β
I hate this feeling. Like I'm here, but I'm not. Like someone cares. But they don't. Like I belong somewhere else, anywhere but here, and escape lies just past that snowy window, cool and crisp as the February air.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
When you love someone, you don't want to hurt them, even if they deserve to be hurt. When you love someone, you want to hurt them, even when they don't deserve to be hurt.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Glass (Crank, #2))
β
Taking no chances means wasting your dreams..
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
Smile. Nod. Say
something witty
before he finds
out what an incredible
geek you are.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
She whirled when the monster was almost on top of her. I thought the thing in her hands was an umbrella until she cranked the pump and the shotgun blast blew the giant twenty feet backwards, right into Nico's sword.
"Nice one," Paul said.
"When did you learn to fire a shotgun?" I demanded.
My mom blew the hair out of her face. "About two seconds ago. Percy, we'll be fine. Go!
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #5))
β
Human relationships didn't work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other. It was a duel to the death--in a cesspool.
β
β
Charles Bukowski (Women)
β
Librarians, Dusty, possess a vast store of politeness. These are people who get asked regularly the dumbest questions on God's green earth. These people tolerate every kind of crank and eccentric and mouth breather there is.
β
β
Garrison Keillor (Dusty and Lefty: The Lives of the Cowboys)
β
You were a summer gift, one I'll always treasure. You were a dream I never wanted to wake up from. You opened my eyes to things I'll never really see. You're the best thing that will ever happen to me.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
We used to do coke, till "Just Say No" put the stuff out of reach. Now it's crank. Meth. The monster. It's a bitch on the body, but damn do you fly.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
Have you ever had so much to say that your mouth closed up tight struggling to harness the nuclear force coalescing within your words? Have you ever had so many thoughts churning inside you that you didnβt dare let them escape in case they blew you wide open? Have you ever been so angry that you couldnβt look in the mirror for fear of finding the face of evil glaring back at you?
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
Rose took my nose, I suppose,β he repeated; the bubble of phlegm in his throat made a disgusting crackle. βAnd it really blows.
β
β
James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
β
you fly until you crash two days
two nights
no sleep,
no food,
come down off the monster
YOU CRASH REAL HARD
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
This is unstoppable, no holds barred. This is beautiful. Crazy. A beginning. Betrayal. Addictive. Aggressive. Alive. This is something to be afraid of.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Fallout (Crank, #3))
β
Anger is a valid emotion. It's only bad when it takes control and makes you do things you don't want to do.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Fallout (Crank, #3))
β
Girls get screwed.
Not that kind of screwed, what I mean is, they're always on the short end of things.
The way things work, how
guys feel great, but make girls feel
cheap for doing
exactly what
they beg for.
The way they get to play you,
all the while claiming they
love you and making you
believe it's
true.
The way it's okay to gift their heart one day, a backhand the next,
to move on to the apricot
when the peach blushes and bruises.
These things make me believe God's a man after all.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
Forgiveness isnβt my best thing.
Easier staying pissed. But Iβm
tired of being pissed all the time.
Tired of feeling hurt by stuff that
can never be fixed because it is
an indelible part of the past.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Fallout (Crank, #3))
β
It's just so hard to feel good, you know?" I do know. And more than that, it's just so incredibly hard to feel.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Fallout (Crank, #3))
β
How could I share the
way my heart was breaking
when my confessor
didnβt believe
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
Love is like that. I could crush her beneath the weight of confession.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Fallout (Crank, #3))
β
Falling in love with someone is the surest highway to hurt that I know. When the door to love opens, the window to control closes.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Fallout (Crank, #3))
β
The problem with resolutions is they're only as solid as the person making them.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
Sometimes the little things in life mean the most.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Glass (Crank, #2))
β
Lula had Eminem cranked up. He was rapping about trailer park girls and how they go round the outside, and I was wondering what the heck that meant. I'm a white girl from Trenton. I don't know these things. I need a rap
cheat sheet.
