Chestnut Sayings And Quotes

Why aren't you in school? I see you every day wandering around." "Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing 'chicken' and 'knock hubcaps.' I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?

You don’t tell a person you love them with the expectation they’ll say it back. You tell them because you want to. You tell them because it’s true.

The story of the young woman whose death I witnessed in a concentration camp. It is a simple story. There is little to tell and it may sound as if I had invented it; but to me it seems like a poem. This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. "I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard," she told me. "In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously." Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, "This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness." Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. "I often talk to this tree," she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. "Yes." What did it say to her? She answered, "It said to me, 'I am here-I am here-I am life, eternal life.

I can’t wait to be old and retired and say things just to see how people will react to get my kicks. That’s the dream right there.

I must have a stupid smile on my face as I stare back at him because I feel an elbow nudge against mine. “It’s nice to see someone looking at Cade like that. Defending him like that,” Jasper says. “Like they can see him for who he is rather than the man circumstances forced him to become.

Did Winter say something to you? Do we like her? Do we hate her? Am I supposed to be mad at something with you? Because I will be if you are. Just tell me how to be supportive.

Then she turns and walks back toward her bedroom, holds one fist up above her head, and says, “Fuck the patriarchy.

He’s connected the freckles to say Mine. And God, in this moment, I feel like that might be true.

I will go wherever you want. I will wear whatever you want. I will never turn my phone off again. I will always, always be there for you. For Vivi. You don’t need to beg, and you don’t need to say please. For as long as I live, for as long as you need me, you’ll have me. Okay? Never doubt that.

Oh my god, Jasper! Fucking say something!” “I feel like I could crumble under the weight of not wanting to disappoint you. I’m paralyzed by my fear of losing you.

It doesn't have any effect on your life. What do you care?! People try to talk about it like it's a social issue. Like when you see someone stand up on a talk show and say, 'How am I supposed to explain to my child that two men are getting married?' ... I dunno, it's your shitty kid, you fucking' tell 'em. Why is that anyone else's problem? Two guys are in love but they can't get married because you don't want to talk to your ugly child for fuckin' five minutes?

I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe. I was a child yesterday. I had not forgotten. But Maxim’s grandmother, sitting there in her shawl with her poor blind eyes, what did she feel, what was she thinking? Did she know that Beatrice was yawning and glancing at her watch? Did she guess that we had come to visit her because we felt it right, it was a duty, so that when she got home afterwards Beatrice would be able to say, “Well, that clears my conscience for three months”? Did she ever think about Manderley? Did she remember sitting at the dining room table, where I sat? Did she too have tea under the chestnut tree? Or was it all forgotten and laid aside, and was there nothing left behind that calm, pale face of hers but little aches and little strange discomforts, a blurred thankfulness when the sun shone, a tremor when the wind blew cold? I wished that I could lay my hands upon her face and take the years away. I wished I could see her young, as she was once, with color in her cheeks and chestnut hair, alert and active as Beatrice by her side, talking as she did about hunting, hounds, and horses. Not sitting there with her eyes closed while the nurse thumped the pillows behind her head. “We’ve got a treat today, you know,” said the nurse, “watercress sandwiches for tea. We love watercress, don’t we?

I love you,” she says, her voice soft but sure. I gaze down at her and wonder what the hell I did to get this fucking lucky. “I love you too. And I don’t need to ride tonight. Or ever again. Hearing that from your lips is the biggest win of my life.” I take my hat, and I plunk it on her head. Just like I told myself I would. And then I kiss her.

Another tug and a yank at my chestnut curls and she snarls at me, “You are so much like her.” This is something my mother often says and never explains. Though it is a great mystery to me it is also a blessing, for she always hurries from the room after saying it.

I'm antisocial,they say. I don't mix. It's so strange.I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or taking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice.

I wished for Willa to come back.” My eyes burn when I pull him into me, feel his tiny arms clutching at my waist. And my voice cracks when I say, “Me too, pal. Me too.

For a man who’s never been huge on chatting, he sure has a lot to say once my clothes come off.

She shied away from the gazes of boys and girls, bound her hair in brambles, braceleted her arms in vines, filled her mouth with chestnut honey to say away, keep away; I have forgotten how to kiss, how to be kissed, and do not want to remember.

We’re going to have to tell people soon.” “Yeah. I already told my mom. I hope that’s okay.” “What did she say?” “That I’ve got some catching up to do. And that she can’t wait to see you.” “Vivi, you mean? Yeah, that will be nice.” “No, Winter. You. She can’t wait to meet you.” “That should be interesting. Hope she’s not too disappointed.” “I could fucking bury whoever made you believe you’re as unlovable as you seem to think.

I watch as the branches of the chestnut tree slowly darken and turn black against the sky. the wind drops. the leaves are still. the sun fades and dips beyond the square of the window. the clouds are lit up with gold in the middle; deep dark lines score their edges. I watch the color leave them, watch it leak out in pink and purple, until the whole sky is burning and bruised and finally black. I watch the night come, and the day end. I understand that im saying goodbye. not just to this day itself, but to the world outside. outside. I'm giving up.

Ah God! to see the branches stir Across the moon at Grantchester! To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten Unforgettable, unforgotten River-smell, and hear the breeze Sobbing in the little trees. Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand Still guardians of that holy land? The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream, The yet unacademic stream Is dawn a secret shy and cold Anadyomene, silver-gold? And sunset still a golden sea From Haslingfield to Madingley? And after, ere the night is born, Do hares come out about the corn? Oh, is the water sweet and cool, Gentle and brown, above the pool? And laughs the immortal river still Under the mill, under the mill? Say, is there Beauty yet to find? And Certainty? and Quiet kind? Deep meadows yet, for to forget The lies, and truths, and pain?… oh! yet Stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?

What I want to say is wholly inappropriate. You’re beautiful. How was your night out? I’m sorry I haven’t been leaving enough coffee for you in the morning. Words that lodge in my throat. Turn to cotton batting on my tongue. Words and feelings I don’t know what to do with anyway.

The dark-haired stranger’s head snapped around. “Daphne? Did he say Daphne?” She drew back, unnerved by his direct question and the rather intense look in his eyes. “Yes.” “Your name is Daphne?” Now she was beginning to wonder if he was an idiot. “Yes.” He groaned. “Not Daphne Bridgerton.” Her face slid into a puzzled frown. “The very one.” Simon staggered back a step. He suddenly felt physically ill, as his brain finally processed the fact that she had thick, chestnut hair. The famous Bridgerton hair. Not to mention the Bridgerton nose, and cheekbones, and— Bugger it all, this was Anthony’s sister! Bloody hell. There were rules among friends, commandments, really, and the most important one was Thou Shalt Not Lust After Thy Friend’s Sister. While he stood there, probably staring at her like a complete idiot, she planted her hands on her hips, and demanded, “And who are you?” “Simon Basset,” he muttered. “The duke?” she squeaked. He nodded grimly. “Oh, dear.

And then he says, “I’m going to ruin you tonight.

I'm happy you're saying that, because... I mean, I always feel like a freak, because I'm never able to move on like... this! You know. People just have an affair, or even entire relationships... they break up and they forget! They move on like they would have changed brand of cereals! I feel I was never able to forget anyone I've been with. Because each person have... their own, specific qualities. You can never replace anyone. What is lost is lost. Each relationship, when it ends, really damages me. I never fully recover. That's why I'm very careful with getting involved, because... It hurts too much! Even getting laid! I actually don't do that... I will miss on the other person the most mundane things. Like I'm obsessed with little things. Maybe I'm crazy, but... when I was a little girl, my mom told me that I was always late to school. One day she followed me to see why. I was looking at chestnuts falling from the trees, rolling on the sidewalk, or... ants crossing the road, the way a leaf casts a shadow on a tree trunk... Little things. I think it's the same with people. I see in them little details, so specific to each of them, that move me, and that I miss, and... will always miss. You can never replace anyone, because everyone is made of such beautiful specific details. Like I remember the way, your beard has a bit of red in it. And how the sun was making it glow, that... that morning, right before you left. I remember that, and... I missed it! I'm really crazy, right?

