Crooked Mind People Quotes

I liked Augustus Waters. I really, really, really liked him. I liked the way his story ended with someone else. I liked his voice. I liked that he took existentially fraught free throws. I liked that he was a tenured professor in the Department of Slightly Crooked Smiles with a dual appointment in the Department of Having a Voice That Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin. And I liked that he had two names. I've always liked people with two names, because you get to make up your mind what you call them: Gus or Augustus?

I nodded. I liked Augustus Waters. I really, really, really liked him. I liked the way his story ended with someone else. I liked his voice. I liked that he took existentially fraught free throws. I liked that he was a tenured professor in the Department of Slightly Crooked Smiles with a dual appointment in the Department of Having a Voice That Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin. And I liked that he had two names. I’ve always liked people with two names, because you get to make up your mind what you call them: Gus or Augustus? Me, I was always just Hazel, univalent Hazel.

How do people get to this clandestine Archipelago? Hour by hour planes fly there, ships steer their course there, and trains thunder off to it--but all with nary a mark on them to tell of their destination. And at ticket windows or at travel bureaus for Soviet or foreign tourists the employees would be astounded if you were to ask for a ticket to go there. They know nothing and they've never heard of the Archipelago as a whole or any one of its innumerable islands. Those who go to the Archipelago to administer it get there via the training schools of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Those who go there to be guards are conscripted via the military conscription centers. And those who, like you and me, dear reader, go there to die, must get there solely and compulsorily via arrest. Arrest! Need it be said that it is a breaking point in your life, a bolt of lightning which has scored a direct hit on you? That it is an unassimilable spiritual earthquake not every person can cope with, as a result of which people often slip into insanity? The Universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it. Each of us is a center of the Universe, and that Universe is shattered when they hiss at you: "You are under arrest." If you are arrested, can anything else remain unshattered by this cataclysm? But the darkened mind is incapable of embracing these dis­placements in our universe, and both the most sophisticated and the veriest simpleton among us, drawing on all life's experience, can gasp out only: "Me? What for?" And this is a question which, though repeated millions and millions of times before, has yet to receive an answer. Arrest is an instantaneous, shattering thrust, expulsion, somer­sault from one state into another. We have been happily borne—or perhaps have unhappily dragged our weary way—down the long and crooked streets of our lives, past all kinds of walls and fences made of rotting wood, rammed earth, brick, concrete, iron railings. We have never given a thought to what lies behind them. We have never tried to pene­trate them with our vision or our understanding. But there is where the Gulag country begins, right next to us, two yards away from us. In addition, we have failed to notice an enormous num­ber of closely fitted, well-disguised doors and gates in these fences. All those gates were prepared for us, every last one! And all of a sudden the fateful gate swings quickly open, and four white male hands, unaccustomed to physical labor but none­theless strong and tenacious, grab us by the leg, arm, collar, cap, ear, and drag us in like a sack, and the gate behind us, the gate to our past life, is slammed shut once and for all. That's all there is to it! You are arrested! And you'll find nothing better to respond with than a lamblike bleat: "Me? What for?" That's what arrest is: it's a blinding flash and a blow which shifts the present instantly into the past and the impossible into omnipotent actuality. That's all. And neither for the first hour nor for the first day will you be able to grasp anything else.

How did you know?” Benedict finally asked. One corner of Colin’s mouth tilted up into a crooked smile. “About Sophie? It’s rather obvious.” “Colin, she’s—” “A maid? Who cares? What is going to happen to you if you marry her?” Colin asked with a devil-may-care shrug of his shoulders. “People you couldn’t care less about will ostracize you? Hell, I wouldn’t mind being ostracized by some of the people with whom I’m forced to socialize.” Benedict shrugged dismissively. “I’d already decided I didn’t care about all that,” he said. “Then what in bloody hell is the problem?” Colin demanded. “It’s complicated.” “Nothing is ever as complicated as it is in one’s mind.

A true community does not need a police force. The very presence of a law enforcement system in a community is an indication that something is not working. And the presence of the police is supposed to make it work. Such a force is essentially repressive, which means that certain people in such a dysfunctional community do not know how to fit in. A community is a place where there is consensus, not where there is a crooked-looking onlooker with a gun, creating an atmosphere of unrest. In my village, houses do not have doors that can be locked. They have entrances. The absence of doors is not a sign of technological deprivation but an indication of the state of mind the community is in. The open door symbolizes the open mind and open heart. Thus a doorless home is home to anybody in the community. It translates the level at which the community operates. In addition, this community does not have a police force because it does not assume that the other person is dishonest or potentially evil. The trust factor must be high. Elders

Of course the people in the metro didn't see a thing!...what a joke! petrified ratlets! but they'll still come out to refute me! make claims!...that nothing got bombed!...squished! powdered! that the firmament was calm, and me, I imagined the whole thing! chrysanthemums, sprays, roses! why, there's no more any such thing as sky-hooking shrapnel than there is anal ice cream! it's all in my mind! hallucinations and bullshit! what a crook! but I repeat and reassert! shrapnel and fiery lace stretched from one end of the horizon to the other! with lots of glow-worms mixed in...and dancing purple fireflies...