β
β
Janet Evanovich (To the Nines (Stephanie Plum, #9))
β
Puzzle pieces don't always connect do they?
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Fallout (Crank, #3))
β
The monster likes to talk; he jumps into your head and opens your mouth, making it spout your deepest darkest deceptions. Making you say all the things you'd rather not say, at least not in mixed company." (Ellen Hopkins)
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
I'm a Crank. I'm slowly going crazy. I keep wanting to chew off my own fingers and randomly kill people.
β
β
James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
β
I want to open myself, let him inside. But how do I give what has already been taken?
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Glass (Crank, #2))
β
How can I explain purposely setting foot on a path so blatantly treacherous? Was the fun in the fall?
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
empty and closed, hovering in some frozen netherworld neither sun nor rain could thaw.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
We kissed for about
the thousandth time,
No promises,
no demands,
Just solid rebuilding
of shattered trust.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
Life was good
before I
met
the monster.
After,
life
was great
At least
for a little while
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
Funny thing, your brain,
how it always functions on one
level or another. How, even stuck in
some sort of subconcious limbo, it works
your lungs, your muscle twitches, your heart,
in fact, in symphony with your heart, allowing it
to feel love. Pain. Jealousy. Guilt. I wonder if itβs the
same for people, lost in comas. Is there really such a thing
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
False hope," she said. "Guess that's better then no hope at all.
β
β
James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
β
Why doesn't love come with an owner's manual?
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Fallout (Crank, #3))
β
Clear.
Cold.
Empty.
Like how I feel
right now. Love
is strange. One
minute youβre
jungle fever.
The next
youβre
Artic
winter.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Fallout (Crank, #3))
β
Innocence eroded into nightmare.
All because of very bad touch.
Love, corrupted.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Fallout (Crank, #3))
β
Alone, there is only the person inside. I've grown to like her better than the stuck-up husk of me. Alone, there is no perfect daughter, no gifted high school junior, no Kristina Georgia Snow. There is only Bree." (Ellen Hopkins)
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
Hot flush, raging bluch. Ice flash, instant crash.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
you come home, and everyone talks at once and everyone asks questions, but no one waits for the answers.Instead they talk about themselves, what they've been up to, what they're going to do next, Β Β Β Β Β as if you're a photo on the wall.And then they talk to one another, forgetting you've jsut flown in, forgetting you're in the backseat, forgetting they've already said it all.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
You're a gift, one I'll always treasure. You're a dream I never want to wake up from. You open my eyes to things I'll never really see. You're the best thing that will ever happen to me. Be safe. Be smart. Stay you.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
β
β
Mark Twain
β
Irony is just honesty with the volume cranked up.
β
β
George Saunders
β
Red and raw like my brain, unable to shut down, thoughts crashing like electrons orbiting a nucleus of deuling emotions.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
Detailed descriptions, abstract ambitions, relevant observations, your's and mine.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.
β
β
Henri Bergson
β
Sometimes tradition and habit are just that, comfortable excuses to leave things be, even when they are unjust and unworthy. Sometimes--not often, but sometimes--the cranks and radicals turn out to be right. Sometimes Everyone is wrong.
β
β
Matthew Scully (Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy)
β
I tried to warn you,
But girls never listen.
Got your innocence insured?
βCause itβs βbout to be stolen
Right out from under your nose.
Prepare to curl your toes.
Iβve got a one-track mind.
Youβve got a nice behind.
Chorus:
I had a good thing goinβ
All numb in my shell,
Then you took me by surprise
And now Iβm scared as hell.
I donβt wanna feel for you,
I donβt wanna feel.
If feeling means hurting,
Then I donβt wanna be real.
You crank up my lust, girl,
You tame down my rage.
You let your inner vixen
Roam out of her cage.
The moment our lips met
I saw it in your eyes,
But you were seeing me,
too, I now realize.
Chorus
What do I want from you?
I want everything.
And Iβm not gonna shareβ
This ainβt a casual fling.
You can be my bad girl,
Iβll even be your good boy.
Howβd the tables get turned?
