Closest Sister Quotes

Best friends are important. They're the closest thing to a sister you'll ever have.

A sister is a dearest friend, a closest enemy, and an angel at the time of need.

I will admit he is unusual, but that is perhaps the closest I could come to complimenting him.

Above all is the centrality of love at the heart of vulnerable faith. Vulnerability will thrive only where love abounds—a love that is generous, gracious, patient, compassionate, humble, curious, joyful, and full of hope. In the absence of fear and the bondage it inflicts on us, love will put down roots, grow, and extend its reach far beyond our expectations or natural capacity. Love we once reserved only for those closest to us can be offered even to those who would persecute us. Enemies are transformed into sisters and brothers and friends.

Being left at the altar was not for sissies. Aside from the humiliation and hurt, there were actual logistics to worry about. Odds were if a guy was willing to leave you standing alone in front of three hundred of your closest friends and relatives, not to mention both your mothers, he wasn't going to sweat the little stuff like returning the gifts and paying the caterer.

The life that I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place and time my touch will be felt. Our lives are linked together. No man is an island. But there is another truth, the sister of this one, and it is that every man is an island. It is a truth that often the tolling of a silence reveals even more vividly than the tolling of a bell. We sit in silence with one another, each of us more or less reluctant to speak, for fear that if he does, he may sound life a fool. And beneath that there is of course the deeper fear, which is really a fear of the self rather than of the other, that maybe truth of it is that indeed he is a fool. The fear that the self that he reveals by speaking may be a self that the others will reject just as in a way he has himself rejected it. So either we do not speak, or we speak not to reveal who we are but to conceal who we are, because words can be used either way of course. Instead of showing ourselves as we truly are, we show ourselves as we believe others want us to be. We wear masks, and with practice we do it better and better, and they serve us well –except that it gets very lonely inside the mask, because inside the mask that each of us wears there is a person who both longs to be known and fears to be known. In this sense every man is an island separated from every other man by fathoms of distrust and duplicity. Part of what it means to be is to be you and not me, between us the sea that we can never entirely cross even when we would. “My brethren are wholly estranged from me,” Job cries out. “I have become an alien in their eyes.” The paradox is that part of what binds us closest together as human beings and makes it true that no man is an island is the knowledge that in another way every man is an island. Because to know this is to know that not only deep in you is there a self that longs about all to be known and accepted, but that there is also such a self in me, in everyone else the world over. So when we meet as strangers, when even friends look like strangers, it is good to remember that we need each other greatly you and I, more than much of the time we dare to imagine, more than more of the time we dare to admit. Island calls to island across the silence, and once, in trust, the real words come, a bridge is built and love is done –not sentimental, emotional love, but love that is pontifex, bridge-builder. Love that speak the holy and healing word which is: God be with you, stranger who are no stranger. I wish you well. The islands become an archipelago, a continent, become a kingdom whose name is the Kingdom of God.

If i'm upset right now, it's becuase I've just discovered that everyone closest to me has been lying to me. Using me. Manipulating me for their own needs. My parents, are still alive, and apparently they're no better than the abusive monsters who adopted me. I have a sister being actively tortured by The Reestablishment-- and I never even knew she existed. I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that nothing is going to be the same for me, not ever again, and I have no idea who to trust or how to move forward. So yeah, right now I don't care about anything. Because I don't know what I'm fighting for anymore. And I don't know who my friends are. Right now, everyone is my enemy, including you.

I’ve sometimes regretted the women I’ve been. There have been so many: daughter, sister, cop, tough broad, several kinds of whore, jilted lover, ideal wife, heroine, killer. I’ll provide the truth of them all, inasmuch as I’m capable of telling the truth. Keeping secrets, telling lies, they require the same skill. Both become a habit, almost an addiction, that’s hard to break even with the people closest to you, out of the business. They say never trust a woman who tells you her age; if she can’t keep that secret, she can’t keep yours. I’m fifty-nine.

Best friends are important. They’re the closest thing to a sister you’ll ever have.

Dasani shares a twin mattress with her closest sister, Avianna, whose name was inspired by the pricer Evian brand of water.

He is the brother-in-law of the sister-in-law of the father-in-law of my mother-in-law, and therefore is the closest relative we have; so nothing is done in our family without his advice.

Bronagh,” I said, grinning at my sister. “What is your favourite position in bed?” Dominic looked at his lady, a smirk playing on his lips. Bronagh mulled my question over in her mind then after some serious consideration she said, “Near the wall, so I’m closest to me phone when it’s chargin’.” I tittered at her answer, then looked to Dominic and burst into laughter. The look of hurt and betrayal was plastered all over his sculpted face. “Kicking me in the nuts would have been less painful, Bronagh,” he muttered as he stood up and practically dragged himself, and his wounded ego, out of the room

I took new pleasure in the thought that in a piece of wild pasture land like this one may get closest to Nature, and subsist upon what she gives of her own free will. There have been no drudging, heavy-shod ploughmen to overturn the soil, and vex it into yielding artificial crops. Here one has to take just what Nature is pleased to give, whether one is a yellow-bird or a human being.

literature is a way in which we can learn to live deeper lives -- husband with wife, parent with child, brother with sister, fellow member with fellow member. Most good authors are better than we are. They are much better company than our own friends. What comes from good company? What comes from good company is better manners, greater sensitivity, greater sensibility, greater empathy, great sympathy. Reading good literature makes us more capable of understanding other people, of loving other people, those whom we don't particularly want to love, even our enemies, as well as those closest to us. How can we expect to have full marriages when we are not going into those marriages with full minds and fine sensibilities? We are ignoring the tremendous possibilities of a delicate, well-poised, rich, sensitive life if we ignore the literature of the past. There is no substitute.

For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness.

Loren Hale would always be one of us. Maybe not a Calloway sister, but the closest thing to one.

Klaus leaned out the window and began to pour the mixture of blackstrap molasses, wild clover honey, corn syrup, aged balsamic vinegar, apple butter, strawberry jam, caramel sauce, maple syrup, butterscotch topping, maraschino liqueur, virgin and extra-virgin olive oil, lemon curd, dried apricots, mango chutney, crema di noci, tamarind paste, hot mustard, marshmallows, creamed corn, peanut butter, grape preserves, salt water taffy, condensed milk, pumpkin pie filling, and glue onto the closest wheels, while his sister tossed the hammocks out of the door, and if you have read anything of the Baudelaire orphans' lives - which I hope you have not - then you will not be surprised to read that Violet's invention worked perfectly.

Marriage is only permitted between those who have little in common. One may not marry a close relative. One may not marry a person of the same sex. God, Who created the heavens and the earth, might easily have ordained that a brother and sister could marry, that two women together could produce offspring. He could have so ordered the world that those who were the closest were able to mate. And thus He might have given His creations more comfort. Why, therefore, did He not do so?

Of all her siblings, Gabriel was the one to whom Phoebe had always felt closest. In his company, she could make petty or sarcastic remarks, or confess her foolish mistakes, knowing he would never judge her harshly. They knew each other's faults and kept each other's secrets. Many people, if not most, would have been flabbergasted to learn that Gabriel had any faults at all. All they saw was the remarkable male beauty and cool self-control of a man so elegantly mannered that it never would have occurred to anyone to call him a lunkhead. However, Gabriel could sometimes be arrogant and manipulative. Beneath his charming exterior, there was a steely core that made him ideally suited to oversee the array of Challon properties and businesses. Once he decided what was best for someone, he took every opportunity to push and goad until he had his way. Therefore, Phoebe occasionally found it necessary to push back. After all, it was an older sister's responsibility to keep her younger brother from behaving like a domineering ass.

Just let her in, dickhead! She's the closest thing Sage has to a sister. Plus, we're all alive thanks to Oli and her Bonded Group. You're not going to get very far by pissing off North Draven’s Bonded, and rumor has it, Nox has finally decided to cozy up with her. I, personally, would rather fling myself off the roof of this place than go toe-to-toe with either one of the Death Dealers.