Democracy as we have tried it started out on the wrong foot. We took the Christian scriptures that say that everybody is equal in the sight of God and made it to mean that everybody is inferior in the sight of God. And this is a parody of mysticism. Because originally, mysticism meant that, from the standpoint of God, all people are divine, which is a far different thing. So this is why all bureaucracies are rude, why police are rude, why you are made to wait in lines for everything, and why everyone is treated as some kind of crook. And a society like this, that views everybody as inferior, turns quickly into fascism because of its terror of the outsider.

Exceptions were made for Friday episodes of One Life to Live, and, occasionally, for Oprah, who was one of the few black people Helen had any regard for. Perhaps in the past she had been more open-minded, but getting mugged in the foyer of our building convinced her that they were all crooks and sex maniacs. “Even the light-skinned ones.

It was in Las Vegas that Eisman and his associates’ attitude toward the U.S. bond market hardened into something like its final shape. As Vinny put it, “That was the moment when we said, ‘Holy shit, this isn’t just credit. This is a fictitious Ponzi scheme.’” In Vegas the question lingering at the back of their minds ceased to be, Do these bond market people know something we do not? It was replaced by, Do they deserve merely to be fired, or should they be put in jail? Are they delusional, or do they know what they’re doing? Danny thought that the vast majority of the people in the industry were blinded by their interests and failed to see the risks they had created. Vinny, always darker, said, “There were more morons than crooks, but the crooks were higher up.

The people cast themselves down by the fuming boards while servants cut the roast, mixed jars of wine and water, and all the gods flew past like the night-breaths of spring. The chattering female flocks sat down by farther tables, their fresh prismatic garments gleaming in the moon as though a crowd of haughty peacocks played in moonlight. The queen’s throne softly spread with white furs of fox gaped desolate and bare, for Penelope felt ashamed to come before her guests after so much murder. Though all the guests were ravenous, they still refrained, turning their eyes upon their silent watchful lord till he should spill wine in libation for the Immortals. The king then filled a brimming cup, stood up and raised it high till in the moon the embossed adornments gleamed: Athena, dwarfed and slender, wrought in purest gold, pursued around the cup with double-pointed spear dark lowering herds of angry gods and hairy demons; she smiled and the sad tenderness of her lean face, and her embittered fearless glance, seemed almost human. Star-eyed Odysseus raised Athena’s goblet high and greeted all, but spoke in a beclouded mood: “In all my wandering voyages and torturous strife, the earth, the seas, the winds fought me with frenzied rage; I was in danger often, both through joy and grief, of losing priceless goodness, man’s most worthy face. I raised my arms to the high heavens and cried for help, but on my head gods hurled their lightning bolts, and laughed. I then clasped Mother Earth, but she changed many shapes, and whether as earthquake, beast, or woman, rushed to eat me; then like a child I gave my hopes to the sea in trust, piled on my ship my stubbornness, my cares, my virtues, the poor remaining plunder of god-fighting man, and then set sail; but suddenly a wild storm burst, and when I raised my eyes, the sea was strewn with wreckage. As I swam on, alone between sea and sky, with but my crooked heart for dog and company, I heard my mind, upon the crumpling battlements about my head, yelling with flailing crimson spear. Earth, sea, and sky rushed backward; I remained alone with a horned bow slung down my shoulder, shorn of gods and hopes, a free man standing in the wilderness. Old comrades, O young men, my island’s newest sprouts, I drink not to the gods but to man’s dauntless mind.” All shuddered, for the daring toast seemed sacrilege, and suddenly the hungry people shrank in spirit; They did not fully understand the impious words but saw flames lick like red curls about his savage head. The smell of roast was overpowering, choice meats steamed, and his bold speech was soon forgotten in hunger’s pangs; all fell to eating ravenously till their brains reeled. Under his lowering eyebrows Odysseus watched them sharply: "This is my people, a mess of bellies and stinking breath! These are my own minds, hands, and thighs, my loins and necks!" He muttered in his thorny beard, held back his hunger far from the feast and licked none of the steaming food.