F*** it, Iβll be your love toy.
β
β
Wendy Higgins (Sweet Peril (Sweet, #2))
β
Have you ever
had so much to say
that your mouth closed up tight
struggling to harness
the nuclear force
coalescing within your words?
Have you ever
had so many thoughts
churning inside you that you didnβt
dare let them escape
in case they blew you wide open?
Have you ever
been so angry that you
couldnβt look in the mirror
for fear of finding the face of evil
glaring back at you?
β
β
Ellen Hopkins
β
If you're looking for forever,
I'll take the batteries out of my clocks.
So that we'll be stuck inside this moment,
as if time had really stopped.
I would tell you I love you every second,
except here, seconds do not exist.
So I'll say I love you with each breath,
with each smile, with each kiss.
And when I die, you can crank your watch,
restart your clocks, begin the time.
And know that we were infinite
in the moment that you were mine.
β
β
Ellen Everett (I Saw You As A Flower: A Poetry Collection)
β
Even good girls have secrets, ones even their best friends must guess.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
With you, I am Adam. And you are my beautiful Eve. Let's run away, find our garden, live there together, happy. Naked.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
It was body rush
After body rush,
intensity building.
Touch me there.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
The academic community has in it the biggest concentration of alarmists, cranks and extremists this side of the giggle house.
β
β
William F. Buckley Jr.
β
Before you go, you need to know - I'd do anything for you. Even kis you goodbye and watch you go.
β
β
Charles Sheehan-Miles (A Song for Julia (Thompson Sisters, #1))
β
You gotta be crazy to open your windows, invite the demons in.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
Dani: Crank it up. Lets get this party started. *I hand Dancer my iPod.*
Lor: What is this crap. Where the hell is Hendrix on this thing?
Jo: Did you get any Muse?
Dani: Muse is something you do
Jo: Distrubed is something you are
Dancer: And Godsmacked is something you get
Lor: Don't you have any Motley Crue or Van Halen?
Christian: How about some Flogging Molly?
Ryodan: Whats the deal with all the Linkin Park, for fuck's sake.
Dancer: Mega has a crush on Chester
Jo: You got any Adele?
Dani: Got some Nicki Minaj.
Ryodan: Somebody kill me now.
β
β
Karen Marie Moning (Iced (Fever, #6))
β
I am a Crank, Minho! I am a Crank! Why canβt you get that through your bloody head? If you had the Flare and knew what you were about to go through, would you want your friends to stand around and watch? Huh? Would you want that?
β
β
James Dashner (The Death Cure (Maze Runner, #3))
β
The only thing about myself I know for sure is that I don't know anything.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Fallout (Crank, #3))
β
I don't need more pain in my life. Why did I invite it in? Do I have to feel pain to believe I feel anything at all?
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Glass (Crank, #2))
β
Get to work. Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in midair.
β
β
Annie Dillard (The Writing Life)
β
He smirks and cranks his glorious smile up another notch so itβs in full HD IMAX.
β
β
E.L. James (Fifty Shades Darker (Fifty Shades, #2))
β
Certain of misfire, my heart threatens to stop.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Fallout (Crank, #3))
β
It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour of calculation which could safely be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.
(Describing, in 1685, the value to astronomers of the hand-cranked calculating machine he had invented in 1673.)
β
β
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz
β
Because you make me better. You make me-you make me feel like I matter. Like my life matters. I feel like, with you, I can do anything in the world. That we can do anything in the world. And we will.
β
β
Charles Sheehan-Miles (A Song for Julia (Thompson Sisters, #1))
β
I need to capture my sprite with trembling hands. Except I could crush her. Wonder how many small things of beauty - flowers, seashells, dragonflies - have met such a demise. Wonder how much fragile love has collapsed beneath the weight of confession.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Fallout (Crank, #3))
β
Possibilities
...in the closet
...itching
...to break out
...but afraid of
...the fallout
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Fallout (Crank, #3))
β
What have I done to her?" Gabriel muttered to himself as he crossed the room to crank open a window. Cool air washed over his skin. "What the devil did she do to me?