Hey, isn’t that Daisy Haites—” Bridge nods her chin towards the door. Daisy Haites. Haites, as in, Julian. Yes, that Julian. The gang lord who somehow still manages to appear in GQ and gets write-ups in VICE. Jonah’s other closest friend, I’d say. Daisy’s his sister. She’s a few years younger than me, completely beautiful, sort of terrifying: dark brown hair, bright hazel eyes and skin a little more tan than your standard-issue white girl.

Marriage is only permitted between those who have little in common. One may not marry a close relative. One may not marry a person of the same sex. God, Who created the heavens and the earth, might easily have ordained that a brother and sister could marry, that two women together could produce offspring. He could have so ordered the world that those who were the closest were able to mate. And thus He might have given His creations more comfort. Why, therefore, did He not do so?

Ranulf had spent much of his life watching those he loved wrestle with the seductive, lethal lure of kingship. It had proved the ruination of his cousin Stephen, a good man who had not made a good king. For his sister Maude, it had been an unrequited love affair, a passion she could neither capture nor renounce. For Hywel, it had been an illusion, a golden glow ever shimmering along the horizon. He believed that his nephew had come the closest to mastery of it, but at what cost?

But the erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelation, nor succumb to the belief that sensation is enough. ... For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness.

Attina saw her and came over. Despite their extreme difference in age, she was the one Ariel felt closest to. Even if her big sister didn't fully understand the urge to seek out a human prince, or to explore the Dry World, or to collect odd bits of human relics, she always treated her little sister as gently as she could- despite how gruff she sounded. "What's happening?" she asked, swishing her orange tail back and forth. Her hair wasn't done yet; it was obvious she was devoting her time to helping the younger sisters with theirs. The only slightly frumpy brown bun was locked in place by sea urchin spikes.

When are you going to get a fella?" Lily asks Rose after a year or two of dancing. "I have one who wants to take me kissing, but I think I should wait for you to have one." Rose flushes. "I don't think I'll ever have a fella." "Why not?" Lily bristles. "We're plenty pretty." "I don't like the look of them," Rose says. Lily purses her lips at the dance floor, appraising. After a moment long, Rose says, "Any of them." Lily looks at her a long time, as Rose tries not to hyperventilate. Then Lily shrugs and says, "Well, then it's you who should have learned to lead, isn't it?" and when Rose clasps Lily's hand, she clasps it back. It's the closest they've ever been.

Despite the sisters' pretend rivalry and occasional squabbles, they were each other's staunchest ally and closest friend. Few people in Lillian's life had ever loved her except Daisy, who adored the ugliest stray dogs, the most annoying children, and things that needed to be repaired or thrown out altogether. And yet for all their closeness, they were quite different. Daisy was an idealist, a dreamer, a mercurial creature who alternated between childlike whimsy and shrewd intelligence. Lillian knew herself to be a sharp-tongued girl with a fortress of defenses between herself and the rest of the world- a girl with well-maintained cynicism and a biting sense of humor.

Still gasping for breath from the exertion of the chase, the colonel lifted his rifle and aimed at the closest mountain lion. The crack of the colonel’s rifle rang through the night air, echoing off the surrounding mountains. A piece of bark flew up next to the lion as the cat leapt to a different branch of the tree. Swearing in anger that he had missed the shot, the colonel took several steps closer, levered his rifle, and fired again. Once more, the lion leaped away just in time, slinking from branch to branch as her brother hissed and snarled to keep the frenzied, stupid tree-climbing dogs at bay. Serafina ran toward her brother and sister as fast as she could, her claws out and ready to fight. The colonel fired again, and then again, twigs breaking, bark exploding, the lions hissing and snarling, the sound of the repeated shots echoing across the mist-filled valley. Discouraged by the colonel’s poor accuracy, the other hunters began to position themselves to shoot the mountain lions themselves and get it over with. “My shot!” he screamed again as he moved closer. Serafina ran straight toward them, her powerful chest expanding with raging power. She was almost there. But on the colonel’s next shot, she heard the bullet thwack into her sister’s body. Serafina watched helplessly as her sister fell from the branch of the tree and tumbled through midair, her limbs flailing as she plummeted toward the rocks below.

Of course I’m ready. But are you ready for your part of our agreement?” “Kereseth? Yeah,” she said. “You get us in, we’ll get him out.” “I want it done simultaneously--I don’t want to risk him getting hurt because of what I’m doing,” I said. “He’s hushflower-resistant, so it will require quite a bit to knock him out. And he’s a skilled fighter, so don’t underestimate him.” Teka nodded, slowly. And stared, chewing the inside of her cheek. “What happened? You look all…frantic, or something,” she said. “You guys have a fight?” I didn’t answer. “I don’t get it,” she said. “You’re obviously in love with him, why do you want him gone?” I considered not answering that, either. The feeling of his rough chin scratching my cheek, and his mouth, warm against my skin, haunted me still. He had kissed me. Without prompting, without cunning. I should have been happy, hopeful. But it wasn’t that easy, was it? I had dozens of reasons to give her. Akos was in danger, now that Ryzek had realized he could use him as leverage over me. Eijeh was lost, and maybe Akos would be able to accept that once he was home, with his mother and sister. Akos and I would never be equals, as long as he was Ryzek’s prisoner here, so I had to make sure he was freed. But the one closest to my heart was the reason that came tumbling out. “Being here, it’s…breaking him,” I said. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, uncomfortable. “I can’t watch anymore. I won’t.” “Yeah.” Her voice was soft. “Win or lose--you get us in, we’ll get him out. Okay?” “Okay,” I said. “Thank you.

Catherine Elizabeth MiddlEton, Kate, Waity Katie, Sizzler Sister, the Duchess of Cambridge, the High Street Duchess. The woman who has held all of these titles is fonder of some than of others, but it is important to remember that, over the years, each of these names has been bestowed on her by someone else. Because she is a naturally private person, others have often projected an image onto her, associated with one of these names, which is completely at odds with who she really is. Underneath, she has remained the same person throughout, and that person remains something of an enigma. For over ten years she has been the person closest to the man who will one day be king, but she only slowly slipped into the public's consciousness, like the royal family's stealth missile.

And I wanted to be different, so I asked for harmonica lessons.” She tilted her head back, found his eyes in the dark. “Word to the wise, don’t ever learn the harmonica while you have braces.” “Hannah. Oh God. No.” His head fell back briefly, a laugh puffing out of him. “What happened?” “Our parents were in the Mediterranean, so we walked to our neighbor’s house and they were in France—” “Ah, yes. Typical neighborhood problems.” She snorted. “So their landscaper offered to drive me and Piper—who had actually peed her pants laughing—in the back of his truck.” She could barely keep her voice even, the need to giggle was so great. “We were driven to the closest hospital in the back of a pickup truck while the harmonica was stuck to my face. Every time I exhaled, the harmonica would play a few notes. People were honking . . .” His whole body was shaking with laughter, and Hannah could tell he’d finally, fully relaxed. The sexual tension didn’t leave completely, but he’d shelved it for now. “What did they say at the hospital?” “They asked if I was taking requests.