Damn it, Jacob, I’m freezing my butt off.” “I came as fast as I could, considering I thought it would be wise to walk the last few yards.” Isabella whirled around, her smiling face lighting up the silvery night with more ease than the fullest of moons. She leapt up into his embrace, eagerly drinking in his body heat and affection. “I can see it now. ‘Daddy, tell me about your wedding day.’ ‘Well, son,’” she mocked, deepening her voice to his timbre and reflecting his accent uncannily, “’The first words out of your mother’s mouth were I’m freezing my butt off!’” “Very romantic, don’t you think?” he teased. “So, you think it will be a boy, then? Our first child?” “Well, I’m fifty percent sure.” “Wise odds. Come, little flower, I intend to marry you before the hour is up.” With that, he scooped her off her feet and carried her high against his chest. “Unfortunately, we are going to have to do this hike the hard way.” “As Legna tells it, that’s what you’re supposed to do.” “Yeah, well, I assure you a great many grooms have fudged that a little.” He reached to tuck her chilled face into the warm crook of his neck. “Surely the guests would know. It takes longer to walk than it does to fly . . . or whatever . . . out of the woods.” “This is true, little flower. But passing time in the solitude of the woods is not necessarily a difficult task for a man and woman about to be married.” “Jacob!” she gasped, laughing. “Some traditions are not necessarily publicized,” he teased. “You people are outrageous.” “Mmm, and if I had the ability to turn to dust right now, would you tell me no if I asked to . . . pass time with you?” Isabella shivered, but it was the warmth of his whisper and intent, not the cold, that made her do so. “Have I ever said no to you?” “No, but now would be a good time to start, or we will be late to our own wedding,” he chuckled. “How about no . . . for now?” she asked silkily, pressing her lips to the column on his neck beneath his long, loose hair. His fingers flexed on her flesh, his arms drawing her tighter to himself. He tried to concentrate on where he was putting his feet. “If that is going to be your response, Bella, then I suggest you stop teasing me with that wicked little mouth of yours before I trip and land us both in the dirt.” “Okay,” she agreed, her tongue touching his pulse. “Bella . . .” “Jacob, I want to spend the entire night making love to you,” she murmured. Jacob stopped in his tracks, taking a moment to catch his breath. “Okay, why is it I always thought it was the groom who was supposed to be having lewd thoughts about the wedding night while the bride took the ceremony more seriously?” “You started it,” she reminded him, laughing softly. “I am begging you, Isabella, to allow me to leave these woods with a little of my dignity intact.” He sighed deeply, turning his head to brush his face over her hair. “It does not take much effort from you to turn me inside out and rouse my hunger for you. If there is much more of your wanton taunting, you will be flushed warm and rosy by the time we reach that altar, and our guests will not have to be Mind Demons in order to figure out why.” “I’m sorry, you’re right.” She turned her face away from his neck. Jacob resumed his ritual walk for all of thirty seconds before he stopped again. “Bella . . .” he warned dangerously. “I’m sorry! It just popped into my head!” “What am I getting myself into?” he asked aloud, sighing dramatically as he resumed his pace. “Well, in about an hour, I hope it will be me.

Dick Brown's affliction was a crooked back, yet he bore his burden so cheerfully that Demi once asked in his queer way, "Do humps make people good-natured? I'd like one if they do." Dick was always merry, and did his best to be like other boys, for a plucky spirit lived in the feeble little body. When he first came he was very sensitive about his misfortune, but soon learned to forget it, for no one dared remind him of it after Mr. Bhaer had punished one boy for laughing at him. "God don't care; for my soul is straight if my back isn't," sobbed Dick to his tormentor on that occasion; and, by cherishing this idea, the Bhears soon led him to believe that people also loved his soul, and did not mind his body, except to pity and help him bear it.

A museum employee walked through interrupting the conversation; he nodded to the couple before disappearing again. Nora hooks her arm with his leading him to a new painting. Stopping before a portrait of a young girl, she identifies this as the one she restored for the Art Academy. Oss glanced around ensuring their privacy then squeezed her elbow. She looked up at him from beneath feathered lashes and the outside world ceased to exist. Brushing his lips to hers, the fresh scent of her fragrance filled his mind. Raids, mobsters and crooked cops receded to distance recesses in his mind. Soft lips caressed his, his mind exploded in color. Two lonely people were falling in love; only the girl in the portrait bore witness to this extraordinary event. ~ The love story of Oss and Nora

A girl is like a young tree,” she said. “You must stand tall and listen to your mother standing next to you. That is the only way to grow strong and straight. But if you bend to listen to other people, you will grow crooked and weak. You will fall to the ground with the first strong wind. And then you will be like a weed, growing wild in any direction, running along the ground until someone pulls you out and throws you away.” But by the time she told me this, it was too late. I had already begun to bend. I had started going to school, where a teacher named Mrs. Berry lined us up and marched us in and out of rooms, up and down hallways while she called out, “Boys and girls, follow me.” And if you didn’t listen to her, she would make you bend over and whack you with a yardstick ten times. I still listened to my mother, but I also learned how to let her words blow through me. And sometimes I filled my mind with other people’s thoughts—all in English—so that when she looked at me inside out, she would be confused by what she saw.

