D O Connor Quotes

People who don’t know me well wonder that I’d give up my badge for an apron, thinking that flipping burgers is a big step down. If they asked me, which they don’t, I would tell them that when a man stumbles onto happiness, he’d be a fool to pass it by. It’s as simple as that. Sam’s Place makes me happy.

I've never been one to mourn the passing of what could have been a promising relationship. When Jeff broke my heart in the ninth grade, I decided then and there that if a guy couldn't see that I was something special, I'd say good-bye with no regrets. Not that I think I'm more special than anyone else, mind you. But if a thing is not meant to be, I figure it's just not part of God's infinite plan.

Lorsque, discutant avec un écrivain qui a trois enfants et qui voyage beaucoup, [Natacha Appanah] lui demande comment il fait, il lui réponde qu'il a « beaucoup de chance ». Elle commente : « "Beaucoup de chance", c'est, je crois, une façon moderne de dire "J'ai une épouse formidable". » Et elle fait les comptes : « Flannery O'Connor, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Simone de Beauvoir : pas d'enfants. Toni Morrison : deux enfants, a publié son premier roman à trente-neuf ans. Penelope Fitzgerald : trois enfants, a publié son premier roman à soixante ans. Saul Bellow : plusieurs enfants, plusieurs romans. John Updike : plusieurs enfants, plusieurs romans. » (p. 83-84)

He'd [Cork] delivered tragic news before. It had been part of the job, but he'd never become immune to he effect tragedy had on those who had to hear of it, and he'd never become used to his own feeling of helplessness in those situations.

In the church I felt really angry when all the people came to shake our hands. This was the morning before the day of the funeral. We were sitting in the front row. We’d never seen these people when she was alive. I was angry they hadn’t helped us. Or her. I didn’t know who half of them were. And the ones I knew made me feel angrier. They’d known. Not the details. But they’d known. And they hadn’t done a thing, but came now to shake our hands and tell us how sorry they were for our loss. I was tempted to ask, Which loss in particular? We’ve more chance of actually raising our mother from the dead some Easter Sunday than ever getting back what we really lost. Which is ourselves, years before now.

Closing her eyes, she began to let herself dream. Not sleep dreaming, but dreaming of how her life might be. It was a thing she didn't often do. In her experience, good things came with great difficulty and were too easily snatched away. She'd longo ago learned to accept what she had at any given moment and try to be happy with only that. She could think about the furniture, plan even, but not expect. It was the expectation that was the trap.

She was everything he’d ever hoped for but hadn’t known existed…

I didn’t know what a mandarin was, but honey came from a bee’s clacker, according to a book I’d read, and that seemed less than ideal.

He'd never slept with Molly before. Before, the bed had been a place of brief coming together and of leaving. It felt god to lie beside her with the early sun beyond the window and the cabin full of qiet. It was peaceful and healing to be with her and not be cut apart by guilt.

If it was true, as Henry Meloux said, that he'd heard the Windigo call his name, he understood why now. Because it felt exactly as if his heart had just been torn out of him and devoured.

He was no stranger to brutal death. Both as sheriff and as a cop on Chicago's south side, he'd seen his share of dying. Murder, accident, overdose - it happened in many ways, but the end was the same. Something sad and confusing left behind. Only the shape of life, only the empty outline.

Listen here, Mr. Shiftlet," she said, sliding forward in her chair, "you'd be getting a permanent house and a deep well and the most innocent girl in the world. You don't need no money. Lemme tell you something: there ain't any place in the world for a poor disabled friendless drifting man.

You'd think that a redheaded boy with glasses who was named Howard and had an up-down walk would have a lot more to wish for than being friends with me. But I admit I felt a smile on my face and hope in my heart, 'cause maybe wishes really do come true. Maybe some wishes just take longer than others.

Procrastination is a way for us to be satisfied with second-rate results; we can always tell ourselves we'd have done a better job if only we had more time...If you're good at rationalizing, you can keep yourself feeling rather satisfied this way, but it's a cheap happy. You're whittling your expectations of yourself down lower and lower.

And if ever you wanted to quit your impatient girl truly, and our little story had to be stored away in a room that's only sometimes remembered, that's still a room I'd want, and I'd go there now and again, like some room in an old hotel on a seafront someplace where two sinners did something they shouldn't. Do you mind what I am telling you? It is the God's honest truth. Even if I never saw you or heard from you again, you'd already have been the miracle of my life.

I don't recall that when I was in high school or college, any novel was ever presented to me to study as a novel. In fact, I was well on the way to getting a Master's degree in English before I really knew what fiction was, and I doubt if I would ever have learned then, had I not been trying to write it. I believe that it's perfectly possible to run a course of academic degrees in English and to emerge a seemingly respectable Ph.D. and still not know how to read fiction.

Bertha knelt in front of me and took both my hands in hers and said, “Your mama loves you very much, Charlie. But sometimes, she just loses her way.” Loses her way? I’d be happy to draw her a map to show her the way back to being my mama again.

And what's a-trouble to you, Jackie?" "Father," I said, feeling I might as well get it over while I had him in good humour, "I had it all arranged to kill my grandmother." He seemed a bit shaken by that, all right, because he said nothing for quite a while. "My goodness," he said at last, "that'd be a shocking thing to do. What put that into your head?" Father," I said, feeling very sorry for myself, " she's an awful woman.

In 1969, both John and I began job hunting. I had finished my second master’s degree and started sending out resumes. I got several offers from various schools—Metropolitan State University in Denver, Keene State College in New Hampshire—and John also had some offers. But neither of us wanted to be a “trailing spouse.” What to do?Then we went to the College Art Association conference in Washington, D.C., and met Gene Grissom, chair of the art department at the University of Florida. They were looking for a young faculty member with some administrative experience, and John fit the bill perfectly. There was also a possibility for me to teach either art history or humanities. After several weeks of negotiations, we decided to make the move to Florida where BOTH of us had jobs!

They fell quiet. Cork wanted to say he loved her. He wanted to ask her to forgive him. He wanted to lay his head against her breast and weep into her warm flesh and feel as connected to someone as he'd felt the night the grief passed through him when he unted the big bear with Sam Winter Moon. [.............] "You've always made me laugh, Cork. That's not what I want now." "What do you want?" "To feel needed. To feel that you need me as much as you need air to breathe. I'm worth that.