Two men enter the room, one old and mustached and the other young and tawny-headed, wearing sweats and a worn T-shirt. He looks like Silas, actually—god, what am I, obsessed? But there really is something of the woodsman in the younger man’s face, with his full lips, his slightly curled hair that turns like tendrils around his ears . . . I look away before studying him too closely. “All right, ladies, are we ready?” the older man says enthusiastically. There’s a loud rustling of paper as well flip the enormous sketchbooks on our easels until we find blank sheets. I draw a few soft lines on my page, unsure what— Non-Silas rips off his T-shirt, revealing lightly defined muscles on his pale chest. I raise an eyebrow just as he tugs at the waist of the sweatpants. They drop to the floor in a fluid, sweeping motion. There’s nothing underneath them. At all. My charcoal slips through my suddenly sweaty fingers. Non-Silas steps out of the puddle of his clothes and moves to the center of the room, fluorescent lights reflecting off his slick abdomen. He’s smiling as though he isn’t naked, smiling as though I didn’t somehow manage to get the seat closest to him. As if I can’t see . . . um . . . everything only a few feet from my face, making my mind clumsily spiral. I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment; he looks like Silas in the face, and because of that I keep wondering if he looks akin to Silas everywhere else. “All right, ladies, this will be a seven-minute pose. Ready?” the older man says, positioning himself behind the other empty easel. The roomful of housewives nod in one hungry motion. I quiver. “Go!” the older man says, starting the stopwatch. Non-Silas poses, something reminiscent of Michelangelo’s David, only instead of marble eyes looking into nothingness, non-Silas is staring almost straight at me. Draw. I’m supposed to be drawing. I grab a new piece of charcoal from the bottom of the easel and begin hastily making lines in my sketchbook. I can’t not look at him, or he’ll think I’m not drawing him. I glance hurriedly, trying to avoid the region my eyes continuously return to. I start to feel fluttery. How long has it been? Surely it’s been seven minutes. I try to add some tone to my drawing’s chest. I wonder what Silas’s chest looks like . . . Stop! Stop stop stop stop stop—” “Right, then!” the older man says as his stopwatch beeps loudly and the scratchy sound of charcoal on paper ends. Thank you, sir, thank you—” “Annnnd next pose!” Non-Silas turns his head away, till all I can see is his wren-colored hair and his side, including a side view of . . . how many times am I going to have to draw this man’s area? What’s worse is that he looks even more like Silas now that I can’t see his eyes. Just like Silas, I bet. My eyes linger longer than necessary now that non-Silas isn’t staring straight at me. By the end of class, I’ve drawn eight mediocre pictures of him, each one with a large white void in the crotch area. The housewives compare drawings with ravenous looks in their eyes as non-Silas tugs his pants back on and leaves the room, nodding politely. I picture him naked again. I sprint from the class, abandoning my sketches—how could I explain them to Scarlett or Silas? Stop thinking of Silas, stop thinking of Silas.

On the third day after all hell broke loose, I come upstairs to the apartment, finished with my shift and so looking forward to a hot shower. Well, lukewarm—but I’ll pretend it’s hot. But when I pass Ellie’s room, I hear cursing—Linda Blair-Exorcist-head-spinning-around kind of cursing. I push open her door and spot my sister at her little desk, yelling at her laptop. Even Bosco barks from the bed. “What’s going on?” I ask. “I just came up but Marty’s down there on his own—he won’t last longer than ten minutes.” “I know, I know.” She waves her hand. “I’m in a flame war with a toxic bitch on Twitter. Let me just huff and puff and burn her motherfucking house down…and then I’ll go sell some coffee.” “What happened?” I ask sarcastically. “Did she insult your makeup video?” Ellie sighs, long and tortured. “That’s Instagram, Liv—I seriously think you were born in the wrong century. And anyway, she didn’t insult me—she insulted you.” Her words pour over me like the ice-bucket challenge. “Me? I have like two followers on Twitter.” Ellie finishes typing. “Boo-ya. Take that, skank-a-licious!” Then she turns slowly my way. “You haven’t been online lately, have you?” This isn’t going to end well, I know it. My stomach knows it too—it whines and grumbles. “Ah, no?” Ellie nods and stands, gesturing to her computer. “You might want to check it out. Or not—ignorance is bliss, after all. If you do decide to take a peek, you might want to have some grain alcohol nearby.” Then she pats my shoulder and heads downstairs, her blond ponytail swaying behind her. I glance at the screen and my breath comes in quick, semi-panicked bursts and my blood rushes like a runaway train in my veins. I’ve never been in a fight, not in my whole life. The closest I came was sophomore year in high school, when Kimberly Willis told everyone she was going to kick the crap out of me. So I told my gym teacher, Coach Brewster—a giant lumberjack of a man—that I got my period unexpectedly and had to go home. He spent the rest of the school year avoiding eye contact with me. But it worked—by the next day, Kimberly found out Tara Hoffman was the one talking shit about her and kicked the crap out of her instead

Many kinds of animal behavior can be explained by genetic similarity theory. Animals have a preference for close kin, and study after study has shown that they have a remarkable ability to tell kin from strangers. Frogs lay eggs in bunches, but they can be separated and left to hatch individually. When tadpoles are then put into a tank, brothers and sisters somehow recognize each other and cluster together rather than mix with tadpoles from different mothers. Female Belding’s ground squirrels may mate with more than one male before they give birth, so a litter can be a mix of full siblings and half siblings. Like tadpoles, they can tell each other apart. Full siblings cooperate more with each other than with half-siblings, fight less, and are less likely to run each other out of the territory when they grow up. Even bees know who their relatives are. In one experiment, bees were bred for 14 different degrees of relatedness—sisters, cousins, second cousins, etc.—to bees in a particular hive. When the bees were then released near the hive, guard bees had to decide which ones to let in. They distinguished between degrees of kinship with almost perfect accuracy, letting in the closest relatives and chasing away more distant kin. The correlation between relatedness and likelihood of being admitted was a remarkable 0.93. Ants are famous for cooperation and willingness to sacrifice for the colony. This is due to a quirk in ant reproduction that means worker ants are 70 percent genetically identical to each other. But even among ants, there can be greater or less genetic diversity, and the most closely related groups of ants appear to cooperate best. Linepithema humile is a tiny ant that originated in Argentina but migrated to the United States. Many ants died during the trip, and the species lost much of its genetic diversity. This made the northern branch of Linepithema humile more cooperative than the one left in Argentina, where different colonies quarrel and compete with each other. This new level of cooperation has helped the invaders link nests into supercolonies and overwhelm local species of ants. American entomologists want to protect American ants by introducing genetic diversity so as to make the newcomers more quarrelsome. Even plants cooperate with close kin and compete with strangers. Normally, when two plants are put in the same pot, they grow bigger root systems, trying to crowd each other out and get the most nutrients. A wild flower called the Sea Rocket, which grows on beaches, does not do that if the two plants come from the same “mother” plant. They recognize each others’ root secretions and avoid wasteful competition.

A case arises for our consciousness, just as it did for primitive man, in which the two opposite attitudes towards death, one of which acknowledges it as the destroyer of life, while the other denies the reality of death, clash and come into conflict. The case is identical for both, it consists of the death of one of our loved ones, of a parent or a partner in wedlock, of a brother or a sister, of a child or a friend. These persons we love are on the one hand a part of our inner possessions and a constituent of our own selves, but on the other hand they are also in part strangers and even enemies. Except in a few instances, even the tenderest and closest love relations also contain a bit of hostility which can rouse an unconscious death wish. [...] The layman feels an extraordinary horror at the possibility of such an emotion and takes his aversion to it as a legitimate ground for disbelief in the assertions of psychoanalysis. I think he is wrong there. No debasing of our love life is intended and none such has resulted. It is indeed foreign to our comprehension as well as to our feelings to unite love and hate in this manner, but in so far as nature employs these contrasts she brings it about that love is always kept alive and fresh in order to safeguard it against the hate that is lurking behind it. It may be said that we owe the most beautiful unfolding of our love life to the reaction against this hostile impulse which we feel in our hearts.