Kaz had never been able to dodge the horror of that night in the Ketterdam harbor, the memory of his brother’s corpse clutched tight in his arms as he told himself to kick a little harder, to take one more breath, stay afloat, stay alive. He’d found his way to shore, devoted himself to the vengeance he and his brother were owed. But the nightmare refused to fade. Kaz had been sure it would get easier. He would stop having to think twice before he shook a hand or was forced into close quarters. Instead, things got so bad he could barely brush up against someone on the street without finding himself once more in the harbor. He was on the Reaper’s Barge and death was all around him. He was kicking through the water, clinging to the slippery bloat of Jordie’s flesh, too frightened of drowning to let go. The situation had gotten dangerous. When Gorka once got too drunk to stand at the Blue Paradise, Kaz and Teapot had to carry him home. Six blocks they hauled him, Gorka’s weight shifting back and forth, slumping against Kaz in a sickening press of skin and stink, then flopping onto Teapot, freeing Kaz briefly—though he could still feel the rub of the man’s hairy arm against the back of his neck. Later, Teapot had found Kaz huddled in a lavatory, shaking and covered in sweat. He’d pleaded food poisoning, teeth chattering as he jammed his foot against the door to keep Teapot out. He could not be touched again or he would lose his mind completely. The next day he’d bought his first pair of gloves—cheap black things that bled dye whenever they got wet. Weakness was lethal in the Barrel. People could smell it on you like blood, and if Kaz was going to bring Pekka Rollins to his knees, he couldn’t afford any more nights trembling on a bathroom floor. Kaz never answered questions about the gloves, never responded to taunts. He just wore them, day in and day out, peeling them off only when he was alone. He told himself it was a temporary measure. But that didn’t stop him from remastering every bit of sleight of hand wearing them, learning to shuffle and work a deck even more deftly than he could barehanded. The gloves held back the waters, kept him from drowning when memories of that night threatened to drag him under. When he pulled them on, it felt like he was arming himself, and they were better than a knife or a gun. 

But being short something where your loss is unlimited is quite different than being long something that you’ve already paid for. And it’s tempting. You see way more stocks that are dramatically overvalued in your career than you will see stocks that are dramatically undervalued. I mean there — it’s the nature of securities markets to occasionally promote various things to the sky, so that securities will frequently sell for 5 or 10 times what they’re worth, and they will very, very seldom sell for 20 percent or 10 percent of what they’re worth. So, therefore, you see these much greater discrepancies between price and value on the overvaluation side. So you might think it’s easier to make money on short selling. And all I can say is, it hasn’t been for me. I don’t think it’s been for Charlie. It is a very, very tough business because of the fact that you face unlimited losses, and because of the fact that people that have overvalued stocks — very overvalued stocks — are frequently on some scale between promoter and crook. And that’s why they get there. And once there — And they also know how to use that very valuation to bootstrap value into the business, because if you have a stock that’s selling at 100 that’s worth 10, obviously it’s to your interest to go out and issue a whole lot of shares. And if you do that, when you get all through, the value can be 50. In fact, there’s a lot of chain letter-type stock promotions that are sort of based on the implicit assumption that the management will keep doing that. And if they do it once and build it to 50 by issuing a lot of shares at 100 when it’s worth 10, now the value is 50 and people say, “Well, these guys are so good at that. Let’s pay 200 for it or 300,” and then they could do it again and so on. It’s not usually that — quite that clear in their minds. But that’s the basic principle underlying a lot of stock promotions. And if you get caught up in one of those that is successful, you know, you can run out of money before the promoter runs out of ideas. In the end, they almost always work. I mean, I would say that, of the things that we have felt like shorting over the years, the batting average is very high in terms of eventual — that they would work out very well eventually if you held them through. But it is very painful and it’s — in my experience, it was a whole lot easier to make money on the long side.

She had a moment of sheer panic, and visions of crooks and the white slave traffic swept through her mind. Had the woman picked her up—like that—on purpose. (There was that queer tale of Stevenson’s in which somebody had furnished a whole house for one night as a net to catch some people he wanted—she could not remember the whole story, but the furnishing of the house for one night had stuck in her mind, and the coming of the pantechnicons at dawn to take the furniture away.)

It was easier, and less expensive, to give a party at Chasen’s. ‘We entertain each other because we never know how to enjoy ourselves with other people,’ Reinhardt said to the guests at his table. ‘Hollywood people are afraid to leave Hollywood. Out in the world, they are frightened. They are unsure of themselves. They never enjoy themselves out of Hollywood. Sam Hoffenstein used to say we are the croupiers in a crooked gambling house. And it’s true. Every one of us thinks, You know, I really don’t deserve a swimming pool.’ The guests did not seem to mind what he had said, but on the other hand, there was no indication that anyone had listened to him.

