Cortez Quotes

Men really do need sea-monsters in their personal oceans

Cortez looked like someone newly in love, the way only twenty-four-year-olds can look.

It would be good to live in a perpetual state of leave-taking, never to go nor to stay, but to remain suspended in that golden emotion of love and longing; to be loved without satiety.

The part about me being an 'okay sorcerer'? 'Not great'? No I believe I missed that. -Lucas Cortez (Dime Store Magic)

[...] it is a strange thing that most of the feeling we call religious, most of the mystical outcrying which is one of the most prized and used and desired reactions of our species, is really the understanding and the attempt to say that man is related to the whole thing, related inextricably to all reality, known and unknowable. This is a simple thing to say, but the profound feeling of it made a Jesus, a St. Augustine, a St. Francis, a Roger Bacon, a Charles Darwin, and an Einstein. Each of them in his own tempo and with his own voice discovered and reaffirmed with astonishment the knowledge that all things are one thing and that one thing is all things—plankton, a shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the spinning planets and an expanding universe, all bound together by the elastic string of time. It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again.

One who was born by the ocean or has associated with it cannot ever be quite content away from it for very long

There is a strange duality in the human which makes for an ethical paradox. We have definitions of good qualities and of bad; not changing things, but generally considered good and bad throughout the ages and throughout the species. Of the good, we think always of wisdom, tolerance, kindliness, generosity, humility; and the qualities of cruelty, greed, self-interest, graspingness, and rapacity are universally considered undesirable. And yet in our structure of society, the so-called and considered good qualities are invariable concomitants of failure, while the bad ones are the cornerstones of success…Perhaps no other animal is so torn between alternatives. Man might be described fairly adequately, if simply, as a two-legged paradox.

We have never understood why men mount the heads of animals and hang them up to look down on their conquerors. Possibly it feels good to these men to be superior to animals, but it does seem that if they were sure of it they would not have to prove it. Often a man who is afraid must constantly demonstrate his courage and, in the case of the hunter, must keep a tangible record of his courage. For ourselves, we have had mounted in a small hardwood plaque one perfect borrego [bighorn sheep] dropping. And where another man can say, "There was an animal, but because I am greater than he, he is dead and I am alive, and there is his head to prove it," we can say, "There was an animal, and for all we know there still is and here is proof of it. He was very healthy when we last heard of him.

I'm bad for you. I told you I will break you and I will. I wish I knew how not to. I can't. I'm sorry. You have to take me like this...

The compass simply represents the ideal, present but unachievable, and sight-steering a compromise with perfection which allows your boat to exist at all.

If then this tendency toward collectivization is a mutation there is no reason to suppose it is for the better. It is a rule in paleontology that ornamentation and complication precede extinction. And our mutation, of which the assembly line, the collective farm, the mechanized army, and the mass production of food are evidences or even symptoms, might well correspond to the thickening armor of the great reptiles—a tendency that can end only in extinction.

We have made our mark on the world, but we have really done nothing that the trees and creeping plants, ice and erosion, cannot remove in a fairly short time.

I tried teeling myself that feeling guilty was just a sickness of some sort. That it was men without guilt who made progress in life. Men who were able to lie, to cheat, men who knew all the shortcuts. Cortez. He didn't fuck around. Neither did Vince Lombardi. But no matter how much I thought about it, I still felt bad.

It is good to know what you are doing. The man with his pickled fish has set down one truth and has recorded in his experience many lies. The fish is not that color, that texture, that dead, nor does he smell that way.

He said 'sorry,' They all fucking say sorry...Sorry is a word, it fixes nothing; it just makes the perpetrator feel a little less like the arsehole he is.

What if I say no?" "I keep asking till the only option is yes. I always win, Ms. Payne.

There would come a time in our poverty when we needed a party.

Clearly it was time to consider rescheduling that optometrist appointment I'd missed last fall.

What’ll it be, Anna Cortez? Are you in, or are you out?

As my hair fell free, Cortez entwined his fingers in it and kissed me even harder. Then he slipped one hand from my hair and snapped his fingers over our heads. The lights went out.

The anarch is (I am simplifying) on the side of gold: it fascinates him, like everything that eludes society. Gold has its own immeasurable might. It need only show itself, and society with its law and order is in jeopardy. The anarch is on the side of gold : this is not to be construed as a lust for gold. He recognizes gold as the central and immobile power. He loves it, not like Cortez, but like Montezuma, not like Pizarro but like Atahualpa ....