Baines told his son that children always got in the way of a marriage. Finding a state boarding school in England for Roland was good for everyone ‘all round’. Rosalind Baines, neé Morley, army wife, child of her times, did not chafe or rage against her powerlessness or sulk about it. She and Robert had left school at fourteen. He became a butcher’s boy in Glasgow, she was a chambermaid in a middle-class house near Farnham. A clean and ordered home remained her passion. Robert and Rosalind wanted for Roland the education they had been denied. This was the story she told herself. That he might have attended a day school and stayed with her was an idea she must have dutifully banished. She was a small nervous woman, a worrier, very pretty, everyone agreed. Easily intimidated, fearful of Robert when he drank, which was every day. She was at her best, her most relaxed, in a long heart-to-heart with a close friend. Then she told stories and laughed easily, a light and liquid sound that Captain Baines himself rarely heard. Roland was one of her close friends. In the holidays, when they did the housework together, she told stories of her childhood in the village of Ash, near the garrison town of Aldershot. She and her brothers and sisters used to brush their teeth with twigs. Her employer gave her her first toothbrush. Like so many of her generation she lost all her teeth in her early twenties. In newspaper cartoons people in bed were often shown with their false teeth in a glass of water on the bedside table. She was the oldest of five and spent much of her childhood minding her sisters and brothers. She was closest to her sister Joy who still lived near Ash. Where was their mother when Rosalind was minding the children? Her reply was always the same, a child’s view unrevised in adulthood: your granny would take the bus to Aldershot and spend the day window-shopping. Rosalind’s mother fiercely disapproved of make-up. In her teens, on rare nights out, Rosalind would meet her friend Sybil and together they

While Mum was a busy working mother, helping my father in his constituency duties and beyond, Lara became my surrogate mum. She fed me almost every supper I ate--from when I was a baby up to about five years old. She changed my nappies, she taught me to speak, then to walk (which, with so much attention from her, of course happened ridiculously early). She taught me how to get dressed and to brush my teeth. In essence, she got me to do all the things that either she had been too scared to do herself or that just simply intrigued her, such as eating raw bacon or riding a tricycle down a steep hill with no brakes. I was the best rag doll of a baby brother that she could have ever dreamt of. It is why we have always been so close. To her, I am still her little baby brother. And I love her for that. But--and this is the big but--growing up with Lara, there was never a moment’s peace. Even from day one, as a newborn babe in the hospital’s maternity ward, I was paraded around, shown off to anyone and everyone--I was my sister’s new “toy.” And it never stopped. It makes me smile now, but I am sure it is why in later life I craved the peace and solitude that mountains and the sea bring. I didn’t want to perform for anyone, I just wanted space to grow and find myself among all the madness. It took a while to understand where this love of the wild came from, but in truth it probably developed from the intimacy found with my father on the shores of Northern Ireland and the will to escape a loving but bossy elder sister. (God bless her!) I can joke about this nowadays with Lara, and through it all she still remains my closest ally and friend; but she is always the extrovert, wishing she could be on the stage or on the chat show couch, where I tend just to long for quiet times with my friends and family. In short, Lara would be much better at being famous than me. She sums it up well, I think: Until Bear was born I hated being the only child--I complained to Mum and Dad that I was lonely. It felt weird not having a brother or sister when all my friends had them. Bear’s arrival was so exciting (once I’d got over the disappointment of him being a boy, because I’d always wanted a sister!). But the moment I set eyes on him, crying his eyes out in his crib, I thought: That’s my baby. I’m going to look after him. I picked him up, he stopped crying, and from then until he got too big, I dragged him around everywhere.

What’ll it be?” Steve asked me, just days after our wedding. “Do we go on the honeymoon we’ve got planned, or do you want to go catch crocs?” My head was still spinning from the ceremony, the celebration, and the fact that I could now use the two words “my husband” and have them mean something real. The four months between February 2, 1992--the day Steve asked me to marry him--and our wedding day on June 4 had been a blur. Steve’s mother threw us an engagement party for Queensland friends and family, and I encountered a very common theme: “We never thought Steve would get married.” Everyone said it--relatives, old friends, and schoolmates. I’d smile and nod, but my inner response was, Well, we’ve got that in common. And something else: Wait until I get home and tell everybody I am moving to Australia. I knew what I’d have to explain. Being with Steve, running the zoo, and helping the crocs was exactly the right thing to do. I knew with all my heart and soul that this was the path I was meant to travel. My American friends--the best, closest ones--understood this perfectly. I trusted Steve with my life and loved him desperately. One of the first challenges was how to bring as many Australian friends and family as possible over to the United States for the wedding. None of us had a lot of money. Eleven people wound up making the trip from Australia, and we held the ceremony in the big Methodist church my grandmother attended. It was more than a wedding, it was saying good-bye to everyone I’d ever known. I invited everybody, even people who may not have been intimate friends. I even invited my dentist. The whole network of wildlife rehabilitators came too--four hundred people in all. The ceremony began at eight p.m., with coffee and cake afterward. I wore the same dress that my older sister Bonnie had worn at her wedding twenty-seven years earlier, and my sister Tricia wore at her wedding six years after that. The wedding cake had white frosting, but it was decorated with real flowers instead of icing ones. Steve had picked out a simple ring for me, a quarter carat, exactly what I wanted. He didn’t have a wedding ring. We were just going to borrow one for the service, but we couldn’t find anybody with fingers that were big enough. It turned out that my dad’s wedding ring fitted him, and that’s the one we used. Steve’s mother, Lyn, gave me a silk horseshoe to put around my wrist, a symbol of good luck. On our wedding day, June 4, 1992, it had been eight months since Steve and I first met. As the minister started reading the vows, I could see that Steve was nervous. His tuxedo looked like it was strangling him. For a man who was used to working in the tropics, he sure looked hot. The church was air-conditioned, but sweat drops formed on the ends of his fingers. Poor Steve, I thought. He’d never been up in front of such a big crowd before. “The scariest situation I’ve ever been in,” Steve would say later of the ceremony. This from a man who wrangled crocodiles! When the minister invited the groom to kiss the bride, I could feel all Steve’s energy, passion, and love. I realized without a doubt we were doing the right thing.

I’ll never forget this one night when Daddy had taken us way out to a little church up on a high ridge. There was no kind of instrumentation, and the hymns were all sung a cappella. During the preaching, there was a little more shouting from the congregation than usual. When it came time for us to sing, we were introduced by the preacher, a wiry little man with kind of a fiery look in his eyes. We stepped to the front and took our places on the old wood-plank platform to one side of the pulpit. Softly, I sung a note to get us started because it was decided I could come closest to hitting a key that we could all sing in. We began our songs, just as we had planned. I was aware that the pastor was on the stage behind us, but I didn’t think anything of it. After a while, I could feel Stella nudging me in the ribs, trying not to be noticed. I looked at her, and she motioned with her head slightly back toward where the preacher was standing. He seemed to be totally wrapped up in the spirit, nearly in a trance. I didn’t think too much of it, until I spotted a familiar sight—the back markings of a snake, a cottonmouth moccasin. I had seen them in the woods, usually scurrying across the path toward cover. They were afraid of me, and I was afraid of them. And up to now, we had always managed to keep our distance from each other. Here, apparently, they were a part of the worship service. I could see now, out of my peripheral vision, that the preacher had a full grown cottonmouth by the back of the head and it was twisting and coiling all around his forearm. Some members of the congregation were reaching out as if they wanted to touch it. The preacher was getting more and more worked up, and he reached into a wooden crate by the pulpit and took out two more snakes. This time he seemed to be holding them much more carelessly. He lifted them near his face as if daring them to strike. We sisters just kept on singing, unconsciously moving away from the snakes until we were very near the front of the platform. Just then, I noticed something that struck a note of fear in my heart much greater than that inspired by the snakes. My father had stepped into the back of the church to hear his little girls sing. Whatever he had been drinking didn’t impair his ability to see exactly what the preacher had in his hands. Just at that moment, the man and his snakes took a step toward the congregation, thus toward us. Daddy had seen enough. He charged down the aisle like a wild boar through a thicket. “You get them Goddamn snakes away from my kids!” Daddy bellowed with a force in his voice I had never heard before. It was amazing how quickly that preacher broke his trance and paid heed. He had heard the voice of a higher power, in this case a really pissed-off redneck. Daddy swooped us up and out the front door before we had time to think about what was happening. We didn’t even stop singing until we were almost down the steps into the churchyard. We were glad to be out of there, and I at least was proud that Daddy had come to our rescue. But Daddy obviously felt terrible about it. On the way home in the car, he got to feeling especially bad. “Goddamn! I can’t believe I said Goddamn in church!” he muttered to himself. He finally got so upset he had to stop the car and get out in the woods and, in his way, ask God’s forgiveness. I couldn’t help thinking how badly Mama had always wanted Daddy to walk down the church aisle and declare himself. Now he had certainly done that, although not I’m sure the way Mama had in mind.

