books “Krueger has crafted an American saga, epic in scope, a glorious and grand adventure that speaks of the heart and history of this country.” —Addison Independent (Vermont) “More than a simple journey; it is a deeply satisfying odyssey, a quest in search of self and home. Richly imagined and exceptionally well plotted and written, the novel is, most of all, a compelling, often haunting story that will captivate both adult and young adult readers.” —Booklist “Absorbing and wonderfully paced, this fictional narrative set against historical truths mesmerizes the reader with its evocations of compassion, courage, and self-discovery.… This Tender Land is a gripping, poignant tale swathed in both mythical and mystical overtones.” —Bob Drury, New York Times bestselling author of The Heart of Everything That Is “This Tender Land is a moving portrait of a time and place receding from the collective memory, but leaving its mark on the heart of what the nation has become.” —CrimeReads

I need only, to make them reappear, pronounce the names Balbec, Venice, Florence, within whose syllables had gradually accumulated the longing inspired in me by the places for which they stood. Even in spring, to come upon the name Balbec in a book sufficed to awaken in me the desire for storms at sea and for Norman Gothic; even on a stormy day the name Florence or Venice would awaken the desire for sunshine, for lilies, for the Palace of the Doges and for Santa Maria del Fiore. But if these names thus permanently absorbed the image I had formed of these towns, it was only by transforming that image, by subordinating its reappearance in me to their own special laws; and in consequence of this they made it more beautiful, but at the same time more different from anything that the towns of Normandy or Tuscany could in reality be, and, by increasing the arbitrary delights of my imagination, aggravated the disenchantment that was in store for me when I set out upon my travels. They magnified the idea that I had formed of certain places on the surface of the globe, making them more special and in consequence more real. I did not then represent to myself cities, landscapes, historical monuments, as more or less attractive pictures, cut out here and there of a substance that was common to them all, but looked on each of them as on an unknown thing, different in essence from all the rest, a thing for which my soul thirsted and which it would profit from knowing. How much more individual still was the character they assumed from being designated by names, names that were for themselves alone, proper names such as people have! Words present to us a little picture of things, clear and familiar, like the pictures hung on the walls of schoolrooms to give children an illustration of what is meant by a carpenter's bench, a bird, an anthill, things chosen as typical of everything else of the same sort. But names present to us— of persons, and of towns which they accustom us to regard as individual, as unique, like persons— a confused picture, which draws from them, from the brightness or darkness of their tone, the colour in which it is uniformly painted, like one of those posters, entirely blue or entirely red, in which, on account of the limitations imposed by the process used in their reproduction or by a whim on the designer's part, not only the sky and the sea are blue or red, but the ships and the church and the people in the streets.

You should date a girl who reads. Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve. Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn. She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book. Buy her another cup of coffee. Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice. It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does. She has to give it a shot somehow. Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world. Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two. Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series. If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are. You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype. You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots. Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads. Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

Expressionism was an artistic symptom of the trauma World War I brought to Europe. A stylized, severe, and serious aesthetic, it emphasized abstractions and angles, an attempt to express off-kilter and intense emotional content rather than balanced, symmetric, mundane realism. Caligari production supervisor Rudolph Meinert enlisted artists Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann, and Walter Rohrig to create a completely artificial and exaggerated set design for Caligari. They painted all the settings in flat perspective on the canvas, including bolts of light and shadow. Everything, even outdoor scenes, was shot inside cramped studio confines. The result was a claustrophobic style that was to permeate not only the horror film, but would percolate into film noir as well. The style is nightmarish, a physical embodiment of the madness overtaking the characters externalized, an artistic effort that’s a sustained attack on the senses that’s just as disturbing as the story it tells—the result? The first great horror film.