Adults, in their dealing with children, are insane," he [Ed Ricketts] said. "And children know it too. Adults lay down rules they would not think of following, speak truths they do not believe. And yet they expect children to obey the rules, believe the truths, and admire and respect their parents for this nonsense. Children must be very wise and secret to tolerate adults at all. And the greatest nonsense of all that adults expect children to believe is that people learn by experience. No greater lie was ever revered. And its falseness is immediately discerned by children since their parents obviously have not learned anything by experience. Far from learning, adults simply become set in a maze of prejudices and dreams and sets of rules whose origins they do not know and would not dare inspect for fear the whole structure might topple over on them. I think children instinctively know this," Ed said. "Intelligent children learn to conceal their knowledge and keep free of this howling mania.

Do you remember what happened to Mexico when Cortez and his very fine good friends arrived from Spain? A whole civilization destroyed by greedy, righteous bigots. History will never forgive Cortez.

The honeymoon phase was over. He still called me his girl, still held me like I meant everything and I really wanted to believe he was still completely here with me. I looked over his body and at his sleeping face. I slowly moved out of his bed, and tip toed to the bathroom where I fell to the tiled floor and sobbed.

We must lean on others to strive on our own

Tiny emerged on deck some hours later, shaken but smiling. He said that what he had been considering love had turned out to be simple flatulence. He said he wished all his romantic problems could be solved as easily.

To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.

Who are you Jared? The man who wants to fuck me and own me, or the man who held me when I had a nightmare?

I would do almost anything for him to kiss me; his possessive lips and eager tongue invading my mouth, even the thought sent tingles up my numb spine and lifeless body

Justice is about making sure that being polite is not the same thing as being quiet. In fact, often times, the most righteous thing you can do is shake the table.

لقد تعلمت أن الشكوى مضيعة للوقت ، إن لم تستسغ أمرا فعليها تغييره ، وإن لم يكن قابلا للتغيير فلتقبله . وإن تعذر هذا وذاك ، فلتغير ظروفها الخاصة لتلائم الوضع الجدي .

الصدق دائما يفضل الكذب ، ليس لمجرد الدافع الخلقي ، ولكن أيضا لأن الحقيقة هي التي يسهل تذكرها .

For the paradoxes are becoming so great that leaders of people must be less and less intelligent to stand their own leadership.

I am a question mark pointed at a secret, Cortez is a tool aimed at the stubborn places of the world.

I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually and semantically correct than about being morally right. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

They gave Mrs. Cortez a check for five hundred and eighty-three dollars—a month’s rent in advance and a month’s rent as security—

بالنسبة لهن البدانة دليل على التقدم الطبيعي في الحياة . كفتيات كن رشيقات ، ثم مع بداية العشرينات من أعمارهن صرن ممتلئات . ومن منتصف إلى أواخر العشرينات أصبحن مكتنزات . وفي الثلاثينات أمسين بدينات . ثم في الأربعينات بتن كالجبال .

يبدو أنه مع الأطفال ركز على اعتبار الفشل عاملا لا يقل أهمية عن النجاح . عامل ضروري لا يستحق الخوف منه ، والخوف تستتبعه عدم القدرة على المخضي في الصعاب . التجربة أهم من النجاح والفشل معا .

[Man] is the only animal who lives outside of himself, whose drive is in external things—property, houses, money, concepts of power. He lives in his cities and his factories, in his business and job and art. But having projected himself into these external complexities, he is them. His house, his automobile are a part of him and a large part of him. This is beautifully demonstrated by a thing doctors know—that when a man loses his possessions a very common result is sexual impotence.

It is a rule in paleontology that ornamentation and complication precede extinction. And our mutation, of which the assembly line, the collective farm, the mechanized army, and the mass production of food are evidences or even symptoms, might well correspond to the thickening armor of the great reptiles—a tendency that can end only in extinction. If this should happen to be true, nothing stemming from thought can interfere with it or bend it. Conscious thought seems to have little effect on the action or direction of our species.

القوة ليست الضخامة وحدها ، والأعنف ليس بمن يحطم شيئا بيديه العاريتين . القوة تعني الذكاء والبراعة والابداع ، والأعنف قد يكون من يعرف كيف يحيا دون تبديد جهده ، أو أن يسبح ضد التيار من هنا لهناك دون أن يتملكه الاجهاد فيغرق .

{- Sziasztok – köszöntem, majd egy „szolid, iskolában vagyunk” csókkal köszöntöttem Cortezt."} – És engem ki fog üdvözölni? – háborodott fel Zsolti, amikor párokba rendeződtünk. Kinga – Dave, Ricsi – Virág, Cortez – én. – Szia, Zsolti – mosolyogtam rá kedvesen. – Ez miez? Nekem rendes üdvözlés kell – rázta meg a fejét. – Károooly! – ordította el magát, mire az egész folyosó felénk fordult, és izgatottan várta, mi fog történni. Karcsi kidugta a fejét a termük ajtaján, és a szemüvege mögül pislogva nézett felénk. – Szaladj szépen felém, és örülj nekem! – utasította Zsolti.