I started my long journey back to Bischoffsheim, by walking from the farm, high on the side of a hill, down to the subterranean railroad station in Überlingen. After the last crest I could see the lake with the magnificent high Alps on the far side. Again, I knew that I was looking at neutral Switzerland but it was a world away from war-torn Germany. It took me well over an hour walking down the steep hill to the village. With me I had two big empty suitcases that I pushed ahead of me as I boarded the train that finally came out of the tunnel. At first the train for Strasbourg was nearly empty, but the farther north we traveled the more people got on. I remember how crowded the Strasbourg Hauptbahnhoff was when the train finally pulled into the station. Not wanting to disturb my sister-in-law Elizabeth again, I stayed at a hotel that night. I didn’t know if I was still wanted by the Nazis but I couldn’t afford to take a chance. This way I could catch the early morning connecting train to Rosheim, which was the closest town to Bischoffsheim.

The Inside of Sister Linda’s Door In the poorest rural parts of Africa, it is still the nuns who maintain many basic health services. Some of these clever, hardworking, and pragmatic women became my closest colleagues. Sister Linda, whom I worked with in Tanzania, was a devout Catholic nun who dressed all in black and prayed three times a day. The door to her office was always open—she closed it only during health-care consultations—and on its outside, the first thing you saw as you entered, was a glossy poster of the pope. One day, she and I were in her office and started discussing a sensitive matter. Sister Linda stood up and closed the door, and for the first time I saw what was on its inside: another large poster and, attached to it, hundreds of little bags of condoms. When Sister Linda turned back around and saw my surprised face she smiled—as she often did when discovering my countless stereotypes of women like her. “The families need them to stop both AIDS and babies,” she said simply. And then she continued our discussion.

The stab that I'd take with this situation the moment I felt ready I spoke to my mother lately when I'm old be fore I marrid by that I didnt what i expected from her instead she didnt notice the pain that i'd eexperianced through. To heal myself I forgave her,accepted my situation learn to live positive in it.In the side of forgive the group of men that raped me continueosly I decided to live my home town to start new life another town where I meet with my soul partner God provided with handsome suitable guy as I had issued with men it took God's misterious ways to connect us he's my friend and prayer partner God blessed us with two sons and one doughter, he continue on helping us on raising our kids again i deed decision of raing our kids for myself by being house wife thanks God and my husband to be succed i 'm not perfect but i tried with God help and my closest friends,family it heppening.As i developed anger, sensitive and other unneeded personality throught my issue activities like body training,blogging,podcusting,reading bible and other booksk,being author,listing music special gospel help me to be in right position.The thing i can ask or say to other to other people is "Women Please love and protect your kids let stop this take quick action to help them if you see suspetious thing be close to them in a way that you manage to see if there's something not right heppen to them cause sometimes they will not tell you like on my case in any reason usualy strangers or rapist make them not say anything or your communication with them is not strong enough or any reason they make them shut To the community let protect each other be your sisters or brothers keeper on your neighborhood or in house report the susptious act cause tomorrow will heppen in your house.Men you are the master protector not rapist stand your ground as God do trusted you with kids and women protect them stop taking advantage who ever does that.To those who like me the victim of rape I'm your girl to use alcohol,drugs and sex edict throw shame and unclean feeling is not solution it only running away act ask yourself that how long you'll runing away with cancer that eating you alive,face by allowing God to be your sim card, rica him and let him operate in you by rebuid you make you a new creation spiritual by acepting Jesus Christ as lord and your savior, healer and believe that God raised him from death in your special prayer with your mouth loud as confesion as I deed you'll be safe 100% in his arms like I am your story will change completly as mine finely no one knows you better dont allow situation explain you you beautiful handsome valueble God love you more than every one and he cares about you I love you'll take care of yourself youre the hero &herous.

Who dare glory in his own good works?' I reflected. 'From one faint spark such as this, it would be possible to set the whole earth on fire.' We often think we receive graces and are divinely illumined by means of brilliant candles. But from whence comes their light? From the prayers, perhaps, of some humble, hidden soul, whose inward shining is not apparent to human eyes; a soul of unrecognised virtue and, in her own sight, of little value—a dying flame. "What mysteries will yet be unveiled to us! I have often thought that perhaps I owe all the graces with which I am laden, to some little soul whom I shall know only in Heaven. "It is God's Will that in this world souls shall dispense to each other, by prayer, the treasures of Heaven, in order that when they reach their Everlasting Home they may love one another with grateful hearts, and with an affection far in excess of that which reigns in the most perfect family on earth. "There no looks of indifference will meet us, because all the Saints will be mutually indebted to each other. No envious glances will be cast, for the happiness of each one of the Blessed will be the happiness of all. With the Doctors of the Church we shall be like unto Doctors; with the Martyrs, like unto Martyrs; with the Virgins, like unto Virgins; and just as the members of one family are proud one of the other, so without the least jealousy shall we take pride in our brothers and sisters. "When we see the glory of the great Saints, and know that through the secret working of Providence we have contributed to it, who knows whether the joy we shall feel will not be as intense, perhaps sweeter, than the happiness they themselves possess? "And do you not think that the great Saints, on their side, seeing what they owe to all little souls, will love them with a love beyond compare? The friendships of Paradise will be both sweet and full of surprise, of this I am certain. The familiar friend of an Apostle, or of a great Doctor of the Church, may be a shepherd boy, and a simple little child may be united in closest intimacy with a Patriarch. . . . I long to enter that Kingdom of Love!

If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple” (14:26). This verse teaches us that the only men and women our Lord will use in His building enterprises are those who love Him personally, passionately, and with great devotion—those who have a love for Him that goes far beyond any of the closest relationships on earth. The conditions are strict, but they are glorious.

She intertwined our fingers, so we were holding hands. We did this a lot. Sometimes I felt more like we were sisters than just friends. I felt like soemthing connected us under our skin, inside our brains. Like maybe Laura's cruelty had taught us how to see the parts of ourselves and of each other that noone else could see and we might always be hurting, we might always be damaged, but we were more than that, too. We were the parts of us that saved ourselves, who'd enough, who'd chosen to live. I knew it was as hard for Agatha as it was for me. I knew she had nightmares, too. But when I woke up in a panic, she was there to remind me I was safe. And I did the same for her. Agatha took a deep, searching breath. Her hand squeezed mine, and I could tell we had come to that quiet part of the day when the hurt was closest to the surface. But we had each other. We weren't alone. And that made all the difference.

Best friends are important. They’re the closest thing to a sister you’ll ever have,” she told me. “Don’t squander it.

use every opportunity to communicate with my friends and family. Anytime I am sitting in the back of a cab, airports, or trains I use the time to send a note to my closest friends and family. I speak with my children and my mother every day. With my sister several times a week. Frequency of communication is important, much more so than duration. These techniques have helped me to stay in touch with my family and friends in Croatia even though I left it 30 years ago.”—Tom, 56

Imani was my best friend, the closest thing in this entire world I had to a sister. And now she was gone. My heart was shattered.

