Crashing Relationship Quotes

The name’s Jude Ryder, since I know you’re all but salivating like a rabid dog to know, and I don’t do girlfriends, relationships, flowers or regular phone calls. If that works for you, I think we could work out something special.

Although love could grow in times of peace, it tempered in battle. Daddy told me once - when I'd said something about how perfect his relationship with Mom was - that I should have seen the first five years of their marriage, that they'd fought like hellions, crashed into each other like two giant stones. That eventually they'd eroded each other into the perfect fit, become a single wall, nestled into each other's curves and hollows, her strengths chinking his weaknesses, her weaknesses reinforced by his strengths.

You’re my true north. No compass would point me in any other direction but to you.

Relationships aren’t easy. They’re hard and can be brutal at times … but those are the times you learn the most about yourself. And when they’re right,” I pause, making sure his eyes are steadfast on mine, “they can be like coming home … finding the rest of your soul …

If it was possible for two people to make sparks, simply by connecting at their lips, I would think we would have been a firework display in the dark.

After all, computers crash, people die, relationships fall apart. The best we can do is breathe and reboot.

Is that one of your go to lines when a girl asks for something more than a twenty-four hour Jude furlough?" Tapping the back of the wall with his heel, he looked down the hall. "No, that's what I answer when a girl I'm falling hard for, the only girl I've fallen hard for, wants to be in a relationship with someone like me.

You need to decide whether you're willing to risk being hurt, plain and simple. You can go for it and have a wonderful relationship. Or you might go for it and crash and burn brilliantly. It's up to you if you want to take that risk, up to you if it's worth it or not.

Mags, I don’t know how many more times I will have to say this, but here it goes. You’re amazing, you deserve the best, and I want nothing more than to be whatever you need me to be.

I am a relationship phoenix: I crash and burn and then I rise and start again.

...class is more than income - it has to do with knowing where you stand in a web of social relationships.

Just because two people don’t wind up spending their entire lives together doesn’t mean their relationship was a failure.

People that hold onto hate for so long do so because they want to avoid dealing with their pain. They falsely believe if they forgive they are letting their enemy believe they are a doormat. What they don’t understand is hatred can’t be isolated or turned off. It manifests in their health, choices and belief systems. Their values and religious beliefs make adjustments to justify their negative emotions. Not unlike malware infesting a hard drive, their spirit slowly becomes corrupted and they make choices that don’t make logical sense to others. Hatred left unaddressed will crash a person’s spirit. The only thing he or she can do is to reboot, by fixing him or herself, not others. This might require installing a firewall of boundaries or parental controls on their emotions. Regardless of the approach, we are all connected on this "network of life" and each of us is responsible for cleaning up our spiritual registry.

But they had already tried, again and again and again, and always, when the first crashing wave of mutual longing subsided, the ugly wreck of the past lay revealed again, its shadow lying darkly over everything they tried to rebuild.

The time to read Madame Bovary is when your romantic hopes and desires have crashed, and you will believe that your future relationships will have disappointing - even devastating - consequences.

Love is terrifying and hard and awful but it’s also amazing and beautiful, and there’s something about us, as humans, that wants that perfect relationship even though we know it’s probably unattainable, and even if we do manage to get it, holding on to t, helping it grow into something that will last a lifetime, well… it’s daunting in its impossibility.

Shelby believed that love was like a solar eclipse - breathtakingly beautiful, absorbing, and capable of rendering you blind. She had not necessarily gone out of her way to avoid a relationship, but she hadn't wanted on either. It was called falling in love for a reason - because, inevitably, you crashed at the bottom.

For all of us, the person we love most in the world, the one who can send us soaring joyfully into space, is also the person who can send us crashing back to earth. All it takes is a slight turning away of the head or a flip, careless remark. There is no closeness without this sensitivity. If our connection with our mate is safe and strong, we can deal with these moments of sensitivity. Indeed, we can use them to bring our partner even closer. But when we don’t feel safe and connected, these moments are like a spark in a tinder forest. They set fire to the whole relationship.

They were different places in that same relationship, and like anything that's out of alignment, they were destined to crash sooner or later.

Like a driver who has lost control of his vechicle, I was bracing for the impending crash." From: "My Worst Valentine's Day.Ever: a Short Story

You should wait, William," Miss Frost said. "The time to read Madame Bovary is when your romantic hopes and desires have crashed, and you believe that your future relationships will have disappointing - even devastating - consequences.

Relationships take time. They are days and nights and weeks. They are stretched and worked and kneaded into something you never imagined they could be. But when they are over, the end comes so quickly you barely have time to breathe, to blink. They are minutes and seconds, and one moment you have everything and the next you have nothing. So here’s my question: when you lose the most important person to you in the entire world, where is all the love—love you never even knew you were capable of—supposed to go?

My hair smells of oceanic wind My eyes are two starfish The charming, turquoise sea is seducing me The rhythms of the calming Crashing waves are my guide Omnipotent, almost holy, They seek to cleanse my polluted soul Here, by the seductive sea, I am unshackled. I am free. I am me.

How I long to be the shore and feel your waves crash upon me over and over again.

You drink your whiskey, I’ll drink my wine. Later when we’re fevered and tipsy we’ll make savage love divine. Until then, let’s swim in the warm, opal sea of each other. Crash a few innocent waves, skinny dip, laugh and get lost in those blood-pumping hearts, and for a time forget all our broken parts.

I don't have any relationship with God and I've never wanted it. I don't believe in fate or in any superior entity; if a plane crashes and people die, it's not because Heaven said so.

In short, the 1870s illustrated the force of the remark that antisemitism rises and falls in inverse relationship to the stock market. In that decade, when the market crashed, bigotry rose.

Compromising choices, preferences, and wants to be in a relationship are one thing, compromising who you are - the things ingrained in you, your beliefs, and your morals - are non-negotiable.

I love you, so don’t die in a plane crash. Don’t change your mind. Don’t sleep with another woman. Don’t think about me getting fat or getting stretch marks. Don’t ruin your relationship with Harry to be with me. But be with me. Gah! I know that sounds impossible. But …

Blue screen of death: she'd crashed his system. Oh, well. Boys were so unstable that way, full of buggy, self-contradictory code, pathetically unoptimized.

When it comes to matters of the heart and soul, I'm not a falling kind of girl. I'm more of a slamming, crashing, erupting...

...it's been amazing- not perfect, but amazing. I'm actually glad of the nonperfection because that has made our relationship feel more grounded, solid, and real than what I had (...), which just cruised blithely along, deceptively perfect, until it crashed and burned in a fiery wreck.

We love someone, so we care. That love can morph into feeling responsible for them, then into we're accountable, then into we're to blame for their self-inflicted pain; then it's our fault if they crash and burn; then the fear causes us to hold on even tighter. Walk this in reverse until you get back to, "we love, we care". Now, love with wisdom. Step one in placing someone's life into His hands.

I'm comming to You. You are blazing. I'm giving You a rose. It embalms sweet. I'm givin a kiss... I melt of You. I melt and flow with You. Like an ice in a spring river. I melt and stay. Sun will vaporise us. It will take us up into clouds. And then we both will fall. Drop by drop. We'll fall out of the sky. We'll raise from dew to fog. Every sunny warm morning. We'll let the wind pull us with him. Cooling our selves in forest shadows. There in silence we'll cool off One from another. But in stormy days and nights. We'll billow and crash. One to another. Like crazy and wild. We'll churn into white foam. Ashore in sands we'll wait For the yellow october leaves Into them we'll fall asleep. We'll fall into and freeze. We'll freeze and melt again And flow and raise and fall again. Over and over again Even if we were in separete glasses of water. We would moove together and whisper. Even if in the oceans mixed. We would moove together and sing. I'm comming to You. You are blazing. I'm giving You a rose It embalms sweet. ... If I'll ever meet You. I' ll take our time... To dance dance dance dance with You...