It's amazing to me; when your mind is fixed on one thing, you forget everything. You forget to eat and drink and care. The only thing I could never forget was him.

I just thought that a man, or in this case a woman, never gets too busy to attend his or her own funeral. You can be late for everything else but this.

The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of a writer.

Ideas are not dangerous unless they find seeding place in some earth more profound than the mind.

Possibly the deep feeling is that if people learn to eat one another the food supply would be so generous and so available that no one would be either safe or hungry.

For if ever any man were deeply and unconsciously sure that his future would be no better than his past, he might deeply wish to cease to live.

Let me absorb this thing. Let me try to understand it without private barriers. When I have understood what you are saying, only then will I subject it to my own scrutiny and my own criticism" This is the finest of all critical approaches and the rarest.

It is one diagnostic trait of Homo sapiens that groups of individuals are periodically infected with a feverish nervousness which causes the individual to turn on and destroy, not only his own kind, but the works of his own kind. It is not known whether this be caused by a virus, some airborne spore, or whether it be a species reaction to some meteorological stimulus as yet undetermined.

It is not enough to say that we cannot know or judge because all the information is not in. The process of gathering knowledge does not lead to knowing. A child's world spreads only a little beyond his understanding while that of a great scientist thrusts outward immeasurably. An answer is invariably the parent of a great family of new questions. So we draw worlds and fit them like tracings against the world about us, and crumple them when they do not fit and draw new ones.

He was the devil in a Sunday hat; he dressed and acted like a civil man, but inside he was just hatred and filth. Then, I guess after what I was planning to do to save a life, I wasn't too dissimilar to him.

I leaned my face into his palm and he looked at me like it was the first time he ever saw me. I felt my heart burst. I wanted him to kiss me. I didn’t care about what he owned, or what issues he had. I knew if we kissed, it would change us both. Even worse, I wanted to say I loved him.

Consider the blundering anarchic system of the United States the stupidity of some of its lawmakers, the violent reaction, the slowness of its ability to change. Twenty-five key men destroyed could make the Soviet Union stagger, but we could lose our congress, our president, and our general staff and nothing much would have happened. We would go right on. In fact we might be better for it.

There is a kind of alchemy in the transformation of base chocolate into this wise fool's-gold, a layman's magic that even my mother might have relished. As I work, I clear my mind, breathing deeply. The windows are open, and the through-draft would be cold if it were not for the heat of the stoves, the copper pans, the rising vapor from the melting couverture. The mingled scents of chocolate, vanilla, heated copper, and cinnamon are intoxicating, powerfully suggestive; the raw and earthy tang of the Americas, the hot and resinous perfume of the rain forest. This is how I travel now, as the Aztecs did in their sacred rituals: Mexico, Venezuela, Columbia. The court of Montezuma. Cortez and Columbus. The Food of the Gods, bubbling and frothing in ceremonial goblets. The bitter elixir of life.

...to the race in general, alcohol as been an anodyne, a warmer of the soul, a strengthener of muscle and spirit. It has given courage to cowards and has made very ugly people attractive. There is a story told of a Swedish tramp, sitting in a ditch on Midsummer Night. He was ragged and dirty and drunk, and he said to himself softly and in wonder, "I am rich and happy and perhaps a little beautiful.

It is very easy to grow tired at collecting; the period of a low tide is about all men can endure. At first the rocks are bright and every moving animal makes his mark on the attention. The picture is wide and colored and beautiful. But after an hour and a half the attention centers weary, the color fades, and the field is likely to narrow to an individual animal. Here one may observe his own world narrowed down until interest and, with it, observation, flicker and go out. And what if with age this weariness becomes permanent and observation dim out and not recover? Can this be what happens to so many men of science? Enthusiasm, interest, sharpness, dulled with a weariness until finally they retire into easy didacticism? With this weariness, this stultification of attention centers, perhaps there comes the pained and sad memory of what the old excitement was like, and regret might turn to envy of the men who still have it. Then out of the shell of didacticism, such a used-up man might attack the unwearied, and he would have in his hands proper weapons of attack. It does seem certain that to a wearied man an error in a mass of correct data wipes out all the correctness and is a focus for attack; whereas the unwearied man, in his energy and receptivity, might consider the little dross of error a by-product of his effort. These two may balance and produce a purer thing than either in the end. These two may be the stresses which hold up the structure, but it is a sad thing to see the interest in interested men thin out and weaken and die. We have known so many professors who once carried their listeners high on their single enthusiasm, and have seen these same men finally settle back comfortably into lectures prepared years before and never vary them again. Perhaps this is the same narrowing we observe in relation to ourselves and the tide pool—a man looking at reality brings his own limitations to the world. If he has strength and energy of mind the tide pool stretches both ways, digs back to electrons and leaps space into the universe and fights out of the moment into non-conceptual time. Then ecology has a synonym which is ALL.