It is a well-known fact, and one that has given much ground for complaint, that after women have lost their genital function their character often undergoes a peculiar alteration, they become quarrelsome, vexatious and overbearing, petty and stingy, that is to say that they exhibit typically sadistic and anal-erotic traits which they did not possess earlier during their period of womanliness,” Sigmund Freud declared in 1913.8 Well, you can argue that he was a man of his time; the first couple of decades of the twentieth century weren’t exactly known for their respect for women’s finer qualities. But unfortunately, the nonsense didn’t stop there. “The unpalatable truth must be faced that all postmenopausal women are castrates,” pronounced American gynecologist Robert Wilson in a 1963 essay;9 he then elaborated fulsomely on this theme in his 1966 bestseller Feminine Forever.10 This frighteningly influential book, it later emerged, was backed by a pharmaceutical company eager to market hormone replacement therapy. “Once the ovaries stop, the very essence of being a woman stops,” psychiatrist David Reuben wrote in 1969 in another bestseller, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask.11 The postmenopausal woman, he added, comes “as close as she can to being a man.” Or rather, “not really a man but no longer a functional woman.” Half a century on, has anything really changed? Sadly, I don’t think so. It might not be acceptable in most circles to write that kind of thing anymore, but menopausal women are too often the butt of men’s jokes for me really to believe that the attitudes themselves have shifted. They’ve just gone a little more underground. So if these are the stories men are telling about us, where are the stories we’re telling about ourselves? Unfortunately, they’re not always very much more helpful. A surprising number of self-help or quasi-medical books by female authors toe the male line, enjoining women to try to stay young and beautiful at all costs, and head off to their doctor to get hormone replacement therapy to hold off the “symptoms” of the dreaded aging “disease” for as long as possible. Their aim, it seems, is above all a suspension of the aging process, an exhortation to live in a state of suspended animation. And although more women are beginning to write about menopause as a natural and profoundly transformational life-passage, in the culture at large it is still primarily viewed as something to be managed, held off, even fought.

To truly destroy a character, you have to know him inside out. You have to know what means the most to him. Take that away, and you can do anything to him. Kill him off, even. Because he has already lost everything that matters.

In this world men find themselves to be imprisoned. In fact the more profoundly we become aware of the limited character of the possibilities which are open to us here and now, the more clear it is that we are farther from God than we had ever dreamed. Men are their own masters. Their union with God is shattered so completely that they cannot even conceive of its restoration. Their sin is their guilt; their death is their destiny; their world is formless and tumultuous chaos, a chaos of the forces of nature and of the human soul; their life is illusion. This is the situation in which we find ourselves. The question 'Is there then a God?' is therefore entirely relevant and indeed inevitable! But the answer to this question, that is to say, our desire to comprehend the world in its relation to God, must proceed either from the criminal arrogance of religion or from that final apprehension of truth which lies beyond birth and death -- the perception, in other words, which proceeds from God outwards. When the problem is formulated thus, it is evident that, just as genuine coins are open to suspicion so long as false coins are in circulation, so the perception which proceeds outwards from God cannot have free course until the arrogance of religion be done away. Now, it is the Gospel that opens up the possibility of this final perception, and, if this possibility is to be realized, all penultimate perceptions must be withdrawn from circulation. The Gospel speaks of God as He is: it is concerned with Him Himself and with Him only. It speaks of the Creator who shall be our Redeemer and of the Redeemer who is our Creator. It is pregnant with our complete conversion; for it announces the transformation of our creatureliness into freedom. It proclaims the forgiveness of our sins, the victory of life over death, in fact, the restoration of everything that has been lost.

Age brings diminishments, but more than a few come with benefits. I’ve lost the capacity for multitasking, but I’ve rediscovered the joy of doing one thing at a time. My thinking has slowed a bit, but experience has made it deeper and richer. I’m done with big and complex projects, but more aware of the loveliness of simple things: a talk with a friend, a walk in the woods, sunsets and sunrises, a night of good sleep. I have fears, of course, always have and always will. But as time lengthens like a shadow behind me, and the time ahead dwindles, my overriding feeling is gratitude for the gift of life. Above all, I like being old because the view from the brink is striking, a full panorama of my life—and a bracing breeze awakens me to new ways of understanding my own past, present, and future. As one of Kurt Vonnegut’s characters says in Player Piano, “out on the edge you can see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.