She’d been notoriously bad, had had a reputation among their Chicago friends for possessing a flair for the soggy, the lumpy, the burned.

He looked like a man who’d invited himself to dinner only to discover that the special of the day was a plateful of shit.

Before he’d shoved off in his canoe, he’d said, “We don’t die. In the things we pass on to our children, we go on living.

He’d heard that freezing wasn’t a bad way to go, that people who froze to death experienced a false warmth at the end, a final euphoria

...Niall carrying it around for motivation; a little hope that he would get his brother out of jail and they'd take off for down under. Instead, he was really down under.

Bonding through caregiving..I don't think I'd ever realized until then that so much affection, so much heart connect, happens when we take care of someone.

Sinead and Prince are right. Nothing, absolutely nothing can compare to the real stuff.

Siobhán wished she could control the thoughts that popped into her mind. She’d have to settle for being grateful that nobody else could hear them.

Cork could have argued, but he'd learned a long time ago that, when confronting men with big rifles and little minds, discretion was best.

He’d [Cork] known Darla LeBeau since high school, when she was a cheerleader with long blonde hair, nice legs, and a lot for a boy to notice under her sweater.

If she’d still had sight, her eyes would have beheld a wonderful view from the few feet of earth that were to be hers forever.

If that woman looks like a million dollars and puts it right in your face, that one you get away from,” R.D. told him. “That one in the corner who is quiet? That’s the one you go after.

She wanted this man with an intensity that defied logic. Which was part of the reason she’d been ignoring him. A girl only had so much self-control when faced with all this deliciousness.

She [Jo] recalled them holding one another and feeling a terrible numbness where caring should have been. She'd blamed it on the circumstances, the weight of what each of them carried that night, the responsibilities. But it wasn't that. They were holding something dying, maybe already dead, but they were too scared to admit it. She wondered why the tragedy at Burke's Landing hadn't brought them together. Adversity was supposed to do that, wasn't it? Instead, everything got worse. Cork wasn't just distant. Something in him seemed to have died along with the other deaths that drizzly morning. Nothing mattered.

Flannery O’Connor’s writing is quite dark, but it is so because she believes in the Devil, and in the Fall, and in humanity as it is. Novels that avoid the horror of human existence in this time between Eden and New Jerusalem can reinforce a Christian’s tendency to Pelagianism. The Christian gospel isn’t “clean” and “safe” and “family-friendly.” It comes to its narrative climax at a bloody Place of the Skull and in a borrowed grave.

Willpower is misunderstood. The very word suggests that wanting something badly enough bequeaths that necessary strength to achieve or overcome something. If that were the case, I'd be Michael Fassbender's missus by now.

Men never talked. Not about themselves, anyway, not really. They talked about what they'd done, what they were doing, what they intended to do, but they didn't talk about what was at the heart of them, why they did these things.

That night when I went to bed, I laid there in the dark and pictured a clothesline full of somebody's else's troubles. I knew for sure there were a lot of them I'd rather pluck off of that line than mine. I imagined what the other troubles might be. There would probably be toothaches and failed math tests. Lost cats and ugly hair. Cheating boyfriends and broken-down cars. But none of those could hold a candle to my troubles, weighing down that clothesline like a sack full of bricks.

Something was wrong. She'd failed, Phoebe thought, but at what? Imagining herself in Europe, she'd always pictured someone else, physically even, a tall blonde with an answer for everything - as if, in the course of this journey, she would not only shed her former life but cease to exist as herself. Yes, she thought, to leave Phoebe O'Connor behind and be reborn as someone beautiful, mysterious. But the opposite had happened; her own narrow boundaries had hemmed her in, keeping everything real at a distance.

He'd [Cork] learned early not to invest a lot of emotion in thinking about the truth in a crime. As a cop, he'd gathered evidfence that had been used to guess at the truth, but in the end responsibility for assembling the pieces and nailing truth to the wall was in the hands of others - lawyers, judges, and juries. Truth became a democratic process, the will of twelve. He'd been burned when he cared too deeply. As a result, he'd trained himself to remain a little distant in his emotional involvement on a case. In the end, the outcome was out of his hands, and to allow himself to believe too strongly in the absoluteness of a thing he couldn't control was useless. He felt different now. Desperate in a way. This time he had to hold the truth in his own hands like a beating heart.

For Cork, the move had the dreadful feel of inevitability, for he recalled far too well the night only three years earlier when he’d entered the Parrant estate in just this way, only to find that a shotgun blast had scattered most of the judge’s head across a wall.

Cork, promise me something.” “What?” “You won’t do anything that’ll get you hurt.” “I’m not what you’d call a brave man,” he assured her. She sighed, her breath making the hair at the back of his neck shiver. “Maybe not, but you’re stubborn, and that’s just as bad.” After

The girl had taken the Ph.D. in philosophy and this left Mrs. Hopewell at a complete loss. You could say "My daughter is a nurse," or "My daughter is a school teacher," or even, "My daughter is a chemical engineer." You could not say, "My daughter is a philosopher." That was something that had ended with the Greeks and Romans. All day Joy sat on her neck in a deep chair, reading. Sometimes she went for walks but she didn't like dogs or cats or birds or flowers or nature or nice young men. She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.

The girl had taken the Ph.D. in philosophy and this left Mrs. Hopewell at a complete loss. You could say, “My daughter is a nurse,” or “My daughter is a school teacher,” or even, “My daughter is a chemical engineer.” You could not say, “My daughter is a philosopher.” That was something that had ended with the Greeks and Romans

Cork thought the man was way too sensitive, but in his experience, a lot of deeply religious people were. In his own mind, there was often a profound difference between those who thought of themselves as religious people and those who preferred to think of themselves as spiritual. Given a choice, he'd go with the latter every time.

The Pass and Lona Hanson and, to some extent, The Power of the Dog may be seen as late novels from the golden age of American landscape fiction, a period that falls roughly in the first half of the last century. In these novels landscape is used not just as decorative background, but to drive the story and control the characters’ lives, as in the work of Willa Cather, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Walter D. Edmonds, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, John Steinbeck, and nearly all that Hemingway wrote, all resonant with the sense of place, a technique well suited to describing the then strikingly different regions of America, the pioneer ethos, the drive of capitalist democracy on the hunt for resources.