We sat on a crate of oranges and thought what good men most biologists are, the tenors of the scientific world--temperamental, moody, lecherous, loud-laughing, and healthy. Once in a while one comes on the other kind--what used in the university to be called a 'dry-ball'--but such men are not really biologists. They are the embalmers of the field, the picklers who see only the preserved form of life without any of its principle. Out of their own crusted minds they create a world wrinkled with formaldehyde. The true biologist deals with life, with teeming boisterous life, and learns something from it, learns that the first rule of life is living. The dry-balls cannot possibly learn a thing every starfish knows in the core of his soul and in the vesicles between his rays. He must, so know the starfish and the student biologist who sits at the feet of living things, proliferate in all directions. Having certain tendencies, he must move along their lines to the limit of their potentialities. And we have known biologists who did proliferate in all directions: one or two have had a little trouble about it. Your true biologist will sing you a song as loud and off-key as will a blacksmith, for he knows that morals are too often diagnostic of prostatitis and stomach ulcers. Sometimes he may proliferate a little too much in all directions, but he is as easy to kill as any other organism, and meanwhile he is very good company, and at least he does not confuse a low hormone productivity with moral ethics.

I once asked Cortez whether he would risk his life for other men in the platoon. “I’d actually throw myself on the hand grenade for them,” he said. I asked him why. “Because I actually love my brothers,” he said. “I mean, it’s a brotherhood. Being able to save their life so they can live, I think is rewarding. Any of them would do it for me.

– Adomány? – vonta fel a szemöldökét Kinga. – Az NBL kártyákat annak szántam – közölte Cortez. – Kevés – tárta szét a karját Kinga. – Mi kell még? – Személyesebb. Amiért ölni tudnának a suliban. – Mondjuk, egy póló? – kérdezte Cortez elég fura arckifejezéssel. Kinga szeme felragyogott. – Óriási! Sőt, add, ami rajtad van! – Mivan? – röhögte el magát Cortez hitetlenül. – Ez az! – csettintett Kinga. – A suliban a lányok egymásra licitálnának egy pólódért, ami volt rajtad! Add ide! – Te beteg vagy! – rázta a fejét Cortez. Kinga elindult felé, ezért Cortez hátrálni kezdett. – Mi az? Rágózol? Köpd ki, ebbe a zsepibe! – matatott Kinga a zsebében, és előhúzott egy csomag pézsét.

Who you are, you say, isn’t important, but who I am you don't want to know. I warn you all. Don’t. You’re opening Pandora’s Box.

I'm at my best when I break and solve a case and...a woman.

Calm down, it isn't a ring” I laughed and he pushed the box across the table to me and I blushed and opened it.

People make promises that they have every intention of keeping at the time but when it comes to cashing in, suddenly the promise loses all value.

Why do good girls like bad boys?

Why do good girls like bad boys? Because when they’re bad, they’re good.

The moment or hour of leave-taking is one of the pleasantest times in human experience, for it has in it a warm sadness without loss.

Oftentimes, the most righteous thing you can do is shake the table.

It was a good thing, we told ourselves; the eyes grow weary with looking at new things; sleeping late, we said, has its genuine therapeutic value; we would be better for it, would be able to work more effectively. We have little doubt that all this was true, but we wish we could build as good a rationalization every time we are lazy. For in some beastly way this fine laziness has got itself a bad name. It is easy to see how it might have come into disrepute, if the result of laziness were hunger. But it rarely is. Hunger makes laziness impossible. It has even become sinful to be lazy. We wonder why. One could argue, particularly if one had a gift for laziness, that it is relaxation pregnant of activity, a sense of rest from which directed effort may arise, whereas most busy-ness is merely a kind of nervous tic. ... How can such a process have become a shame and a sin? Only in laziness can one achieve a state of contemplation which is a balancing of values, a weighing of oneself against the world and the world against itself. A busy man cannot find time for such balancing. We do not think a lazy man can commit murders, nor great thefts, nor lead a mob. He would be more likely to think about it and laugh. And a nation of lazy contemplative men would be incapable of fighting a war unless their very laziness were attacked. Wars are the activities of busy-ness.