It wasn’t her hypnotic eyes that drew him in or the wild sway of her hips; it was that devil’s blood-red lipstick smeared all over her chubby angel lips. He shivered with the magnitude of impending heaven and hell in one woman. He crashed into heaven while crossing the thresholds of hell.

You were a storm I chased to get my kicks and have some fun; it backfired when I crashed hard in love.

You were nothing more than a daydream that a beautiful heart was bound to fall in love with, and daydreams aren't real and beautiful hearts trust easily, fall fast and crash hard.

Your alternate dimension keeps crashing into this one & love's got me experiencing symptoms without ever getting sick of you.

A lot of wives are trying too hard to make their marriages work, but they can’t sustain the weight of what they’re doing, and they crash. God says, “I want you to soar on the wind of the Holy Spirit. Position yourself in Me, and let Me glide your marriage into a changed relationship.” When you are doing it God’s way, you don’t have to flap because you can soar.

woman is like a wave. When she feels loved her self-esteem rises and falls in a wave motion. When she is feeling really good, she will reach a peak, but then suddenly her mood may change and her wave crashes down. This crash is temporary. After she reaches bottom suddenly her mood will shift and she will again feel good about herself. Automatically her wave begins to rise back up.

I hope I am following in Harriet Tubman’s footsteps, because she had the capacity to dream of liberation. Not all of us allow ourselves to fulfill our dreams of freedom. Maybe you dream of being free from a job, a relationship, a city.… But acting on freedom can be the scariest thing we do. To believe we are so radically free that we can dream the craziest, wildest dreams for ourselves and then work nonstop to make them come true, no matter the odds. No matter the borders we have to cross. No matter how many glass ceilings we have to crash through. This struggle, the restless determination, the feeling of urgency that comes with working to make things better—it never really goes away.

The other thing about falling in love: the harder you fell, the easier it was to get hurt. Maybe that’s why it was called falling in love; at some point there was a crash at the bottom that could shatter someone into a million pieces.

I take in all the colorful locks that line the bridge. Each one told a story. Each lock represented a relationship that was once special, whether it ended or turned into true happiness. The locks represented a past, present, and a possible future.

The things that help you sleep all the way through it. Back-breaking labor might do it; or liquor. Surely a body--friendly if not familiar--lying next to you. Someone whose touch is a reassurance, not an affront or a nuisance. Whose heavy breathing neither enrages not disgusts, but amuses you like that of a cherished pet. And rituals help too: door locking, tidying up, cleaning teeth, arranging hair, but they are preliminaries to the truly necessary things. Most people want to crash into sleep.

Clank, crash, clank. Ramona forgot about her father being out of a job, she forgot how cross he had been since he gave up smoking, she forgot about her mother coming home tired from work and about Beezus being grouchy lately. She was filled with joy.

she said i want you to meet him you'll like him really yeah i thought like car crash broken glass rusty razored underwear barbed wire cheer acid fear like walking down normandie naked nightly like tiger claws 'n earthquake falls i'll really relish meeting 'm.

Sometimes I find myself in the eye of my own hurricane.… He was trouble in my life interrupting my world crashing into my dreams but I was a fucking storm the lightening to his thunder so, what more could a little chaos add but a beautiful catastrophic eruption.

I once read a theory about ‘positive thinking’ that seems to be true or, at least, made a sufficient impression on me to remember it. I have always been distrustful of positive thinking, believing it to be as fixed and unyielding as negative thinking. Yet it is the advice most often offered to depressives. That it does not work seems not to occur to those who offer it up like some benevolent panacea. Perhaps it works for them or perhaps they are a product of some positive thinking gene pool. Who knows? Anywhere, here is the theory that helped me. I hope that it will help you too. Imagine you are driving a car, and you are heading straight for a brick wall. If you stay in habitual or rigid thinking (the kind of thinking that says, ‘this is the way I always do things’) and do not change the direction in the way you are headed, you will drive you car into the brick wall. Now imagine you are driving that same car towards that same brick wall. Now use positive thinking to imagine that wall is, in fact, a tunnel. It is not, of course, you simply hope or wish that it is a tunnel but it is the same old, intractable brick. You still drive your car into the wall. You are in the same car, facing the same wall except that you use creative or constructive thinking. You see the wall as an obstacle set dead ahead and see that it is solid and immoveable. You use your thinking to change direction and drive your car around it. Understanding that our thinking is not always helpful sounds so obvious and simple. So does changing our thinking, yet both are formidably difficult to do, perhaps because, most of the time, we never question it. We go right ahead and do what we have always done, in the same way we have always done it. We crash into relationships, mess up jobs, ruin friendships and all because we believe that our way is the right way. There is a saying: ‘I’d rather be right than happy.’ And here is another: ‘My way or no way.’ I see that wall as a symbol for an obstacle (or obstacles, there may be many) in our emotional make-up. If we go on behaving in the same way, we will crash. If we pretend that those obstacles in our character don’t exist, or are something else entirely, we will still crash. But if we acknowledge them and behave in a different way, we will come to a better and safer place. Or at least we will, until we meet the next obstacle.

She dances, She dances around the burning flames with passion, Under the same dull stars, Under the same hell with crimson embers crashing, Under the same silver chains that wires, All her beauty and who she is inside, She's left with the loneliness of human existence, She's left questioning how she's survived, She's left with this awakening of brutal resilience, Her true beauty that she denies, As much she's like to deny it, As much as it continues to shine, That she doesn't even have to admit, Because we all know it's true, Her glory and success, After all she's been through, Her triumph and madness, AND YET, SHE STANDS. Broken legs- but she's still standing, Still dancing in this void, You must wonder how she's still dancing, You must wonder how she's not destroyed, She doesn't even begin to drown within the flames, But little do you realize, Within these chains, She weeps and she cries, But she still goes on, And just you thought you could stop her? You thought you'd be the one? Well, let me tell you, because you thought wrong. Nothing will ever silence her, Because I KNOW, I know that she is admiringly strong, Her undeniable beauty, The triumph of her song, She's shining bright like a ruby, Reflecting in the golden sand, She's shining brighter like no other, She's far more than human or man, AND YET, SHE STANDS. She continues to dance with free-spirit, Even though she's locked in these chains, Though she never desired to change it, Even throughout the agonizing pain, Throughout all the distress, Anxiety, depression, tears and sorrow, She still dances so beautify in her dress, She looks forward to tomorrow, Not because of a fresh start but a new page, A new day full of opportunities, Despite being trapped in her cage, She still smiles after being beaten so brutally, A smile that could brighten anyone's day, She's so much more than anyone could ask for, She's so much more than I could ever say, She's a girl absolutely everyone should adore, She never gets in the way, Even after her hearts been broken, Even after the way she has been treated, After all these severe emotions, After all all the blood she's bled, AND YET, SHE STANDS. Even if sometimes she wonders why she's still here, She wonders why she's not dead, But there's this one thing that had been here throughout every tear, Throughout the blazing fire leaving her cheeks cherry red, Everyday this thing has given her a place to exist, This thing, person, these people, Like warm sunlight it had so softly kissed, The apples of her cheeks, Even when she's feeling feeble, Always there at her worst and at her best Because of you and all the other people, She has this thing deep inside her chest, That she will cherish forever, Even once you're gone, Because today she smiles like no other, Even when the sun sets at dawn, Because today is the day, She just wants you to remember, In dark and stormy weather, It gets better. And after what she's been through she knows, Throughout the highs and the lows, Because of you and all others, After crossing the seas, She has come to understand, You have formed this key, This key to free her from this land, This endless gorge that swallowed her, Her and other men, She had never knew, nor had she planned, That because of you, She's free. AND YET, THIS VERY DAY, SHE DANCES. EVEN IN THE RAIN.