You shall see rude and sturdy, experienced and wise men, keeping their castles, or teaming up their summer’s wood, or chopping alone in the woods, men fuller of talk and rare adventure in the sun and wind and rain, than a chestnut is of meat; who were out not only in ‘75 and 1812, but have been out every day of their lives; greater men than Homer, or Chaucer, or Shakespeare, only they never got time to say so; they never took to the way of writing. Look at their fields, and imagine what they might write, if ever they should put pen to paper. Or what have they not written on the face of the earth already, clearing, and burning, and scratching, and harrowing, and plowing, and subsoiling, in and in, and out and out, and over and over, again and again, erasing what they had already written for want of parchment.

Instructions for Dad. I don't want to go into a fridge at an undertaker's. I want you to keep me at home until the funeral. Please can someone sit with me in case I got lonely? I promise not to scare you. I want to be buried in my butterfly dress, my lilac bra and knicker set and my black zip boots (all still in the suitcase that I packed for Sicily). I also want to wear the bracelet Adam gave me. Don't put make-up on me. It looks stupid on dead people. I do NOT want to be cremated. Cremations pollute the atmosphere with dioxins,k hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide. They also have those spooky curtains in crematoriums. I want a biodegradable willow coffin and a woodland burial. The people at the Natural Death Centre helped me pick a site not for from where we live, and they'll help you with all the arrangements. I want a native tree planted on or near my grave. I'd like an oak, but I don't mind a sweet chestnut or even a willow. I want a wooden plaque with my name on. I want wild plants and flowers growing on my grave. I want the service to be simple. Tell Zoey to bring Lauren (if she's born by then). Invite Philippa and her husband Andy (if he wants to come), also James from the hospital (though he might be busy). I don't want anyone who doesn't know my saying anything about me. THe Natural Death Centre people will stay with you, but should also stay out of it. I want the people I love to get up and speak about me, and even if you cry it'll be OK. I want you to say honest things. Say I was a monster if you like, say how I made you all run around after me. If you can think of anything good, say that too! Write it down first, because apparently people often forget what they mean to say at funerals. Don't under any circumstances read that poem by Auden. It's been done to death (ha, ha) and it's too sad. Get someone to read Sonnet 12 by Shakespeare. Music- "Blackbird" by the Beatles. "Plainsong" by The Cure. "Live Like You Were Dying" by Tim McGraw. "All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands" by Sufian Stevens. There may not be time for all of them, but make sure you play the last one. Zoey helped me choose them and she's got them all on her iPod (it's got speakers if you need to borrow it). Afterwards, go to a pub for lunch. I've got £260 in my savings account and I really want you to use it for that. Really, I mean it-lunch is on me. Make sure you have pudding-sticky toffee, chocolate fudge cake, ice-cream sundae, something really bad for you. Get drunk too if you like (but don't scare Cal). Spend all the money. And after that, when days have gone by, keep an eye out for me. I might write on the steam in the mirror when you're having a bath, or play with the leaves on the apple tree when you're out in the garden. I might slip into a dream. Visit my grave when you can, but don't kick yourself if you can't, or if you move house and it's suddenly too far away. It looks pretty there in the summer (check out the website). You could bring a picnic and sit with me. I'd like that. OK. That's it. I love you. Tessa xxx

That’s fine. I can take care of myself.” “I know you can, but you don’t have to because I’m here to help.” He says it so matter-of-factly. Like doing this for someone is the most obvious thing in the world. And I wonder if, for him, maybe it is. He stepped in to take care of his siblings in the wake of tragedy. He stepped up to be a single parent to his son. Barfing babysitter? That’s a perfect job for him too. At his core, Cade is a caretaker. Selfless. With such a big heart I almost can’t wrap my head around it.

You’re going to spend as much time as you want at our house,” he says, while thrusting into me slowly. “You’re going to work whatever job you want. Wherever you want. But you’ll always have a place here. A home here. I’ll make you coffee every morning. I’ll leave you all the Post-it notes you want. I’ll cook your dinner every day. I’ll eat your pussy in the hot tub before bed every damn night.

A police officer pulls over Werner Heisenberg for speeding. “Do you know how fast you were going?” asks the cop. “No,” Heisenberg replies, “but I know exactly where I am!” I think we can all agree that physics jokes are the funniest jokes there are. They are less good at accurately conveying physics. This particular chestnut rests on familiarity with the famous Heisenberg uncertainty principle, often explained as saying that we cannot simultaneously know both the position and the velocity of any object. But the reality is deeper than that.

It was like this: you were happy, then you were sad, then happy again, then not. It went on. You were innocent or you were guilty. Actions were taken, or not. At times you spoke, at other times you were silent. Mostly, it seems you were silent—what could you say? Now it is almost over. Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life. It does this not in forgiveness— between you, there is nothing to forgive— but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment he sees the bread is finished with transformation. Eating, too, is a thing now only for others. It doesn't matter what they will make of you or your days: they will be wrong, they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man, all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention. Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad, you slept, you awakened. Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

Te vivo?” Winter nods. “It’s Portuguese. My dad used to say it to my sister and me. Sadly, it’s some of the only Portuguese I know. It means ‘I live you’ or something along those lines.” “You mean I love you?” “No.” I scrub at my stubble and glance down at our daughter, who is now amusing herself by playing her favorite game of fetch with Peter and his miniature rubber chicken. “It means . . . I live you. Like I see you everywhere, you are in everything. Our connection is more than physical.

Sorry to tell you, but that's a very old chestnut. My mother used to say when God slams a door on you, he opens a window.' Tig gave this two seconds of respectful consideration before rejecting it. 'No, that's not the same. I'm saying when God slams a door on you it's probably a shitstorm. You're going to end up in rubble. But it's okay because without all that crap overhead, you're standing in the daylight.' 'Without a roof over your head, it kind of feels like you might die.' 'Yeah, but you might not. For sure you won't find your way out of the mess if you keep picking up bricks and stuffing them in your pockets. What you have to do is look for blue sky.

Cade: Baby, why are you blushing? Willa: Because I swear people are looking at me like I just got my brains fucked out. Cade: You did. Willa: I think these panties are ruined. Cade: I’ll wash them for you. And then shove them in your mouth again the next time you say something rude. Willa: Fuck off. Cade: Careful. They haven’t even been washed yet.

Summer: Well, then, I’m whatever you want me to be. Rhett: That’s a dangerous thing to say.

Sloane.” The cool tone in his voice stops my hand from sliding further down my body. “I know I don’t need to tell you that you’re only allowed to touch my pussy when I say so.

Her encouragement shouldn’t feel this good. I shouldn’t like that she’s excited. So, I just say, “Welcome to the wild side, Princess.

Instead, I snap. I point at the floor beneath my feet and say, “Lose that fucking ring and crawl.

They say comparison is the thief of joy,

He made slighting remarks about the committee’s enforcement, and, well, rules is rules as the rules say someplace, or at least as all the oldies say they say.

Rhett: Your dad told me you’re still alive. He also says he’s going to cut my hair off in my sleep.

I have some things I need to say to you, and you’re going to listen.

He’s connected the freckles to say Mine.

I don’t love him.” He shrugs and gives me one of those sarcastic frowns that says, Okay, sure, but we both know you’re full of shit.

She says it so quietly, I almost miss it. “I don’t see you that way.

Kip: Why did Rhett send me a text saying that I’m fired?

There’s a beauty in children his age saying what they mean. They don’t wonder how it will come off, or if someone might read too much into it. if it’s in their heart, they say it.

His eyes lock on mine with a level of intensity that screams at me to be careful. And then he says, “I’m going to ruin you tonight.

Right. Well, I don’t think I told you not to fall in love with him.” “I don’t love him.” He shrugs and gives me one of those sarcastic frowns that says, Okay, sure, but we both know you’re full of shit.

