Consolation Prize Quotes

Stories are consoling, fiction is one of the consolation prizes for having lived in the world.

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize." [Modernism's Patriarch (Time Magazine, June 10, 1996)]

I'm not the consolation prize, Dex. I'm not something you resort to. I happen to think I'm worth more than that.

I learned that writing is the consolation prize you are given when you don’t get the thing you want the most.

I mean to say, really, I am near to developing a neurosis - is there anyone around who doesn't want to study or kill me?" Floote raised a tentative hand. "Ah, yes, thank you, Floote." "There is also Mrs Tunstell, madam," he offered hopefully, is if Ivy were some kind of consolation prize. "I notice you don't mention my fair-weather husband." "I suspect, at this moment, madam, he probably wants to kill you." Alexia couldn't help smiling. "Good point.

SALLY    Harry, I can’t do this anymore. I am not your consolation prize. Goodbye.

I wish you could see yourself through my eyes. Every woman who’s met you wants a shot at you. How could you ever think you’re the consolation prize?

Longing for Heaven won’t help you to make the most of this lifetime, the one you have now. Especially if you’re interested in Spiritual Enlightenment, don’t treat this precious human life like some pathetic kind of consolation prize.

In the end you can't save your soul and life by thought. But if you think, the least of the consolation prizes is the world.

Although I never found a church where I felt completely at home again, I made a new home in the world. I renewed my membership in the priesthood of all believers, who may not have as much power as we would like, but whose consolation prize is the freedome to meet God after work, well away from all centers of religious command, wherever God shows up.

Making God a man is the consolation prize that our forefathers gave themselves for not being the ones who were each blessed with a vagina.

Writing is the consolation prize you are given when you don't get the thing you want the most.

We all have things we don’t talk about, Ernest thought. Even though, more often than not, those are the things that make us who we are.

In a world that has no heaven the earth becomes an abyss. And the poem is one of its consolation prizes. One of the qualities of the winds, north or south

Self-awareness: it is one of the chief bonuses of advancing age. It is our consolation prize.

There are people in our lives whom we love, and lose, and forever long for. They orbit our hearts like Halley's Comet, crossing into our universe only once, or if we're lucky, twice in a lifetime. And when they do, they affect our gravity.

She needs to decide if it’s me she wants. I sure as hell won’t be the consolation prize.

Sometimes you need to feel the sadness, you need to feel everything to finally leave it behind, to have peace. Happiness. Sadness. Like all things, they both come to an end.

Parents always have a story that their children don’t really know,

Beautiful gay men are God's gift to women. They're like a consolation prize for ...well, for everything else about being a woman.

You’re not my second choice. You’re not a consolation prize. You’re everything I never knew I needed. You’re my number fucking one. You own me.

Since this often seems to come up in discussions of the radical style, I'll mention one other gleaning from my voyages. Beware of Identity politics. I'll rephrase that: have nothing to do with identity politics. I remember very well the first time I heard the saying "The Personal Is Political." It began as a sort of reaction to defeats and downturns that followed 1968: a consolation prize, as you might say, for people who had missed that year. I knew in my bones that a truly Bad Idea had entered the discourse. Nor was I wrong. People began to stand up at meetings and orate about how they 'felt', not about what or how they thought, and about who they were rather than what (if anything) they had done or stood for. It became the replication in even less interesting form of the narcissism of the small difference, because each identity group begat its sub-groups and "specificities." This tendency has often been satirised—the overweight caucus of the Cherokee transgender disabled lesbian faction demands a hearing on its needs—but never satirised enough. You have to have seen it really happen. From a way of being radical it very swiftly became a way of being reactionary; the Clarence Thomas hearings demonstrated this to all but the most dense and boring and selfish, but then, it was the dense and boring and selfish who had always seen identity politics as their big chance. Anyway, what you swiftly realise if you peek over the wall of your own immediate neighbourhood or environment, and travel beyond it, is, first, that we have a huge surplus of people who wouldn't change anything about the way they were born, or the group they were born into, but second that "humanity" (and the idea of change) is best represented by those who have the wit not to think, or should I say feel, in this way.

I realized that all those superheroes were doing was fighting themselves, and that getting to breathe underwater or shoot fire from your fingers didn't really make up for being screwed up in the first place. It was just the consolation prize--you got the great costume and the invisible jet for being a loser in everything else.