Our hosts had been kind to us and considerate as only Mexicans can be. Furthermore, they had taught us the best ways to go hunting, and we shall never use any other. We have, however, made one slight improvement on their method: we shall not take a gun, thereby ovbiating the last remote possibility of having the hunt cluttered up with game. We have never understood why men mount the heads of animals and hang them up to look down on their conquerors. Possibly it feels food to these men to be superior to animals, but it does seem that if they were sure of it they would not have to prove it. Often a man who is afraid must constantly demonstrate his courage and, in the case of the hunter, must keep a tangible record of his courage. for ourselves, we have mounted in a small hardwood plaque one perfect borrego dropping. And where another man can say "There was an animal, but because I am greater than he, he is dead and I am alive, and there is his head to prove it," we can say, "There was an animal, and for all we know there still is and here is the proof of it. he was very healthy when we last heard of him

Tears flood in you your eyes burning your heart scars with my name scratched deep My face is gone my heart betrayed by your lullabies I’m a shadow of a girl inside Hands are touching you nothing takes the place of you Heart wrench, weeps goodbye Lullabies, beautiful and trusting Barely breathing as they break into dust Lonely corners me Sweeps me off my feet Shows me it was better for me Fingertips holding close your grip not as soft Follows me to an empty bed I can’t stop the weakening of my soul my body is dying your tune is holding my mind Let me go see what I do No control No you You whisper your sweet goodbye If it is small it won’t interrupt my sleep But my heart you keep You say it’s for me But who would be happy? Alone left out in the cold

But I also instantly recognized this response as my conditioning from grad school, where these things were trained out of me, where I was reprogrammed in a way that actually took away my power while purporting to give me access to power--power that, through my voice, I'd already had.

He swallowed hard and looked deep into my eyes so intensely, I tried hard not to look away. I didn’t want him to see how mildly scared of him I was. I touched the hand in his lap and he answered.

Wealthy celebrities in particular are all too eager to jump onto the proverbial bandwagon of oppression, and lecture us about the evils within our country. In Vogue magazine, Taylor Swift said, “Rights are being stripped from basically everyone who isn’t a straight white cisgender male.” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, elected to Congress at twenty-nine years old, famously said that her generation “never saw American prosperity.” Such overstatements, totally devoid of evidence, only make sense in the context of a culture that has become accustomed to seeking victimhood over self-empowerment

Once Ed said to me, "For a very long time I didn't like myself." It was not said in self-pity but simply as an unfortunate fact. "It was a very difficult time," he said, "and very painful. I did not like myself for a number of reasons, some of them valid and some of them pure fancy. I would hate to have to go back to that. Then gradually," he said, "I discovered with surprise and pleasure that a number of people did like me. And I thought, if they can like me, why cannot I like myself? Just thinking it did not do it, but slowly I learned to like myself and then it was all right." This was not said in self-love in its bad connotation but in self-knowledge. He meant literally that he had learned to accept and like the person "Ed" as he liked other people. It gave him a great advantage. Most people do not like themselves at all. They distrust themselves, put on masks and pomposities. They quarrel and boast and pretend and are jealous because they do not like themselves. But mostly they do not even know themselves well enough to form a true liking. They cannot see themselves well enough to form a true liking, and since we automatically fear and dislike strangers, we fear and dislike our stranger-selves.

It would be good to live in a perpetual state of leave-taking, never to go nor to stay, but to remain suspended in that golden emotion of love and longing; to be missed without being gone; to be loved without satiety. How beautiful one is and how desirable; for in a few moments one will have ceased to exist.

People who are actually "cancelled" don't get their thoughts published and amplified in major outlets... . The term "cancel culture" comes from entitlement—as though the person complaining has the right to a large, captive audience, & one is a victim if people choose to tune them out. Odds are you're not actually cancelled, you're just being challenged, held accountable, or unliked. ― Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Why do we so dread to think of our species as a species? Can it be that we are afraid of what we may find? That human self-love would suffer too much and that the image of God might prove to be a mask? This could be only partly true, for if we could cease to wear the image of a kindly, bearded, interstellar dictator, we might find ourselves true images of his kingdom, our eves the nebulae, and universes in our cells.

Fuck it,” said Private First Class Chris Barnes, raising his hand. “Let’s do it. This sounds like a great fucking idea. Who wants to get blown up?” They started laughing. Watt, Barker, Cortez, and Private First Class Shane Hoeck all raised their hands. They did not give a damn anymore. It was all so absurd to them, that they were going to drive up and down a road for the next eight hours as bomb magnets. The only thing that they could do was laugh. “Hooray! We’re going out to get blown up!” they sang. “Who’s on board? Hey, who wants to come get blown up? Woohoo! Yeah, dude, I am ready to go fucking die! We are all going to fucking die!