A lesson presents itself so that we can know. How you go about knowing is completely up to you. Some of us unconsciously prefer to go through crash and burn wake up calls in order to learn and some of us prefer to take a path where we can, in a healthy manner, peacefully come to know.

I want to update it. I want to beta test new models. I want to break it and start all over. The way I think of it is: marriage is just a technology that was never quite future-proof. Like, it may have been a good tool in Victorian England or whatever. But for us? Now? Not so much. We have these twenty-first-century relationships running eighteenth-century software. So it’s glitchy and it crashes all the time. Typically with any technology we try to innovate and update and improve it, but with marriage we seem to refuse all progress. We’ve convinced ourselves that, actually, we like all those glitches.

People frequently die in fires or crash landings because they try to escape through the same door they used when they entered. In their panic, they rely on an established pattern instead of thinking of another way out. In the same manner, our suffering, our disengagement, our relationship challenges, and our other life difficulties are almost never solved by thinking in the same old, automatic way.

The largest locomotive in the New York Central system, while standing still, can be prevented from moving by a single one-inch block of wood placed in front of each of the eight drive wheels! The same locomotive, moving at 100 miles per hour, can crash through a wall of steel-reinforced concrete five feet thick. The only difference is momentum. Confidence gives you the momentum that makes the difference. You

Physical deprivation and hunger are one thing; the poverty of the mind and psyche is quite another. Crashing Costco to find bulk beans and rice is not the same as flash-mobbing for Air Jordans and iPhones. How odd that our cultural elite and our dependent poor are somewhat alike, in a symbiotic relationship in which the latter guilt-trip the former for entitlements, with the assurance that the top of the pyramid is safe and free to fritter about far from those they worry about. No wonder those in between who lack the romance of the poor and the privileges and power of the elite are shrinking. We are entering the age of the bread-and-circuses Coliseum: luxury box seats for the fleshy senatorial class, free food and tickets for the rest—and the shrinking middle out in the sand of the arena providing the entertainment.

People love to say, “There’s someone for everyone.” It’s one of those ‘feel better’ things your mom tells you after your relationship has crashed and burned, or your normally noncommunicative dad mumbles as he slaps you between your shoulder blades, then announces “good talk.” But it’s mostly true. If you consider how many people are walking around this planet, there has to be someone you could fit perfectly with, right? The person who makes your heart say super-cray things like “I’ll love you forever” and “I can’t wait to meet your parents” and “Oh, sure, let’s definitely get each other’s names tattooed on our necks.” The problem is we spend most of our puny lives chasing someone else’s someone, and, if we’re lucky, we end up with only a third of the time we could’ve spent with the person truly meant for us. That is, if we don’t wind up missing them altogether.

Hand in hand, we head for the kiss and cry. Today, we're going to kiss. Sometimes, we'll cry. There'll be broken tree branches. Misunderstandings and crash landings. It turns out all relationships are like Axels. They take a leap of faith and they have their ups and downs. But it's not about falling, it's about what you do after the fall. Whatever happens, we'll pick ourselves u. Brush ourselves off. And circle around for another attempt.

Sometimes difficulty clarifies things. And sometimes realizing that the road you’ve chosen is a demanding one gives you the courage to stay on that road. It reveals the nature of our relationship with God. It sounds cute and comforting to say “God is in control,” and people who say that may imagine sitting on their daddy’s lap behind the wheel of the family car, going “Vroom vroomy vroom!” while Daddy does the steering. In reality, when God is in control, it feels more like one of those movies where some amateur has to step up and land the airplane or steer the ship to safety through a crashing storm, with an expert giving them instructions remotely through a headset. In theory, following the expert’s instructions will help us get in safely; but our fear, panic, self-doubt, and lack of skill are not exactly comforting. Yes, God is in control, but we’re the ones who are in for a rough ride.

I Am Here (The Sonnet) Look into my eyes, I wanna listen to your silence. Tell me of the storms unpassed, I wanna be your expression express. Tell me what you have been through, Tell me of the heartaches unhealed. Speak the pain you could never utter, I am here, I am near, you are my priority! I cannot promise you all the happiness, Nor can I promise you eternal peace. But if and when the sky crashes, I shall be your human shield. It's okay if you come late to me. I am here, I am near, I have come early.

But no matter how carefully we schedule our days, master our emotions, and try to wring our best life now from our better selves, we cannot solve the problem of finitude. We will always want more. We need more. We are carrying the weight of caregiving and addiction, chronic pain and uncertain diagnosis, struggling teenagers and kids with learning disabilities, mental illness and abusive relationships. A grandmother has been sheltering without a visitor for months, and a friend's business closed its doors. Doctors, nurses, and frontline workers are acting as levees, feeling each surge of the disease crash against them. My former students, now serving as pastors and chaplains, are in hospitals giving last rites in hazmat suits. They volunteer to be the last person to hold his hand. To smooth her hair. The truth if the pandemic is the truth of all suffering: that it is unjustly distributed. Who bears the brunt? The homeless and the prisoners. The elderly and the children. The sick and the uninsured. Immigrants and people needing social services. People of color and LGBTQ people. The burdens of ordinary evils— descriminations, brutality, predatory lending, illegal evictions, and medical exploitation— roll back on the vulnerable like a heavy stone. All of us struggle against the constraints places on our bodies, our commitments, our ambitions, and our resources, even as we're saddled with inflated expectations of invincibility. This is the strange cruelty of suffering in America, its insistence that everything is still possible.

If one day Balloon Dog’s value bursts and shrivels in a Koons crash, we can only hope that Anonymous has an ongoing relationship with his orange pooch that can sustain the inevitable inflations and deflations of all speculative markets. In fact, a balloon serves as a nice metaphor for the lessons of history: you blow and you blow and you blow, and the thing gets larger and larger and larger still, and in your excitement you forget the laws of physics, and you begin to believe that your balloon is like no other balloon in the world—there is no limit to its size. And then, it pops.