As important and revolutionary as these things were, it was Joseph Smith's teachings on marriage that had a more visible and far-reaching effect on William Clayton's life than anything else he learned in Nauvoo. Two doctrines, “eternal marriage" and "plural marriage," went hand-in-hand, and Clayton learned of them during the last two years of his association with the prophet. Why would the straitlaced, idealistic William Clayton, who was almost overly concerned with what people thought of him, seriously consider the practice of plural marriage when it so clearly violated all his earlier values as well as the morality and sensibilities of the society in which he lived? He had a good marriage with Ruth Moon, which had endured considerable adversity. He was also close to her family. By the time the doctrine of polygamy was presented to him Ruth had borne three children and on February 17, 1843, just two months before his second marriage, she presented him with his first son. It was no lack of love or compatibility that led him to take additional wives. The most compelling factor was his single-minded conviction that whatever Joseph Smith told him to do was right and that he must spare no pains to accomplish it. At the same time, it is clear that his affection for Sarah Crooks of Manchester was still there, and once he was convinced that the principle was true, it was only natural that he should think of her as a possible second wife.

Then again, almost nobody passed the test of our mockery. Almost anything said or done by anybody was in some way undermined by an unconscious assumption or blind spot or standpoint issue which the speaker or actor suffered from. Everyone was disdained, oneself especially. The performance of kicking in one’s own rotten ideological floorboards was something we called “reflexivity.” This was a cop-out, of course, but it was a smart cop-out. Being smart—which we confused with being knowledgeable—was less about seeing something for what it was than about critically viewing one’s act of seeing, and then critically viewing oneself critically viewing one’s originally seeing self, and so on infinitely, as in an Escher, without vertigo. In practice, it led to abandoning all attempts to actually absorb anything, and defaulting to an ironic or camp focus on obviously trash TV and comic books and music, and expressing a perverse but real admiration for brazenly rich or crooked or right-wing people, whom we associated with authenticity and transparency, the idea being that human beings purporting to act in good faith were either operators or people who had mistaken their lucky success for merit. It sounds unbelievable, but that’s how small-minded and envious we were. That isn’t to say that perspectivism doesn’t have value, because of course it does. But it does not solve the problem. One remains an American idiot.

In a husky whisper he recited the prophecy to her. When he finished she stirred in the crook of his arm. “That is your song?” “Huh, yes.” “But, it’s beautiful!” With a start, Hunter realized he thought so, too. “Since my boyhood, I had much hate for the words.” He twined a length of her hair around his finger, smiling. “And great hate for the honey-haired woman who would one day steal my heart. I wished to kill you, yes?” “But I’m not the woman in your song.” “Ah, yes, you are the woman.” “The song says the People will call me the Little Wise One. They don’t! And they never will. I’m far from wise.” “It will come to pass,” he assured her. “It must. All of the words must.” She saw shadows creep into his eyes. “What is it? Why are you so sad?” The muscles along his throat knotted. “My song says I will one day leave my people. I am Comanche. Without them, I will be as nothing, Blue Eyes.” Loretta stared sightlessly into the shifting shadows, watching the play of firelight. “It’s only a legend, Hunter. A silly legend. Hatred going away on the wind? High places and great canyons of blood! New tomorrows and new nations?” She turned her face toward him. “Look into my eyes. Do you see a new morning with new beginnings?” He searched her gaze, and then, in a husky voice that reached way down inside her, he whispered, “Yes.” He drew out the word until it seemed to echo and reecho in her mind.

She is nice,” Valerie said with a smile. “Nothing like I would have imagined a vampire would be like . . . if I’d have even imagined vampires existed,” she added wryly. “But then you’re all nice. Well, all of you that I’ve met since escaping Count Rip-Your-Throat-Out.” “We’re just people, Valerie. We have good ones and bad ones and some in between,” Anders said quietly. She shook her head, a crooked smile on her face. “And you’re delusional if you think that, Anders.” When alarm crossed his face, she patted his hand soothingly. “I believe you want to believe that. But you aren’t ‘just people.’ ‘Just people’ don’t live centuries or even millennia. They can’t see in the dark, or lift a small car with little effort, or read the minds of, and control others. And ‘just people’ don’t need to feed on other ‘just people’ to survive.” “I—” “It’s all right. You were born this way, so you don’t have a clue that you’re like a fricking superhero. You probably don’t even realize how differently you see things. That your perception of time is so much different than non-immortals because it has so little hold on you,” Leigh had mentioned that to her. That one of the things she’d noticed about immortals since becoming one herself was that the old ones had a different concept of time. That what she considered a long time, was a mere twinkling of time to them. Valerie supposed if you lived thousands of years, a day was a blink in time and a week wasn’t much more. Grimacing, she added, “You probably don’t realize that you have so many fewer fears and worries than mortals because cancer, and heart disease, and all those other nasty little life stealers can’t claim you. And you’ve surely never been afraid of a mortal doing you harm.