As she rubbed, as she crooned, Connor’s eyes fluttered open. He found himself staring up into Meara’s pale face and teary eyes. “What? Why am I on the floor? I hadn’t gotten drunk yet.” He reached up, brushed a tear from Meara’s cheek. “Don’t cry, darling.” He struggled to sit up, teetered a bit. “Well, here we all are, sitting on Fin’s kitchen floor. If we’re going to spin the bottle, I’d like to be the one to empty it first.

Without ever leaving her hide-out in Milledgeville, Georgia, Flannery O’Connor knew all there was to know about the two-lane, dirt and blacktop Southern roads of the 1950s—with their junkyards and tourist courts, gravel pits and pine trees that pressed at the edges of the road. She knew the slogans of the Burma Shave signs, knew the names of barbecue joints and the chicken baskets on their menus. She also knew a backwoods American cadence and vocabulary you’d think was limited to cops, truckers, runaway teens, and patrons of the Teardrop Inn where at midnight somebody could always be counted on to go out to a pickup truck and come back with a shotgun. She was a virtuoso mimic, and she assimilated whole populations of American sounds and voices, and then offered them back to us from time to time in her small fictional detonations, one of which she named, in 1953, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.

They'd long ago crossed the Canadian border, but the nature of the land below had changed little. It was a great arboreal wilderness, and the boundary lines politicians had drawn on maps were meaningless. Those lines might change. Who knew? But the land itself had been as it was for millions of years and would continue for millions more. There was comfort it this, in the knowledge that whatever humans did, in the very long run their impact was small when compared with the vast patience that was the spirit of the earth.

But there was that thing inside him that had wanted to see New York. He had been to Atlanta once when he was a boy and he had seen New York in a picture show. Big Town Rhythm it was. Big towns were important places. The thing inside him had sneaked up on him for just one instant. The place like he’d seen in the picture show had room for him! It was an important place and it had room for him! He’d said yes, he’d go. He must have been sick when he said it. He couldn’t have been well and said it. He had been sick and she had been so taken up with her damn duty, she had wangled it out of him.

She’d almost told him she loved him. So many times, she’d been on the edge of letting the words spill out, but her past had kept her cautious. And now she was glad, very glad, she hadn’t. Let him go back to a woman who didn’t care. [She] didn’t care either. What ran down her cheeks and tasted of salt wasn’t tears but good cleansing sweat. It poured from every part of her body. When she finally stood and ran outside, she trailed steam like a thing that had been through fire. As she dropped into the hole she’d cleared of ice, the bitterly cold water of the lake squeezed her hard, wrung her out, and left her wonderfully empty.

MacDermid.” Cork’s mother and Grandma Dilsey sat at the kitchen table, each with a cup of coffee, and spread out between them on the tabletop was a jumble of photographs. “Your grandfather,” Grandma Dilsey said when Cork looked over her shoulder. He was a man Cork had never known. Handsome and smiling, he stood with a much younger version of Cork’s grandmother in front of a small white clapboard building, the one-room schoolhouse on the rez where Grandma Dilsey had taught and which had been enlarged to become the community center. Patrick “Paddy” O’Connor had been superintendent in the Tamarack County School District then. He’d died

Old Dudley would get out his gun and take it apart and, as Rabie cleaned the pieces, would explain the mechanism to him. Then he’d put it together again. Rabie always marveled at the way he could put it together again. Old Dudley would have liked to have explained New York to Rabie. If he could have showed it to Rabie, it wouldn’t have been so big—he wouldn’t have felt pressed down every time he went out in it. “It ain’t so big,” he would have said. “Don’t let it get you down, Rabie. It’s just like any other city and cities ain’t all that complicated.” But they were. New York was swishing and jamming one minute and dirty and dead the next. His daughter didn’t even live in a house. She lived in a building—the middle in a row of buildings all alike, all blackened-red and gray with rasp-mouthed people hanging out their windows looking at other windows and other people just like them looking back. Inside you could go up and you could go down and there were just halls that reminded you of tape measures strung out with a door every inch. He remembered he’d been dazed by the building the first week. He’d wake up expecting the halls to have changed in the night and he’d look out the door and there they stretched like dog runs. The streets were the same way. He wondered where he’d be if he walked to the end of one of them. One night he dreamed he did and ended at the end of the building—nowhere.

We judge ourselves by our intentions but others by their actions. We tend to think other people's mistakes are caused by character flaws while our mistakes are due to situational factors. "I had a headache on the day of the examine, but he's not very smart." Then we have the opposite. Our good behavior is attributable to fundamental traits while other people's is temporary and situational. "I'm returning this wallet to lost and found because I'm a moral and ethical person. Others do so only if they're seen picking it up." Thus we own our strengths and disavow our weaknesses. This is a big obstetrical to overcoming self-destruction behavior, it justifies all our attempts to deny or put off our need to change and rationalizes the consequences of our actions.

Walt's father had been shopping with his son on a Sunday afternoon when he'd wandered into All Saints' Passage and found the bookshop. A silent boy, Walt still hadn't spoken, so there was no reason to think he'd be interested in reading yet. But when Walt snuck through the door, under his father's arm, he let out a gasp of delight. He had stepped into a kingdom: an oak labyrinth of bookshelves, corridors and canyons of literature beckoning him, whispering enchanting words Walt had never heard before. The air was smoky with the scent of leather, ink and paper, caramel-rich and citrus-sharp. Walt stuck out his small tongue to taste this new flavor and grinned, sticky with excitement. And he knew, all of a sudden and deep in his soul, that this was a place he belonged more than any other.

When I was a young lad, we knew what we could want and how to get it, and we knew we’d have something to show for it at the end of the day. A crop, or a flock, or a house, or a family. There’s great strength in that. Now there’s too many things you’re told to want, there’s no way to get them all, and once you’re done trying, what have you got to show for it at the end? You’ve made a buncha phone calls selling electricity plans, maybe, or had a buncha meetings about nothing; you’ve got your hole offa some bitta fluff you met on the internet, got yourself some likes on the aul’ YouTube. Nothing you can put your hands on. The women do be grand anyway; they’re adaptable. But the young men don’t know what to be doing with themselves at all. There’s a few of them, like Fergal O’Connor who you met there, that keep their feet on the

When I was a young lad, we knew what we could want and how to get it, and we knew we'd have something to show for it at the end of the day. A crop, or a flock, or a house, or a family. There's great strength in that. Now there's too many things you're told to want, there's now ay to get them all, and once you're done trying, what have you got to show for it at the end? You've made a buncha phone calls selling electricity plans, maybe, or had a buncha meetings about nothing; you've got your hole offa some bitta fluff you met on the internet, got yourself some likes on the aul' YouTube. Nothing you can put your hands on. The women do be grand anyway; they're adaptable. But the young men don't know what to be doing with themselves at all. There's a few of them, like Fergal O'Connor who you met there, that keep their feet on the ground regardless. The rest are hanging themselves, or they're getting drunk and driving into ditches, or they're overdosing on the aul' heroin, or they're packing their bags.