The point being, everyone knows a celebratory redemption story, one where the person in question overcomes adversity and becomes the main character in an undeniably remarkable turnaround story. But there's nothing but ridicule for the ones who never turn things around. Like the socialite whose ex-husband was arrested on a money laundering charge and is now an outcast among her former upscale circle. Or the father who abandoned everything for his mistress and now lives an isolated existence in a run-down apartment with no mistress, ex-wife, or kids. Or the bank executive who embezzled money and lost it all only to wind up living under a forty-second street bridge with his close friend Jack Daniels. Or the beauty queen who fell victim to a botched facelift and now curses her existence behind two-inch thick, closed miniblinds. No one celebrates the fallen and discarded because no one wants to admit it could happen to them. But we're all just one misstep away from living an upside-down life while the rest of the world points out all the ways we deserve it.

Most agree Paul isn’t suggesting we thank God for every single thing. How can we give thanks for things God opposes? The wise words of R. C. Sproul explain Ephesians 5:20. Oftentimes these words are misappropriated to say more than the text actually says. “For everything” must be interpreted consistent with the last clause, “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” If the meaning of the term “for everything” is devoid of reference to God’s character, purpose and nature, grave distortions can occur. Some, in “literal” zeal, actually thank God for things he despises. This faulty thinking drives some to the conclusion they must thank God for the very evil he hates. May this never be. We dare not thank God for evil consequences of sinful actions, such as when a drunken driver kills another person. What we praise God for is for being God in the midst of such terrible tragedies, and for his redeeming purposes which can bring light out of darkness. There is a multitude of things to thank God for in the midst of tragedies, but these must be consistent with his character and redeeming purposes. Exhaust those things in prayer, and do not be tempted to offer indiscriminate praise to the offence of God.

So vexed was the professor that she boarded a flight to examine the current Flower portrait and later informed David Howells, the new curator of the Royal Shakespeare Company, that the painting currently on display was not the same portrait depicted in her earlier photograph. Her claim was backed by Reinhardt Altmann of the German Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigation, who supplied a written report stating the current picture had to be a copy. Professor Wolfgang Speyer, an expert on Old Masters at the Dorotheum in Salzburg, added: “The picture must have been restored, or, to put it more precisely ‘repainted’… During this process everything was smoothed out on the surface but the character had been utterly lost.

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I will take a case. I am sent for in an emergency, and it is the dead of night. A man is dying, smitten suddenly by the death-blast.[17] I go to his bedside, as requested. Consciousness remains, but he is evidently in mortal agony. He has lived an ungodly life—and he is about to die. I am asked by his wife and friends to speak to him a word that may bless him. Shall I tell him that he can only be saved by good works? Where is the time for works? Where is the possibility of them? While I am speaking, his life is struggling to escape him! He looks at me in the agony of his soul, and he stammers out, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ Shall I read to him the Moral Law? Shall I expound to him the Ten Commandments and tell him that he must keep all these? He would shake his head and say, ‘I have broken them all; I am condemned by them all!’ If salvation is of works, what more have I to say? I am of no use here. What can I say? The man is utterly lost! There is no remedy for him. How can I tell him the cruel dogma of ‘modern thought’ that his own personal character is everything? How can I tell him that there is no value in belief, no help for the soul in looking to Another—even to Jesus, the Substitute? There is no whisper of hope for a dying man in the hard and stony doctrine of salvation by works!”–1891, Sermon 2210 2g.

When character is lost, nothing is lost; when wealth is lost, something is lost; but when health is lost, everything is lost.

When character is lost, nothing is lost; when wealth is lost, something is lost; but when health is lost, everything is lost.

The Biblical writers did not learn grace from a textbook or in a classroom. They learned it from the school of hardship and difficulty. They experienced the sufficiency of grace in the moment. Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den. David hid in a cave fearing for his life. Job lost everything, and his friends advised to curse God and die. Paul himself was shipwrecked, stoned, and suffered under the ever present thorn in his flesh. These are the same writers who teach us of God’s goodness. Their bad days or difficult experiences did not change the character of God; it changed them. They never attempt to answer all the questions. They ask different ones.