I pulled him in and kissed back, and he threw his hands through my hair, his tongue licking hard over mine, picked me up by my thighs and wrapped them around him, he had a leather couch in his office and he threw me onto it, he quickly yanked his tie off and ripped his shirt off. I lay on the sofa looking over his sculpted chest, his deep pecks his hard abs, he came at me and grabbed my hair, he pulled it back exposing my throat, he kissed from my jaw down to my collarbone.

Perhaps the most overrated virtue in our list of shoddy virtues is that of giving. Giving builds up the ego of the giver, makes him superior and higher and larger than the receiver. Nearly always, giving is a selfish pleasure, and in many cases it is a downright destructive and evil thing. One has only to remember some of our wolfish financiers who spend two-thirds of their lives clawing fortunes out of the guts of society and the latter third pushing it back. It is not enough to suppose that their philanthropy is a kind of frightened restitution, or that their natures change when they have enough. Such a nature never has enough and natures do not change that readily. I think that the impulse is the same in both cases. For giving can bring the same sense of superiority as getting does, and philanthropy may be another kind of spiritual avarice.

Eres es la explosión de rosas en un cuarto oscuro. O el sabor inesperado y dulce en el té que tomamos en Starbucks You are the moon that gives midnight its meaning. And the explanation of water for all living things. You are my compass, A sapphire, A bookmark, A rare coin, Un trompo, Un canica, De mi juventud. Eres miel y canela chocolate y jamoncillo. You are rare spices lost from a boat That was once sailed by Cortez. Eres un rosa, prensado en un libro un anillo de perla de herencia y un frasco de perfume rojo que se encuentran cerca de las orillas del Nilo. You are an old soul from an ancient place, A thousand years and centuries and milleniums ago. And you have traveld all this way… Just so that I could love you… And, I do.

We in the United States have done so much to destroy our own resources, our timber, our land, our fishes, that we should be taken as a horrible example and our methods avoided by any government and people enlightened enough to envision a continuing economy. With our own resources we have been prodigal, and our country will not soon lose the scars of our grasping stupidity.

We must remember three things," he said to them. "I will tell them to you in the order of their importance. Number one and first in importance, we must have as much fun as we can with what we have. Number two, we must eat as well as we can, because if we don't we won't have the health and strength to have as much fun as we might. And number three and third and last in importance, we must keep the house reasonably in order, wash the dishes, and such things. But we will not let the last interfere with the other two.

Jared. I have a past" I almost whispered "Who doesn-" I interrupted him "Please just let me speak and then you can tell me what it is you want." He nodded and l continued. I hated this. I hadn't told people. But he could find out and he would; I had to tell him.

Where there is little danger, there seems to be little stimulation. Perhaps the pattern of struggle is so deeply imprinted in the genes of all life conceived in this benevolently hostile planet that the removal of obstacles automatically atrophies a survival drive.

We wanted to see everything our eyes would accommodate, to think what we could, and, out of our seeing and thinking, to build some kind of structure in modeled imitation of the observed reality. We knew that what we would see and record and construct would be warped, as all knowledge patterns are warped, first, by the collective pressure and stream of our time and race, second by the thrust of our individual personalities. But knowing this, we might not fall into too many holes—we might maintain some balance between our warp and the separate thing, the external reality.

A videó elindult, a legeslegelső kép Ricsi, ahogyan belefejel a kamerába, majd rögtön azután elindul a Papa Roach Last Resort című dala, és egyszerűen mindenki megőrül a felvételen. Andris és Robi ugrál, Kinga vörös fejjel ordít, Gábor idegesen csapkod Dave felé, aki a szabad kezével (amelyikkel nem kamerázik) a fülét pöckölgeti. Én a padomon ülve olvasok, majd visszadobom az ölembe esett szendvicset (?), Virág a székén ugrál (eredetileg egy Kispál és a Borz számra, de, ugye, ez ezen a felvételen nem hallatszik), Cortez lesöpri a padjára rakott papírokat, Ricsi meg páros lábbal tapos rajta. Zsolti a terem végéből nekifut, és kitartott karral leveri a csontváz fejét, majd pankrátor módjára rá is ugrik a földön heverő Carlosra. Ezután bevágások kajacsatáról, üdítőköpködésről, mutogatásról a kamerának (cenzúra, Dave kikockázta), metálvillák és kinyújtott nyelvek (Andris és Robi), lökdösődés (Karcsi a termünkben járt), Macu a felmosórongyot lóbálva próbál ninjitsuzni (valami japán harcművészet), Zsolti azonnal felveszi vele szemben a harci pózt, majd vágóképek következtek arról, hogy milyen sora van nálunk Carlosnak, a csontváznak. Virág megöleli, én kezet fogok vele (nálam maradt a karja), Zsolti belenyúl a szemébe, Andris és Robi bordán csapják, Kinga megpróbálja visszatenni a fejét, Cortez napszemüveget ad rá, Ricsi lefejeli, Jacques és Gábor pedig két oldalról átkarolják, amolyan „haveri" stílusban. A zene véget ért, az utolsó kép, immáron hanggal, hogy felröhögünk valamin a teremben, aztán elsötétül a jelenet. Itt azt hittem, vége, és már ki akartam nyomni, amikor még egyszer kivilágosodott a képernyőm, és Máday jelent meg, ahogyan a termünkben áll a tanári asztal mellett. – Tizenegyedik bé! Elegem van belőletek! – mondja idegesen. És ekkor tényleg véget ér a felvétel.