Wild Peaches" When the world turns completely upside down You say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern Shore Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore; We’ll live among wild peach trees, miles from town, You’ll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown Homespun, dyed butternut’s dark gold color. Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor, We’ll swim in milk and honey till we drown. The winter will be short, the summer long, The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot, Tasting of cider and of scuppernong; All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all. The squirrels in their silver fur will fall Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot. 2 The autumn frosts will lie upon the grass Like bloom on grapes of purple-brown and gold. The misted early mornings will be cold; The little puddles will be roofed with glass. The sun, which burns from copper into brass, Melts these at noon, and makes the boys unfold Their knitted mufflers; full as they can hold Fat pockets dribble chestnuts as they pass. Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover; A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year; The spring begins before the winter’s over. By February you may find the skins Of garter snakes and water moccasins Dwindled and harsh, dead-white and cloudy-clear. 3 When April pours the colors of a shell Upon the hills, when every little creek Is shot with silver from the Chesapeake In shoals new-minted by the ocean swell, When strawberries go begging, and the sleek Blue plums lie open to the blackbird’s beak, We shall live well — we shall live very well. The months between the cherries and the peaches Are brimming cornucopias which spill Fruits red and purple, sombre-bloomed and black; Then, down rich fields and frosty river beaches We’ll trample bright persimmons, while you kill Bronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvasback. 4 Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones There’s something in this richness that I hate. I love the look, austere, immaculate, Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones. There’s something in my very blood that owns Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate, A thread of water, churned to milky spate Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones. I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray, Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves; That spring, briefer than apple-blossom’s breath, Summer, so much too beautiful to stay, Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves, And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.

This “waking sleep” is also the starting point for the crucial process of waking up. The ability to wake up is not only possible, but also an inherent part of being human. We fall asleep as we come into this world and acquire a personality, but the potential for conscious growth and transformation is part of our makeup. In fact, many ancient wisdom traditions say that this task of waking up to become aware of who we are represents the purpose of human life on earth.

Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm anti-social, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you?

Well, you know. Boys will be b—” “No,” I cut him off. Because that saying is straight trash, and years of bartending have given me plenty of time to see boys being boys. Which really is just boys being shitheads. “Boys will be gentlemen.

Uncle Mort glanced at Pandora, then back at the Juniors. "Okay, kids. Brace yourselves. And try not to yell too much." Elysia's hand tensed on Lex's arm. "I hate it when he says that," she whispered. Uncle Mort gave them a sympathetic smile. "Remember that old chestnut about the wickedest Grim of all time?" He pounded on the roof. Grotton's head popped down through the ceiling, a snaky grin stretching from ear to ear. The screams were so loud, Dora nearly drove into a tree

I wish I could say something to that, but I’m too choked up. So, I just fold her into a hug, take a deep inhale of the scent on her skin—cherries, always cherries—and whisper into the crook of her neck, “It’s perfect, Princess. And so are you.

I love you,” she says, her voice soft but sure. I gaze down at her and wonder what the hell I did to get this fucking lucky. “I love you too. And I don’t need to ride tonight. Or ever again. Hearing that from your lips is the biggest win of my life.

Doctor Winter Valentine. I’m Summer’s half-sister.” Summer winces at that designation, but it’s what her sister says next that has her all flustered. “And of course, I know who you are. Summer had your Wranglers ad plastered on her bedroom wall for years.

Once my father told me: When a Jew prays, he is asking God a question that has no end. Darkness fell. Rain fell. I never asked: What question? And now it's too late. Because I lost you, Tateh. One day, in the spring of 1938, on a rainy day that gave way to a break in the clouds, I lost you. You'd gone out to collect specimens for a theory you were hatching about rainfall, instinct, and butterflies. And then you were gone. We found you lying under a tree, your face splashed with mud. We knew you were free then, unbound by disappointing results. And we buried you in the cemetery where your father was buried, and his father, under the shade of the chestnut tree. Three years later, I lost Mameh. The last time I saw her she was wearing her yellow apron. She was stuffing things in a suitcase, the house was a wreck. She told me to go into the woods. She'd packed me food, and told me to wear my coat, even though it was July. "Go," she said. I was too old to listen, but like a child I listened. She told me she'd follow the next day. We chose a spot we both knew in the woods. The giant walnut tree you used to like, Tateh, because you said it had human qualities. I didn't bother to say goodbye. I chose to believe what was easier. I waited. But. She never came. Since then I've lived with the guilt of understanding too late that she thought she would have been a burden to me. I lost Fitzy. He was studying in Vilna, Tateh—someone who knew someone told me he'd last been seen on a train. I lost Sari and Hanna to the dogs. I lost Herschel to the rain. I lost Josef to a crack in time. I lost the sound of laughter. I lost a pair of shoes, I'd taken them off to sleep, the shoes Herschel gave me, and when I woke they were gone, I walked barefoot for days and then I broke down and stole someone else's. I lost the only woman I ever wanted to love. I lost years. I lost books. I lost the house where I was born. And I lost Isaac. So who is to say that somewhere along the way, without my knowing it, I didn't also lose my mind?

Jasper: Is there a way out at the other end of the hallway? Cade: There’s an emergency exit. Rhett: Fuuuuucckk. Are you breaking our cousin out of her shitty, stuffy wedding? Jasper: Yes. Come up with a distraction and text me when it’s safe for us to run. Rhett: Can I pull the fire alarm? Cade: I will come up with something. Rhett: I’ve always wanted to pull the fire alarm. Cade: You did. I had to wait for your dumb ass after school while you finished detention for weeks. Jasper: Guys? Cade: Willa has a plan. That might actually be worse. But when I say go . . . go. You need to run.

I love your freckles,” he murmurs from behind me, the pad of his finger tracing lines across the expanse of my back. “They remind me of all the constellations. Like I could draw lines between them, and pictures would appear.” It’s such an oddly worshipful thing to say. I wiggle my toes, hum softly, and tip my cheek against the bed to gaze back at him. “Right here, there are two so close together they almost look like one.” “Like binary stars,” I murmur. “What are binary stars?” His finger tenderly swipes across the spot he’s talking about. “It’s two stars that look like one to us when we see them in the sky. But really, they’re two. Stuck together by a gravitational pull, always orbiting one another.” “Kind of like the two of us, stuck together,” he muses.

Do you get it now,Becks?" Jack wrapped a finger around a long strand of my hair, and we were quiet as it slipped through his grip. "You haven't moved on?" He chuckled. "I have a lifetime of memories made up of chestnut wars and poker games and midnight excursions and Christmas Dances...It's all you. It's only ever been you.I love you." The last part seemed to escape his lips unintentionally, and afterward he closed his eyes and put his head in his hands,as if he had a sudden headache. "I've gotta not say that out loud." The sight of how messed up he was made me want to wrap my arms around him and fold him into me and cushion him from everything that lay ahead. Instead,I reached for his hand. Brought it to my lips. Kissed it. He raised his head and winced. "You shouldn't do that," he said, even though he didn't pull his hand away. "Why?" "Because...it'll make everything worse...If you don't feel-" His voice cut off as I kissed his hand again, pausing with his fingers at my lips. He let out a shaky sigh and his hair flopped forward. Then he looked at my lips for a long moment. "What if...?" I bit my lower lip. "What?" "What if we could be like this again?" He leaned in closer with a smile, and as he did,he said, "Are you going to steal my soul?" "Um...it's not technically your soul that..." I couldn't finish my sentence. His lips brushed mine, and I felt the whoosh of transferring emotions,but it wasn't as strong as the last time. The space inside me was practically full again. The Shades were right. Six months was just long enough to recover. He kept his lips touching mine when he asked, "Is it okay?" Okay in that I wasn't going to suck him dry anymore. Not okay in that my own emotions were in hyperdrive. Only our lips touched.Thankfully there was space between us everywhere else. He took my silence to mean it was safe. We held our lips together, tentative and still. But he didn't let it stay that casual for long.He pressed his lips closer, parting his mouth against mine. I shivered,and he put his arms around me and pulled me closer so that our bodies were touching in so many places. He pulled back a little.His breath was on my lips. "What is it?" I asked. "I dreamed of you every night." He briefly touched his lips to mine again. "It felt so real.And when I'd wake up the next morning,it was like your disappearance was fresh. Like you'd left me all over again." I lowered my chin and tucked my head into his chest. "I'm sorry." He sighed and tightened his grip around me. "It never got easier.But the dreams themselves." I felt him shake his head. "It's like I had a physical connection to you. They were so real. Every night,you were in my room with me. It was so real." I tilted my head back so I could face him again, realizing for the first time how difficult it must've been for Jack. I kissed his chin, his cheek, and then his lips. "I'm sorry," I said again. He shook his head. "It's not your fault I dreamed of you, Becks.I just want to know if it was as real as it felt." "I don't know," I said. But I told him about the book I'd read on Orpheus and Eurydice, and my theory that it was her connection to Orpheus that saved her.