If anger is your currency, then you’re one rich bitch.

What I miss is the feeling that nothing has started yet, that the future towers over the past, that the present is merely a planning phase for the gleaming architecture that will make up the skyline of the rest of my life. But what I forget is the loneliness of all that. If everything is ahead then nothing is behind. You have no ballast. You have no tailwinds either. You hardly ever know what to do, because you’ve hardly done anything. I guess this is why wisdom is supposed to be the consolation prize of aging. It’s supposed to give us better things to do than stand around and watch in disbelief as the past casts long shadows over the future.

Memories are narcotic, he thought. Like the array of pill bottles that sit cluttered on my nightstand. Each dose, carefully administered, use as directed. Too much and they become dangerous. Too much and they'll stop your heart.

My theory,” Maisie said, “is that the best, worst, happiest, saddest, scariest, and most memorable moments are all connected. Those are the important times, good and bad. The rest is just filler.

People thought money would make them happy. But money was the consolation prize in life. Money was what you had left to dream for when all the other dreams died. Money was what would keep you going when nothing else could delight you again.

Each morning fog rolls over the bay and caresses the Golden Gate, the most picturesque bridge in the world. In the evenings night descends from heaven like some mystical force of nature, alerting hearts that something wonderful is about to happen. The City by the Bay becomes a moonlit paradise of sounds and sensations. It teems with lights, music, ocean, and pretty girls ready to dance and have fun. San Francisco stretches out her romantic hand, beckoning you to join in all the living going on, all the love being found. And for this reason, night is the loneliest time for those of us who have no one. Oh, we try for love, desperately we make the attempt, gallantly we forge on. But inevitably we fall into a seductive whirlpool of night and garter belts, lipstick and alluring lingerie, darkened hotel rooms and passion devoid of love. Love is the trophy others raise high in happiness, leaving the rest to seek momentary solace in sex bereft of tenderness and meaning, pretending for a few moments, perhaps even a few hours, that it is something more. A hollow consolation prize for losing the romance contest.

The present is merely the past reassembled,

Happiness. Sadness. Like all things, they both come to an end.

Sometimes a woman offers a man friendship out of pity, as a consolation, or as a consolation prize, for his failure to make her want him, or at least agree to be in a relationship with him.

He didn't want to say Let's just be friends or I hope we can stay friends, because that made friendship sound like a consolation prize, the blue ribbon to look at distractedly while someone else walks off with the gold cup. No, what he said was: "I think you and I will be even closer, and that we will be even better together and more to each other if we're best friends, not boyfriends.

People often attempt to compensate for this loss of hope by comforting themselves with “consolation prizes”: easy but self-destructive habits like too much TV, too much junk food, too much shopping, not enough exercise, endless video games. And sometimes they distract themselves with riskier behavior: alcohol and drugs, debt,

Right and wrong are superstitions; your desires, however, are real. Those who cannot achieve their desires, or who despair of doing so, often compensate by constructing imaginary frameworks. For example, if you wish to live in a world in which no one exploits animals, it is moralism to judge those who eat meat immoral instead of setting about disabling the animal exploitation industry. People retreat into moralism as a sort of consolation prize, for it is easier to rule in the realm of good and evil, fictitious as it may be, than to come to terms with our limited leverage upon this world and yet persist in endeavoring to change it.

When you feel wronged by life, you give yourself permission to have another cookie, or another drink, or another pill, or another sulk. After all you’ve been through, why deprive yourself anymore? This is a vicious cycle. You keep feeling wronged in order to enjoy more of your consolation prize.

My theory,” Maisie said, “is that the best, worst, happiest, saddest, scariest, and most memorable moments are all connected. Those are the important times, good and bad. The rest is just filler.” She pointed to the balloon. “The rest is nothing but hot air.

I guess there’s a difference between the body and the soul. You can buy a body, but the heart…” He shook his head. “The heart, you can’t even rent.” —

He suspected that everyone his age, of his vintage, had a backstory, a secret that they’d never shared.

Sometimes you need to feel the sadness, you need to feel everything to finally leave it behind, to have peace. Happiness. Sadness. Like all things, they both come to an end.

A long-lost love. A living, breathing embodiment of what might have been.

A first kiss means everything.

I understand. It is a good thing I do understand, because that is the only reason you are getting a second chance with me. I am no man's consolation prize.