The New England wilderness March 1, 1704 Temperature 10 degrees She had no choice but to go to him. She set Daniel down. Perhaps they would spare Daniel. Perhaps only she was to be burned. She forced herself to keep her chin up, her eyes steady and her steps even. How could she be afraid of going where her five-year-old brother had gone first? O Tommy, she thought, rest in the Lord. Perhaps you are with Mother now. Perhaps I will see you in a moment. She did not want to die. Her footsteps crunched on the snow. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. The Indian handed Mercy a slab of cornmeal bread, and then beckoned to Daniel, who cried, “Oh, good, I’m so hungry!” and came running, his happy little face tilted in a smile at the Indian who fed him. “Mercy said we’d eat later,” Daniel confided in the Indian. The English trembled in their relief and the French laughed. The Indian knelt beside Daniel, tossing aside Tommy’s jacket and dressing Daniel in warm clean clothing from another child. Nobody in Deerfield owned many clothes, and if she permitted herself to think about it, Mercy would know whose trousers and shirt these were, but she did not want to think about what dead child did not need clothes, so she said to the Indian, “Who are you? What’s your name?” He understood. Putting the palm of his hand against his chest, he said, “Tannhahorens.” She could just barely separate the syllables. It sounded more like a duck quacking than a real word. “Tannhahorens,” he said again, and she repeated it after him. She wondered what it meant. Indian names had to make a picture. She smiled carefully at the man she had thought was going to burn her alive as an example and said, “I’ll be right back, Tannhahorens.” She took a few steps away, and when he did nothing, she ran to her family. Her uncle swept her into his arms. How wonderful his scratchy beard felt! How strong and comforting his hug! “My brave girl,” he whispered, kissing her hair. “Mercy, they won’t let me help you.” In a voice as childish and puzzled as Daniel’s, he added, “They won’t let me help your aunt Mary, or Will and Little Mary either. I tried to help your brothers and got whipped for it.” He stammered: Uncle Nathaniel, whose reading choices from the Bible were always about war, and whose voice made every battle exciting. He needed her comfort as much as she needed his. “Uncle Nathaniel,” she said, “if I had done better, Tommy and Marah--” “Hush,” said her uncle. “The Lord set a task before you and you obeyed. Daniel is your task. Say your prayers as you march.” In a tight little pack behind Uncle Nathaniel stood her three living brothers. How small and cold they looked. Sam lifted his chin to encourage his sister and said, “At least we’re together. Do the best you can, Mercy. So will we.” They stared at each other, the two closest in age, and Mercy thought how proud their mother would be of Sam. “Mercy,” cried her brother John, panicking, “you have to go! Go fast,” he said urgently. “Your Indian is pointing at you.” Tannhahorens was watching her but not signaling. He isn’t angry, thought Mercy. I don’t have to be afraid, but I do have to return. “Find out your Indian’s name,” she said to her brothers. “It helps. Call him by name.” She took the time to hug and kiss each brother. How narrow their little shoulders; how thin the cloth that must keep them from freezing. She had to go before she wept. Indians did not care for crying. “Be strong, Uncle Nathaniel,” she said, touching the strange collar around his neck. “Don’t tug it,” he said wryly. “It’s lined with porcupine quill tips. If I don’t move at the right speed, the Indians give my leash a twitch and the needles jab my throat.” The boys laughed, pantomiming a hard jerk on the cord, and Mercy said, “You’re all just as mean as you ever were!” “And alive,” said Sam. When they hugged once more, she felt a tremor in him, deep and horrified, but under control.

What is appropriate in one setting may be entirely inappropriate in another. How you behave at a football game is different than how you behave at your sister’s wedding. How you interact with your closest friends will be different than how you engage with your boss.

At about this time David hit on a scheme to end their financial problems. With his growing family, their limited income must have been the cause of constant worry to him. Stories of the rich strikes in the Klondike a decade earlier, perhaps bolstered by his spell of active service in South Africa, seem to have persuaded him that gold-mining might be the answer. On hearing that a new goldfield had been discovered in Ontario, he staked several claims to forty acres near the small township of Swastika, in the Great Lakes area. Only small quantities of gold had been found there so far, but a big seam was believed to exist. ---- Over the next twenty years or so, David would travel to Ontario many times to work the claim. He had already been there alone when, in the spring of 1912, he and Sydney decided to go together and – the biggest treat — they were to sail on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. Fortunately, something happened to make this impossible, and their departure was delayed until autumn of the following year. ---- It is not difficult to see why David remained keen, although the mining project eventually came to nothing. Furthermore, he and Sydney were at their closest in the shack at Swastika through the winter in that inhospitable climate, and it was one of the happiest times of David’s life. It was there that Sydney conceived their fifth child. ---- The parents, still hoping for a second boy, were disappointed, but soon came round. There was time for another boy. In David’s absence Sydney called her Unity after an actress (Unity Moore) she admired, and then Grandfather Redesdale said that she must have a topically apposite second name so they added Valkyrie, after Wagner’s Norse war-maidens. Almost from the time of her birth she was known in family circles as ‘Bobo’, but with hindsight, Unity Valkyrie’s unusual name, combined with the place of her conception, Swastika, seems almost like an eerie prophecy which the fifth Mitford child had no alternative but to fulfil.

Sitting closest to the captain was a man who was clearly Alpha Dog of the group. He was about thirty-five and wore what looked like a very expensive suit, and Matthews had inclined his head toward the man in a way that went beyond deferential and nearly approached reverence. The man looked up at me as I entered, scanned me as if he was memorizing a row of numbers, and then turned impatiently back to Matthews. Sitting next to this charming individual was a woman so startlingly beautiful that for a half moment I forgot I was walking, and I paused in midstep, my right foot dangling in the air, as I gaped at her like a twelve-year-old boy. I simply stared, and I could not have said why. The woman’s hair was the color of old gold, and her features were pleasant and regular, true enough. And her eyes were a startling violet, a color so unlikely and yet so compelling that I felt an urgent need to move near and study her eyes at close range. But there was something beyond the mere arrangement of her features, something unseen and only felt, that made her seem far more attractive than she actually was—a Bright Passenger? Whatever it was, it grabbed my attention and held me helpless. The woman watched me goggle at her with distant amusement, raising an eyebrow and giving me a small smile that said, Of course, but so what? And then she turned back to face the captain, leaving me free to finish my interrupted step and stumble toward the table once more. In a morning of surprises, my reaction to mere Female Pulchritude was a rather large one. I could not remember ever behaving in such an absurdly human way: Dexter does not Drool, not at mere womanly beauty. My tastes are somewhat more refined, generally involving a carefully chosen playmate and a roll of duct tape. But something about this woman had absolutely frozen me, and I could not stop myself from continuing to stare as I lurched into a chair next to my sister. Debs greeted me with a sharp elbow to the ribs and a whisper: “You’re drooling,” she hissed. I wasn’t, of course, but I straightened myself anyway and summoned the shards of my shattered dignity, looking around me with an attempt at regaining my usual composure. There was one last person at the table whom I had not registered yet. He had put a vacant seat between himself and the Irresistible Siren, and he leaned away from her as if afraid he might catch something from her, his head propped up on one elbow, which was planted casually on the table. He wore aviator sunglasses, which did not disguise the fact that he was a ruggedly handsome man of about forty-five, with a perfectly trimmed mustache and a spectacular haircut. It wasn’t possible to be sure with the sunglasses clamped to his face, but it certainly seemed like he hadn’t even glanced at me as I’d come clown-footing into the room and into my chair. Somehow I managed to conceal my crushing disappointment at his negligence, and I turned my steely gaze to the head of the table, where Captain Matthews was once again clearing his throat.

My sisters seemed so different from the way I remembered them. Sali, the one closest in age, mother of two children. Her tone of voice had changed; she spoke German or Yiddish with an English accent. The brothers-in-law, all so different from people that I used to know: Betty's husband Nat - distant; Sali's husband Willie - friendly and enthusiastic; Gertie's Jacques - a real character, a devout Communist, who told me that I didn't understand what I saw when I criticized the Soviet system. My cousins, close in age to me: Jack Stadler, one year older than myself, had just got engaged the week when I arrived and Albert, a few years younger - none of them could talk to the newly arrived uncle and aunt, since they spoke only English.