This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. “I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,” she told me. “In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.” Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, “This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.” Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. “I often talk to this tree,” she said to me. I was startled and didn’t quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. “Yes.” What did it say to her? She answered, “It said to me, ‘I am here—I am here—I am life, eternal life.

For nothing, as I now see it, equals the value of life - not the wealth they say prosperous Ilium possessed in earlier days, when there was peace, before the coming of the Greeks, nor all the treasure pilled up behind the stone threshold of Phoebus Apollo in rocky Delphi. Cattle and fat sheep can be lifted. Tripods and chestnut horses can be procured. But you cannot lift or procure a man's life, when once the breath has left his lips.

I sit by her bed, and through the window the chestnut trees in the beer garden opposite glow in brown and gold. I breathe deeply and say over to myself:—“You are at home, you are at home.” But a sense of strangeness will not leave me, I cannot feel at home amongst these things. There is my mother, there is my sister, there my case of butterflies, and there the mahogany piano—but I am not myself there. There is a distance, a veil between us.

Did a horse kick you in the head as a child when I wasn’t watching?” Cade asks. “Beau beat your ass too hard one time? If I shake you hard enough, will it get you thinking straight?” Cade is mad, but my dad just looks sad. His blink lasts a few beats too long as he nods his head and folds his newspaper. “When is Summer coming back?” he asks as he pushes himself up from the table. “I don’t know.” I stare at my feet when I say it. Cade scoffs.

Thomas smiles. “Being in Delaware.” “Delaware!” Less says, utterly perplexed. He can think of nothing to say about Delaware. It is like trying to describe an airplane meal you had half a century ago. Thomas nods. “Or being gay in Delaware,” he says, quite serious now, moving closer to Less and looking up at him. Chestnut eyes. “I’m just trying to build a story.” “A story?” Thomas says, “About a boy who does not know if he deserves to be loved.

We were never very demonstrative in our family; poor folk who toil and are full of cares are not so. It is not their way to protest what they already know. When my mother says to me “dear boy,” it means much more than when another uses it. I know well enough that the jar of whortleberries is the only one they have had for months, and that she has kept it for me; and the somewhat stale cakes that she gives me too. She must have got them cheap some time and put them all by for me. I sit by her bed, and through the window the chestnut trees in the beer garden opposite glow in brown and gold. I breathe deeply and say over to myself:—“You are at home, you are at home.” But a sense of strangeness will not leave me, I cannot feel at home amongst these things. There is my mother, there is my sister, there my case of butterflies, and there the mahogany piano—but I am not myself there. There is a distance, a veil between us.

I was not quite two, so I don’t remember her. Actually, I think that’s the worst part. I missed out on this whole facet of life. I’ll never get to experience having a mom. And my dad never moved on.” Nodding, I say, “I can relate to that. But you know, at least your mom wanted you.” I sound terribly tragic saying that, but I blurt it out before I can think better of it. “My dad has spent his entire life proving to me he loves me, and I think a lot of that is to make up for the clusterfuck that is everyone else around me.

Why aren’t you in school? I see you every day wandering around.” “Oh, they don’t miss me,” she said. “I’m antisocial, they say. I don’t mix. It’s so strange. I’m very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn’t it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this.” She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. “Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don’t think it’s social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you?

Tell me," she said quietly. "If that [happiness] machine is like you say, has it got an answer to making babies in it somewhere? Can that machine make seventy-year-old people twenty? Also, how does death look when you hide in there with all that happiness?" "Hide!" "If you died from overwork, what should I do today, climb in that big box down there and be happy? Also tell me, Lee, how is our life? You know how our house is. Seven in the morning, breakfast, the kids; all of you gone by eight thirty and it's just me and washing and me and cooking and socks to be darned, weeds to be dug, or I run to the store or polish silver. Who's complaining? I'm just reminding you how the house is put together, Lee, what's in it! So now answer: How do you get all those things I said in one machine?" "That's not how it's built!" "I'm sorry. I got no time to look, then." And she kissed his cheek and went from the room and he lay smelling the wind that blew from the hidden machine below, rich with the odor of those roasted chestnuts that sold in the autumn streets of a Paris he had never known . . .

The substance of the attacks on the reality of organized abuse and torture of children always reduce to that old chestnut—it is unscientific. “Give us proof,” say the naysayers. “How is this different from reports of alien abduction?” say the clever-clever wags of Private Eye. Indeed. How is it different? In the case of alien abduction, we are asked to believe that visitors to this planet from outer space have kidnapped someone, taken them away, and brought them back. It is not believable. In the case of ritual abuse, we are asked to believe that people can organize themselves into groups for the purpose of torturing children. There would seem to be a significant difference here in what we are asked to believe.

Haymitch will be the real challenge.” “Haymitch?” Gale abandons the chestnuts. “You’re not asking him to come with us?” “I have to, Gale. I can’t leave him and Peeta because they’d —” His scowl cuts me off. “What?” “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how large our party was,” he snaps at me. “They’d torture them to death, trying to find out where I was,” I say. “What about Peeta’s family? They’ll never come. In fact, they probably couldn’t wait to inform on us. Which I’m sure he’s smart enough to realize. What if he decides to stay?” he asks. I try to sound indifferent, but my voice cracks. “Then he stays.” “You’d leave him behind?” Gale asks. “To save Prim and my mother, yes,” I answer. “I mean, no! I’ll get him to come.” “And me, would you leave me?” Gale’s expression is rock hard now.

PANOTII LOOKS PUT OUT ABOUT BEING LEFT BEHIND AND dogs my steps as I stow his tack under the deep overhang on the south side of the wizard’s hovel. There’s plenty of grass here, water at the lake, and it’s not that cold yet, despite the shift in seasons. If the rains start before we get back, the horses can take shelter under the overhang. I’m not worried about them wandering off. Not one of them has stepped outside of the large makeshift corral of God Bolt pits since we got here. “You can’t come with us,” I tell him. “It’ll be cold and slippery. And big monsters will want to eat you.” He tosses his head, snorting. “Really big monsters. There might be Dragons. And the Hydra. And I can’t vouch for the friendliness of the Ipotane toward regular horses.” I blow gently into his nose. Panotii chuffs back. “You’ll be safe here, and if anyone tries to steal you, Grandpa Zeus will throw down a thunderbolt. Boom! No more horse thief.” “Zeus may have better things to do than babysit our horses,” Flynn says, stowing his own equine gear next to mine. I glance northward toward the Gods’ mountain home and speak loudly. “In that case, I’m announcing right now that I’ll make an Olympian stink if anything happens to my horse.” Flynn looks nervous and moves away from me like he’s expecting a God Bolt to come thundering down. “She’s not kidding.” Sunlight glints off Griffin’s windblown hair. Thick black stubble darkens his jaw. He flashes me a smile that brings out the slight hook in his nose, and something tightens in my belly. I turn back to Panotii and scratch under his jaw. “You’re in charge here.” His enormous ears flick my way. “You keep the others in line.” Panotii nods. I swear to the Gods, my horse nods. Brown Horse raises his head and pins me with a gimlet stare. I roll my eyes. “Fine. You can help. You’re both in charge.” Apparently satisfied, Griffin’s horse goes back to grazing, shearing the grass around him with neat, organized efficiency. Griffin and Brown Horse were made for each other. Panotii shoves his nose into my shoulder, knocking me back a step. Taking a handful of his chestnut mane, I stretch up on my toes to whisper into one of his donkey ears. “Seriously, you’re in charge. I’ll bet you can even rhyme.” Carver and Kato chuckle as they walk past. Griffin bands his arms around my waist from behind, surprising me. “I heard that.

This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. "I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard," she told me. "In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously." Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, "This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness." Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. "I often talk to this tree," she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. "Yes." What did it say to her? She answered, "It said to me, 'I am here - I am here - I am life, eternal life.

Why aren't you in school? I see you every day wandering around." "Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing 'chicken' and 'knock hubcaps.' I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?