So . . . for some reason we thought you were the guys assigned to Ms. Lynde’s surveillance. Guess we were mistaken?” “Nope, you got it right,” Kamin said. “We do the night shift. Nice girl. We talk a lot on the way to the gym.” “Oh. Then I guess Agent Wilkins and I are just curious why you two are here instead of with her.” Kamin waved this off. “It’s cool. We did a switcheroo with another cop, see?” “A switcheroo . . . right. Remind me again how that works?” Jack asked. “It’s because she’s got this big date tonight,” Kamin explained. Jack cocked his head. “A date?” Phelps chimed in. “Yeah, you know—with Max-the-investment-banker-she-met-on-the-Bloomingdales-escalator.” “I must’ve missed that one.” “Oh, it’s a great story,” Kamin assured him. “She crashed into him coming off the escalator and when her shopping bag spilled open, he told her he liked her shoes.” “Ah . . . the Meet Cute,” Wilkins said with a grin. Jack threw him a sharp look. “What did you just say?” “You know, the Meet Cute.” Wilkins explained. “In romantic comedies, that’s what they call the moment when the man and woman first meet.” He rubbed his chin, thinking this over. “I don’t know, Jack . . . if she’s had her Meet Cute with another man that does not bode well for you.” Jack nearly did a double take as he tried to figure out what the hell that was supposed to mean. Phelps shook his head. “Nah, I wouldn’t go that far. She’s still on the fence about this guy. He’s got problems keeping his job from intruding on his personal life. But she’s feeling a lot of pressure with Amy’s wedding—she’s only got about ten days left to get a date.” “She’s the maid of honor, see?” Kamin said. Jack stared at all three of them. Their lips were moving and sound was coming out, but it was like they were speaking a different language. Kamin turned to Phelps. “Frankly, I think she should just go with Collin, since he and Richard broke up.” “Yeah, but you heard what she said. She and Collin need to stop using each other as a crutch. It’s starting to interfere with their other relationships.” Unbelievable. Jack ran a hand through his hair, tempted to tear it out. But then he’d have a bald spot to thank Cameron Lynde for, and that would piss him off even more. “Can we get back to the switcheroo part?” “Right, sorry. It was Slonsky’s suggestion. 

The important thing is, Hiro, that you have to understand the Mafia way. And the Mafia way is that we pursue larger goals under the guise of personal relationships. So, for example, when you were a pizza guy you didn't deliver pizzas fast because you made more money that way, or because it was some kind of a fucking policy. You did it because you were carrying out a personal covenant between Uncle Enzo and every customer. This is how we avoid the trap of self-perpetuating ideology. Ideology is a virus. So getting this chick back is more than just getting a chick back. It's the concrete manifestation of an abstract policy goal. And we like concrete—right, Vic?

I am told there are readers of Genesis who argue the following: If evolution is true, there was no Adam and Eve. If there was no Adam and Eve, there was no fall. If there was no fall, we didn’t need Jesus to save us. But this argument has reversed things. In reality, we know we needed Jesus to save us, and we recognize the way Genesis describes our predicament as human beings. We know we have not realized our vocation to take the world to its destiny and serve the earth; we know there is something wrong with the world in its violence; we know there is something wrong with our relationships with one another, especially relationships between men and women and between parents and children; and we know there is something wrong with our relationship with God. We also know we die, so we know we need Jesus to save us. The question Genesis handles is, Was all that a series of problems built into humanity when it came intoexistence? The answer is no. God did not create us that way. There was a point when humanity had to choose whether it wanted to go God’s way, and it chose not to. The Adam-and-Eve story gives us a parabolic account of that. They ignored the red light and crashed the train. God brought the first human beings into existence with their vocation, and they turned away from it. That is true whether or not you believe that the theory of evolution helps us understand how God brought them into existence.

Going to school takes a lot of work. I know you stay up late studying, but if you can’t make it to work on time let me know now. Maybe I can schedule you for closing shifts.” Just as Kyle had done, Pete stared at Derrick like he was speaking a foreign language. “I appreciate you wanting to work with me,” the young associate said. “But it would cut into my time with Wendy.” Derrick had no idea who Pete was talking about. “Who’s Wendy?” “She’s my girlfriend. She doesn’t believe I take our relationship seriously, so I’ve been crashing at her place this past month, to be with her.” Derrick was more than perplexed. “You mean you’ve been tardy these past weeks because you’re staying up late with your girlfriend?” Pete nodded casually. “What can I say? She’s hot!” Derrick suppressed a groan.

How can HOW help us repair our faltering global economy? Only by getting our "hows" right can we ensure that we are sustainable. This can only be achieved when we are rooted in, and inspired by, sustainable values. The global economic meltdown supplied a perfect, but painful, example of how sustainability cannot be guided by situational values. The economic crash occurred because too many financial companies became disconnected from fundamental values and long-term sustainable thinking. Instead of nurturing sustainable collaborations, banks, lenders, borrowers and shareholders pursued short-term relationships founded on situational values. More than ever we need to get out of this cycle of crises and build long-term success and deep human connections so that we achieve enduring significance in today's globally interconnected world.

The woman's body twitched suddenly, as if remembering something, and she covered her mouth with a stiff mitten. Dara knew what it was. She'd felt it a dozen times that day already. The body remembering, contorting, -He's gone, he's gone.- For a moment, only a moment, Dara felt sorry for her. As if sensing it, the woman looked at her and reached for her sunglasses, removing them at last. Her eyes heavy, swollen. 'I wish I could explain,' she said. 'You build this family. And it's perfect. It's everything you wanted. And then something goes wrong. Slowly or all at once. It was good and now it's bad, and it's his fault. Or he started it. All the ripples from his bad behavior.' Dara didn't say anything. The woman kept going. 'So, in some private part of your head, you start thinking up fantasies of escape. You tell yourself: If only he were gone, if only a heart attack, a lightning bolt, a car crash...' 'I have to go,' Dara said, turning. 'Sometimes,' the woman said suddenly, her voice choked. 'Sometimes, you think you'd do anything to get out to be free.' They held glances a long moment.... 'You're never free,' Dara said, realizing it as she said it. -When something goes wrong in a family, it takes generations to wipe it out.- Those words came to Dara, something from a history book, a book about kings and queens she once found in the den long ago. Marie, Charlie, they thought they could escape it, through leaving, or trying to. Through other people, lovers. But they both ended right back where they started. In their mother's house, her third-floor hideaway. 'I guess you're right,' the woman said. 'You blame everything on that one person.You think if that one person is gone, everything will be perfect and good.' She slid her sunglasses back on. 'But in the end, that person is you.

Hiro would have chalked it all up to class differences, except that her parents lived in a house in Mexicali with a dirt floor, and his father made more money than many college professors. But the class idea still held sway in his mind, because class is more than income -- it has to do with knowing where you stand in a web of social relationships. Juanita and her folks knew where they stood with a certitude that bordered on dementia. Hiro never knew. His father was a sergeant major, his mother was a Korean woman whose people had been mine slaves in Nippon, and Hiro didn't know whether he was black or Asian or just plain Army, whether he was rich or poor, educated or ignorant, talented or lucky. He didn't even have a part of the country to call home until he moved to California, which is about as specific as saying that you live in the Northern Hemisphere. In the end, it was probably his general disorientation that did them in.

he same goes for new situations. Imagine a child who’s more afraid of the ocean than are other kids the same age. Thoughtful parents recognize that this fear is natural and even wise; the ocean is indeed dangerous. But they don’t allow her to spend the summer on the safety of the dunes, and neither do they drop her in the water and expect her to swim. Instead they signal that they understand her unease, while urging her to take small steps. Maybe they play in the sand for a few days with the ocean waves crashing at a safe distance. Then one day they approach the water’s edge, perhaps with the child riding on a parent’s shoulders. They wait for calm weather, or low tide, to immerse a toe, then a foot, then a knee. They don’t rush; every small step is a giant stride in a child’s world. When ultimately she learns to swim like a fish, she has reached a crucial turning point in her relationship not only with water but also with fear

The same goes for new situations. Imagine a child who’s more afraid of the ocean than are other kids the same age. Thoughtful parents recognize that this fear is natural and even wise; the ocean is indeed dangerous. But they don’t allow her to spend the summer on the safety of the dunes, and neither do they drop her in the water and expect her to swim. Instead they signal that they understand her unease, while urging her to take small steps. Maybe they play in the sand for a few days with the ocean waves crashing at a safe distance. Then one day they approach the water’s edge, perhaps with the child riding on a parent’s shoulders. They wait for calm weather, or low tide, to immerse a toe, then a foot, then a knee. They don’t rush; every small step is a giant stride in a child’s world. When ultimately she learns to swim like a fish, she has reached a crucial turning point in her relationship not only with water but also with fear.