He laughs like, what can you do? Laughs and spreads his palms as if revealing himself, Cortez the thief, as he is and always was, the person I always knew was there but never wanted to see. I am surprised, but why am I surprised? I decided at some point that he had made my road his road, given over to me the last two months of preimpact existence, because I was on my cockamamie hero's quest and required an able and agile sidekick—I reached that conclusion without thinking about it much and put the question aside. But everybody does everything for a reason. That's lesson number one of police work; it's lesson number one of life.

Successful law is simply the publication of the practice of the majority of units of a society, and by it the inevitable variable units are either driven to conform or are eliminated. We have had many examples of law trying to be the well-spring of action; our prohibition law showed how completely fallacious that theory is.

The tree-frog in the high pool in the mountain cleft, had he been endowed with human reason, on finding a cigarette butt in the water might have said, "Here is an impossibility. there is no tobacco hereabouts nor any paper. Here is evidence of fire and there has been no fire. This thing cannot fly nor crawl nor blow in the wind. In fact, this thing cannot be and I will deny it, for if I admit that this thing is here the whole world of frogs is in danger, and from there it is only one step to anti-frogicentricism." And so that frog will for the rest of his life try to forget that something is, is.

Don't ever cancel my call again! I told you I would talk to you, you should have waited..." Shit. Shit. Shit. "Mr. Edge, it is 5pm, I assumed my working day was done and I cancelled the phone call by accident, this phone is new, still working it out" I made it up as I went along and was surprised by my ability to lie on my feet. "Melissa, don't play stupid. Get your arse back here or I will hunt it down and drag it back" He ordered and made me hold my breath

He eyed me curiously, his eyes fluttering over my breasts, and I swallowed, knowing he was thinking things he shouldn't. His tongue snuck between his lips and lightly darted to moisten them. I heard what sounded like a moan before he moved his left hand from under the table. He tried to rest his palm on my resting hand but I inched away. I looked at his hand, and noticed the shading of where his wedding ring used to go... My mind caught up - used to? Where was it?

Only in laziness can one achieve a state of contemplation which is a balancing of values, a weighing of oneself against the world and the world against itself. A busy man cannot find time for such balancing. We do not think a lazy man can commit murders, nor great thefts, nor lead a mob. He would be more likely to think about it and laugh. And a nation of lazy contemplative men would be incapable of fighting a war unless their very laziness were attacked. Wars are the activities of busy-ness.

Rahul’s great idea, he said that having either darkness or too much white made someone’s sanity decay and made them easier to manipulate. In the dark, though, they felt they could hide, and in Rahul’s words... 'They can hide, but they can’t run' he used that like a mantra.

There is a curious idea among unscientific men that in scientific writing there is a common plateau of perfectionism. Nothing could be more untrue. The reports of biologists are the measure, not of the science, but of the men themselves. There are as few scientific giants as any other kind. In some reports it is impossible, because of inept expression, to relate the descriptions to the living animals. In some papers collecting places are so mixed or ignored that the animals mentioned cannot be found at all. The same conditioning forces itself into specification as it does into any other kind of observation, and the same faults of carelessness will be found in scientific reports as in the witness chair of a criminal court. It has seemed sometimes that the little men in scientific work assumed the awe-fullness of a priesthood to hide their deficiencies, as the witch-doctor does with his stilts and high masks, as the priesthoods of all cults have, with secret or unfamiliar languages and symbols. It is usually found that only the little stuffy men object to what is called "popularization", by which they mean writing with a clarity understandable to one not familiar with the tricks and codes of the cult. We have not known a single great scientist who could not discourse freely and interestingly with a child. Can it be that the haters of clarity have nothing to say, have observed nothing, have no clear picture of even their own fields? A dull man seems to be a dull man no matter what his field, and of course it is the right of a dull scientist to protect himself with feathers and robes, emblems and degrees, as do other dull men who are potentates and grand imperial rulers of lodges of dull men.