I know. It feels like the end of the world when you can’t have the things you always wanted. But it’s not the end of the world. There’s some other place to go.” “Sorry to tell you, but that’s a very old chestnut. My mother used to say when God slams a door on you, he opens a window.” Tig gave this two seconds of respectful consideration before rejecting it. “No, that’s not the same. I’m saying when God slams a door on you it’s probably a shitstorm. You’re going to end up in rubble. But it’s okay because without all that crap overhead, you’re standing in the daylight.” “Without a roof over your head, it kind of feels like you might die.” “Yeah, but you might not. For sure you won’t find your way out of the mess if you keep picking up bricks and stuffing them in your pockets. What you have to do is look for blue sky.

Hello, Jimmy,' said an all-too-familiar voice from somewhere behind me. It was Marty. No one else at South Miami had that delightful, almost exotic English accent. I turned around slowly until I faced her. “Hi, Marty,” I said. She got up from one of the few chairs that had not been placed in storage and gave me a shy half-smile. “So, come to say goodbye, then?” Marty asked. I gazed at her, committing every detail of her appearance to memory. She wore faded Levi’s blue jeans, a white and orange SOUTH MIAMI CHORUS T-shirt, white socks and an old pair of Keds sneakers. Her chestnut hair was tied into a ponytail. She wore very little makeup; a touch of mascara here, a hint of blush there, a bit of lip-gloss to make things a bit interesting. She was shockingly, heartrendingly beautiful. My heart skipped a beat. “I couldn’t go without seeing you, you know,” I said. She smiled. “Oh, come on; I bet you say that to all the girls.” “It’s true,” I said. “And no, I don’t say that to all the girls.

To sit indoors was silly. I postponed the search for Savchenko and Ludmila till the next day and went wandering about Paris. The men wore bowlers, the women huge hats with feathers. On the café terraces lovers kissed unconcernedly - I stopped looking away. Students walked along the boulevard St. Michel. They walked in the middle of the street, holding up traffic, but no one dispersed them. At first I thought it was a demonstration - but no, they were simply enjoying themselves. Roasted chestnuts were being sold. Rain began to fall. The grass in the Luxembourg gardens was a tender green. In December! I was very hot in my lined coat. (I had left my boots and fur cap at the hotel.) There were bright posters everywhere. All the time I felt as though I were at the theatre. I have lived in Paris off and on for many years. Various events, snatches of conversation have become confused in my memory. But I remember well my first day there: the city electrified my. The most astonishing thing is that is has remained unchanged; Moscow is unrecognizable, but Paris is still as it was. When I come to Paris now, I feel inexpressibly sad - the city is the same, it is I who have changed. It is painful for me to walk along the familiar streets - they are the streets of my youth. Of course, the fiacres, the omnibuses, the steam-car disappeared long ago; you rarely see a café with red velvet or leather settees; only a few pissoirs are left - the rest have gone into hiding underground. But these, after all, are minor details. People still live out in the streets, lovers kiss wherever they please, no one takes any notice of anyone. The old houses haven't changed - what's another half a century to them; at their age it makes no difference. Say what you will, the world has changed, and so the Parisians, too, must be thinking of many things of which they had no inkling in the old days: the atom bomb, mass-production methods, Communism. But with their new thoughts they still remain Parisians, and I am sure that if an eighteen-year-old Soviet lad comes to Paris today he will raise his hands in astonishment, as I did in 1908: "A theatre!

The industrialist dropped me already. And it’s all because of politics. Politics poisons human relationships. I spit on it. The emcee was a Jew, the one on the bike was a Jew, the one who was dancing was a Jew.… So he asks me if I’m Jewish too. My God, I’m not — but I’m thinking: if that’s what he likes, I’ll do him the favor — and I say: “Of course — my father just sprained his ankle at the synagogue last week.” So he says, he should have known, with my curly hair. Of course it’s permed, and naturally straight like a match. So he gets all icy; turns out he’s nationalist with a race, and race is an issue — and he got all hostile — it’s all very difficult. So I did exactly the wrong thing. But I didn’t feel like taking it all back. After all, a man should know in advance whether he likes a woman or not. So stupid! At first they pay you all sorts of compliments and are drooling all over you — and then you tell them: I’m a chestnut! — and their chin drops: oh, you’re a chestnut — yuk, I had no idea. And you are exactly the way you were before, but just one word has supposedly changed you.

As an aside, Sheldon Rovin in his first draft of a guide to Systems Thinking, repeated this old chestnut: The often-quoted tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that, ‘When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.’ However, in government more advanced strategies are often employed, such as: 1. Buying a stronger whip. 2. Changing riders. 29 3. Appointing a committee to study the horse. 4.    Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride horses. 5. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included. 6. Reclassifying the dead horse as living impaired. 7. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse. 82 8. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed. 9. Providing extra funding/training to increase the dead horse’s performance. 10.  Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s performance. 3 11.  Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than live horses. 12.  Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses. And, of course… 13.  Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

I'll tell you this,though, Frankie makes me happy. So does Sadie. I don't want to canoodle with either of them, but I love them to death." "Must you use those words in my presence?" "Sorry.But.Truth:You are dead as the spat." Edward sighed. "You're right.You're absolutely right. So I suppose you'd best go to sleep, darling Ella. It's late. And,as was famously said, 'tomorrow-'" "-is another day? Thank you, Scarlett O'Hara." "Actually-" -he scowled at me- "I was going to say, 'Tomorrow comes. Tomorrow brings, tomorrow brings love, in the shape of things.'" "Shakespeare?" I asked. "Queen," he shot back. "Not nearly as good as 'Bohemian Rhapsody' or 'Fat Bottomed Girls,' but certainly poetic." "Good night, Edward." "Good night, lovely girl." I turned off the light and climbed into bed. "Oh.By the way." "Yes?" "I think I figured out why you called Diana all those nicknames. 'Spring,' 'Cab,' 'Post'..." "Yes?" "They're all things you wait for. I think Diana was making you wait, and it was making you crazy. Am I right?" "Oh,Ella. You know I can't tell you that. I will,however, leave you with one more lovely old chestnut-" "'All good things are worth waiting for?'" "I really wish you would let me finish a thought tonight. I was going to say, 'Ain't nothing like the real thing, baby.'" "Marvin Gaye," I said. "The one and only.

I am sitting alone in my old English classroom at my old desk, reading from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The only sounds in the room are the ticking of the clock and the occasional rustling of the pages of the book. Then, Martina Reynaud, the most beautiful girl in the Class of ’83, walks in. She’s tall, graceful, and absolutely breathtaking. She’s wearing a black dress, one that shows off her long dancer’s legs. Her peaches-and-cream complexion is flawless; there is no sign of a pimple anywhere. Her long chestnut hair cascades down over her shoulders. In short, she is the personification of feminine elegance from the top of her head to her high-heeled shoes. I try to get back to my reading assignment, but the scent of her perfume, a mixture of jasmine and orange blossoms, is beguiling. I look to my right; she is sitting at the desk right next to mine. She gives me a smile. My heart skips a beat. I know guys who would kill for one of Marty’s smiles. She has that effect on most men. Her smile is full of genuine warmth and affection; I can tell by the look in her hazel eyes. “Hi, Jimmy,” she says. Her voice is soft and melodious; she speaks with a lilting British accent. From what I’ve heard, her family is from England. London, actually. “Hi,” I reply, feeling about as articulate as your average mango. Then, mustering my last reserves of willpower, I focus my attention on Shakespeare’s play.