It was simply the way with Harry, like waiting for sunrise. But once you made clear that you wouldn't be going to bed with him, he'd look oddly relieved and calm down. And the matter once raised would not be revisited, I will say that for him. He didn't make a nuisance of himself. Funny old skellum. Never dull. There are men whom it is important not to take the slightest notice of when they're talking, if it's after ten o'clock at night and they've had a glass of beer. Harry was one such mammal. They really and truly don't mean to be idiots. But it's like a Roman Catholic person not wanting to feel guilt. Might as well ask water to run uphill. Except that might conceivably be contrived. With a pump. Once, he asked my sister to run away with him, to Rotterdam I think it was. She said no and he asked my brother. That was the most important thing to understand about Harry. Essentially, what he wanted--darling, who wouldn't--was someone to run away with him to Rotterdam. It's what all of us want, isn't it? Of course, nobody gets it. Probably not even those misfortunates who are in Rotterdam already. One wonders where they want to run away to. Crouch End?

He told me I need to find a passion and said to try politics. Well, he actually said I should work toward world domination, crushing as many skulls as I can along the way. I thought I’d go for something a little less messy. Demon dads, what are you gonna do with them?

March 15, 1 AE (from the journal of Danielle O’Connor) If someone had told me three months ago that 90 percent of the people in the world were about to die, I would’ve laughed. If someone had told me the survivors would develop unbelievable Abilities, I would’ve called them crazy. If someone had told me I’d find love with the least likely person, I would’ve rolled my eyes. And if someone had told me that, after everything, the people I cared about most would be torn from my grasp, I would’ve walked away. I wish I could walk away now.

BECAUSE IT CONTINUED TO RAIN, CONNOR SAT IN BRANNA’S workshop, drinking his second beer and brooding at the fire. When Fin walked in, he scowled. “You’d be wise to feck off. I’m not fit company.

Amused, Connor poured whiskey all around, lifted his glass, tapped it to Meara’s. “Whether we’re victorious or buggered, there’s no five others I’d rather stand with. So fuck it all. Sláinte.

I wanted to take his leash off and let him run free, but I was scared to. What if he decided he'd had enough of me and ran off to be a stray again?

.I never felt particularly connected to Coalfield; I mean, I felt anchored to it, like the years I’d spent here would make it harder for me to live anywhere else, but I never felt shaped by it. Everyone thinks the South is, like, Flannery O’Connor. They think it’s haunted. And maybe it is, deep down, in the soil, but I never saw it that way.

Just when it got to the highest note and you knew you were going to make an absolute show of yourself, he would throw an apple or a tennis ball at you and you’d be so busy trying to either defend yourself from the thing or catch it that the note would come out of your body. It was his way of showing you that you were just in your own way; it was the Stanislavski method of singing.

Mr. Nobley had entered the room before he noticed her. He groaned. “And here you are. Miss Erstwhile. You are infuriating and irritating, and yet I find myself looking for you. I would be grateful if you would send me away and make me swear to never return.” “You shouldn’t have told me that’s what you want, Mr. Nobley, because now you’re not going to get it.” “Then I must stay?” “Unless you want to risk me accusing you of ungentleman-like behavior at dinner, yes, I think you should stay. If I spend too much time alone today, I’m in real danger of doing a convincing impersonation of the madwoman in the attic.” He raised an eyebrow. “And how would that be different from--” “Sit down, Mr. Nobley,” she said. He sat in a chair on the opposite side of a small table. The chair creaked as he settled himself. She didn’t look at him, watching instead the rain on the window and the silvery shadows the wet light made of the room. She spent several moments in silence before she realized that it might be awkward, that conversation at such a time was obligatory. Now she could feel his gaze on her face and longed to crack the silence like the spine of a book, but she had nothing to say anymore. She’d lost all her thoughts in paint and rain. “You are reading Sterne,” he said at last. “May I?” He gestured to the book, and she handed it to him. Jane was remembering a scene from the film of Mansfield Park when suitor Henry Crawford read to Frances O-Connor’s character so sweetly, the sound created a passionate tension, the words themselves becoming his courtship. Jane glanced at Mr. Nobley’s somber face, and away again as his eyes flicked from the page to her. He began to read from the top. His voice was soft, melodious, strong, a man who could speak in a crowd and have people listen, but also a man who could persuade a child to sleep with a bedtime story. “The man who first transplanted the grape of Burgundy to the Cape of Good Hope (observe he was a Dutchman) never dreamt of drinking the same wine at the Cape, the same grape produced upon the French mountains--he was too phlegmatic for that--but undoubtedly he expected to drink some sort of vinous liquor; but whether good, bad, or indifferent--he knew enough of this world to know, that it did not depend upon his choice…” Mr. Nobley was trying very hard not to smile. His lips were tight; his voice scraped a couple of times. Jane laughed at him, and then he did smile. It gave her a little thwack of pleasure as though someone had flicked a finger against her heart. “Not very, er…” he said. “Interesting?” “I imagine not.” “But you read it well,” she said. He raised his brows. “Did I? Well, that is something.” They sat in silence a few moments, chuckling intermittently. Mr. Nobley began to read again suddenly, “Mynheer might possibly overset both in his new vineyard,” having to stop to laugh again. Aunt Saffronia walked by and peered into the dim room as she passed, her presence reminding Jane that this tryst might be forbidden by the Rules. Mr. Nobley returned to himself. “Excuse me,” he said, rising. “I have trespassed on you long enough.

He hadn’t hooked up with anyone else. Hell, he couldn’t think about anyone other than Nora. Hadn’t since the day he’d met her.