It's ironic that Juanita has come into this place in a low-tech, black-and-white avatar. She was the one who figured out a way to make avatars show something close to real emotion. That is a fact Hiro has never forgotten, because she did most of her work when they were together, and whenever an avatar looks surprised or angry or passionate in the Metaverse, he sees an echo of himself or Juanita - - the Adam and Eve of the Metaverse. Makes it hard to forget. Shortly after Juanita and Da5id got divorced, The Black Sun really took off. And once they got done counting their money, marketing the spinoffs, soaking up the adulation of others in the hacker community, they all came to the realization that what made this place a success was not the collision-avoidance algorithms or the bouncer daemons or any of that other stuff. It was Juanita's faces. Just ask the businessmen in the Nipponese Quadrant. They come here to talk turkey with suits from around the world, and they consider it just as good as a face-to-face. They more or less ignore what is being said -- a lot gets lost in translation, after all. They pay attention to the facial expressions and body language of the people they are talking to. And that's how they know what's going on inside a person's head-by condensing fact from the vapor of nuance. Juanita refused to analyze this process, insisted that it was something ineffable, something you couldn't explain with words. A radical, rosary-toting Catholic, she has no problem with that kind of thing. But the bitheads didn't like it. Said it was irrational mysticism. So she quit and took a job with some Nipponese company. They don't have any problem with irrational mysticism as long as it makes money. But Juanita never comes to The Black Sun anymore. Partly, she's pissed at Da5id and the other hackers who never appreciated her work. But she has also decided that the whole thing is bogus. That no matter how good it is, the Metaverse is distorting the way people talk to each other, and she wants no such distortion in her relationships.

Long-term, loving, erotic relationships take a lot of work, willingness, patience, compromise, deep listening and humility. Many people struggle in long-term erotic relationships, especially after the fleeting ‘falling in love’ phase has passed. Very often during the first year in a romantic relationship, euphoric and intense emotions, together with high levels of lust, sweep both parties involved off their feet. Excitement, a boost in confidence, and a carefree mood are felt by the couple. This is often described as ‘falling in love’. The couple will very often disclose sensitive secrets about themselves, yearning to feel closer to each other. They are high on life and engaged in intense, sexual romance. This can last up to 18 months depending on the couple, but more than likely it will fizzle out after just one year. All too often after 18 months, when hormone levels and feelings of lust having reverted back to normal levels, couples come crashing back down to reality. This can be very disheartening for both parties.

At the sight of his quizzical, kindly face - so sweet, so agreeable, so glad to see me - something wrenched deep in my chest. 'Richard' he said again, as if there were no one on earth he could possibly be so delighted to see. 'How are you?' 'Fine.' 'I'm just going over to North Hampden. Will you walk with me?' I looked at the innocent, happy face and thought: If only he knew. It would kill him. 'Julian, I'd love to, thanks,' I said. 'But I have to be getting home.' He looked at me closely. The concern in his eyes made me nearly sick with self-loathing. 'I see so little of you these days, Richard,' he said. 'I feel that you're becoming just a shadow in my life.' The benevolence, the spiritual calm, that radiated from him seemed so clear and true that, for a dizzying moment, I felt the darkness lift almost palpably from my heart. The relief was such that I almost broke down sobbing; but then, looking at him again, I felt the whole poisonous weight come crashing back down, full force. 'Are you sure you're all right?' He can never know. We can never tell him. 'Oh. Sure I am,' I said. 'I'm fine.

At the sight of his quizzical, kindly face - so sweet, so agreeable, so glad to see me - something wrenched deep in my chest. 'Richard' he said again, as if there were no one on earth he could possibly be so delighted to see. 'How are you?' 'Fine.' 'I'm just going over to North Hampden. Will you walk with me?' I looked at the innocent, happy face and thought: If only he knew. It would kill him. 'Julian, I'd love to, thanks,' I said. 'But I have to be getting home.' He looked at me closely. The concern in his eyes made me nearly sick with self-loathing. 'I see so little of you these days, Richard,' he said. 'I feel that you're becoming just a shadow in my life.' The benevolence, the spiritual calm, that radiated from him seemed so clear and true that, for a dizzying moment, I felt the darkness lift almost palpably from my heart. The relief was such that I almost broke down sobbing; but then, looking at him again, I felt the whole poisonous weight come crashing back down, full force. 'Are you sure you're all right?' He can never know. We can never tell him. 'Oh. Sure I am,' I said. 'I'm fine.

Did you hook up with your girlfriend yet?" "No. But I have high hopes for that. Assuming I can stay alive." "High hopes for what?" "Our relationship." "Why?" she asks. "What's changed between then and now?" This is one of these utterly simple and obvious questions that is irritating because Hiro's not sure of the answer. "Well, I think I figured out what she was doing -- why she came here." Another simple and obvious question. "So, I feel like I understand her now." "You do?" "Yeah, well, sort of." "And is that supposed to be a good thing?" "Well, sure." "Hiro, you are such a geek. She's a woman, you're a dude. You're not supposed to understand her. That's not what she's after." "Well, what is she after, do you suppose -- keeping in mind that you've never actually met the woman, and that you're going out with Raven?" "She doesn't want you to understand her. She knows that's impossible. She just wants you to understand yourself. Everything else is negotiable." "You figure?" "Yeah. Definitely." "What makes you think I don't understand myself?" "It's just obvious. You're a really smart hacker and the greatest sword fighter in the world -- and you're delivering pizzas and promoting concerts that you don't make any money off of. How do you expect her to --

Then I remembered my grandmother and realized, my God, the human mind can absorb and process an incredible amount of information -- if it comes in the right format. The right interface. If you put the right face on it. Want some coffee?" Then he had an alarming thought: What had he been like back in college? How much of an asshole had he been? Had he left Juanita with a bad impression? Another young man would have worried about it in silence, but Hiro has never been restrained by thinking about things too hard, and so he asked her out for dinner and, after having a couple of drinks (she drank club sodas), just popped the question: Do you think I'm an asshole? She laughed. He smiled, believing that he had come up with a good, endearing, flirtatious bit of patter. He did not realize until a couple of years later that this question was, in effect, the cornerstone of their relationship. Did Juanita think that Hiro was an asshole? He always had some reason to think that the answer was yes, but nine times out of ten she insisted the answer was no. It made for some great arguments and some great sex, some dramatic fallings out and some passionate reconciliations, but in the end the wildness was just too much for them -- they were exhausted by work -- and they backed away from each other. He was emotionally worn out from wondering what she really thought of him, and confused by the fact that he cared so deeply about her opinion. And she, maybe, was beginning to think that if Hiro was so convinced in his own mind that he was unworthy of her, maybe he knew something she didn't.