For Gracias, the Tesla and SpaceX investor and Musk’s friend, the 2008 period told him everything he would ever need to know about Musk’s character. He saw a man who arrived in the United States with nothing, who had lost a child, who was being pilloried in the press by reporters and his ex-wife and who verged on having his life’s work destroyed. “He has the ability to work harder and endure more stress than anyone I’ve ever met,” Gracias said. “What he went through in 2008 would have broken anyone else. He didn’t just survive. He kept working and stayed focused.” That ability to stay focused in the midst of a crisis stands as one of Musk’s main advantages over other executives and competitors. “Most people who are under that sort of pressure fray,” Gracias said. “Their decisions go bad. Elon gets hyperrational. He’s still able to make very clear, long-term decisions. The harder it gets, the better he gets. Anyone who saw what he went through firsthand came away with more respect for the guy. I’ve just never seen anything like his ability to take pain.” fn1

What happens to you is not the story. The plot is not the story, the conflict is not the story, the world is not the story. The story is you. You, the character; you, the reader; and the liminal watercolor of magic that happens between those two. Love a story, hate a story, tire of a story, all the possible magic a story has is contained between those two immovable, unknowable forces. Everything else—well, it matters. But this is another story.

In the basement of my fears, I memorised every line You wrote in your old perfumed letters. You said you would come back in 3 days, And each time I stood waiting Reciting your letter like a poem, I started to believe that you meant something else, Something more poetic when you said 3 days. I began to see everything in three; God the son, God the father, God the Holy Spirit. For three years I have been waiting Because if I lost my faith in God What would become of faith itself? And so, when she came, I took whatever she said with a grain of salt She promised to erase every memory of you, I did not want to disappoint her with the truth That I still remember you Whenever it rained That was how we met, You swept me with your beauty And showed me a wet letter When the sun shone, We dried it and the letter was never whole again, Maybe I should have taken a cue from it. love makes us blind When we are blind We don’t see disappointments Three days came, Three days met three decades, I was married, I had a child Yet I still had old memories of you, Your perfumed letters Were still ingrained in my mind For me to love you My lover had to die And your husband too had to die. So, we went to the chapel in secret And prayed for the death of people Who had promised to love us. And when they did die We run away On a boat Never to return To love ourselves like the character In the old perfume letters So hard that we couldn’t distinguish reality from poetry

The Love of Spectacle and Life at the Surfaces And does not the democratic character also live out his life in this fashion, day by day indulging the appetite of the day, sometimes drinking wine heavily and listening to the flute; at other times drinking only water and dieting; sometimes exercising; at other times loafing and neglecting everything, and at another time occupying himself with what he takes to be philosophy? And frequently he goes in for politics and bounces up and says and does whatever enters his head. And if he happens to admire soldiers, he is borne in that direction, and if moneyed men, in that one, and there is no order or compulsion in his existence, but he calls this life of his pleasant, free, and blessed. —PLATO, REPUBLIC, 561C-D

And does not the democratic character also live out his life in this fashion, day by day indulging the appetite of the day, sometimes drinking wine heavily and listening to the flute; at other times drinking only water and dieting; sometimes exercising; at other times loafing and neglecting everything, and at another time occupying himself with what he takes to be philosophy? And frequently he goes in for politics and bounces up and says and does whatever enters his head. And if he happens to admire soldiers, he is borne in that direction, and if moneyed men, in that one, and there is no order or compulsion in his existence, but he calls this life of his pleasant, free, and blessed. —PLATO, REPUBLIC