She did not want to be a consolation prize. Be pitied or a distraction.

Being rich is an untalented artist’s consolation prize.

Laughter is our consolation prize for consciousness.

one planet that’s lost its way in the race for development, that showed up at the stadium after all the medals had been handed out, when all that was left was the consolation prize of survival.

Ernest had lain awake many nights and wondered. Girls were complicated, women confounding, their challenges almost insurmountable. The world was a rigged game, stacked against them. But maybe Maisie had played to her advantage

Gracie’s memory was like a jigsaw puzzle with parts that didn’t always fit, but she’d found the all-important edge pieces. She was beginning to reframe her life—their life. It was a work in progress, but the image was coming together. “It’s

She asked him to meet her at Elegante. He agreed, but he felt somehow wronged. Exiting the garage, he realized what bothered him. For the first time, he felt going to Elegante was a consolation prize. Why hadn't Mrs. Cook invited him to her country club?

held at Metairie on April 1, two four-mile heats. As he had always purposed, owners would put down five thousand dollars each, and that would make up the winner’s purse, less one-thousand-dollar consolation prizes to any entrants that were not distanced.

ஆறுதல் பரிசு ( consolation prize ) என்று ஒன்று உண்டு. அதைவிட மோசமான பரிசு இந்த உலகத்திலேயே கிடையாது. தோற்றவரை ஆற்றுவதற்காகத் தரும் இந்தப் பரிசு உண்மையிலேயே தோல்வியை நினைவுபடுத்துவதற்காகக் கொடுக்கப்படுவது. இந்தப் பரிசு பெற்றவரை யாரும் ஞாபகம் வைத்துக்கொள்வதில்லை.

My mouth fell open. “Is this real life? You’re giving me your dog?” He chuckled. “Yeah. My dog that was supposed to be the consolation prize when our parents forced me to go back to public school. My dog that sleeps in your room and that you walk and feed every day.

Worldly success is the consolation prize for those unhappy driven souls who have redirected their early humiliation and sense that they weren’t good enough into ‘achievements’ – which will never make up for the unconditional love they will deep down always crave in vain.

lawyers. An error at the hour of signing a big contract, or negotiating an acquisition, could easily cost you millions, or be the deciding factor between summers in Ibiza with your model girlfriend or taking a consolation-prize job as product manager at Oracle instead (look,

He had entered into every relationship in his life in good faith, reveling in the breathless flush of new love for as long as it lasted and then valiantly pretending not to notice that it had faded for as long as he could. When he finally moved on, he always left something of him behind and took something of her along until he became, in essence, every lover he had ever been with. He assimilated all of their strengths and weaknesses, and any virtue he possessed was learned from one woman or another, a consolation prize bestowed on him at their parting.

You are unwilling to pay that price, even knowing that the consolation prize is not only to learn every philosophy that has ever existed, but ones which have not yet been conceived? Even knowing that if you do not accept, you will soon cease to learn anything at all?" Raimund tilted his head, still staring into my eyes, and I knew he must see the tears filling them, though I held them back from falling. "My friend," he whispered, "do you really believe your own words, I wonder? Your pain makes me think you know that death is not the end of learning, but only the beginning.

Does [your music] have to be a job? And as for your actual job...do you have to think of [it] as a consolation prize? ...What if you just *played*? Isn't it possible you'd also like your job more, because you wouldn't think of it as something that's secretly had to replace this other thing?

You guys come from a really small town, and people talk,” Caleb shrugged. “I can’t go into a store in Covington without someone asking me how I feel about being a consolation prize,” he laughed. “People took your breakup harder than Brad and Jen’s! They’ve done everything but make up Team Jason and Team Caleb shirts!

Other than the promise of life after death, nothing consoles the poor better than the fact that rich people are also subject to death.

All of this, everything I have, was built on the idea that despite the unfair labor laws, the damnable exclusion act designed to keep your kind out—bringing people like you

to this country was a profitable, charitable, and even humanitarian transaction.

the great Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909—Seattle’s forgotten world’s fair.

reality, the Mann Act was used to prevent interracial relationships. World champion heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson was prosecuted under the Mann Act for dating white women.