And lifting water is just one of the many jobs that the phloem, xylem, and cambium perform. They also manufacture lignin and cellulose; regulate the storage and production of tannin, sap, gum, oils, and resins; dole out minerals and nutrients; convert starches into sugars for future growth (which is where maple syrup comes into the picture); and goodness knows what else. But because all this is happening in such a thin layer, it also leaves the tree terribly vulnerable to invasive organisms. To combat this, trees have formed elaborate defense mechanisms. The reason a rubber tree seeps latex when cut is that this is its way of saying to insects and other organisms, “Not tasty. Nothing here for you. Go away.” Trees can also deter destructive creatures like caterpillars by flooding their leaves with tannin, which makes the leaves less tasty and so inclines the caterpillars to look elsewhere. When infestations are particularly severe, some trees can even communicate the fact. Some species of oak release a chemical that tells other oaks in the vicinity that an attack is under way. In response, the neighboring oaks step up their tannin production the better to withstand the coming onslaught. By such means, of course, does nature tick along. The problem arises when a tree encounters an attacker for which evolution has left it unprepared, and seldom has a tree been more helpless against an invader than the American chestnut against Endothia parasitica. It enters a chestnut effortlessly, devours the cambium cells, and positions itself for attack on the next tree before the tree has the faintest idea,

The street sprinkler went past and, as its rasping rotary broom spread water over the tarmac, half the pavement looked as if it had been painted with a dark stain. A big yellow dog had mounted a tiny white bitch who stood quite still. In the fashion of colonials the old gentleman wore a light jacket, almost white, and a straw hat. Everything held its position in space as if prepared for an apotheosis. In the sky the towers of Notre-Dame gathered about themselves a nimbus of heat, and the sparrows – minor actors almost invisible from the street – made themselves at home high up among the gargoyles. A string of barges drawn by a tug with a white and red pennant had crossed the breadth of Paris and the tug lowered its funnel, either in salute or to pass under the Pont Saint-Louis. Sunlight poured down rich and luxuriant, fluid and gilded as oil, picking out highlights on the Seine, on the pavement dampened by the sprinkler, on a dormer window, and on a tile roof on the Île Saint-Louis. A mute, overbrimming life flowed from each inanimate thing, shadows were violet as in impressionist canvases, taxis redder on the white bridge, buses greener. A faint breeze set the leaves of a chestnut tree trembling, and all down the length of the quai there rose a palpitation which drew voluptuously nearer and nearer to become a refreshing breath fluttering the engravings pinned to the booksellers’ stalls. People had come from far away, from the four corners of the earth, to live that one moment. Sightseeing cars were lined up on the parvis of Notre-Dame, and an agitated little man was talking through a megaphone. Nearer to the old gentleman, to the bookseller dressed in black, an American student contemplated the universe through the view-finder of his Leica. Paris was immense and calm, almost silent, with her sheaves of light, her expanses of shadow in just the right places, her sounds which penetrated the silence at just the right moment. The old gentleman with the light-coloured jacket had opened a portfolio filled with coloured prints and, the better to look at them, propped up the portfolio on the stone parapet. The American student wore a red checked shirt and was coatless. The bookseller on her folding chair moved her lips without looking at her customer, to whom she was speaking in a tireless stream. That was all doubtless part of the symphony. She was knitting. Red wool slipped through her fingers. The white bitch’s spine sagged beneath the weight of the big male, whose tongue was hanging out. And then when everything was in its place, when the perfection of that particular morning reached an almost frightening point, the old gentleman died without saying a word, without a cry, without a contortion while he was looking at his coloured prints, listening to the voice of the bookseller as it ran on and on, to the cheeping of the sparrows, the occasional horns of taxis. He must have died standing up, one elbow on the stone ledge, a total lack of astonishment in his blue eyes. He swayed and fell to the pavement, dragging along with him the portfolio with all its prints scattered about him. The male dog wasn’t at all frightened, never stopped. The woman let her ball of wool fall from her lap and stood up suddenly, crying out: ‘Monsieur Bouvet!

Maxim’s grandmother suffered her in patience. She closed her eyes as though she too were tired. She looked more like Maxim than ever. I knew how she must have looked when she was young, tall, and handsome, going round to the stables at Manderley with sugar in her pockets, holding her trailing skirt out of the mud. I pictured the nipped-in waist, the high collar, I heard her ordering the carriage for two o’clock. That was all finished now for her, all gone. Her husband had been dead for forty years, her son for fifteen. She had to live in this bright, red-gabled house with the nurse until it was time for her to die. I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe. I was a child yesterday. I had not forgotten. But Maxim’s grandmother, sitting there in her shawl with her poor blind eyes, what did she feel, what was she thinking? Did she know that Beatrice was yawning and glancing at her watch? Did she guess that we had come to visit her because we felt it right, it was a duty, so that when she got home afterwards Beatrice would be able to say, “Well, that clears my conscience for three months”? Did she ever think about Manderley? Did she remember sitting at the dining room table, where I sat? Did she too have tea under the chestnut tree? Or was it all forgotten and laid aside, and was there nothing left behind that calm, pale face of hers but little aches and little strange discomforts, a blurred thankfulness when the sun shone, a tremor when the wind blew cold? I wished that I could lay my hands upon her face and take the years away. I wished I could see her young, as she was once, with color in her cheeks and chestnut hair, alert and active as Beatrice by her side, talking as she did about hunting, hounds, and horses. Not sitting there with her eyes closed while the nurse thumped the pillows behind her head.

He went straight to ‘his alley,’ and when he reached the end of it he perceived, still on the same bench, that wellknown couple. Only, when he approached, it certainly was the same man; but it seemed to him that it was no longer the same girl. The person whom he now beheld was a tall and beautiful creature, possessed of all the most charming lines of a woman at the precise moment when they are still combined with all the most ingenuous graces of the child; a pure and fugitive moment, which can be expressed only by these two words,— ‘fifteen years.’ She had wonderful brown hair, shaded with threads of gold, a brow that seemed made of marble, cheeks that seemed made of rose-leaf, a pale flush, an agitated whiteness, an exquisite mouth, whence smiles darted like sunbeams, and words like music, a head such as Raphael would have given to Mary, set upon a neck that Jean Goujon would have attributed to a Venus. And, in order that nothing might be lacking to this bewitching face, her nose was not handsome— it was pretty; neither straight nor curved, neither Italian nor Greek; it was the Parisian nose, that is to say, spiritual, delicate, irregular, pure,— which drives painters to despair, and charms poets. When Marius passed near her, he could not see her eyes, which were constantly lowered. He saw only her long chestnut lashes, permeated with shadow and modesty. This did not prevent the beautiful child from smiling as she listened to what the white-haired old man was saying to her, and nothing could be more fascinating than that fresh smile, combined with those drooping eyes. For a moment, Marius thought that she was another daughter of the same man, a sister of the former, no doubt. But when the invariable habit of his stroll brought him, for the second time, near the bench, and he had examined her attentively, he recognized her as the same. In six months the little girl had become a young maiden; that was all. Nothing is more frequent than this phenomenon. There is a moment when girls blossom out in the twinkling of an eye, and become roses all at once. One left them children but yesterday; today, one finds them disquieting to the feelings. This child had not only grown, she had become idealized. As three days in April suffice to cover certain trees with flowers, six months had sufficed to clothe her with beauty. Her April had arrived. One sometimes sees people, who, poor and mean, seem to wake up, pass suddenly from indigence to luxury, indulge in expenditures of all sorts, and become dazzling, prodigal, magnificent, all of a sudden. That is the result of having pocketed an income; a note fell due yesterday. The young girl had received her quarterly income. And then, she was no longer the school-girl with her felt hat, her merino gown, her scholar’s shoes, and red hands; taste had come to her with beauty; she was a well-dressed person, clad with a sort of rich and simple elegance, and without affectation. She wore a dress of black damask, a cape of the same material, and a bonnet of white crape. Her white gloves displayed the delicacy of the hand which toyed with the carved, Chinese ivory handle of a parasol, and her silken shoe outlined the smallness of her foot. When one passed near her, her whole toilette exhaled a youthful and penetrating perfume.