This particular song’s just something that’s been floating around inside me for a long time,” Tate went on. “Is she the one who got away? Yeah. She is. But it’s because she got away that I—that we,” he clarified, “are all here now.” “How do you mean?” the interviewer asked. Tate was silent for several heartbeats, then said, “When I met her, I was playing ball. She knew I wasn’t that good. But she also saw a talent in me I didn’t even know I had. She’s the one who encouraged my music. I lost her after that summer, but it’s because I lost her that Kendrick was even formed. So yeah, she is ‘Everything.’ She’s everything I have and everything I’m missing.” “Would it be safe to assume you work as hard as you do because you’re trying to prove to her what she’s missing?” the interviewer asked. “No,” Tate answered. “Not really.” “That’s a load of crap,” someone muttered in the background. “Okay,” Tate said louder. “Maybe it’s a little true. Did I hope she’d one day hear one of these songs about her and call me up? Sure. I think that’s the whole point of tracks like this. That there’s hope. I mean, that’s what life’s really about, right? Without hope, what the hell does a person have?” “A lot of”—BEEP—“ing fun,” Jace interjected.

Instead, the thing that had captured my attention was this big metal column topped by…absolutely nothing. It was doing this in the parking lot of what I had to figure was the main supplier of off-campus food: a retro-fifties fast-food joint. Maybe it’s supposed to be some kind of art, I thought as I stared at the column. I was living in the big city now, after all. Public art happened. Not only that, it didn’t have to make sense. In fact, having it not make sense was probably a requirement. “They took it down for repairs,” a voice beside my suddenly said. I’m kind of embarrassed to admit this, but the truth is, I jumped about a mile. I’d been so mesmerized by the sight of that column extending upward into space, supporting empty air, that I’d totally lost track of all my soon-to-be-fellow students rushing by me. To this day, I can’t quite explain the fascination. But I’ve promised to tell you the 100 percent truth, which means I’ve got to include even the parts which make me appear less than impressive. “Huh?” Yes, all right, I know. Nowhere even near the list of incredibly clever replies. “They took it down for repairs,” the voice said again. “Took it down,” I echoed. By this time, I knew I was well on my way to breaking my own blending-in rule, big time. Sounding like a total idiot can generally be considered a foolproof method of getting yourself noticed. “The car that’s usually up there.” The guy--it was a guy; I’d calmed down enough to realize that--said. I snuck a quick glance at him out of the corner of my eye. First fleeting impression: tall and blond. The kind of muscular-yet-lanky build I’ve always been a sucker for. Faded jeans. Letterman jacket with just about every sport there was represented on it. Gotcha! I thought. BMOC. Big Man on Campus. This made me feel a little better for a couple of reasons. The first was that it showed my skills hadn’t abandoned me completely after all. I could still identify the players pretty much on sight. The second was that in my vast, though admittedly from-a-distance, experience of them, BMOCs have short attention spans for anyone less BOC than they are. Disconcerting and intense as it was at the moment, I could nevertheless take comfort in the fact that this guy’s unexpected and unnatural interest in me was also unlikely to last very long. “An old Chevy, I think,” he was going on now. “It’s supposed to be back soon, though. Not really the same without it, is it?” He actually sounded genuinely mournful. I was surprised to find myself battling back a quick, involuntary smile. He did seem to be more interesting than your average, run-of-the-mill BMOC. I had to give him that. Get a grip, O’Connor, I chastised myself. “Absolutely not,” I said, giving my head a semi-vigorous nod. That ought to move him along, I thought. You may not be aware of this fact, but agreeing with people is often an excellent way of getting them to forget all about you. After basking in the glow of agreement, most people are then perfectly content to go about their business, remembering only the fact that someone agreed and allowing the identity of the person who did the actual agreeing to fade into the background. This technique almost always works. In fact, I’d never known it not to. There was a moment of silence. A silence in which I could feel the BMOC’s eyes upon me. I kept my own eyes fixed on the top of the carless column. But the longer the silence went on, the more strained it became. At least it did on my side. This guy was simply not abiding by the rules. He was supposed to have basked and moved on by now.

An old Chevy, I think,” he was going on now. “It’s supposed to be back soon, though. Not really the same without it, is it?” He actually sounded genuinely mournful. I was surprised to find myself battling back a quick, involuntary smile. He did seem to be more interesting than your average, run-of-the-mill BMOC. I had to give him that. Get a grip, O’Connor, I chastised myself. “Absolutely not,” I said, giving my head a semi-vigorous nod. That ought to move him along, I thought. You may not be aware of this fact, but agreeing with people is often an excellent way of getting them to forget all about you. After basking in the glow of agreement, most people are then perfectly content to go about their business, remembering only the fact that someone agreed and allowing the identity of the person who did the actual agreeing to fade into the background. This technique almost always works. In fact, I’d never known it not to. There was a moment of silence. A silence in which I could feel the BMOC’s eyes upon me. I kept my own eyes fixed on the top of the carless column. But the longer the silence went on, the more strained it became. At least it did on my side. This guy was simply not abiding by the rules. He was supposed to have basked and moved on by now. “You don’t have the faintest idea what I’m talking about, do you?” he said at last. I laughed before I quite realized what I’d done. “Not a clue,” I said, turning to give him my full attention for the very first time, an action I could tell right away spelled trouble. You just had to do it, didn’t you? I thought. He was even better looking when I took a better look. He flashed me a smile, and I felt my pulse kick up several notches. My brain knew perfectly well that that smile had not been invented just for me. My suddenly-beating-way-too-fast heart wasn’t paying all that much attention to my brain, though. “You must be new, then,” he commented. “I’d remember you if we’d met before.” All of a sudden, his face went totally blank. “I cannot believe I just said that,” he said. “That is easily the world’s oldest line.” “If it isn’t, it’s the cheesiest,” I said. He winced. “I’d ask you to let me make it up to you, but I’m thinking that would make things even worse.” “You’d be thinking right.” This time he was the one who laughed, the sound open and easy, as if he was genuinely enjoying the joke on himself. In retrospect I think it was that laugh that did it. That finished the job his smile had started. You just didn’t find all that many guys, all that many people, who were truly willing to laugh at themselves. “I’m Alex Crawford,” he said. “Jo,” I said. “Jo O’Connor.” At this Alex actually stuck out his hand. His eyes, which I probably don’t need to tell you were this pretty much impossible shade of blue, focused directly on my face. “Pleased to meet you, Jo O’Connor.” I watched my hand move forward to meet his, as if it belonged to a stranger and was moving in slow motion. At that exact moment, an image of the robot from the movie Lost in Space flashed through my mind. Arms waving frantically in the air, screaming, “Danger! Danger!” at the top of its inhuman lungs. My hand kept moving anyhow. Our fingers connected. I felt the way Alex’s wrapped around mine, then tightened. Felt the way that simple action caused a flush to spread across my cheeks and a tingle to start in the palm of my hand and slowly begin to work its way up my arm. To this day, I’d swear I heard him suck in a breath, saw his impossibly blue eyes widen. As if, at the exact same moment I looked up at him, he’d discovered something as completely unexpected as I had, gazing down. He released me. I stuck my hand behind my back. “Pleased to meet you, Jo O’Connor,” he said again. Not quite the way he had the first time.