Whenever I was around Colton, everything seemed to live in this amazing technicolor moment. It was all so vivacious and alive.

guess there’s a difference between the body and the soul. You can buy a body, but the heart…” He shook

guess there’s a difference between the body and the soul. You can buy a body, but the heart…” He shook his head. “The heart, you can’t even rent.

With a wry smile, he went on to hypothesize more generally—and, I suspect, only half-jokingly—that addicts are bored or frustrated problem-solvers who instinctively contrive Houdini-like situations from which to disentangle themselves when no other challenge happens to present itself. The drug becomes the reward when they succeed and the consolation prize when they fail.

You’re still in love with him,” Finn finally says, calmly. I wish he would yell at me or shake me. It would be easier to take than him sounding so weary. So sad. “Finn—” “I knew it,” he says. “I should have always known it, and maybe I did, but when I saw you with him in that hotel room, the way you held on to him . . .” I know loving someone doesn’t ever completely go away, but it’s hard for me. I see the way Marina is with him, and it still tears me up inside. I can’t take it from you, too. I can’t always be the consolation prize for you, Em. I just—I love you too much.” I’m a fish on dry land, gawping and gasping. “I know you care about me or whatever,” he continues, “but if you’re still in love with James, I need to know. I deserve that much.

So you take all that hurt and resentment, suffered in silence, and you let it simmer for decades and it distills down into anger." She looked out at the canal next to them, the water close enough to throw late-afternoon ripples onto her face. "That's what I found so hard, Swan. I didn't know how to love an angry man who pretended to be fine." To stave off Sewanee's response, Marilyn held up a hand, her left one, ringless. "We had a good life together. Life is never one thing. But I think I was his consolation prize. And if there's one things I've learned, Swanling: never be a consolation prize." How could Sewanee not think of Nick when Marilyn said this? Didn't this justify her feelings? And then Marilyn added, "Especially your own," which spun Sewanee's head around.

But the most surprising difference was Show Street, the topless corner of Seattle’s second world’s fair, where fairgoers could rent Polaroid cameras to snap photos of showgirls in various stages of undress.

He was used to people staring at him on the street—the villagers who’d spat at him or laughed. But for now he felt safely surrounded, comforted, as he drew a deep breath and melted into the girls’ kindness.

think about it. you're playing survivor with all the people you love. some, by sheer luck of genetic lottery, end up on the right team. this team simply knows how to dominate the game. this team understands there is no referee or rules. in fact, this team is so good at the game, they made up invisible referees and rules for other teams to find. they simply do what they want because they understand there is no such things as rights. how do you win if you're not on this team? you don't. however, the consolation prize for knowing the campground is puppet-stringed by a small herd of psychopaths is there is no one for them to pass the reigns on to. in the end, any evil there is in the universe dies, too. i recommend not making any more players and enjoying ice cream while you watch the firework show we tend to call: sun set.

The truth of the matter was that these days Gracie barely remembered him. Her mind had become a one-way mirror. Ernest could see her clearly, but to Gracie he’d been lost behind her troubled, distorted reflection.

But curiously, 1909 was also the peak of Seattle’s social evils—described as “dance halls, bagnios, crib houses, opium dens, and noodle joints…openly advertised in the full glare of electric light”—a major concern for the host city.

There are people in our lives whom we love, and lose, and forever long for. They orbit our hearts like Halley’s Comet, crossing into our universe only once, or if we’re lucky, twice in a lifetime. And when they do, they affect our gravity.

Years ago, a friend said to me, "Your entire existence can be reduced to a three-part cycle. One: Get fucked up. Two: Fuck up. Three: Damage control." With a wry smile, he went on to hypothesize more generally - and I suspect, only half-jokingly - that addicts are bored or frustrated problem-solvers who instinctively contrive Houdini-like situations from which to disentangle themselves when no other challenge happens to present itself. The drug becomes the reward when they succeed and the consolation prize when they fail.

She got fired?" Confusion laced Gavin's voice. "When?" "This morning," Dante muttered. "Why?" Gavin asked. "What did she do?" "Me," Dante said. "Oh." A moment of silence passed before Gavin broke out into laughter. "Ah man, really? She lost her job for fucking around with you?" "I don't see why that's so funny." "Because," Gavin said, "you're the worst consolation prize ever." Dante shot right back up, and Matty barely had enough time to move out of the way before the bottle of water hurled by him, hitting Gavin in the chest.