β
β
Olivia Parker
β
What do you want from me, Crank?β Her voice was raw, desperate.
I looked at her. She was so close, but might as well have been a thousand miles away. I said, βI want you to love me.
β
β
Charles Sheehan-Miles (A Song for Julia (Thompson Sisters, #1))
β
My body
Healed quickly. But the wound
to my psyche was deep.
Wide. First aid, too little, too late,
left me hemorrhaging inside,
the blood unstaunched by psychological
bandage or love's healing magic.
Eventually it scabbed over,
a thick, ugly welt of memory.
I work to conceal it, but no matter
how hard I try, once in a while
something makes me pick at it
until the scarring bleeds.
In my arms, Ashante cries,
innocence ripped apart
by circumstance. Bloodied by
inhuman will. Time will prove
a tourniquet. But she will always
be at risk of infection.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Fallout (Crank, #3))
β
Ever, can't you just relax and enjoy the view? When was the last time you were in Paris anyway?"
"Never. I've never been to Paris. And I hate to break it to you, Ava, but thisβis not Paris. This is like some cranked up Disney version of Paris. Like, you've taken a pile of travel brochures and French postcards, and scenes from that adorable cartoon movie Ratatouille, mixed them all together and voila, created this.
β
β
Alyson Noel (Blue Moon (The Immortals, #2))
β
Always before, I just said no, left it solidly there. I waver now. I want to share everything with him. Want to know what he knows, feel what he feels, share the same space he's in.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Fallout (Crank, #3))
β
As I thought
about that, I had
to wonder: What will we
know better about tomorrow?
Who cares? Hindsight is useless.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
Our meeting, touching, accidentally connecting immediately, interwoven hand-in-hand, heart-to-heart.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
The promoters of the global economy...see nothing odd or difficult about unlimited economic growth or unlimited consumption in a limited world.
β
β
Wendell Berry (Another Turn of the Crank: Essays)
β
I wanted to meet the monster.
Why go down if you can go up?
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
Your hurt swallows ine, like space swallows time, and the two intertwine. We tangle together.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
So you want to know all about me, Who
I am
What chance meeting of brush and canvas painted
the face
you see? what made me despise the girl
in the mirror
enough to transform her, turn her into a stranger,
only not.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
Forever made that kiss stand out in my mind, touch my heart, make me remember a kiss so tender.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
So you want to know all about me. Who
I am.
What chance meeting of brush and canvas painted
the face
you see? What made me despise the girl
in the mirror
enough to transform her,turn her to into a stranger,
only not.
So you want to hear the whole story. Why
I swerved
off the high road,
hard left to nowhere,
recklessly
indifferent to those coughing my dust,
picked up speed
no limits,no top end,
just a high velocity rush
to madness.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
No way to get away. No way to get away. Little change to sneak away... insanity.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
Yeah, I know getting high isn't so smart. Ask me if I care.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Glass (Crank, #2))
β
God i've missed you. I can't wait to give you your present. He kisses me hotter this time, and beneath me, through his denim and mine. I can feel the promise of his Christmas gift soon to come.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Glass (Crank, #2))
β
Life is full of choices. We don't always make good ones.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
Alone
everything changes.
Some might call it distorted reality
but it's exactly the place I need to be.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
You can turn your back but you can never really walk away.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
β
Six months since we met up
again we are inseparable,
an intricate weave.
No longer do I believe
this is a temporary fling.
More like total commitment.
More like I have walked
down the aisle, holding
hands with the monster.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Glass (Crank, #2))
β
Crank, You See isn't any ordinary monster. It's like a giant octopus, weaving its tentacles not just around you, but through you, squeezing not hard enough to kill you, but enough to keep you from reeling until you try to get away. Try, and you hunger for it grasping clutch, the way its tendrils prop you up, your need intensifying exponentially every minute you refuse to admit its being (p.469)
β
β
Ellen Hopkins
β
Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power,- who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government.