There are just too many coincidences for me. Combined with too many things that don’t add up.” “Maybe I’m just a woman of mystery,” I said. He gave a sudden bark of laughter. “Maybe, but I doubt it. I’ll say this, though. You’re full of surprises.” I took a step, closing the distance between us, and saw emotion flare back into his eyes. This time, surprise. “Leave me alone, Mark,” I said, using his first name for the very first time. “Stop following me. I don’t have anything to hide.” “Prove it,” he said. “How?” “Take me to the prom.” “You have it backward,” I said, my tone condescending and patient. “You’re supposed to say, Claire, may I please take you to the prom.” “Not the Royer prom,” Mark said impatiently. “The Beacon prom.” “I can’t do that,” I said, giving my head a toss to cover the fact that he’d totally caught me off guard. I really liked the way Claire’s hair moved when I did that. “I’m already going with Alex Crawford.” For just an instant, Mark’s face became absolutely unreadable. “I don’t mean as a date,” he said, his tone ever so slightly snide. “You’ll need a staff photographer.” “Forget it,” I said. Without warning, he leaned down until our faces were close. Omigod, he’s going to kiss me, I thought. “Make me,” he said. “You want me to back off, fine. Prove to me you’re not Jo O’Connor and I’ll do whatever you say. I’ll flap my arms and fly to the moon.” “That won’t be necessary,” I said. “The other side of the room will be just fine.” He gave a breathy laugh, the air of it moving across my face, and eased back.

By the time first period was over, my head felt back to normal, and I was well on my way to congratulating myself on my quick recovery from my encounter with Alex Crawford. Right up until the moment I walked out of the classroom and straight into his arms. It was hard not to. He was standing right outside the door. His hands came up to grasp and steady me at the same time as he flashed me that mind-numbing smile. How on earth did he get here so fast? I wondered. “Hey, Jo O’Connor,” he said. “Hey, yourself,” I mumbled. At that moment, I made a snap decision, a thing I usually avoid. My usual new school adjustment techniques just didn’t seem to be getting me anywhere, at least not with Alex Crawford. If at first you don’t succeed, try try again. Only a fool tries the same thing twice, though. If fading into the background wasn’t going to work, maybe standing out by being obnoxious would. “What did you say your name was, again?” I asked. Alex laughed. Oh, nice move, O’Connor; I thought. It was the same kind of laugh he’d given before. Open, easy, unselfconscious. A laugh that softened all my defenses and pretty much made my heart want to melt like one of those little pats of butter you get at Denny’s, left out in the sun.

Without warning, he leaned down until our faces were close. Omigod, he’s going to kiss me, I thought. “Make me,” he said. “You want me to back off, fine. Prove to me you’re not Jo O’Connor and I’ll do whatever you say. I’ll flap my arms and fly to the moon.” “That won’t be necessary,” I said. “The other side of the room will be just fine.” He gave a breathy laugh, the air of it moving across my face, and eased back. “So, do we have a deal or not?” “What’s so important about the prom?” I asked. “Don’t be stupid, Calloway,” Mark said. “The ghost is practically expected. If she doesn’t show, I’ll know it’s because you’re not who you say you are. That Claire Calloway and the ghost of Jo O’Connor are one and the same. They can’t be in the same place at the same time.” “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” I said, though my heart was beating so hard I thought for sure it was going to burst right through my clothes. “Then you shouldn’t have anything to worry about, should you?” “I don’t have anything to worry about,” I said. “Fine.” “Fine. I’ll clear things with Rob. In the meantime, stay away from me, London. Or I might develop a sudden illness which will prevent me from attending the prom at all.” “Chicken,” he said. “You’d so like to think so.” This time when I attempted to move past him, he let me go. I’d only gone a few steps before he called after me. “Hey, Calloway.” Reluctantly I turned back. “What?” “Save me a dance, will you?” I smiled sweetly. “Only if you wear one of those cute little plaid cummerbunds.

So She watched and listened instead. She watched Connor reach over to flick a tear from Meara's cheek as she minced onion, and caught the easy flirtation in the gesture in his eyes. "If you were mine, Meara my love," he said," I'd ban onions from the house so you'd never shed a tear." "If I were yours," She shot back," I'd be shedding them over more onions,

I do not ask for your forgiveness. I know full well I am beyond redemption.” He sighed and looked into her eyes. “But please let me say it once more—I love you, Katrina O’Connor of Earth. I love you with everything that is in me. I will never forgive myself for the way my foolish actions have harmed you. And for this…” he brushed her wounded cheek with his fingertips. Kat felt the tingle and knew the curling green lines must have progressed. But she didn’t pull away from his touch. Deep studied her eyes for a long moment. Searching for something, Kat thought. But what? If he was searching for hatred or recrimination he didn’t find it. Even though she was going to die, Kat couldn’t bring herself to hate him. He had acted horribly but in the end, it was her best interest he’d had in mind. He was trying to save me…save me from himself. And now it’s too late. “Kat…

May 28: Shooting begins on There’s No Business Like Show Business. Marilyn’s director, Walter Lang, does not seem to know how to handle her. Donald O’Connor, Marilyn’s love interest in the film, recalls that the director was afraid to ask her to take her shoes off in a scene because her bouffant hairdo and high heels made her look taller than O’Connor. Lang wants the actor to stand on an apple box. O’Connor goes to Marilyn and tells her, “[T]his idiot’s afraid to ask you to take off your shoes, but I’d feel very strange working with you, standing on an apple box.” Marilyn says, “Oh Christ, the guy’s nuts,” kicks off her shoes, and “everything was fine,” according to O’Connor.