Without the power, Aiden was defenseless. Asmodeus was almost sad, Aiden was the closest thing he had to a friend in a long time, and now he was gone. Gone from this world, but he would see him again in the next. When Aiden would again meet Sister Mary in the afterlife.

they agreed to start the shop together way back in college, so did his window to let her in on the joke. And breaking the news all these years later sure as hell wasn’t an option, not with her being his best friend and the closest thing he had to a sister now. No, the only way he’d tell her that the homers they discussed all the time were...errr, another kind of home run would be through a ‘Dear Quinn’ letter. A lovely posthumous one by certified mail. In the meantime, Luke was just going to have

Best friends are important. They’re the closest thing to a sister you’ll ever have,” she told me.

Years, Jasper. Years. For years I have been the little cousin, the little sister, the good friend. For years I have seen you. Waited for you every summer. Watched you go on dates with women who weren’t me—who would never be me. I was sick over you. And then I came to terms with what we were. I accepted I would always want you and you would never want me back. I convinced myself that sometimes the greatest loves of our lives will be our closest friends. And I was okay with that.

I’ve never spent one whole day away from my sister. She’s been my closest friend, the only person I truly cared about. Anna is better than me in every way. She’s smarter, kinder, happier. I often felt that when we formed in the womb, our characteristics were split in two parts. She got the better part of us, but as long as she was close by, we could share her goodness. Now she’s gone, and all that light has gone with her. All that’s left are the qualities that lived in me: focus. Determination. And rage.

taping of the Hollywood Palace TV show. In America then, if you had long hair, you were a faggot as well as a freak. They would shout across the street, “Hey, fairies!” Dean Martin introduced as something like “these long-haired wonders from England, the Rolling Stones.… They’re backstage picking the fleas off each other.” A lot of sarcasm and eyeball rolling. Then he said, “Don’t leave me alone with this,” gesturing with horror in our direction. This was Dino, the rebel Rat Packer who cocked his finger at the entertainment world by pretending to be drunk all the time. We were, in fact, quite stunned. English comperes and showbiz types may have been hostile, but they didn’t treat you like some dumb circus act. Before we’d gone on, he’d had the bouffanted King Sisters and performing elephants, standing on their hind legs. I love old Dino. He was a pretty funny bloke, even though he wasn’t ready for the changing of the guard. On to Texas and more freak show appearances, in one case with a pool of performing seals between us and the audience at the San Antonio Texas State Fair. That was where I first met Bobby Keys, the great saxophone player, my closest pal (we were born within hours of each other).

So Rabbit left Fisher with his sister and the dog to seek out the closest Statewide-associated adult he could find and deliver the message that his chaperone had been shot. His conductor was comatose. He wanted to play Afternoon of a Faun on a bassoon.

THE SIGNAL CAME FROM XENIA, a small planet in a modest star system near the tip of one spiral arm of the Pinwheel Galaxy. There, at the start of a night that lasted for several Earth years, something like a child held up something not quite a flashlight to something quite unlike the Earth’s night sky. Near the child stood the closest living thing to what might be called its parent. On Xenia, the entire species of intelligent beings contributed a little germ plasm to birth each new child. But each Xenian was given one child to raise. On Xenia, everyone was everyone else’s parent and everyone else’s child, everyone’s older sister and younger brother all at once. When one person died, so did everyone and no one. On Xenia, fear and desire and hunger and fatigue and sadness and all other transitory feelings were lost in a shared grace, the way that separate stars are lost in the daytime sun. “There,” the something-like-a-father said to its something-like-a-child, in something almost like speech. “A little higher. Right up there.” The little one lay back, floating on its living kinship raft above the intelligent soil. It felt its not-quite arm nudged by a process of assistance no one from Earth would have a name for. “There?” the younger one asked. “Right there? Why didn’t they ever answer?” The older one replied not in sound or light but in changes in the surrounding air. “We bathed them in signals for thousands of their generations. We tried everything we could think of. We never managed to get their attention.” The sequence of chemicals that the young one emitted was not quite a laugh. It was a whole verdict, really, an entire astrobiological theory. “They must have been very busy.” THE DAYS LENGTHENED.

So you've all been defiling the pool house all these years and no one bothered to tell me," Vansh filled the glass up again, and yes, he sounded sulky as hell at being left out. Vansh was a good five years younger than Ashna, who was the closest to him in age. Between the age gap and the fact that he had gone off to boarding school in India at sixteen, he should have been used to the feeling by now. "Eeew," all his sisters said at once. Nisha took the glass out of Vansh's hand again. "It's a good thing we let you drink when you're underage." He was twenty-six and they all knew it. "It's illegal in the state of California for children to have sex," Trisha said, ruffling Vansh's hair with complete disregard for how much he hated his hair being ruffled. It took a lot of effort to get it to look this good. "And we're the Rajes. You're not allowed to get frisky until you're thirty." "How are you allowed to be thirty-two and call it 'getting frisky'?" Vansh said, patting his hair in place. "And for the record, I could teach you a thing or two about getting frisky." Trisha made a gagging face and then smiled. "Of course, baby." She wrapped her arms around Vansh. "You could teach most of us a thing or two about most things. You're our worldly baby brother, the light of our lives." "The apple of our eyes," Nisha said, joining the hug. "Our pride and joy," Ashna said, completing the group hug. "But we are going to have to punch you if you mention sex around us again," Trisha finished up. As his sisters squeezed him and let him go, the sting of being left out of their nefarious pool house antics, and everything else they always thought he was too young for, died down.

You okay, Milo?" No, I wasn't. But I'd gotten to save my sister. I'd gotten to hug her and send her to bed. That was the closest I'd been to Ivy in over twelve years. "I'm fine," I told him. "Let's get the boys and go see what trouble Freddie got into.

Best friends are important. They’re the closest thing to a sister you’ll ever have,

As soon as the girls were in the kitchen, Beth and Eddie started to giggle. “What?” asked Caroline. “Do you know what looks like cinnamon?” said Eddie. “Chili powder.” Caroline gave a little squeak of delight. “And do you know what looks like chocolate sprinkles?” asked Beth. “What?” Carolina asked again. “I don’t know,” said Beth. “What does?” The sisters looked through Mother’s cupboards. The closest thing they could find to chocolate sprinkles was cracked pepper. “Now here’s the thing—we’ve got to mix them so the guys won’t get suspicious. Caroline, you mix a little cinnamon and chili powder together, Beth, you do the chocolate sprinkles and cracked pepper, and I’ll get the coffee for Mr. and Mrs. Hatford.” “Ha! Wally wanted both the chocolate and cinnamon. He’s going to get a double dose!” laughed Caroline. Was this a good party or what?

If I start bad-mouthing his wife, who is it fixing to get hurt when they get back together?” [Margy, Russ’s mum] “You think they’re going to get back together?” [Janet, Russ’s sister] “I’d like to think . . .” Her voice trailed off. Even with the last turn of the stairs and the living room between them, Russ could hear his mother sigh. “Your brother is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a real-life Horton the Elephant. He meant what he said and he said what he meant . . .” “An elephant’s faithful one hundred percent,” Janet finished the quote. Great. His entire personality could be summed up by Dr. Seuss.

One thing the demon loves to do is to use other people against us, even the ones closest to us, our spouses, brothers, sisters, children, friends — anyone who might be weak and might give an opening to the influence of the demon.