CHANGING YOUR LIFE TO ACCOMMODATE THE SIXTH SECRET The sixth secret is about the choiceless life. Since we all take our choices very seriously, adopting this new attitude requires a major shift. Today, you can begin with a simple exercise. Sit down for a few minutes and reassess some of the important choices you’ve made over the years. Take a piece of paper and make two columns labeled “Good Choice” and “Bad Choice.” Under each column, list at least five choices relating to those moments you consider the most memorable and decisive in your life so far—you’ll probably start with turning points shared by most people (the serious relationship that collapsed, the job you turned down or didn’t get, the decision to pick one profession or another), but be sure to include private choices that no one knows about except you (the fight you walked away from, the person you were too afraid to confront, the courageous moment when you overcame a deep fear). Once you have your list, think of at least one good thing that came out of the bad choices and one bad thing that came out of the good choices. This is an exercise in breaking down labels, getting more in touch with how flexible reality really is. If you pay attention, you may be able to see that not one but many good things came from your bad decisions while many bad ones are tangled up in your good decisions. For example, you might have a wonderful job but wound up in a terrible relationship at work or crashed your car while commuting. You might love being a mother but know that it has drastically curtailed your personal freedom. You may be single and very happy at how much you’ve grown on your own, yet you have also missed the growth that comes from being married to someone you deeply love. No single decision you ever made has led in a straight line to where you find yourself now. You peeked down some roads and took a few steps before turning back. You followed some roads that came to a dead end and others that got lost at too many intersections. Ultimately, all roads are connected to all other roads. So break out of the mindset that your life consists of good and bad choices that set your destiny on an unswerving course. Your life is the product of your awareness. Every choice follows from that, and so does every step of growth.

unless we’re missing our guess, your life and the gospel probably haven’t always felt in sync on a lot of days, in most of the years since. After the emotional scene with the trembling chin and the wadded-up Kleenexes, where you truly felt the weight of your own sin and the Spirit’s conviction, you’ve had a hard time consistently enjoying and experiencing what God’s supposedly done to remedy this self-defeating situation. Even on those repeat occasions when you’ve crashed and burned and resolved to do better, you’ve typically only been able, for a little while, to sit on your hands, trying to stay in control of yourself by rugged determination and brute sacrifice (which you sure hope God is noticing and adding to your score). But you’ll admit, it’s not exactly a feeling of freedom and victory. And anytime the wheels come off again, as they often do, it just feels like the same old condemnation as before. Devastating that you can’t crack the code on this thing, huh? You were pretty sure that being a Christian was supposed to change you—and it has. Some. But man, there’s still so much more that needs changing. Drastic things. Daily things. Changes in your habits, your routines, in your choices and decisions, changes to the stuff you just never stop hating about yourself, changes in what you do and don’t do . . . and don’t ever want to do again! Changes in how you think, how you cope, how you ride out the guilt and shame when you’ve blown it again. How you shoot down those old trigger responses—the ones you can’t seem to keep from reacting badly to, even after you keep telling yourself to be extra careful, knowing how predictably they set you off. Changes in your closest relationships, changes in your work habits, changes that have just never happened for you before, the kind of changes that—if you can ever get it together—might finally start piling up, you think, rolling forward, fueling some fresh momentum for you, keeping you moving in the right direction. But then—stop us if you’ve heard this one before . . . You barely if ever change. And come on, shouldn’t you be more transformed by now? This is around the point where, when what you’ve always thought or expected of God is no longer squaring with what you’re feeling, that you start creating your own cover versions of the gospel, piecing together things you’ve heard and believed and experimented with—some from the past, some from the present. You lay down new tracks with a gospel feel but, sadly, not always a lot of gospel truth.

You didn’t waltz into my life like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing on air. Quite the contrary, you made a crash landing in the center of my heart, blazing guns and glory.

Along with data from other research studies, these findings make it clear that when we’re trying to solicit cooperation from other people—be they coworkers, clients, students, or acquaintances—we should offer help to them in a way that’s unconditional and no-strings-attached. Approaching the potentially cooperative relationship in this way should not only increase the likelihood that you’ll secure their cooperation in the first place, but also ensure that the cooperation you do receive is built on a solid foundation of trust and mutual appreciation, rather than on a much weaker incentive system. You’ll also find this approach to be much longer lasting. Otherwise, the moment the incentive you’ve been promising or awarding can no longer be offered or is no longer desired by the other person, the brittle foundation of the relationship may crack, and the cooperative bridge you’ve built up may come crashing down.

Signs of Stage Four. Teams are the norm, focused around shared values and a common purpose. Information moves freely throughout the group. People’s relationships are built on shared values. They tend to ask, “what’s the next right thing to do?” and to build ad hoc partnerships to accomplish what’s important at the moment. Their language focuses on “we,” not “me.” If two people get in a squabble, a third will step in and repair the relationship rather than create a personal following for himself. Unlike Stage Two, the group is composed of people who have played the Stage Three game and won—and are ready for genuine partnerships. Your first job is to make sure each person is stable at Stage Four, as most groups at this level crash down to Stage Three when under stress. Go to Chapter 7 and read to the end of the book.

Persistence gets you experience. Persistence is a sentence of failures punctuated by the briefest of successes, and eventually those successes will start to propel you toward mastery. Not one success or two. But many, many, many. How do you keep persisting when life is filled with changing careers, relationships, responsibilities, economic crashes, historical upswings, and so many things that can get in your way? There’s no answer. That’s why it’s called persistence. Because no matter where you are, there you are, doing what you always did. Not letting any of the above stop you. Using all of the above in your mastery arsenal to propel you to higher successes (if sometimes also deeper failures) and then even higher successes. It’s painful and brutal and no fun and nobody will ever understand why. And when you achieve success people will act as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to have happened to you.

Just as I’m about to continue walking along the shoreline, the left third of the iceberg breaks off suddenly and crashes violently, like a high-rise apartment building imploding in the heart of the city. Tears roll down my face uncontrollably as I watch the two distinct halves of the iceberg drift further and further apart from each other. It’s devastating to watch something that seems so strong and unbreakable crumble in an instant. Even more devastating is the feeling that there’s nothing I can do about it.