You do things his way, not yours. You pray, you listen, and the you pray some more. You take one step at a time, with his Word as a lamp unto your feet. In everything you say, think, or do, you look to honor him, not yourself. You become a new creature in Christ Jesus, one who can finally say no to sin and yes to God' He leaned back and folded his arms, a grin surfacing on his lips. 'And then, if I were you, I'd duck my head and look out.' She blinked, 'Why?' 'Because the blessings of God are going to overtake you, Charity O'Connor, and you're going to find yourself overloaded with the desires of your heart.

They were gone. They'd come for her, but she'd missed them and she was never going to get home again. When she finally turned toward the door to the apartment once more, she saw that Lucien had dragged himself from the bed. He was braced in the door frame, his dark skin bleached of color.

He turned her hand over and pressed a kiss to her palm. She blushed red as a strawberry. “Keep doing that, Tavish O’Connor, and I’ll begin to suspect you fancy me.” He loved when she teased him back. The first few weeks he’d known her, she had been far too serious. “What do I need to do to get you from ‘suspecting’ to ‘believing’?

Excuses – the great enabler. Without them, we'd have no reason to shop when we shouldn't and every reason to feel guilty for doing so. Nothing like the aul 'dog ate my knickers' chestnut to manifest a new handbag at will (in which to deposit much-needed new knickers, of course).

We were probably drugged," Lauren said, running her hands over the walls again. "You'd know about that," said Esmee. Lauren wheeled round. "What's that supposed to mean?" Esmee waved her hands at Lauren. "You look like you've done a few peace pipes in your time. Nice tattoo by the way." Lauren's fingers stroked the black treble clef tattoo on the inside of her left arm. "I like music." "Every potential employer's nightmare, a girl with a tramp stamp and an attitude.

Yes," Charlie was saying now, "I get up nice and early before the sun and do the little things that need doin' around the house. And then what d'ye think I do, Father? You'd never guess. Not in a million years you wouldn't. I'll tell you what I do: I go out in the yard and have a grand look at all the birds. Ain't birds lovely, Father?" This was the softer side of Charlie: rarely visible, like the other side of the moon. I said, "Are you a bird watcher, then, Mr. Carmody? That's something I wouldn't have guessed." "Ah well, I ain't a loony about it, Father. I don't go crawlin' around on my belly through the wet grass lookin' for the golden-headed hoohoo. That's nut stuff. But the fact of the matter is that nothin' makes me feel better than comin' down and findin' the whole place littered with birds, all kinds, singin' and chirpin' away all around me. I tell you, Father, there's days I might be St. Francis himself!" I said, "Aha." It was a pale acknowledgment, unworthy of such an announcement, but the truth is that I had nothing better to offer. Thirty years as a priest and still unable to make the appropriate small talk with the living duplicates of the sanctified! Who, by the way, are more numerous than you might imagine. With Charlie, however, it seemed safe enough to stick to the birds, and so I said, "I suppose they come around because you're good to them; you probably put out a little seed for them every once in a while." There was a pause. "Ah well," he said slowly. "I don't exactly do that now, Father. No no. I'm a great man for the birds, none greater, but the way I do is this: they can damn well feed themselves. And they do! I'm here to tell you they do. On my grass seed." The old voice had suddenly become louder; there was a new note, unmistakably grim. "Grass seed is sellin' for two dollars the pound," he said, "and every robin on the place is gettin' big as a hen. Oh, I tell you, Father, a man has to look sharp or they'll eat him out of house and home. What I do, sometimes, is I sit around waitin' for them with a few little stones in my pocket." A dusty reminiscent chuckle come over the telephone. "I pegged one at this big black devil of a starlin' the other day," St. Francis said gleefully, "and damn near took his head off. Well, well, we mustn't complain, Father. That's the way life goes.

How do you think people are going to feel when they find out you’ve deceived them?” he asked. “When they find out you’ve been playing them all for fools for weeks on end?” I didn’t answer until we were safely out in the parking lot. Then I turned to face him. “Gee, I don’t know, Mark. I imagine they’ll be furious and hate me for it. Is that the point you’re trying to make? I get it. Though, for the record, I never wanted to deceive anyone.” “Then why pretend to be dead in the first place?” “I already told you I can’t tell you.” “Then let me tell you something, Calloway--O’Connor--whatever your name is,” Mark said in a furious voice. “I am going to write the tell-all article of your nightmares.” “Gee,” I said. “Now there’s a surprise.” I began to walk quickly through the parking lot in the direction of the street. If I didn’t get away from him soon, I was going to do something completely disgusting, like disgrace myself and cry. “Don’t walk away from me. Where are you going?” Mark said. “To the bus stop.” “What do you mean to the bus stop? Nobody leaves the prom on the bus.” “Now the heck do you think I got here?” I all but shouted, rounding on him as a flood of frustration overcame my desire to cry. “In a carriage that will turn into a pumpkin at midnight?” “Why didn’t Crawford pick you up?” “Because I wasn’t his date,” I said succinctly. “Elaine was. Is.” Mark dragged a hand through his hair. “My car’s right over there,” he said. “I’ll drive you home.” “No way,” I said. “And listen to you tell me what a lying jerk I am all the way across town? I think I’d rather walk.” Before I could take so much as a step back, Mark crossed the distance between us and yanked me into his arms. In the next moment, his mouth crashed down onto mine. Twice before I’d thought he was going to kiss me, but he hadn’t. I guess he must have figured he had nothing to lose now. The kiss was full of frustration, almost as full of frustration as of desire. It was a kiss that begged for mercy, took no prisoners, searched for answers, and made promises it could never keep, all at the same time. In other words, it would have knocked my socks off if I’d been wearing any at the time. It certainly made my knees weak, a thing that probably would have annoyed the hell out of me if it hadn’t been quite so exhilarating. “That’s the last thing I’m ever going to say to you,” Mark said when the kiss was over. In a silence that felt like a blackout at the end of the world, I let him drive me home.

He couldn’t seem to appease the fire in his veins. In fact, if O’Connor wasn’t due to arrive any minute, he’d have had Jane’s skirts flipped up and his head between her legs faster than a Covent Garden pickpocket could strike.