It is the last evening at home. Everyone is silent. I go to bed early, I seize the pillow, press it against myself and bury my head in it. Who knows if I will ever lie in a feather bed again? Late in the night my mother comes into my room. She thinks I am asleep, and I pretend to be so. To talk, to stay awake with one another, it is too hard. She sits long into the night although she is in pain and often writhes. At last I can bear it no longer, and pretend I have just wakened up. ”Go and sleep, Mother, you will catch cold here.” ”I can sleep enough later,” she says. I sit up. ”I don’t go straight back to the front, mother. I have to do four weeks at the training camp. I may come over from there one Sunday, perhaps.” She is silent. Then she asks gently: ”Are you very much afraid?” ”No Mother.” ”I would like to tell you to be on your guard against the women out in France. They are no good.” Ah! Mother, Mother! You still think I am a child–why can I not put my head in your lap and weep? Why have I always to be strong and self-controlled? I would like to weep and be comforted too, indeed I am little more than a child; in the wardrobe still hang short, boy’s trousers–it is such a little time ago, why is it over? ”Where we are there aren’t any women, Mother,” I say as calmly as I can. ”And be very careful at the front, Paul.” Ah, Mother, Mother! Why do I not take you in my arms and die with you. What poor wretches we are! ”Yes Mother, I will.” ”I will pray for you every day, Paul.” Ah! Mother, Mother! Let us rise up and go out, back through the years, where the burden of all this misery lies on us no more, back to you and me alone, mother! ”Perhaps you can get a job that is not so dangerous.” ”Yes, Mother, perhaps I can get into the cookhouse, that can easily be done.” ”You do it then, and if the others say anything–” ”That won’t worry me, mother–” She sighs. Her face is a white gleam in the darkness. ”Now you must go to sleep, Mother.” She does not reply. I get up and wrap my cover round her shoulders. She supports herself on my arm, she is in pain. And so I take her to her room. I stay with her a little while. ”And you must get well again, Mother, before I come back.” ”Yes, yes, my child.” ”You ought not to send your things to me, Mother. We have plenty to eat out there. You can make much better use of them here.” How destitute she lies there in her bed, she that loves me more than all the world. As I am about to leave, she says hastily: ”I have two pairs of under-pants for you. They are all wool. They will keep you warm. You must not forget to put them in your pack.” Ah! Mother! I know what these under-pants have cost you in waiting, and walking, and begging! Ah! Mother, Mother! how can it be that I must part from you? Who else is there that has any claim on me but you. Here I sit and there you are lying; we have so much to say, and we shall never say it. ”Good-night, Mother.” ”Good-night, my child.” The room is dark. I hear my mother’s breathing, and the ticking of the clock. Outside the window the wind blows and the chestnut trees rustle. On the landing I stumble over my pack, which lies there already made up because I have to leave early in the morning. I bite into my pillow. I grasp the iron rods of my bed with my fists. I ought never to have come here. Out there I was indifferent and often hopeless;–I will never be able to be so again. I was a soldier, and now I am nothing but an agony for myself, for my mother, for everything that is so comfortless and without end. I ought never to have come on leave.

Lucien crossed the street moments before the horses reached him. He tackled Horatia, knocking her to the ground in an alley between the shops. The curricle’s wheels sliced through the snow and slush inches from his boots, soaking them with icy water. For a long moment, Lucien couldn’t move. She was alive. He’d made it. The curricle hadn’t run either of them over… Then his body seemed to realize it had a woman under it. A woman with the finest curves God had ever made to tempt a man. Her bonnet was askew, revealing long lustrous curls of deep chestnut hair. Her dark eyes, so innocent, fixed on his face in wonder. “My lord…” she murmured in a daze. Her gloved hands rested on his chest, holding him at bay. He felt the tremble of her hands all the way to his bones, and his body responded with interest. “What in blazes?” Charles rushed into the alley, gray eyes alight with fury. “Did you see who was driving that curricle?” Charles paused and took in the scene before him with a smile. “Horatia, love, how are you? Not too bruised I hope?” Charles had never in his life bothered with titles or propriety. Neither did Lucien for that matter. So it didn’t surprise Lucien that his friend treated Horatia as he did. “Oh Charles!” she exclaimed. She seemed to realize only now she was on her back in an alley just off Bond Street, with a street full of curious people peering in and Lucien on top of her. Lucien gritted his teeth. “Oh Charles!” she’d said, but Lucien was always “My lord.” It grated his nerves that she didn’t offer such intimacy to him. It was his own damned fault. He pushed her away at every opportunity, just to keep himself from tugging her into the nearest alcove and kissing her. Something about her seemed to render him into the most barbaric state possible. He had little else on his mind other than how she’d taste, how she’d moan and sigh if he could just get his hands on her. “Lucien…” Horatia stammered. His name on her lips was more erotic than a lover’s sated sigh. “What on earth just happened?” “I fear someone just tried to run me over, and you were, unfortunately, in the way,” he explained, worried by the dazed expression swallowing her dark eyes. “I say, Lucien, you might want to get off the girl, she’s turning blue,” Charles teased. “Besides, stay on top of her any longer and people are bound to talk." -Horatia, Lucien, & Charles

The Renzettis live in a small house at 84 Chestnut Avenue. Frank Renzetti is forty-four and works as a bookkeeper for a moving company. Mary Renzetti is thirty-five and works part-time at a day care. They have one child, Tommy, who is five. Frank’s widowed mother, Camila, also lives with the family. My question: How likely is it that the Renzettis have a pet? To answer that, most people would zero in on the family’s details. “Renzetti is an Italian name,” someone might think. “So are ‘Frank’ and ‘Camila.’ That may mean Frank grew up with lots of brothers and sisters, but he’s only got one child. He probably wants to have a big family but he can’t afford it. So it would make sense that he compensated a little by getting a pet.” Someone else might think, “People get pets for kids and the Renzettis only have one child, and Tommy isn’t old enough to take care of a pet. So it seems unlikely.” This sort of storytelling can be very compelling, particularly when the available details are much richer than what I’ve provided here. But superforecasters wouldn’t bother with any of that, at least not at first. The first thing they would do is find out what percentage of American households own a pet. Statisticians call that the base rate—how common something is within a broader class. Daniel Kahneman has a much more evocative visual term for it. He calls it the “outside view”—in contrast to the “inside view,” which is the specifics of the particular case. A few minutes with Google tells me about 62% of American households own pets. That’s the outside view here. Starting with the outside view means I will start by estimating that there is a 62% chance the Renzettis have a pet. Then I will turn to the inside view—all those details about the Renzettis—and use them to adjust that initial 62% up or down. It’s natural to be drawn to the inside view. It’s usually concrete and filled with engaging detail we can use to craft a story about what’s going on. The outside view is typically abstract, bare, and doesn’t lend itself so readily to storytelling. So even smart, accomplished people routinely fail to consider the outside view. The Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan once predicted trouble for the Democrats because polls had found that George W. Bush’s approval rating, which had been rock-bottom at the end of his term, had rebounded to 47% four years after leaving office, equal to President Obama’s. Noonan found that astonishing—and deeply meaningful.9 But if she had considered the outside view she would have discovered that presidential approval always rises after a president leaves office. Even Richard Nixon’s number went up. So Bush’s improved standing wasn’t surprising in the least—which strongly suggests the meaning she drew from it was illusory. Superforecasters don’t make that mistake. If Bill Flack were asked whether, in the next twelve months, there would be an armed clash between China and Vietnam over some border dispute, he wouldn’t immediately delve into the particulars of that border dispute and the current state of China-Vietnam relations. He would instead look at how often there have been armed clashes in the past. “Say we get hostile conduct between China and Vietnam every five years,” Bill says. “I’ll use a five-year recurrence model to predict the future.” In any given year, then, the outside view would suggest to Bill there is a 20% chance of a clash. Having established that, Bill would look at the situation today and adjust that number up or down.

Despite the absence of speech, the green area on the upper part of the gyrus was glowing. “If it’s lighting up, it means she’s talking to me at this very moment.” “Eugenie?” Sharko grunted. Leclerc felt a chill. To see his chief inspector’s meninges react to speech like this, when you couldn’t even hear a fly buzzing, made him feel like there was a ghost in the room. “What’s she saying?” “She wants me to buy a pint of cocktail sauce and some candied chestnuts next time I go shopping. She loves those miserable chestnuts. Excuse me a second…” Sharko closed his eyes, lips pressed tight. Eugenie was someone he might see and hear at any moment. On the passenger seat of his old Renault. At night when he went to bed. Sitting cross-legged, watching the mini-gauge trains run around the tracks. Two years earlier, Eugenie had often shown up with a black man, Willy, a huge smoker of Camels and pot. A real mean son of a bitch, much worse than the little girl because he talked loud and tended to gesticulate wildly. Thanks to the treatment, the Rasta had disappeared for good, but the other one, the girl, came and went as she pleased, resistant as a virus.

After that they had the presents. Those from the guests to the hosts were chiefly a disguised dole: tins or pots of more or less luxurious food, bottles of hard liquor, wide-spectrum gift tokens. Hosts showered guests with diversely unwearable articles of clothing: to Keith from Adela, a striped necktie useful for garroting underbred rivals in his trade; to Tracy from George, a liberation-front lesbian's plastic apron. Under a largely unspoken kind of non-aggression pact, the guests gave one another things like small boxes of chocolates or very large boxes of matches with (say) aerial panoramas of Manhattan on their outsides and containing actual matches each long enough, once struck, to kindle the cigarettes of (say) the entire crew of a fair-sized merchant vessel, given the assembly of that crew in some relatively confined space. Intramural gifts included a bathroom sponge, a set of saucepans, a cushion in a lop-sided cover, a photograph-frame wrought by some vanished hand and with no photographs in it, an embroidered knitting bag. Keith watched carefully what Bernard gave, half expecting a chestnut-coloured wig destined for Adela, or a lavishly-illustrated book on karate for George, but was disappointed, although he savored Bernard's impersonation of a man going all out to hide his despondency as he took the wrappings off present after useless, insultingly cheap, no doubt intended to be facetious, present.