His book For Whom the Bell Tolls was an instant success in the summer of 1940, and afforded him the means to live in style at his villa outside of Havana with his new wife Mary Welsh, whom he married in 1946. It was during this period that he started getting headaches and gaining weight, frequently becoming depressed. Being able to shake off his problems, he wrote a series of books on the Land, Air and Sea, and later wrote The Old Man and the Sea for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in May 1954. Hemingway on a trip to Africa where he barely survived two successive airplane crashes. Returning to Cuba, Ernest worked reshaping the recovered work and wrote his memoir, A Moveable Feast. He also finished True at First Light and The Garden of Eden. Being security conscious, he stored his works in a safe deposit box at a bank in Havana. His home Finca Vigía had become a hub for friends and even visiting tourists. It was reliably disclosed to me that he frequently enjoyed swinger’s parties and orgies at his Cuban home. In Spain after divorcing Frank Sinatra Hemingway introduced Ava Gardner to many of the bullfighters he knew and in a free for all, she seduced many of hotter ones. After Ava Gardner’s affair with the famous Spanish bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguín crashed, she came to Cuba and stayed at Finca Vigía, where she had what was termed to be a poignant relationship with Ernest. Ava Gardner swam nude in the pool, located down the slope from the Hemingway house, after which he told his staff that the water was not to be emptied. An intimate friendship grew between Hemingway’s forth and second wife, Mary and Pauline. Pauline often came to Finca Vigia, in the early 1950s, and likewise Mary made the crossing of the Florida Straits, back to Key West several times. The ex-wife and the current wife enjoyed gossiping about their prior husbands and lovers and had choice words regarding Ernest. In 1959, Hemingway was in Cuba during the revolution, and was delighted that Batista, who owned the nearby property, that later became the location of the dismal Pan Americana Housing Development, was overthrown. He shared the love of fishing with Fidel Castro and remained on good terms with him. Reading the tea leaves, he decided to leave Cuba after hearing that Fidel wanted to nationalize the properties owned by Americans and other foreign nationals. In the summer of 1960, while working on a manuscript for Life magazine, Hemingway developed dementia becoming disorganized and confused. His eyesight had been failing and he became despondent and depressed. On July 25, 1960, he and his wife Mary left Cuba for the last time. He never retrieved his books or the manuscripts that he left in the bank vault. Following the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban government took ownership of his home and the works he left behind, including an estimated 5,000 books from his personal library. After years of neglect, his home, which was designed by the Spanish architect Miguel Pascual y Baguer in 1886, has now been largely restored as the Hemingway Museum. The museum, overlooking San Francisco de Paula, as well as the Straits of Florida in the distance, houses much of his work as well as his boat housed near his pool.

Crucially, most of the existing Harrah’s debt did not have to be refinanced. Because it was not secured by any collateral, suddenly Harrah’s could issue senior debt backed by the company’s assets. It would do so in the LBO deal, pushing $4.5 billion of existing debt to the bottom of the totem pole in a $25 billion debt stack. This was cruel. Those existing unsecured bonds crashed in price as they were last in line to be repaid. But the maneuver allowed Apollo and TPG to issue new debt more cheaply. And it illustrated one of the key legal principles that would echo through this case: Debtholders’ relationship with the company remains strictly contractual. Any rights they have must be bargained for and embedded in documents. The management and board of a company, in contrast, have fiduciary duties which dictate that they maximize shareholder value.

Kill Yourself Buddhism argues that your idea of who “you” are is an arbitrary mental construction and that you should let go of the idea that “you” exist at all; that the arbitrary metrics by which you define yourself actually trap you, and thus you’re better off letting go of everything. In a sense, you could say that Buddhism encourages you to not give a fuck. It sounds wonky, but there are some psychological benefits to this approach to life. When we let go of the stories we tell about ourselves, to ourselves, we free ourselves up to actually act (and fail) and grow. When someone admits to herself, “You know, maybe I’m not good at relationships,” then she is suddenly free to act and end her bad marriage. She has no identity to protect by staying in a miserable, crappy marriage just to prove something to herself. When the student admits to himself, “You know, maybe I’m not a rebel; maybe I’m just scared,” then he’s free to be ambitious again. He has no reason to feel threatened by pursuing his academic dreams and maybe failing. When the insurance adjuster admits to himself, “You know, maybe there’s nothing unique or special about my dreams or my job,” then he’s free to give that screenplay an honest go and see what happens. I have both some good news and some bad news for you: there is little that is unique or special about your problems. That’s why letting go is so liberating. There’s a kind of self-absorption that comes with fear based on an irrational certainty. When you assume that your plane is the one that’s going to crash, or that your project idea is the stupid one everyone is going to laugh at, or that you’re the one everyone is going to choose to mock or ignore, you’re implicitly telling yourself, “I’m the exception; I’m unlike everybody else; I’m different and special.” This is narcissism, pure and simple. You feel as though your problems deserve to be treated differently, that your problems have some unique math to them that doesn’t obey the laws of the physical universe. My recommendation: don’t be special; don’t be unique. Redefine your metrics in mundane and broad ways. Choose to measure yourself not as a rising star or an undiscovered genius. Choose to measure yourself not as some horrible victim or dismal failure. Instead, measure yourself by more mundane identities: a student, a partner, a friend, a creator. The narrower and rarer the identity you choose for yourself, the more everything will seem to threaten you. For that reason, define yourself in the simplest and most ordinary ways possible. This often means giving up some grandiose ideas about yourself: that you’re uniquely intelligent, or spectacularly talented, or intimidatingly attractive, or especially victimized in ways other people could never imagine.

For all of us, the person we love most in the world, the one who can send us soaring joyfully into space, is also the person who can send us crashing back to earth.

There comes a time in every relationship when the fires of passion begin to die down as they are slowly quenched by the rains of indifference and familiarity. They cannot be allowed to go out completely though, as love without passion is like a jet without a pilot, destined to crash and burn in a spectacularly messy fashion. As a couple, you must fan the flames with the winds of lust and kinky rubber catsuits, or whatever other nastiness rocks your boat. Anything else isn’t living, it’s existing.

As my mother regained a bit of composure after hearing the news that she would have a granddaughter, I explained to her that, although I’d always known I would be a parent someday, I’d never for one second imagined having a girl. By no means am I a cigar-chomping, NASCAR-watching, Sunday-afternoon-armchair-quarterback kind of guy, but what could I ever offer a daughter? How to tune a kick drum and catalog her Slayer bootlegs? I was at a loss. And then, as she had always done, my mother imparted a little bit of her well-earned wisdom that has since proven to be one of my life’s most indisputable truths: “The relationship between a father and daughter can be one of the most special relationships in any girl’s life.” She knew this because of the relationship she had with her father, a military man of charm and wit who everyone loved dearly before his early passing when she was in her twenties. I never had the pleasure of meeting him, but from all that I’ve heard, he was a good man and indeed had that special connection to my mother. Though still terrified, I was slightly reassured. Maybe cataloging Slayer bootlegs together could be fun. Courtesy of Danny Clinch As the months flew by, Jordyn and I began to prepare for the new baby, readying her room, shopping for all the necessary gear, and eventually settling on the name Violet (after my mother’s mother, Violet Hanlon). I was given a library of books to study with subjects ranging from sleep training (which is a farce because ultimately they sleep-train you, making it impossible to sleep past six A.M. for the rest of your life) to swaddling (I’m bad enough at rolling joints; how could I successfully roll a child?) to how to change a diaper (something I may hold a land speed record in by this point). I was taking a crash course in fatherhood, or at least the logistical side of it.

11. Lack of controlled sexual urge. Sex energy is the most powerful of all the stimuli which move people into action. Because it is the most powerful of the emotions, it must be controlled, through transmutation, and converted into other channels. 12. Uncontrolled desire for “something for nothing.” The gambling instinct drives millions of people to failure. Evidence of this may be found in a study of the Wall Street crash of ’29, during which millions of people tried to make money by gambling on stock margins. 13. Lack of a well defined power of decision. Men who succeed reach decisions promptly, and change them, if at all, very slowly. Men who fail reach decisions, if at all, very slowly, and change them frequently, and quickly. Indecision and procrastination are twin brothers. Where one is found, the other may usually be found also. Kill off this pair before they completely “hog-tie” you to the treadmill of failure. 14. One or more of the six basic fears. These fears have been analyzed for you in a later chapter. They must be mastered before you can market your services effectively. 15. Wrong selection of a mate in marriage. This is a most common cause of failure. The relationship of marriage brings people intimately into contact. Unless this relationship is harmonious, failure is likely to follow. Moreover, it will be a form of failure that is marked by misery and unhappiness, destroying all signs of ambition. 16. Over-caution. The person who takes no chances generally has to take whatever is left when others are through choosing. Over-caution is as bad as under-caution. Both are extremes to be guarded against. Life itself is filled with the element of chance. 17. Wrong selection of associates in business. This is one of the most common causes of failure in business. In marketing personal services, one should use great care to select an employer who will be an inspiration, and who is, himself, intelligent and successful. We emulate those with whom we associate most closely. Pick an employer who is worth emulating. 18. Superstition and prejudice. Superstition is a form of fear. It is also a sign of ignorance. Men who succeed keep open minds and are afraid of nothing. 19. Wrong selection of a vocation. No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like. The most essential step in the marketing of personal services is that of selecting an occupation into which you can throw yourself wholeheartedly. 20. Lack of concentration of effort. The jack-of-all-trades seldom is good at any. Concentrate all of your efforts on one definite chief aim.