The following morning, Gary and Colby returned once more to Balanced Rock, hoping to dig up evidence of last night's sighting. An argument was taking place in my head: I'd seen diddly to suggest that Bigfoot resided in the Berkshires. What I'd experienced instead was the intoxicating power of belief, a power that's in all of us. At the same time, one need not be kissed before falling in love. Bigfoot may or may not be real, I thought, but either way, there's something profoundly true about the feeling it evinced.

She’d almost told him she loved him. So many times, she’d been on the edge of letting the words spill out, but her past had kept her cautious. And now she was glad, very glad, she hadn’t. Let him go back to a woman who didn’t care. Molly didn’t care either. What ran down her cheeks and tasted of salt wasn’t tears but good cleansing sweat. It poured from every part of her body. When she finally stood and ran outside, she trailed steam like a thing that had been through fire. As she dropped into the hole she’d cleared of ice, the bitterly cold water of the lake squeezed her hard, wrung her out, and left her wonderfully empty.

Tall, long blond hair, good figure. A way about her that suggested that if you tossed her a flirt, she’d catch it with a soft glove.

I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.”   -Franklin D. Roosevelt 20th century ruler, Earth     Logan was in the middle of taking on Leda Truant and Tad Emble together when the notification pinged his NOED. He ignored it, bringing Honoris’ haft across his body to smash Truant’s testing spear out of the way so hard that she actually staggered sideways, opening her right flank up to him. He would have liked to take advantage of the chance, but needed to instead bring the axe around and keep Tad at bay as the Brawler closed in on his left. Leda recovered, and the spear slashed at Logan’s legs, now. He stepped into the arc of the strike, letting the haft of the weapon—rather than the blade—smack him along the back of his newly armored foreleg and ping off harmlessly, all while swinging Honoris around at the Phalanx’s head. Leda ducked, but it wasn’t her who was the actual target of the move. Tad, seeing his chance, darted in once more, punch-daggers driving forward. Logan’s steel-clad fist—the one he’d released from the massive axe’s shaft once the momentum of his swing had been enough to carry it through—took the smaller boy in the side of the head before he could land a hit.

She’d come just after Jenny was born, come to help for a few weeks while Jo finished law school. She never left. Although she was heavy then, she was heavier now, and at thirty-five was completely without the prospect of marriage in her own life. There were times when Cork felt sorry for Rose and guilty because all the care she could have given to a family of her own was lavished on his instead.

They’d gone fifty yards when Cork heard a cry rise behind them, a wail of grief prolonged and primordial.

I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.” -Franklin D. Roosevelt 20th century ruler, Earth

If you shoot a marble outside the circle, you get a point,” Mr. D explained. “The player with the most points wins. I used to be pretty good.

No fair! Yours is prettier than mine,” Grace said to Nancy, and pushed in front of her. “Can I go first, Mr. D? Can I?” “Whoa, no pushing. Everybody will get a turn.” Shooting marbles was harder than it looked. Nancy didn’t get any points.

A couple of large leaf rakes were on the porch. “I have an idea,” Nancy said. By pushing the rakes in front of them up and down the yard, the girls would spot the hidden trap before either of them fell into it. Unfortunately, the yard was pretty big. They hadn’t covered much ground when they heard a car. It was pulling into the twins’ driveway! Bree and Nancy dropped the rakes and scrammed. They ran through the lilac bushes in between the twins’ house and Mrs. DeVine’s. They dashed across Mrs. DeVine’s yard, wiggled through the hedge that separated her yard from Nancy’s, and hid inside Headquarters. Whew! That was a close call. But they were safe! They collapsed into the beanbag chairs. “You really think there’s a booby trap?” Bree asked. She sounded doubtful now. “More and more, I’m sure of it. We need to search that whole yard. But let’s sneak back under cover of darkness.” That meant at night but sounded way more dangerous. They’d have to use flashlights. There’d be spooky night noises. Nancy could picture it all! “We’re not allowed out after dark,” Bree pointed out. Nancy knew that. She just didn’t want to be reminded of it. Not right now. It was more fun picturing the two of them sneaking around in the dark. Nancy sighed. It was awfully difficult to be a glamorous detective when your bedtime was eight thirty.

I wish I could’ve saved that moment there in that weed-filled yard surrounded by those good-hearted Odoms, with Wishbone sitting there on the cooler in front of us. Just pack it into one of Bertha’s canning jars to keep in my room. Then when I was feeling bad about myself or loaded down with all my troubles, I could open it up and breathe in the goodness of it and I’d feel better.

through a patch of vibrant trees glowing from the kiss of rain, reminding Siobhán why her home was called the Emerald Isle. The leaves indeed sparkled like precious emeralds. And she knew that, if forced to make a choice, she’d rather gaze upon this beautiful land than wear true emeralds around her neck.

Flannery O’Connor was first on the agenda. Previously I’d been taught to read for plot and theme, but O’Connor was all landscape. I had never been to the South and now here it was, grotesque and monstrous. In her paragraphs the air tasted of molasses and smiling strangers exposed invisible fangs. In O’Connor the devil lurked in all corners, most especially the pious and proper ones. This author wrote blunt and with hell on her mind, odd and unwholesome and bad to the bone.

I might be an arse but nobody deserves to be drinking double vodka on their own in the middle of the day,” he chuckled, but there was a serious concern there that even Lydia could pick up on. Well that was a damn sight different to the stiff-lipped prick he’d been last time they spoke. Eyeing him for a moment longer, she offered up a smirk of her own. “Tori kick your arse hard enough to knock that stick out of it, then?” “Ah, I’m not sure,” Erik clicked his tongue, tilting his head in mock-thoughtfulness, "Think I’ve still got splinters.

Once he’d started speaking it was like the words had been waiting all these years to find someone who would listen and believe them, spilling from his mouth before he could want to stop them.

You want to know what happened to Josh?” he hissed, taking a step forward, and Lydia’s skin prickled with chills – despite being shorter than her his gaze and his presence somehow managed to pierce directly into her, demanding attention; demanding respect. “They cut him open. Turned him into the kind of monster you wouldn’t recognise even if you’d known him. Then, when Tori and I escaped from that place, they sent our own squad – our family – to get us back. Josh was caught in the crossfire. I buried him. He's dead. Your life revolved around him? There, then. Job done. Purpose fulfilled.