β
β
Thomas Pynchon (Mason & Dixon)
β
I feel like a goddess, jailed in her Olympus. Little wonder how the gods toyed with humans. Toyed with women, to watch them squirm, pollinate the seeds of despair; toyed with men, to satiate their Seven Deadly Sins.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Glass (Crank, #2))
β
Trust me, son. The pair of you are going to do this from time to time, and you might as well start to deal with it rationally now. Took me a good fifty years of making shit worse till I figured out a better way to handle arguments. Learn from my mistakes.β
Johnβs head cranked over, and he started to mouth, I love her so much. Iβd die if anything happened to hβ
When he stopped short, Tohr took a deep breath through the pain in his chest. βI know. Trust me β¦ I know.
β
β
J.R. Ward (Lover Reborn (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #10))
β
I've Got A Little Problem
And I'm not really sure how to fix it.
Not really sure I need to. Not really sure I could.
Life is pretty good. But once in a while, uninvited and uninitiated anger invades me.
It starts, a tiny gnaw at the back of my brain. Like a migraine except without pain. They say headaches blossom, but this isn't so much a blooming as a bleeding. Irritation bleeds into rage, seethes into fury. An ulcer, emptying hatred inside me. And I don't know why. Life is pretty good.
So, what the hell?
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Fallout (Crank, #3))
β
But when you talk about Nabokov and Coover, youβre talking about real geniuses, the writers who weathered real shock and invented this stuff in contemporary fiction. But after the pioneers always come the crank turners, the little gray people who take the machines others have built and just turn the crank, and little pellets of metafiction come out the other end. The crank-turners capitalize for a while on sheer fashion, and they get their plaudits and grants and buy their IRAs and retire to the Hamptons well out of range of the eventual blast radius. There are some interesting parallels between postmodern crank-turners and whatβs happened since post-structural theory took off here in the U.S., why thereβs such a big backlash against post-structuralism going on now. Itβs the crank-turners fault. I think the crank-turners replaced the critic as the real angel of death as far as literary movements are concerned, now. You get some bona fide artists who come along and really divide by zero and weather some serious shit-storms of shock and ridicule in order to promulgate some really important ideas. Once they triumph, though, and their ideas become legitimate and accepted, the crank-turners and wannabes come running to the machine, and out pour the gray pellets and now the whole thingβs become a hollow form, just another institution of fashion. Take a look at some of the critical-theory Ph.D. dissertations being written now. Theyβre like de Man and Foucault in the mouth of a dull child. Academia and commercial culture have somehow become these gigantic mechanisms of commodification that drain the weight and color out of even the most radical new advances. Itβs a surreal inversion of the death-by-neglect that used to kill off prescient art. Now prescient art suffers death-by acceptance. We love things to death, now. Then we retire to the Hamptons.
β
β
David Foster Wallace
β
[English] fails me utterly when I attempt to describe what I love about Greek, that language innocent of all quirks and cranks; a language obsessed with action, and with the joy of seeing action multiply from action, action marching relentlessly ahead and with yet more actions filing in from either side to fall into neat step at the rear, in a long straight rank of cause and effect toward what will be inevitable, the only possible end.
β
β
Donna Tartt
β
So You Want to Know
All about her. Who
she
really is. (Was?) Why
she swerved off the
high road. Hard
left
to nowhere,
recklessly indifferent to
me.
Hunter Seth Haskins,
her firstborn
son. I've been
chocking
that down for
nineteen years.
Why did she go
on
her mindless way,
leaving me spinning
in a whirlwind of
her dust?
β
β
Ellen Hopkins (Fallout (Crank, #3))
β
We would be attending the conference under false pretenses and dealing, from the start, with a crowd that was convened for the stated purpose of putting people like us in jail. We were the Menace - not in disguise, but stone-obvious drug abusers, with a flagrantly cranked-up act that we intended to push all the way to the limit...not to prove any final, sociological point, and not event as a conscious mockery: It was mainly a matter of life-style, a sense of obligation and even duty. If the Pigs were gathering in Vegas for a top-level Drug Conference, we felt the drug culture should be represented.