let’s turn to the formula, talking about accumulation: M C C’ M’. M, money, C, input commodities, one cycle; M prime, more money. What happens in this process to allow M to become M prime, which is the whole point? You wouldn’t go through all of this if you ended up at the end with the same money as you started out with at the beginning. M just came out as M. The whole point is to get from M to M prime. To understand this, we have to examine this peculiar commodity of labor power. As an analysis of how more money emerges from the production process than goes in, Marx first rules out any possibilities of cheating or unfairness. In his analysis of the capitalist system, Marx is in a conversation with, and often in argumentation with, the economists, and political economists who came before them, principally the classical political economists. People like David Ricardo, Adam Smith, and a number of others. He wanted to make his analysis within their frame of rules, which presents capital in its best light. So that if in fact he shows it not to produce the advantages that they claim, he will have done it on their terms. One of the things he does is to rule out things like cheating, like buying low and selling high, which is a sort of principal character of mercantilism. The reason he rules this out is, he says, that on balance in society, this doesn’t produce any additional surplus value or wealth. It simply redistributes what value or wealth already exists. That it all averages out; if you cheat somebody, you may have gotten something, but they lost something. It’s a kind of zero-sum thing. He rules that out. Everything in the process as Marx analyzes it trades at its true value. The means of production cannot be the source of the additional value. Remember, he’s trying to figure out in his process how we get from M to M prime. One of the things that capitalists do is buy means of production. He says, those cannot be the source of additional value. The reasons are this. They either transfer part of their value to the new products, or, for example, you depreciate machinery over time. You can calculate how much of the value goes into a production in each cycle of production. Or the means of production actually end up incorporated into the new product itself, but there is no new value there. So, if you make something, if you make bread out of wheat, it becomes incorporated in the bread, but there is no new value there. It’s necessary for the capitalists to find on the market the commodity that produces more value than it itself costs. That’s the trick. This unique commodity is labor power, and is the only element in the process that produces surplus value, which is the source of profit.

© 2000 The Barcelona Review, interview made by Sarah Martin with Patricia Anthony on the subject of her novel FLANDERS - Why did you choose to write about World War I? The easy answer to your question "Why?" would be that I wanted to write about death in all its aspects, from the terror and pain of it to the transcendent beauty of the end. Normally I don't begin a novel with a theme, but allow the theme to grow organically, just as I allow my characters and story to grow on their own and follow where they lead. Anyway, this time, rather than the idea, I played with theme. I looked around history for just the right death--the worst grinding horror of it, the great maw of the beast. The perfect choice, of course, was WWI. Not when the Americans entered the war - then the war became mobile. The soldiers climbed up out of the trenches. The early tanks made their debut. Earlier, then. So the secondary characters had to be British, as I didn't know enough about the Germans. It wouldn't be appropriate to set the novel in 1914 when, despite the slaughter of the British Army, many soldiers still believed the war would be won soon. No. It had to be the tag end of 1915, expanding until that dismal, wet autumn of 1916 when in Flanders the mud was so deep that the wounded drowned in it, that horses couldn't move. Hope was lost and all that was left was the daily grind of battle. War had become commonplace, a way of life, no longer a goal to be won. War had become the terrible, mindless machine that rolls over everything in its path - morality and courage and even outrage become moot in its shadow. But in that darkness, Travis Lee's enlightenment. And in the end, of course, the only light of the book resides in him, even though his external world is uncompromisingly dark. What I wanted to do was show one man who faces the worst that life and death has to offer, yet still has inner peace. Travis Lee's story is that of a man on his road toward enlightenment.

There was nowhere I had to be tomorrow, yet something kept pushing me to hurry and make up lost time. But lost to what? Who finds time that is lost? Time is never lost, we give it away, dump it out, character is everything, and I had not wanted to withhold myself anymore, that was all.

The Unbidden An unbidden grace seizes me, compelling me to be what I know I ought to be. To let it in I know I must let go. This is the grace of aspiration, The gravitas of one hundred New Year’s resolutions, with peaks of love, death and transience jagged as the Teton’s crown. With a nervous laughter I imagine it as the frazzled smile on a cartoon character. There is altitude in grace; I’m anointed sherpa of my landscape. Fumeroles of memory erupt through my soul, pointing to a underground river of propinquity. Time and space fuse, the desperation of the disparate is vanquished. In the mindscape of grace, everything flows in two directions. Memories ripple forward and are joined by new events cascading backwards. My sherpa calls this swirling cauldron life, the manufacturer of all meaning. Without the epiphany of the unbidden, we are without compass and forever lost.