Hiro, you are such a geek. She's a woman, you're a dude. You're not supposed to understand her. That's not what she's after." ... "She doesn't want you to understand her. She wants you to understand yourself. Everything else is negotiable.

Self-compassion is a mindful awareness of your value and worth as a human being. A human being who is flawed, imperfect, and struggling. This is opposed to self-esteem, which is based on external events. Self-esteem crashes when we are unsuccessful, either by the standards of others or ourselves. Self-compassion, on the other hand, is inclusive instead of competitive. It is always available to us, even when we are not our best selves or successful by the standards we have established. And it’s pretty much impossible to connect with others intimately if we don’t have some level of comfort with our own flawed existence.

When we are going about our daily lives, we often don’t see the broken bits that are so obvious to those around us. We are navigating our world, thinking everything is status quo until something or someone points it out to us. Or we crash.

Her smile was brittle. "Well, I know Kieran's achieving something if someone like you is willing to be in a relationship with him." "Someone like me?" She gestured to me from head to toe. "Respectable. Elegantly dressed, if a little flamboyant with color. Beautiful manners, well-spoken. Clearly you listened to your parents when they told you how to behave." I choked back a snort at the thought of my biological father being Mr. Manners. The sheer audacity of it. "Kieran probably hasn't told you about all the times we had to get him out of trouble," she continued. I blinked, confused. "No." She ticked off on her fingers as she spoke. "He skipped classes, he stole money out of my wallet, he crashed our cars more than once. Not to mention the drinking, my God. He couldn't hold his liquor at all. We were so ashamed." I held back my eye roll. It was like having a conversation with a steamroller. As she continued to list Kieran's crimes, I realized that she relished this monologue, all the ways he'd done them wrong. Like she never wanted him to grow up because then she'd have to stop being a martyr. "But anyway, that's all in the past. Finally, he's become who we always wanted him to be, and we can hold our heads up." The thought of being a source of pride to these snobby, plastic people made me want to drink ten flutes of prosecco, climb onto their dining room table, and do Amy Winehouse karaoke, Diane's advice about polish and presentation be damned. But all I needed to shock them was the truth. "I haven't seen my father in over twenty years," I began. "As far as I know he's still the lead singer of the second-best hair metal band in Spokane. My mother's salary was for keeping herself in clothes and boyfriends. Sometimes I had to break into my piggy bank so that I could by Cup O' Noodles at 7-Eleven for my brother and me. I've made a good life in spite of my parents, not because of them. It's one of the reasons I fell in love with your son. I knew he was a survivor, too. But thank you for the compliments. Now, if you'll excuse me.

After the get-to-know-you phase has passed, [...], uncertainty in close relationships arises from whether we're sure about our own thoughts (Am I really in love?), those of the other person (Does he really enjoy spending time together?), and the future of the relationship (Are we headed for a breakup?). [...] Knoblosh believes uncertainty leads close partners to experience relational turbulance [...], a good metaphor for partners facing uncertainty and interference: When an aircraft encounters a dramatic hange in weather cinditions, passengers feel turbulence as the place is jostled, jerked, and jolted erratically. Similarly, when a [couple] undergoes turbulence as sudden intense reactions to their circumstances. Just as turbulence during a flight may make passengers [reconsider] their safety, fear a crash, or grip their seat, turbulence in a relationship may make partners ruminate about hurt, cry over jealousy, or scream during conflict. [...] In times of relational turbulence, we're likely to feel unsettling emotions like anger, sadness, and fear. It's a bumpy ride that makes us more reactive, or sensitive, to our partner's actions. [Reducing uncertainty in ongoing relationships: Relational turbulence theory]

Crash films…shot between 1948 and 1950, before Colombia. As the Web authors explained, this was a series of nineteen films whose sole aim was to display things never before attempted in the medium, a kind of artistic exploit on celluloid. Lacombe didn’t care about the point of a film, only about the public’s reactions: its passivity toward images, its relationship to plot and story line, its voyeuristic tendencies, its fascination with intimacy, and also its tolerance for conceptual cinema. He challenged people’s watching habits and turned filmmaking conventions on their heads. Always a need to innovate, disturb, shock…

I just wanted to bury my head in the sand and go back to a point in time that felt comfortable and familiar. I hated feeling like a visitor in my own life, and no matter what I told myself when I woke up in the morning each day, I couldn’t shake feeling like everything I had come back to after my contract with the army was up was a life that belonged to someone else. My family didn’t feel right. The new dynamic in my relationship with Rule didn’t feel right. Trying to get used to Shaw being taken care of by my wayward and reckless little brother didn’t feel right. Crashing with Nash while I tried to get my shit straight didn’t feel right. Not having a job lined up or any clear direction of how to support myself doing something other than fighting a war quite possibly felt the most wrong out of it all.

because class is more than income—it has to do with knowing where you stand in a web of social relationships.

In writing my memoirs I had reopened my Pandora’s Box. They forced me to face the demons that haunted me after returning to reality from my fantasy-bubbled life, which came to a crashing halt when Andy and I terminated our four-year loving relationship. He went his merry way to New Zealand in pursuit of an engineering career and I stayed in London to follow my fashion ambition.

As much as I loved Toby, he was not you and never would be. I had unconsciously fallen into a relationship through default, using Toby as your replacement. Although our sexual rapport was excellent, our relationship did not touch the soul-to-soul level I shared with you. At twenty-two, there were many things I did not understand about love. I thought I knew it all. I plunged full steam ahead, and, soon after we met, I found myself sharing a home with Toby. Our lives together came crashing down a year later. I concluded that there wasn’t anyone who could replace you in my heart. It was best for Toby and me to separate. He realized that I could not provide the love he so desired. You, Young, are the boy I’ve been trying to replace, all these years. You are an ever-present apparition who never leaves me. Images of you continue to follow me everywhere I go. You are my shadow…

During the horrifying attacks against the United States by terrorists on September 11, 2001, the country experienced the reality of criminal violence en masse. We learned of the actions taken aboard a hijacked airplane by some of its passengers that caused the plane to crash into a field instead of, perhaps, the White House or Capitol building. Americans embraced the actions the passengers took to save those who would otherwise have died-actions that required the application of violent force. The passengers had to impose their wills upon the hijackers in order to thwart their mission. I was struck by the unanimity of that public response to violence. Perhaps it was the unbelievable scale of the devastation, or the catastrophic change in our view of our safety and security, that inspired such vast support for greater enforcement measures to combat threats against America.