He’s crooked, he’s corrupt, he’s more sly and cynical than Cardinal Richelieu. But you know, to do him credit, there’s something very broad-minded and forgiving about him. People who are civilized and also amoral, well, they don’t make big, harsh demands. They’re willing to let you be.

Is there a problem, ma’am?” Mitch slanted a glance in her direction. She stood military straight, vehemently shaking her head. “Everything’s fine, Officer.” “Sheriff. You sure about that?” Charlie said, sounding like a complete hard-ass. “Looked to me like you were being accosted.” “N-no—” Mitch cut her off. “Would you get the hell out of here?” “Mitch,” Maddie said, with a low hiss. Evidently in a devious mood, Charlie stalked forward, placing a hand menacingly over his baton. “What did you say?” “Fuck. Off.” Mitch fired each word like a bullet. “Mitch, please,” Maddie said, tone pleading. “Do I have to take you in?” Charlie’s attention shifted in Maddie’s direction and his mouth twisted into a smile that Mitch had seen him use on hundreds of women during their fifteen-year friendship. “I’ll be happy to look after her for you, Mitch.” A stab of something suspiciously close to possessiveness jabbed at his rib cage. Mitch shot Charlie a droll glare. “Over my dead body.” One black brow rose over his sunglasses. “That can be arranged.” “Please, don’t take him to jail,” Maddie said, sounding alarmed. Both Charlie’s and Mitch’s attention snapped to her. “Now, why would you be thinking that?” Charlie asked, in an amused voice. Maddie’s gaze darted back and forth. “He threatened you.” Mitch laughed and Charlie scoffed. “Honey, he’s nothing but a pesky little fly I’d have to bat away.” Comprehension dawned and her worried expression cleared. “Oh, I see. You know, you should tell someone this is some macho-guy act before you get rolling.” “And what fun would that be?” Charlie rocked back on his heels. Even with his eyes hidden behind the mirrored frames, it was damn clear he was scoping Maddie out from head to toe. Under his scrutiny, she started to fidget. She pressed closer to Mitch, almost as if by instinct, pleasing him immensely. “Don’t mind him, Princess.” He slid his arm around her waist, pulling her tighter against him. “He likes to abuse his power over unsuspecting women.” “Um,” Maddie said, fitting under the crook his arm as though she were made for him, which was odd considering he towered over her by a foot. “I bet it’s quite effective.” Charlie laughed. “Maddie Donovan, you’re everything I’ve heard and then some.” Maddie stiffened, pulling out of Mitch’s embrace and cocking her head to the side. “How do you know my name?” “Honey,” Charlie drawled, the endearment scraping a dull blade over Mitch’s nerves. “This is a small town. People don’t have anything else to do but talk. Give me time and I’ll know your whole life story.” That strawberry-stained mouth pulled into a frown, and two little lines formed between auburn brows. She studied the cracked concrete at her feet. Suddenly, she looked up, her cheeks flushing when she realized they were watching her. She smiled brightly. “Oh well, I guess this is what I get for making an entrance.” Charlie

When a manager has a criminal record or a history of cheating investors or even just feels above the law, I stop right there. Crooks don’t suddenly sprout a sense of fiduciary duty. When a piece of evidence might or might not tag a bad guy, I use it only if it hints at other investment defects. Glamorous hype stocks are more likely to be scams, but I avoid them because they are usually overpriced and prone to raising capital constantly. Intricate corporate structures make analysis difficult, even if nothing bad is going on. To spot bad guys, look for the fraud triangle: pressure, opportunity, and rationalization. Philosopher Hannah Arendt had it right that “most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” Watch for when massive option grants or hefty fees compel people to try too hard. Pride can be a dominant motive when an audience believes in someone’s magical powers. Charismatic promoters often suppress the boards of directors, auditors, and other naysayers that might prevent them from doing what they want. They cluster in industries and geographies where capital is abundantly available with little scrutiny or accountability. Lax accounting standards are also a draw. Don’t buy anything someone is pushing hard. By avoiding the bad-guy stocks—and it’s a short list—I slash the possibility of a disastrous outcome but scarcely reduce my opportunity set.