For Gracias, the Tesla and SpaceX investor and Musk’s friend, the 2008 period told him everything he would ever need to know about Musk’s character. He saw a man who arrived in the United States with nothing, who had lost a child, who was being pilloried in the press by reporters and his ex-wife and who verged on having his life’s work destroyed. “He has the ability to work harder and endure more stress than anyone I’ve ever met,” Gracias said. “What he went through in 2008 would have broken anyone else. He didn’t just survive. He kept working and stayed focused.” That ability to stay focused in the midst of a crisis stands as one of Musk’s main advantages over other executives and competitors. “Most people who are under that sort of pressure fray,” Gracias said. “Their decisions go bad. Elon gets hyperrational. He’s still able to make very clear, long-term decisions. The harder it gets, the better he gets. Anyone who saw what he went through firsthand came away with more respect for the guy. I’ve just never seen anything like his ability to take pain.

The Bible tells us, “the young woman was lovely and beautiful….” Not just lovely, not just beautiful, but lovely AND beautiful — that’s Esther. In the King James translation, she is described as “fair and beautiful”. The word “fair” comes from the word “to’ar”. This word, when literally translated, means lovely on the outside. Esther’s outward appearance was very pleasing.2 The word “beautiful” comes from the word “tobe”. This word, literally translated, goes far beyond external beauty. It means “good in the widest sense, used as a noun…. also as an adverb: beautiful, cheerful, at ease, fair, in favor, glad, good….. gracious, joyful, kindly…. loving, merry, most pleasant, precious, prosperity, ready, sweet, well.”3 These words give us a much more accurate view of Esther: she is more than beautiful! Please take note that Esther’s circumstance did not dictate her attitude. Esther’s life does not sound easy by any means. First, she is living in a city that has not been entirely friendly to Jewish people, even though the captivity is over. On top of that, she has lost her parents and any other family other than Mordecai. In spite of these hardships, she is described as lovely and beautiful — inside and out! Esther has not allowed herself to become bitter over circumstances that were out of her control. This is a wonderful example for us to follow: as we are faithful to God, He is faithful to us. Rather than allowing situations to make us disagreeable, we need to keep our focus on the Lord. Allow Him to move through everything that comes to you, both good and bad. In the end, you are a child of the true King! Though great times and hard times, God is working out a perfect plan for you! These inner strengths and qualities in Esther are about to become necessary for her very survival. If the hardships of life in Persia could not make Esther bitter, another test of her character is about to come: Ahasuerus’ servants are out collecting young women as potential candidates to be queen. At first, such an opportunity may seem exciting, but consider that these young women are being given no choice in the matter. Possibly afraid, definitely alone, each were taken from their homes and families by force. So it was, when the king’s command and decree were heard, and when many young women were gathered at Shushan the citadel, under the custody of Hegai, that Esther also was taken to the king’s palace, into the care of Hegai the custodian of the women. Esther 2:8 NJKV After the virgins in the kingdom are gathered, they are taken to Hegai “the custodian of the women”. Hegai is going to “weed out” any women whom he thinks will not be suitable for the king. He will look them over and if they are pretty enough to keep around, he orders their beauty preparations. What will Hegai think when he meets Esther? Now the young woman pleased him, and she obtained his favor; so he readily gave beauty preparations to her, besides her allowance. Then seven choice maidservants were provided for her from the king’s palace, and he moved her and her maidservants to the best place in the house of the women. Esther 2:9 Esther impressed Hegai from the first, and he immediately agreed to begin her beauty preparations as well as her diet (“her allowance”). Esther is going on to “round two” in this “pageant”! Initially this may sound glamorous, but this is truly a “fish out of water” situation for Esther. Remember the description of the palace in chapter 1? Esther has never seen anything like the excess in Ahasuerus’ palace and, considering her background, is probably very uncomfortable. She has been raised to have a simple faith in God, and this palace may feel to her like one huge tribute to a man: Ahasuerus (and knowing him, it probably is!). Add this to her already isolated and lonely feeling that must have