β
β
Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)
β
In fact, gone are the days of having sex at all. I have resorted to jerking off alone in the bathroom after my wifeβs asleep.Β Itβs a sad, lonely existence when you have to take your cell phone into the shitter so you donβt wake your wife when you pull up the YouPorn app and crank one out. The worst part is the SpongeBob SquarePants shower curtain in the bathroom.Β Do you know how difficult it is to keep an erection while SpongeBob is staring at you with his big, googly eyes and you keep hearing the song "Jellyfishinβ, Jellyfishinβ, Jellyfishin" in your head?
β
β
Tara Sivec (Troubles and Treats (Chocolate Lovers, #3))
β
Why should people in one part of the globe have developed collectivist cultures, while others went individualist? The United States is the individualism poster child for at least two reasons. First there's immigration. Currently, 12 percent of Americans are immigrants, another 12 percent are children of immigrants, and everyone else except for the 0.9 percent pure Native Americans descend from people who emigrated within the last five hundred years. And who were the immigrants? Those in the settled world who were cranks, malcontents, restless, heretical, black sheep, hyperactive, hypomanic, misanthropic, itchy, unconventional, yearning to be rich, yearning to be out of their damn boring repressive little hamlet, yearning. Couple that with the second reason - for the majority of its colonial and independent history, America has had a moving frontier luring those whose extreme prickly optimism made merely booking passage to the New World insufficiently novel - and you've got America the individualistic.
Why has East Asia provided textbook examples of collectivism? The key is how culture is shaped by the way people traditionally made a living, which in turn is shaped by ecology. And in East Asia it's all about rice. Rice, which was domesticated there roughly ten thousand years ago, requires massive amounts of communal work. Not just backbreaking planting and harvesting, which are done in rotation because the entire village is needed to harvest each family's rice. The United States was not without labor-intensive agriculture historically. But rather than solving that with collectivism, it solved it withe slavery.
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Robert M. Sapolsky (Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst)
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With time to think, the full reality of what had happened hit Thomas like a falling boulder. Ever since Thomas had entered the Maze, Newt had been there for him. Thomas hadnβt realized just how much of a friend heβd become until now. His heart hurt.
He tried to remind himself that Newt wasnβt dead. But in some ways this was worse. In most ways. Heβd fallen down the slope of insanity, and he was surrounded by bloodthirsty Cranks. And the prospect of never seeing him again was almost unbearable. [...]
He pulled the envelope out of his pocket and ripped it open, then took out the slip of paper. The soft lights that ringed the mirror lit up the message in a warm glow. It was two short sentences:
Kill me. If youβve ever been my friend, kill me.
Thomas read it over and over, wishing the words would change. To think that his friend had been so scared that heβd had the foresight to write those words made him sick to his stomach. And he remembered how angry Newt had been at Thomas specifically when theyβd found him in the bowling alley. Heβd just wanted to avoid the inevitable fate of becoming a Crank.
And Thomas had failed him. [...]
βNewt suddenly twisted around and grabbed Thomas by the hand holding the gun. He yanked it toward himself, forcing it up until the end of the pistol was pressed against his own forehead. βNow make amends! Kill me before I become one of those cannibal monsters! Kill me! I trusted you with the note! No one else. Now do it!β
Thomas tried to pull his hand away, but Newt was too strong. βI canβt, Newt, I canβt.β
βMake amends! Repent for what you did!β The words tore out of him, his whole body trembling. Then his voice dropped to an urgent, harsh whisper. βKill me, you shuck coward. Prove you can do the right thing. Put me out of my misery.β
The words horrified Thomas. βNewt, maybe we canββ
βShut up! Just shut up! I trusted you! Now do it!β
βI canβt.β
βDo it!β
βI canβt!β How could Newt ask him to do something like this? How could he possibly kill one of his best friends?