What I miss is the feeling that nothing has started yet, that the future towers over the past, that the present is merely a planning phase for the gleaming architecture that will make up the skyline of the rest of my life. But what I forget is the loneliness of all that. If everything is ahead then nothing is behind. You have no ballast. You have no tailwinds either. You hardly ever know what to do, because you’ve hardly done anything. I guess this is why wisdom is supposed to be the consolation prize of aging. It’s supposed to give us better things to do than stand around and watch in disbelief as the past casts long shadows over the future. The problem, I now know, is that no one ever really feels wise, least of all those who actually have it in themselves to be so. The Older Self of our imagination never quite folds itself into the older self we actually become. Instead, it hovers in the perpetual distance like a highway mirage. It’s the destination that never gets any closer even as our life histories pile up behind us in the rearview mirror. It is the reason that I got to forty-something without ever feeling thirty-something. It is why I hope that if I make it to eighty-something I have the good sense not to pull out those old CDs. My heart, by then, surely would not be able to keep from imploding. My heart, back then, stayed in one piece only because, as bursting with anticipation as it was, it had not yet been strained by nostalgia. It had not yet figured out that life is mostly an exercise in being something other than what we used to be while remaining fundamentally—and sometimes maddeningly—who we are.

His consolation prize was a hat. A battered fedora that looked as if it had blown off of Humphrey Bogart during the filming of Key Largo. Sucked up into the atmosphere during the movie’s hurricane, it had ended up here, on the other side of the world, sixty years later. On his head. Even though it had been enshrined in a closet inside the house, it kind of smelled as if it had spent about three of those decades at the bottom of a birdcage. Yesiree. It was almost as fun to wear as the brown leather flight jacket. Which really wasn’t fair to the flight jacket. It was a gorgeously cared-for antique that didn’t smell at all. And it definitely worked for him, in terms of some of his flyboy fantasies. But the day had turned into a scorcher. It was just shy of a bazillion degrees in the shade. He needed mittens or perhaps a wool scarf to properly accessorize his impending heat stroke. “Today, playing the role of Indiana Jones, aka Grady Morant, is Jules Cassidy,” he said, as he slipped his arms into the sleeves. Was anyone really going to be fooled by this? Jones was so much taller than he was.

In November, Bettina [Moreira] presented him with a framed quotation by the biologist George Wald, who had won the Nobel fifty years ago. It read: What one really needs is not Nobel laureates but love. How do you think one gets to be a Nobel laureate? Wanting love, that’s how. Wanting it so bad that one works all the time and ends up a Nobel laureate. It’s a consolation prize. What matters is love. ‘What the hell do you want me to do with this?’ said Chandra, who had come to a similar conclusion himself but would sooner be damned than tell Ms. Moreira this.

Ernest glanced about at all the faces—happy, sad, and in between—they’d become his family. He had come to love his new life. It wasn’t without ugliness, but it felt so much more true and honest, richer and more satisfying than life under Mrs. Irvine and the custodial care of the state.

There are people in our lives whom we love, and lose, and forever long for. They orbit our hearts like Halley’s Comet, crossing into our universe only once, or if we’re lucky, twice in a lifetime. And when they do, they affect our gravity.” He said, “You know what I mean? These people are special.

stumbled upon an old article about race and the AYP and how China had declined to sponsor an exhibit because delegates had been harassed at previous world’s fairs, and how ethnographic displays were immensely popular, like the Igorrote exhibit, a mock village of grass huts, which was basically a human zoo.

Parks waits a long while, until he’s absolutely certain that Justineau’s monologue is finished. The truth is, for most of the time he’s been trying to figure out what it is exactly that she’s trying to tell him. Maybe he was right the first time about where they were heading, and Justineau airing her ancient laundry is just a sort of palate-cleanser before they have sex. Probably not, but you never know. In any case, the countermove to a confession is an absolution, unless you think the sin is unforgivable. Parks doesn’t. “It was an accident,” he tells her, pointing out the obvious. “And probably you would have ended up doing the right thing. You don’t strike me as the sort of person who just lets shit slide.” He means that, as far as it goes. One of the things he likes about Justineau is her seriousness. He frigging flat-out hates frivolous, thoughtless people who dance across the surface of the world without looking down. “Yeah, but you don’t get it,” Justineau says. “Why do you think I’m telling you all this?” “I don’t know,” Parks admits. “Why are you telling me?” Justineau steps away from the parapet wall and squares off against him – range, zero metres. It could be erotic, but somehow it’s not. “I killed that boy, Parks. If you turn my life into an equation, the number that comes out is minus one. That’s my lifetime score, you understand me? And you … you and Caldwell, and Private Ginger f**king Rogers … my God, whether it means anything or not, I will die my own self before I let you take me down to minus two.” She says the last words right into his face. Sprays him with little flecks of spit. This close up, dark as it is, he can see her eyes. There’s something mad in them. Something deeply afraid, but it’s damn well not afraid of him. She leaves him with the bottle. It’s not what he was hoping for, but it’s a pretty good consolation prize.