To the impartial observer it is plain that the Greeks, from the intellectual point of view at least, really borrowed very largely from the Orientals, as they themselves frequently admitted ; however unveracious they may have been at times, on this point at least they cannot have lied, for they had no possible interest in doing so, indeed quite the contrary. As we said before, their originality principally lay in their manner of expressing things, by means of a faculty for adaptation one cannot deny them, but which was necessarily limited by the extent of their comprehension ; briefly, their originality was of a purely dialectical order. Actually, since Greeks and Orientals differed in their characteristic ways of thinking, there were necessarily corresponding differences in the modes of reasoning which they employed ; this must always be borne in mind when pointing out certain analogies, real though they be, such as for instance the analogy between the Greek syllogism and what has fairly correctly been called the Hindu syllogism. It cannot even be said that Greek reasoning is distinguished by an ^exceptional strictness ; it only appears stricter than other methods of reasoning to people who are themselves in the habit of employing it exclusively, and this illusion is due solely to the fact that it is restricted to a narrower and more limited field and is therefore more easily defined. On the contrary, the faculty most truly characteristic of the Greeks, but which is little to their advantage, is a certain dialectical subtlety, of which the dialogues of Plato provide numerous examples ; there is an apparent desire to examine each question interminably, under all its aspects and in minutest detail, m order to arrive finally at a rather insignificant conclusion; it would appear that in the West the moderns are not the first people to have been afflicted with “ intellectual myopia.” Perhaps, after all, the Greeks should not be blamed too severely for restricting the field of human thought as they have done ; on the one hand this was an inevitable result of their mental constitution, for which they cannot be held responsible, and on the other hand they did at least in this way bring within reach of a large part of humanity certain kinds of knowledge which were otherwise in danger of remaining completely foreign to it. It is easy to realise the truth of this if one considers what Westerners are capable of to-day, when they happen to come into direct contact with certain Oriental conceptions and set about interpreting them in a manner conforming to their own particular mentality : anything which they cannot connect with the “classical” idiom escapes them completely and whatever can be made to tally with it, by hook or by crook, is so disfigured in the process that it becomes almost unrecognizable. »

Hello.” “Hello.” “You’re not too crowded?” “No, it’s all right.” “Have you been in the jug a long time?” “Long enough.” “Are you past the halfway mark?” “Just.” “Look over there: how poverty-stricken our villages are—straw thatch, crooked huts.” “An inheritance from the Tsarist regime.” “Well, but we’ve already had thirty Soviet years.” “That’s an insignificant period historically.” “It’s terrible that the collective farmers are starving.” “But have you looked in all their ovens?” “Just ask any collective farmer in our compartment.” “Everyone in jail is embittered and prejudiced.” “But I’ve seen collective farms myself.” “That means they were uncharacteristic.” (The goatee had never been in any of them—that way it was simpler.) “Just ask the old folks: under the Tsar they were well fed, well clothed, and they used to have so many holidays.” “I’m not even going to ask. It’s a subjective trait of human memory to praise everything in the past. The cow that died is the one that gave twice the milk. [Sometimes he even cited proverbs!] And our people don’t like holidays. They like to work.” “But why is there a shortage of bread in many cities?” “When?” “Right before the war, for example.” “Not true! Before the war, in fact, everything had been worked out.” “Listen, at that time in all the cities on the Volga there were queues of thousands of people…” “Some local failure in supply. But more likely your memory is failing you.” “But there’s a shortage now!” “ ‘Old wives’ tales. We have from seven to eight billion poods of grain.” “And the grain itself is rotten.” “Not at all. We have been successful in developing new varieties of grain.”[…] And so forth. He is imperturbable. He speaks in a language which requires no effort of the mind. And arguing with him is like walking through a desert. It’s about people like that that they say: “He made the rounds of all the smithies and came home unshod.”[

Vanishing cream for the mind, English writer Jeremiah Creedon calls it. It's beholding the mote in your brother's eye, says the Bible, while disregarding the beam in your own. Denial is refusing to listen to the voice that awakens you in the night and whispers, "You know, you really are an incredible jerk and you ought to do something about it!" "Beware thoughts that come in the night," cautions William Least Heat Moon at the start of Blue Highways, his evocative journal of self-discovery on the back roads of America. "They aren't turned properly. They come in askew, free of sense or satisfaction, deriving from the most remote of sources." Samuel Taylor Coleridge called those remote sources "an aching hollow in the bosom, a dark cold speck at the heart, an obscure and boding sense of something that must be kept out of sight of the conscience, some secret lodger, whom they can neither resolve to reject or retain." Denial is keeping from ourselves secrets we already know. It's choosing to forget what we can't bear to remember. It's making people tell us what we want to hear so we can keep believing the lies we've told ourselves, keep punishing those who dare to make us listen to the truth. Denial is the psychology of self-deception, the mind's deliberate failure to see things as they really are in order to protect ourselves from ourselves, says Donald Goldman, author of Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception. Familiar words of denial: It's not about the money. I am not a crook. I was only obeying orders. Business is business. I can quit whenever I want. I don't remember.