And that had been Phoebe’s story, too—she had been so good. So quiet. So studious. Valedictorian of her high school, then college, and then went off to graduate school to make a life for herself, which she did. She fell in love, got a PhD, got married. Bought a house with her husband. And then, after five grueling cycles of IVF, when all seemed lost, she finally got pregnant using their last embryo. For ten weeks, she rubbed lotion on her belly, and she could feel it, how she was hurtling toward the happy ending that would make everything, even her mother’s death, seem like a necessary part of the story. But then it was over, in under a sentence. One day she had been pregnant, and then the next day, she was not. She had felt the blood between her legs, and every time she remembered the blood, she thought, No, no, no, this can’t be how it ends. Because this ending made a mockery of her mother’s death. This ending was just tragic. More like a Russian novel, where all the characters go on a great wild adventure just to be killed off in the end.

You’ve always deserved better than me. And no one knows,” he repeats, his voice dropping. “Because if they did, I’d be dead.” “Why would—” My lips part, and my pulse jumps as my head starts to swim. He has to have full control. He has to make snap character judgments. He has to intrinsically know who to trust and who not to. In order for the movement to have been as successful as it was within the walls of Basgiath, he has to know…everything. Xaden’s most pressing need is information. Tairn shifts, angling his body toward Sgaeyl instead of beside her. Oh gods. There’s only one signet riders are killed for having. Fear churns in my stomach and threatens to bring up what little I’ve had to eat today. “Yes.” He nods, his gaze boring into mine. Shit, did he just— “No.” I shake my head and take a step backward out of his shadows, but he moves as if he takes the step with me. “Yes. It’s how I knew I could trust you not to tell anyone about the meeting under the tree last year,” he says as I retreat another step. “How I seem to know what my opponent has planned on the mat before their next move. How I know exactly what someone needs to hear in order to get them to do what I need done, and how I knew if someone remotely suspected us while we were at Basgiath.” I shake my head in denial, wishing I’d stopped pushing like he’d demanded me to. He crosses the space between us. “It’s why I didn’t kill Dain in the interrogation chamber, why I let him come with us, because the second his shields wavered, I knew he’d had a true epiphany. How would I know that, Violet?” He’d read Dain’s mind. Xaden is more dangerous than I ever imagined. “You’re an inntinnsic,” I whisper. Even the accusation is a death sentence among riders. “I’m a type of inntinnsic,” he repeats slowly, like it’s the first time he’s ever said the words. “I can read intentions. Maybe I would know what to call it if they didn’t kill everyone with even a hint of the signet.” My eyebrows jolt upward. “Can you read thoughts or not?” His jaw flexes. “It’s more complicated than that. Think of that breath of a second before the actual thought, the subconscious motivation you might not even be aware of in your mind, or when instinct drives you to move or you’re looking to betray someone. The intention is always there. Mostly they come across as pictures, but some people intend in really clear pictures.” Tairn growls low in his throat and lowers his head at Sgaeyl as a rush of something bitter and sick floods our bond. Betrayal. I slam my shields up, blocking him out before I’m lost to his emotions, already struggling with mine. He didn’t know.

I mentioned earlier how everything that was not connected with the immediate task of keeping oneself and one’s closest friends alive lost its value. Everything was sacrificed to this end. A man’s character became involved to the point that he was caught in a mental turmoil which threatened all the values he held and threw them into doubt. Under the influence of a world which no longer recognized the value of human life and human dignity, which had robbed man of his will and had made him an object to be exterminated (having planned, however, to make full use of him first—to the last ounce of his physical resources)—under this influence the personal ego finally suffered a loss of values. If the man in the concentration camp did not struggle against this in a last effort to save his self-respect, he lost the feeling of being an individual, a being with a mind, with inner freedom and personal value. He thought of himself then as only a part of an enormous mass of people; his existence descended to the level of animal life. The men were herded—sometimes to one place then to another; sometimes driven together, then apart—like a flock of sheep without a thought or a will of their own. A small but dangerous pack watched them from all sides, well versed in methods of torture and sadism. They drove the herd incessantly, backwards and forwards, with shouts, kicks and blows. And we, the sheep, thought of two things only—how to evade the bad dogs and how to get a little food.

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