The standout, though, was Maisie May, who’d been growing her hair longer. Ernest had never seen her in a corset before, and he wondered what battle had been fought to get her into one of those spoon-billed contraptions. He imagined an angry, feral, six-toed cat, with long claws and no tail, hissing while being dunked into icy water.

Returning to my own example, it’s a similar commitment that enables me to succeed with fixed scheduling. I, too, am incredibly cautious about my use of the most dangerous word in one’s productivity vocabulary: “yes.” It takes a lot to convince me to agree to something that yields shallow work. If you ask for my involvement in university business that’s not absolutely necessary, I might respond with a defense I learned from the department chair who hired me: “Talk to me after tenure.” Another tactic that works well for me is to be clear in my refusal but ambiguous in my explanation for the refusal. The key is to avoid providing enough specificity about the excuse that the requester has the opportunity to defuse it. If, for example, I turn down a time-consuming speaking invitation with the excuse that I have other trips scheduled for around the same time, I don’t provide details—which might leave the requester the ability to suggest a way to fit his or her event into my existing obligations—but instead just say, “Sounds interesting, but I can’t make it due to schedule conflicts.” In turning down obligations, I also resist the urge to offer a consolation prize that ends up devouring almost as much of my schedule (e.g., “Sorry I can’t join your committee, but I’m happy to take a look at some of your proposals as they come together and offer my thoughts”). A clean break is best.

Colton David Gamble.” She tsked and shook her head with reproach. “How in God’s name could you ever think I could ever focus on anyone else whenever you’re in the room.” “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I’m used to coming in second place.” “Not with me you don’t,” she said seriously. “God, I love you,” I admitted just before my mouth sank against hers.

My okaasan would say, 'Water is Yin. Fire is Yang. And tea is a perfect expression of both.'" "Both?" Ernest asked politely. "Both sides of life, hot and cold, light and dark, not as opposites, but as complementary parts of each other," Fahn said, pausing, as though deep in thought. "Life is about balancing the good and the bad, the past and the present.

For the left, the consolation prize is ideological hegemony in the more sentimental area of human relations, especially that of “human rights”. Completely defeated in the area of economic policy, the left gets to define the dominant social doctrine, based on multiculturalism, concern for minorities, and anti-racism. Americans are taught to judge the governments of other countries almost exclusively by how they treat pro-Western dissidents or select minorities. Other qualities or defects, such as whether or not they feed and educate their populations, are of scant interest. The American entertainment industry creates an imaginary world celebrating this doctrine and channeling domestic revolt into artistic dead-ends.

Now that I am almost never the youngest person in any room I realize that what I miss most about those times is the very thing that drove me so mad back when I was living in them. What I miss is the feeling that nothing has started yet, that the future towers over the past, that the present is merely a planning phase for the gleaming architecture that will make up the skyline of the rest of my life. But what I forget is the loneliness of all that. If everything is ahead then nothing is behind. You have no ballast. You have no tailwinds either. You hardly ever know what to do, because you’ve hardly done anything. I guess this is why wisdom is supposed to be the consolation prize of aging. It’s supposed to give us better things to do than stand around and watch in disbelief as the past casts long shadows over the future.