This is not mysticism, but identification; man, building this greatest and most personal of all tools, has in turn received a boat-shaped mind, and the boat, a man-shaped soul. His spirit and the tendrils of his feeling are so deep in a boat that the identification is complete. It is very easy to see why the Viking wished his body to sail away in an unmanned ship, for neither could exist without the other; or, failing that, how it was necessary that the things he loved most, his women and his ship, lie with him and thus keep closed the circle. In the great fire on the shore, all three started at least in the same direction, and in the gathered ashes who could say where man or woman stopped and ship began?

– Ren, igazán hiányoztál – nézett rám Ricsi, raszta tincsei mögé rejtve a mosolyát. – Fizika? – túrtam bele a táskámba. – Jaja – bólintott. – Tessék – nyomtam a kezébe a füzetem. Cortez és Zsolti nyugodtan ácsorogtak, mire Ricsi feltartotta a füzetet. – Senki? – kérdezte értetlenül. – Az okos barátnő előnye. Muhahaha – vihogott Zsolti, mi meg unottan összenéztünk Kingával. Ez egyébként tényleg így van, Cortez és Zsolti állandóan rólunk írják. Csak annyi a különbség, hogy Cortez elkéri és leírja, Zsolti pedig ellopja és leírja. :) Ricsi töprengve nézett a robogóján ülő Virágra, aki ide-oda rángatta a kormányt, mintha vezetne, és sóhajtva bólintott. – Ja, vágom – mondta vigyorogva, és a vállát vonogatva másolni kezdte a leckét.

... Melissa. Where are you planning to go?" His voice was nasally, shit, he knew I had no idea where to go. "Well if you didn't change the apartment I was staying in I would. I was going to stay in a hotel" "How will you do that without your purse, sweetcheeks?" he sounded so damn cocky. I wanted to hit him, somehow through the phone. "Look, wait there, ill come down. We should talk anyway" "I have nothing to say" I grumbled "I have plenty" and he hung up.

Gentleman,” I purr smoothly in greeting. Ezra and Cort circle me like sharks scenting blood. I know who they are, but not who is who since they’re wearing black hoods over their heads. It covers them to the shoulder and has holes for the eyes and mouth. Their clothing is identical Italian designer label suits. Even their shoes are the same. Their eyes glow like steel ball-bearings from the safety of their masks. The mouths are different- one serious, one snarky- both ruby-red and kissable. While they circle Fate and me several times taking our measure, the other Master stands in a sphere of his own confidence. He’s older and I don’t mean just in age, but knowledge. Ezra and Cortez feel like babies compared to this man. I bet he’s who I really have to impress. I wait, always meeting their eyes when their path moves them back to my face. I don’t follow them with my gaze- I wait. “Hello,” the hood with the serious lips speaks in a smooth deep tone. I know it’s not his true voice, but the one Kris calls The Boss. His eyes are kind and assessing. No one pays Fate any mind as she cowers at my thigh. I hold their undivided attention. Curly-locks is quiet- watchful- a predator sighting its quarry. Snarky mouth is leering at my chest and I smirk. Caught ya, Cortez Abernathy. “I seem to be at a disadvantage conversing with you while you’re hooded. I can’t see you, but you can see me.” I try to get them to out themselves. It’s a longshot. “And who are you, Ma’am?” Ezra asks respectfully. “Please call me Queen.” I draw on all of my lessons from Hillbrook to pull me through this conversation. The power in the air is stifling. I wonder if it’s difficult for them to be in the same room without having a cage match for dominance. I feel like I’m on Animal Planet and the lions are circling. “Queen, indeed,” Cort says snidely under his breath and I wince. I turn my face from them in embarrassment. I should have gone with something less- less everything. I know I’m strong, but the word also emulates elegance and beauty. I’m neither. Have to say, tonight has sucked for my self-esteem. First, the dominant one overlooks me for Fate and now Cortez makes fun of me- lovely. “What did you say to upset her?” Ezra accuses Cortez. “Nothing,” Cort complains in confusion. “Please excuse my partner. Words are his profession and it seems they have failed him this evening. I will apologize for not sharing our names, but this gentleman is Dexter.” He gestures to the dominant man. I wait for him to shake my hand like a civilized person. He does not- he actually crosses his arms over his chest in disobedience. This shit is going to be a piece of cake.