βKill me or Iβll kill you. Kill me! Do it!β
βNewt β¦β
βDo it before I become one of them!β
βI β¦β
βKILL ME!β And then Newtβs eyes cleared, as if heβd gained one last trembling gasp of sanity, and his voice softened. βPlease, Tommy. Please.β
With his heart falling into a black abyss, Thomas pulled the trigger.
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James Dashner (The Death Cure (The Maze Runner, #3))
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V grabbed him by the lapels and yanked him up against his body. The brother was trembling from head to foot, his eyes glowing like crystals in the night. "You are not my enemy."
Instantly pissed off, Butch gripped V's shoulders, bunching up the leather jacket in his fists. "How do we know for sure."
V bared his fangs and hissed, his black eyebrows cranking down hard. Butch gave the aggression right back, hoping, praying, ready for them to start clocking each other. He was jonesing to hit and get hit back; he wanted blood all over the both of them.
For long moments, they stayed locked together, muscles straining, sweat blooming, right on the edge.
Then Vishous's voice came out into space between their faces, the cracked tone riding a panting, desperate breath and getting bucked off. "You are my only friend. Never my enemy."
No telling who embraced who first, but the urge to beat the living shit out of the other guy bled from their bodies, leaving only the bond between them. They wound up tight together and stood for a time in the cold wind. When they stepped back, it was awkwardly and with embarrassment.
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J.R. Ward (Lover Revealed (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #4))
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The value of Greek prose composition, he said, was not that it gave one any particular facility in the language that could not be gained as easily by other methods but that if done properly, off the top of one's head, it taught one to think in Greek. One's thought patterns become different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation. By necessity, I suppose, it is difficult for me to explain in English exactly what I mean. I can only say that an incendium is in its nature entirely different from the feu with which a Frenchman lights his cigarette, and both are very different from the stark, inhuman pur that the Greeks knew, the pur that roared from the towers of Ilion or leapt and screamed on that desolate, windy beach, from the funeral pyre of Patroklos.
Pur: that one word contains for me the secret, the bright, terrible clarity of ancient Greek. How can I make you see it, this strange harsh light which pervades Homer's landscapes and illumines the dialogues of Plato, an alien light, inarticulable in our common tongue? Our shared language is a language of the intricate, the peculiar, the home of pumpkins and ragamuffins and bodkins and beer, the tongue of Ahab and Falstaff and Mrs. Gamp; and while I find it entirely suitable for reflections such as these, it fails me utterly when I attempt to describe in it what I love about Greek, that language innocent of all quirks and cranks; a language obsessed with action, and with the joy of seeing action multiply from action, action marching relentlessly ahead and with yet more actions filing in from either side to fall into neat step at the rear, in a long straight rank of cause and effect toward what will be inevitable, the only possible end.
In a certain sense, this was why I felt so close to the other in the Greek class. They, too, knew this beautiful and harrowing landscape, centuries dead; they'd had the same experience of looking up from their books with fifth-century eyes and finding the world disconcertingly sluggish and alien, as if it were not their home. It was why I admired Julian, and Henry in particular. Their reason, their very eyes and ears were fixed irrevocably in the confines of those stern and ancient rhythms β the world, in fact, was not their home, at least the world as I knew it β and far from being occasional visitors to this land which I myself knew only as an admiring tourist, they were pretty much its permanent residents, as permanent as I suppose it was possible for them to be. Ancient Greek is a difficult language, a very difficult language indeed, and it is eminently possible to study it all one's life and never be able to speak a word; but it makes me smile, even today, to think of Henry's calculated, formal English, the English of a well-educated foreigner, as compared with the marvelous fluency and self-assurance of his Greek β quick, eloquent, remarkably witty. It was always a wonder to me when I happened to hear him and Julian conversing in Greek, arguing and joking, as I never once heard either of them do in English; many times, I've seen Henry pick up the telephone with an irritable, cautious 'Hello,' and may I never forget the harsh and irresistible delight of his 'Khairei!' when Julian happened to be at the other end.
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Donna Tartt (The Secret History)