If you had done as I said, you would be at full strength, your body healed from its ordeal,” he pointed out, smug male amusement deliberately in his mind to tease her. She stopped walking so abruptly, his arm jerked her forward. “Do you have any idea where we’re going? I’m lost out here. Everything is beginning to look the same to me. And stop with that cute little grin you always get in your mind. You think you can get around me with it, but you can’t.” He tugged at her arm, his black eyes restless, searching the forest around them. He could still feel the dark malevolence through Shea. “I can always get around you, little red hair,” he answered tenderly. “You are not capable of holding a grudge.” The feeling of hatred was oppressive. Jacques’ gentle teasing was comforting, and she was oddly grateful for it. She tucked her fingers into the crook of his arm. “Don’t count on my good nature, Jacques. You do remember what they say about people with red hair.” “That they are great lovers?” She laughed in spite of the waves of black malice washing over her continually. “You would think that.

Pete felt blindsided by the sudden loss of his future, a loss that Beatriz pointed out was only a loss in his mind, a he did not need a moving truck to be a whole person, and it fact only required a sense of worth, which was something that came separate from a job title or being shipped off to another country to shoot at people like your father or father’s father had been before. This did not, as you might imagine, make Pete feel any better, as very few people are ever healed by being told a truth instead of feeling the truth for themselves.

Jacob!” I call, not minding when my voice echoes off the library building, so loud he and his friends turn to me. For once, Jacob doesn’t look sure what he wants to do, whether he wants to stop or keep going. But I do. I know. I shut the car door behind me and venture into the Unknown. His walls are up, fortified by days and days of silence. To my relief, while his face is carefully blank, he doesn’t turn away when I near. I feel his friends, both guys and girls, watching me. And I realize this might be a colossal mistake, a public humiliation. Maybe Jacob is seeing someone else now. Maybe he’ll never forgive me. His friends draw behind him like bodyguards. I have no words, just myself and this piece of used paper, which I hold out to him. Jacob takes my note silently and reads the two coordinates. “What’s this?” he asks gruffly. This is what I want, I tell myself. He, of all people, is worth this risk of being transparent, of letting him know how I feel, what I want. So despite his friends who are watching, I straighten, throw my hair over my shoulder, and stand before him, utterly vulnerable. “A geocache,” I say. “A geocache.” “If you’ve got the guts to find it.” For the first time, his eyes glint with something like amusement, something like curiosity. “Well,” he drawls, “that depends on the cache.” I shrug and shake my head. “It’s a new one. No one has ever found it.” “So tell me more.” “It’d take . . . oh, gosh, an entire day at least to tell you all about it.” “I’ve got time,” he says easily. “Give me a clue.” “You?” I ask in mock horror. “You, an expert geocacher, are asking for a clue?” “For especially gnarly caches, I make exceptions.” “Gnarly?” I frown. “Complicated,” he amends. The beginning of his crooked smile begins to form, and the murky Unknown solidifies into familiar terrain. “So what’s the cache called?” That, I hadn’t prepped for. So I improvise: “I’m a Moron and I’m So Sorry. But then really good geocachers know it by its nickname: I’ve Missed You So Much.” A breeze tangles my hair, and when Jacob reaches out to brush a strand off my cheek, the tension releases in me.

People think that leather car seats are luxurious, but to my mind there is something vaguely redolent of sex work about them, perhaps because, unlike cloth car seats, they seem designed to be able to be wiped clean.

THE STORY HE COULDN'T FINISH It was near dusk when they reached the inn—lanterns swaying gently on crooked hooks, walls leaning like tired elders, the sign above the door too faded to read. “No prices,” noted the monk, peering at the empty menu board. “Exactly,” said the monkey. “A place of mystery. And trust. My kind of place.” The monk hesitated on the threshold. “Quick choices show clarity,” the monkey added, strolling inside. So the monk followed, chose a modest room, and said nothing. He slept soundly—dreamless, for once. But in the morning, a firm knock woke him. A woman stood at the door, arms crossed, hair braided like a crown of thorns. “That’ll be one story,” she said. The monk blinked. “Pardon?” “One night’s stay. Payment’s a story.” He rubbed his eyes. “What kind of story?” “Any kind,” she said. “But it must be yours.” The monk sat on the edge of the straw mattress, breath catching somewhere between curiosity and dread. “Well,” he began slowly, “there was once a monk and… a monkey.” The monkey, who had been watching from the window ledge, grinned. The woman nodded. “Go on.” The monk opened his mouth. Nothing came. His thoughts slid like pebbles in water—fragments of temples, footsteps, laughter, leaves that didn’t fall, bowls filled with air. But none of it felt like a story. None of it had an end. “I—” he started again, then faltered. The woman waited a moment longer. Then she turned, walking away without a word. The monkey hopped down beside him. “You know, most people don’t realize they’re in the middle of the story until it’s too late.” The monk looked down at his hands. Then out the window, where the trail was already beginning to disappear into morning fog.