When I was a kid, I used to watch that show, sitting on the couch in my pajamas and wishing more than anything that one day I'd just change into this other person. I thought that would explain everything. You know, about why I felt so different. Then I'd find out that my mother was really an alien or that I'd been bitten by a radioactive spider as a baby and it would all be okay because I'd be able to fly and see through walls.. But it never happened. I just went on being me my whole life, until one day I realized that all those superheroes were doing was fighting themselves, and that getting to breathe underwater or shoot fire from your fingers didn't really make up for being screwed up in the first place. It was just the consolation prize - you got the great costume and the invisible jet for being a loser in everything else.

stumbled upon an old article about race and the AYP and how China had declined to sponsor an exhibit because delegates had been harassed at previous world’s fairs, and how ethnographic displays were immensely popular, like the Igorrote exhibit, a mock village of grass huts, which was basically a human zoo. As I kept digging, I was intrigued to learn that 1909 was also the height of Washington State’s suffrage movement. Both the Washington Equal Suffrage Association and the National American Woman Suffrage Association held conventions in Seattle to take advantage of the publicity of the AYP.

Who do you think is angriest right now? In our country, I mean.” I shrugged. “African Americans?” She made a buzzing noise, a sort of you’re-out-but-we’ve-got-some-lovely-consolation-prizes-backstage kind of a sound. “Guess again.” “Gays?” “No, you dope. The straight white dude. He’s angry as shit. He feels emasculated.” “Honestly, Jacko.” “Of course he does.” Jackie pointed a purple fingernail at me. “You just wait. It’s gonna be a different world in a few years if we don’t do something to change it. Expanding Bible Belt, shit-ass representation in Congress, and a pack of power-hungry little boys who are tired of being told they gotta be more sensitive.” She laughed then, a wicked laugh that shook her whole body. “And don’t think they’ll all be men. The Becky Homeckies will be on their side.” “The who?” Jackie nodded at my sweats and bed-matted hair, at the pile of yesterday’s dishes in the sink, and finally at her own outfit. It was one of the more interesting fashion creations I’d seen on her in a while—paisley leggings, an oversized crocheted sweater that used to be beige but had now taken on the color of various other articles of clothing, and purple stiletto boots. “The Susie Homemakers. Those girls in matching skirts and sweaters and sensible shoes going for their Mrs. degrees. You think they like our sort? Think again.

Sick of ambitious and mercenary connexions, prizing more and more the sterling good of principle and temper, and chiefly anxious to bind by the strongest securities all that remained to him of domestic felicity, he had pondered with genuine satisfaction on the more than possibility of the two young friends finding their natural consolation in each other for all that had occurred of disappointment to either; and the joyful consent which met Edmund's application, the high sense of having realised a great acquisition in the promise of Fanny for a daughter, formed just such a contrast with his early opinion on the subject when the poor little girl's coming had been first agitated, as time is for ever producing between the plans and decisions of mortals, for their own instruction, and their neighbours' entertainment.

Their own inclinations ascertained, there were no difficulties behind, no drawback of poverty or parent. It was a match which Sir Thomas’s wishes had even forestalled. Sick of ambitious and mercenary connexions, prizing more and more the sterling good of principle and temper, and chiefly anxious to bind by the strongest securities all that remained to him of domestic felicity, he had pondered with genuine satisfaction on the more than possibility of the two young friends finding their natural consolation in each other for all that had occurred of disappointment to either; and the joyful consent which met Edmund’s application, the high sense of having realised a great acquisition in the promise of Fanny for a daughter, formed just such a contrast with his early opinion on the subject when the poor little girl’s coming had been first agitated, as time is for ever producing between the plans and decisions of mortals, for their own instruction, and their neighbours’ entertainment.

Millions of us daily take advantage of [Skype], delighted to carry the severed heads of family members under our arms as we move from the deck to the cool of inside, or steering them around our new homes, bobbing them like babies on a seasickening tour. Skype can be a wonderful consolation prize in the ongoing tournament of globalization, though typically the first place it transforms us is to ourselves. How often are the initial seconds of a video's call takeoff occupied by two wary, diagonal glances, with a quick muss or flick of the hair, or a more generous tilt of the screen in respect to the chin? Please attend to your own mask first. Yet, despite the obvious cheer of seeing a faraway face, lonesomeness surely persists in the impossibility of eye contact. You can offer up your eyes to the other person, but your own view will be of the webcam's unwarm aperture. ... The problem lies in the fact that we can't bring our silence with us through walls. In phone conversations, while silence can be both awkward and intimate, there is no doubt that each of you inhabits the same darkness, breathing the same dead air. Perversely, a phone silence is a thick rope tying two speakers together in the private void of their suspended conversation. This binding may be unpleasant and to be avoided, but it isn't as estranging as its visual counterpart. When talk runs to ground on Skype, and if the purpose of the call is to chat, I can quickly sense that my silence isn't their silence. For some reason silence can't cross the membrane of the computer screen as it can uncoil down phone lines. While we may be lulled into thinking that a Skype call, being visual, is more akin to a hang-out than a phone conversation, it is in many ways more demanding than its aural predecessor. Not until Skype has it become clear how much companionable quiet has depended on co-inhabiting an atmosphere, with a simple act of sharing the particulars of a place -- the objects in the room, the light through the window -- offering a lovely alternative to talk.