Hey!” Someone’s banging on the door of the ladies’ loos: we all jump. Kelly blinks, and one big tear is released. It starts to trickle down her red cheek. “Hey!” the voice calls again. It’s a guy, and not an Italian; they don’t yell “Hey!” here, but “Oh!” instead, which is weird until you get used to it. I’m closest to the door. I grab my dress, hold it over me with one hand, and ease the door open a crack with the other. Behind me, the girls, excited, scream at a pitch that would deafen bats. We’re all ridiculously worked up at the thought of a man seeing us in our underwear, even though we’re planning to go into the river in exactly that. In front of me is a wide male chest. I look up, over the swell of the pectorals, the broad tanned neck, the square jaw, to the cheerful blue eyes and cropped blond hair of Evan, Paige’s brother. Like Paige, he’s built on a massive scale, especially by comparison with the slender, slim-hipped Italians. He completely blocks any view of the club behind him. “Violet!” he says. His eyes widen as he takes in my state of undress, but he’s manfully resisting looking anywhere but my face, which I thoroughly appreciate. “Look, I made the other guys give me their shirts, okay? I thought you’d need all of them.” He’s holding a bunched-up ball of fabric in one big fist, which he pushes toward me; it leaves me in a quandary, as I don’t have my hands free. I wedge the door with my shoulder, which means I can still hold my dress over me and take the shirts with the other. “Thanks!” I exclaim gratefully, realizing that this means Kelly can come swimming with the rest of us, that I can cover my bra up. But Evan isn’t done. He reaches down, takes the hem of his own T-shirt, and pulls it up in one swift movement, dragging it over his head, baring his tanned chest. I can’t help staring. Evan is at college on a football scholarship, apparently, and from his muscle definition, I can’t imagine he gets any time to study. He looks as if he spends every waking minute in the gym. And he’s really close to me. I feel a blush rising to my cheeks, and I try to step back a little, confused by my feelings about this sudden striptease, his physical proximity. His hand reaches out to me again, giving me the T-shirt still warm from his body, still smelling of him. I take it, realizing that my mouth has fallen open at the sight of him. I clamp my lips together as he says, grinning, his white American teeth perfect: “Give this to Paige, okay? Those skinny little Italian guys’ shirts won’t fit around her, and I don’t want my little sister showing her junk all over town.” “Hey!” Paige shouts back crossly. “I do not show my junk all over town! You better not go around telling people that!” Evan’s grin deepens as he looks down at me; he winks. “It’s just too easy to get her going,” he says to me confidentially, seeing my eyebrows raised: I’ve rarely heard Paige this wound up. Evan certainly knows how to press her buttons.

Jono is the closest thing I have to a brother, just like Lily is pretty much my sister.

The sea dragons. Far below, the dragons danced on the surface of the ocean, tiny, glimmering worms on a gray floor. Their voices rang through the air, across the great distance and over the roar of Fingap Falls. The dragon song mingled with Leeli’s, and the music pulsed with joy and then sadness. Janner blinked with wonder when he focused again on the images swirling before him. He no longer saw Nugget but a spray of giant waves, then something red and gold—the dragons. He had only ever seen the creatures from the heights of the cliff, but now he could see them as if he floated just above the surface of the sea, a stone’s throw away. They were as beautiful as they were fearsome. Their bodies shimmered with metallic scales that swirled with color. The dragon closest to him glittered orange and gold, like the strikes of a thousand matchsticks, but its winglike fins cycled between shades of blue. Its head was sleek and graceful, perfect for slicing through the water, and its eyes—big and deep and serene—sent a chill down to Janner’s toes, because it was suddenly clear the dragon knew it was being watched. The eyes rolled back, and translucent lids slid over them as the dragon opened its mouth and sang. Teeth lined its mouth, but not in the crooked, yellow way of the Fangs or the toothy cows; these were straight and bright and sharp as needles. Janner pushed his mind through the image and looked again at his brother and sister. Leeli’s eyes were closed, and though she smiled, tears wet her cheeks while she played. Wind stirred Tink’s hair, and he stared at the empty air before him; his eyes flicked back and forth as if studying a drawing that hung a few feet before his face. The song changed to a gentle hum, and Janner turned his mind again to the floating image. A dragon rose from the waves bearing something

Patroklos and Achilles were virtually brothers by adoption. The word brothers appears as symbol in everyday talk of Vietnam veterans, as in "How y'doin, bro?" or the much more deeply felt, "I had to. He's my bro." The "brotherhood of soldiers" has become a dead metaphor in the mouths of political speechifiers and rear-echelon officers visiting the troops, but the reality of combat calls forth the language and emotion of the earliest and strongest family relationships in every place and era. A veteran, speaking of his closest friend-in-arms, says: It's a closeness you never had before. It's closer than your mother and father, closest [sic] than your brother and sister, or whoever you're closest with in your family. It was...y'know, you'd take a shit, and he'd be right there covering you. And if I take a shit, he'd be covering me...We needed each other to survive.

Are they leaving to have sex?" Ross makes a gagging sound as if he can't fathom his sister having sex, much less fucking me in the elevator, which feels like a very real possibility. I wonder if there are security cameras there too? "More likely to find the closest Justice of the Peace," Courtney answers. I recognize her and her husband, Kaede, from the wedding when I first met Abigail. And I like the way she thinks. If I put a ring on Abigail's finger and my cock inside her, I could stop her from ever leaving me again. The idea has merit.

You’re a soft place to land / a hard, wheezing laugh / the closest I’ll come to another sister / I used to think all of this in-between stuff was the intermission / the rest stops along the way / the amuse-bouche / the filler flowers / but lately I’ve come to realize that all of this small stuff is the stuff / this is it / the main event / the blue plate special / a million little drops of love that fill the whole cup.

I tell them not to give up. It’s what feels appropriate to say to a total stranger. But it’s not all I want to say. It’s not what I would say if it were my sister who was hurting, or my best friend. It’s not what I wish I could say to my younger self. Because to those closest to me, I am supportive and encouraging . . . but I absolutely refuse to watch you wallow.

Do you remember those roses that Caitriona used to have in her garden? The great, puffy ones that have layers of petals that open when they bloom?" Elspeth nodded. Freya turned her glass thoughtfully. "Imagine that the outer petals of the rose are all of society--- everyone you don't know. And that the center where the pistil lies is you." "I can never remember which part the pistil is," Elspeth confessed. Freya gave her a look. "How many times did Caitriona explain this to you? The pistil is the part in the center that becomes the rose hip when it's pollinated." Her sister set aside her drink and cupped her hands together. "These are the outside of the rose, the petals that guard against the world that doesn't know you at all." She slowly opened her fingers. "Inside are more petals---they represent your acquaintances. The people whom you greet on the street or whom you might talk to at a ball. They know you, but they probably couldn't tell you that strawberry tart is your favorite pudding." "Ohhh," Elspeth said, "I'm beginning to see." Though she still wasn't sure how the rose pertained to love. "I hope so," Freya said. "But remember that there are even more petals beneath those." She let her hands drop as she smiled at Elspeth ruefully. "I can't demonstrate with my hands, so imagine that rose with all the petals curled each within each other. The third layer are your closest friends and family. The people you live with. The people you grew up with. They know you better than the outer two groups of petals, don't they?" Elspeth nodded. Rings within rings, each smaller than the last, each closer to oneself. "These people know you very well," Freya said. "They know what you like and dislike, they know the type of person you are. But there's a last ring." She wrinkled her nose. "No, not a ring. Perhaps the stamen sitting next to your pistil at the very center of the rose." For some reason, her cheeks pinked as she smiled privately. "That is the person who knows your mind and your soul and your heart.

That was life, wasn't it? Making connections, bonding with people and places, then moving forward without them. Missing them. Carrying those influences around, sort of like layers of clothing. Her birthplace was one layer, her family another. Her best friend, Josephine. Antarctica. Now Boston. Sometimes it hurt to collect another layer, to make new friends and have new experiences when she still ached for the layers closest to her skin, but she would keep pursuing nights like this, because she'd made a promise to her sister.