Most people are conscious of the fact that in looking back upon their past lives, especially upon the days of their childhood, it is the sunshine that abides with them and not the shadow. In all the memories, let us say of a garden in which we played as children, the says are hot and bright, the flowers always blooming. So it is with Oxford. Heaven knows the place is often enough shrouded in cold, wet mist: for weeks together the streets are muddy beyond all other streets: at the beginning of each term (save that one by courtesy called "summer") the chemists' shops are (or used to be) filled with rows of bottles of quinine, to enable the poor undergraduate to struggle against a depressing climate. But who remembers all these things in after years? The man of fifty hears Oxford mentioned, and there comes back to him at once a place where old grey buildings throw shadows across shaven lawns; where the young green of the chestnut makes a brilliant splash of colour above the college garden wall; where cool bright waters wind beneath ancient willows, and it is good to bask in flannels in a punt. In fact it is the few days of real summer—the two or three in each "summer" term—that he remembers in accordance with memory's happy scheme, in which it is the fittest that survive.

You might even say there is a tree for every mood and every moment. When you have something precious to give to the universe, a song or a poem, you should first share it with a golden oak before anyone else. If you are feeling discouraged and defenceless, look for a Mediterranean cypress or a flowering horse chestnut. Both are strikingly resilient, and they will tell you about all the fires they have survived. And if you want to emerge stronger and kinder from your trials, find an aspen to learn from – a tree so tenacious it can fend off even the flames that aim to destroy it. If you are hurting and have no one willing to listen to you, it might do you good to spend time beside a sugar maple. If, on the other hand, you are suffering from excessive self-esteem, do pay a visit to a cherry tree and observe its blossoms, which, though undoubtedly pretty, are no less ephemeral than vainglory. By the time you leave, you might feel a bit more humble, more grounded.

But it’s Jasper who really gets the last laugh when he leans in against my ex’s ear and says, “I fucked that ring right off her finger.

But Eddie, listen.” She turned to look at him. “What I’m saying is, they realized the chestnuts were going extinct. So what did they do? They ran up here and cut down every last one that was left alive.” He thought about it. “They were dying anyway, I guess that’s what they figured.” “But not all of them would have died. Some of those last chestnuts were standing because they weren’t sick. They might have stood straight on through the blight.

You might even say there is a tree for every mood and every moment. When you have something precious to give to the universe, a song or a poem, you should first share it with a golden oak before anyone else. If you are feeling discouraged and defenceless, look for a Mediterranean cypress or a flowering horse chestnut. Both are strikingly resilient, and they will tell you about all the fires they have survived. And if you want to emerge stronger and kinder from your trials, find an aspen to learn from – a tree so tenacious it can fend off even the flames that aim to destroy it. If you are hurting and have no one willing to listen to you, it might do you good to spend time beside a sugar maple. If, on the other hand, you are suffering from excessive self-esteem, do pay a visit to a cherry tree and observe its blossoms, which, though undoubtedly pretty, are no less ephemeral than vainglory. By the time you leave, you might feel a bit more humble, more grounded. To reminisce about the past, seek out a holly to sit under; to dream about the future, choose a magnolia instead. And if it is friends and friendships on your mind, the most suitable companion would be a spruce or a ginkgo. When you arrive at a crossroads and don’t know which path to take, contemplating quietly by a sycamore might help. If you are an artist in need of inspiration, a blue jacaranda or a sweetly scented mimosa could stir your imagination. If it is renewal you are after, seek a wych elm, and if you have too many regrets, a weeping willow will offer solace. When you are in trouble or at your lowest point, and have no one in whom to confide, a hawthorn would be the right choice. There is a reason why hawthorns are home to fairies and known to protect pots of treasure. For wisdom, try a beech; for intelligence, a pine; for bravery, a rowan; for generosity, a hazel; for joy, a juniper; and for when you need to learn to let go of what you cannot control, a birch with its white-silver bark, peeling and shedding layers like old skins. Then again, if it’s love you’re after, or love you have lost, come to the fig, always the fig.

The little ones eat their meal, which at times requires us to coax, plead or threaten, spewing old chestnuts such as, ‘There will be no dessert for you, young man,’ and ‘Do you think dragons leave food on their plates?’ ‘Dragons don’t use plates.’ ‘I know they don’t use plates, I know that. I’m just saying … could you please just finish it.’ After their meal is eaten, sort of, the little ones are allowed to watch a bit of television. Dragons for him, Peppa Pig for her. (There is no question that my wife and I, along with many parents, wish the creators of that irritating animated swine a slow death, but they are so rich they have probably purchased immortality. And yet at the same time said pig allows us respite for half an hour or so every day. May God bless those creators.) While the little kids are immersed, I begin to make culinary preparations for the next ‘sitting’. TV time has ended, and we usher the little ones to bed. As usual the two-year old is screaming between gulps of her bottle because she has had to leave her beloved pink porcine pal. After settling her into her cot, we then take turns reading about dragons to the five-year-old, who proceeds to tell us he’s hungry, so we begrudgingly make him some toast and say something like, ‘I told you to eat your dinner. This is the last time.’ And it is. Until tomorrow.

He was immaculately clean, almost sparkling, a little foxy-faced boy with small rounded-at-the-top triangular ears and dark, alert eyes. He was a ruddy chestnut brown with white points on his face, chest, paws, and tail, a handsome, elegant, and with an uncanny presence, especially considering he weighed not much more than twenty pounds. He was clearly the kind of dog judges say “asks to win,” the kind of creature you somehow find yourself drawn to look at, no matter how many other dogs are around. It was no surprise at all that he was so successful in the show ring.

I can’t ever lose you,” he growls. “You won’t,” I reply quietly, right as the tip of his nose traces the shell of my ear. “I might.” “Nev—” Before I can say never, he cuts me off with, “Because I think I’m about to fuck everything up between us.

In a dear little village Remote and obscure A beautiful maiden resided As to whether or not Her intentions were pure Opinions were sharply divided She loved to lie Out 'neath the darkening sky And allow the night breeze To entrance her She whispered her dreams To the birds flying by But seldom received any answer Over the field and along the lane Gentle Alice would love to stray When it came to the end of the day She would wander away Unheeding Dreaming her innocent dreams she strode Quite unaffected by heat or cold Frequently freckled or soaked with rain Alice was out in the lane Who she met there Every day Was a question Answered by none But she'd get there And she'd stay there 'Til whatever she did Was undoubtedly done You might also like Mad Dogs And Englishmen Noël Coward You’re Losing Me (From The Vault) Taylor Swift Cupid (Twin Version) FIFTY FIFTY (피프티피프티) Over the field and along the lane Both her parents would call in vain Sadly, sorrowfully, they'd complain 'Alice is at it again.' Although that dear little village Surrounded by trees Had neither a school, nor a college Gentle Alice acquired From the birds and the bees Some exceedingly practical knowledge The curious secrets that nature revealed She refused to allow to upset her But she thought When observing the beasts of the field That things might have been organised better Over the field and along the lane Gentle Alice would make up And take up Her stand The road was not exactly arterial But it led to a town nearby Where quite a lot of masculine material Caught her rolling eye She was ready to hitchhike Cadillac or motorbike She wasn't proud or choosy All she Was aiming to be Was a pinked-up Minked-up Fly-by-night floozy When old Rogers Gave her pearls as large as Nuts on a chestnut tree All she'd say was 'Fiddle-di-dee! The wages of sin will be the death of me!' Over the field and along the lane Gentle Alice's parents Would wait Hand in hand Her dear old white-headed mother Wistfully sipping champagne Said 'We've spoiled our child Spared the rod Open up the caviar and say "Thank God!" We've got no cause to complain! Alice is at it again!