There was nothing pretty or elegant about their robot. Compared to the gleaming machines other teams had constructed, Stinky was a study in simplicity. The PVC, the balloon, the tape measure—in each case they had chosen the most straightforward solution to a problem. It was an approach that grew naturally out of watching family members fix cars, manufacture mattresses, and lay irrigation piping. To a large swath of the population, driveway mechanics, box-frame builders, and gardeners did not represent the cutting edge of engineering know-how. They were low-skilled laborers who didn’t have access to real technology. Stinky represented this low-tech approach to engineering. But that was exactly what had impressed the judges. Lisa Spence, the NASA judge, believed that there was no reason to come up with a complex solution when an elementary one would suffice. She felt that Carl Hayden’s robot was “conceptually similar” to the machines she encountered at NASA. The guys were in shock. They marched back up to the stage and looked out at the audience with dazed smiles. Lorenzo felt a rush of emotion. The judges’ Special Prize wasn’t a consolation award. These people were giving them real recognition.

Eat, woman,” he bellowed, leaning over her, prepared to force the remainder of her meal into her opened mouth. “I would,” she said in a strained voice, “But there is a giant attached to my chin. Perhaps if he would be so gracious as to remove the cured pork from my pack, I would share it with him.” Rautu’s eyes blazed in senseless joy. He released his companion and hastened toward her effects, rummaging through them with great anticipation. He found a small brown parchment parcel and assumed that this was the source of his happiness. He sniffed the outside of the paper and hummed in delight for the exquisite scent. He tore open the barrier between him and his prize and he was compelled to smile when remarking the numerous slices of meat in his hands. He began eating them immediately, leaving no time between one slice and the next to savour that which he had longed to again taste. The superior fare of Frewyn had been the chief of his consolation during the war, and if he was to remain on the islands with all its splendor, all its comforting familiarity, all its temperate climate, and all its horrendous food, he would relish this last ember of bliss before being made to suffer a diet of steamed grains again. “I did say share,” the commander called out. “I am responsible for securing your life,” he replied with a full mouth and without turning around. “And I thanked you accordingly.” The commander’s remonstrations were unanswered, and she scoffed in aversion as she watched the voracious beast consume nearly all the provisions she had been saving for the return journey. “I know you shall not be satisfied until you have all the tribute in the world, but that pork does belong to me, Rau.” “You are not permitted to have meat while taking our medicines,” he said, dismissively. She peered at him in circumspection. “I don’t recall you mentioning that stipulation before. I find it convenient that you should care to do so now.” The giant paused, his cheeks filled with pork. “And?” he said, shoving another slice into his mouth. “And,” she laughed, “You’re going to allow me to starve on your inedible bread while you skulk off with something that was meant for both of us?” “Perhaps.” “Savior, indeed,” the commander fleered. “You have saved me from one means of death only to plunge me into another.

That you may not be discouraged, bear in mind that the prize for which you are striving is worth more than all you can ever give to purchase it. Remember that you have powerful defenders ever near you. Against the assaults of corrupt nature you have God's grace. Against the snares of the devil you have the almighty power of God. Against the allurements of evil habits you have the force of good habits confirmed by grace. Against a multitude of evil spirits you have numberless angels of light. Against the bad example and persecutions of the world you have the good example and strengthening exhortations of the saints. Against the sinful pleasures and vain joys of the world you have the pure joys and ineffable consolations of the Holy Ghost.   Is it not evident that all that are for you are stronger than all that are against you? Is not God stronger than the devil? Is not grace superior to nature? Are not the good angels more powerful than the fallen legions of Satan? Are not the pure and ineffable joys of the soul far more delightful than the gross pleasures of sense and the vain amusements of the world?