Dirt The Movie Quotes

I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

Well, of course I’ve tried lavender. And pulling my memory out, ribbonlike and dripping. And shrieking into my pillow. And writing the poems. And making more friends. And baking warm brown cookies. And therapy. And intimacy. And pictures of rainbows. And all of the movies about lovers and the terrible things they do to each other. And watching the ones in other languages. And leaving the subtitles off. And listening to the language. And forgetting my name. And feeling the dirt on my skin. And screaming in the shower. And changing my shampoo. And living alone. And cutting my hair. And buying a turtle. And petting the cat. And traveling. And writing more poems. And touching a different body. And digging a grave. And digging a grave. Of course, I’ve tried it. Of course I have.

If the farmer is rich, then so is the nation.

I hate studying and I hate partying. But I'm okay with motocross. And muscles. Motocross and Muscles. Now that should be a Lifetime movie.

You bagged a movie star. You should be throwing a fucking party and bragging on Twitter. What you shouldn’t be doing is moping, not when you threw him out of your house like a baller.

Movie directors often shoot funerals in the rain. The mourners stand in their dark suits under large black umbrellas, the kind you never have handy in real life, while the rain falls symbolically all around them, on grass and tombstones and the roods of cars, generating atmostphere. What they don't show you is how the legs of your suit caked with grass clippings, cling soaked to your shins, how even under umbrellas the rain still manages to find your scalp, running down your skull and past your collar like wet slugs, so that while you're supposed to be meditating on the deceased, instead you're mentally tracking the trickle of water as it slides down your back. The movies don't convey how the soaked, muddy ground will swallow up the dress shoes of the pallbearers like quicksand, how the water, seeping into the pine coffin, will release the smell of death and decay, how the large mound of dirt meant to fill the grave will be transformed into an oozing pile of sludge that will splater with each stab of the shovel and land on the coffin with an audible splat. And instead of a slow and dignified farewell, everyone just wants to get the deceased into the ground and get the hell back into their cars.

To a farmer dirt is not a waste, it is wealth.

Something inside of him twisted in an ugly manner. The girl had a damn movie star on her front porch and had looked away.

The basic 110-volt AC power line moves the electrons at 60 cycles. If a transformer is close to the power source (and all speakers have transformers), the 60 cycles produce an audible hum. Crackling, caused by dirt on the sound head, can also be heard.

Is the phrase "Deliciously politically incorrect" used with the same gay abandon in the U.S.? You come across it all the time here, and it usually means, quite simply, that a book or a movie or a TV program is racist and/or sexist and/or homophobic; there is a certain kind of cultural commentator who mysteriously associates these prejudices with a Golden Age during which we were allowed to do a lot of things that we are not allowed to do now. (The truth is that there's no one stopping them from doing anything. What they really object to is being recognized as the antisocial pigs that they really are.)

There are so many dirty names for her that one rarely learns them all, even in one’s native language. There are dirty names for every female part of her body and for every way of touching her. There are dirty words, dirty laughs, dirty noises, dirty jokes, dirty movies, and dirty things to do to her in the dark. Fucking her is the dirtiest, though it may not be as dirty as she herself is. Her genitals are dirty in the literal meaning: stink and blood and urine and mucous and slime. Her genitals are also dirty in the metaphoric sense: obscene. She is reviled as filthy, obscene, in religion, pornography, philosophy, and in most literature and art and psychology. where she is not maligned she is magnificently condescended to, as in this diary entry by Somerset Maugham written when he was in medical school: The Professor of Gynaecology: He began his course of lectures as follows: Gentlemen, woman is an animal that micturates once a day, defecates once a week, menstruates once a month, parturates once a year and copulates whenever she has the opportunity. I thought it a prettily-balanced sentence. Were she loved sufficiently, or even enough, she could not be despised so much. were she sexually loved, or even liked, she and what is done with or to her, in the dark or in the light, she would not, could not, exist rooted in the realm of dirt, the contempt for her apparently absolute and irrevocable; horrible; immovable; help us, Lord; unjust. She is not just less; she and the sex she incarnates are a species of filth. God will not help of course: "For a whore is a deep ditch; and a strange woman is a narrow pit.

It's not about becoming a movie star. It's about the down-in-the-dirt art of inhabiting the person you aspire to be while carrying on your shoulders the uncertain and hungry man you know you are.

Why do you want to talk about ugly things?" she said. ... "We should think only beautiful things, as much as we can. There is so much beautiful in the world if you look around. You are looking only at the dirt under your feet, Jimmy. It's not good for you." She would never tell him. Why did this drive him so crazy? "It wasn't real sex was it?" he asked. "In the movies. It was only acting. Wasn't it?" "But Jimmy, you should know. All sex is real.

But middle-class in this country was a state of mind, as one of Kaiz’s unbearable friends had once declared. Not the filthy-rich of masala movies, not the dirt-poor of arthouse films, but everything in between. For some it was shorthand for middle-access, a separation from the corridors of power. For others it was middle-culture, a separation from the world of ideas.

I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen—I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theatres from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, life is a cruel joke and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

As we strolled, I noticed the soft light and its effect on the buildings around us. Like an aging screen actress shot in soft light to conceal her age lines, this magical twilight softened the avenues of Paris and produced an elegant scene not unlike a movie. Lining the street ahead of us, the buildings were constructed of solid white stone and more than one hundred years old, but all traces of age or dirt were diffused by the twilight, while their classic French architecture was center stage and highlighted. Fifty Parisians, the bluish cobblestones of the sidewalk, glowing neon, and a colorful outdoor flower stand completed the scene in front of us. Overwhelmed and in awe of the setting, I stopped and stared silently ahead.

All human creativity is an echo of God’s creativity. When God makes man, he forms him in the dirt, breathes life into him, and sends him out in the world. We’ve been playing in the dirt ever since. Just as God took something he’d made, shaped it, breathed life and meaning into it, and transformed it into something new, so we set about our own business, taking creation, shaping it, and giving it new meaning and purpose. Clay becomes sculpture. Trees become houses. Sounds are arranged in time to become music. Oils, pigments, and canvas are arranged to become paintings. Various metals, glass, and petroleum products become iPhones. The same is true of stories. There is nothing new under the sun, and our stories—no matter how fresh and new they might feel—are all a way of “playing in the dirt,” wrestling with creation, reimagining it, working with it, and making it new. Our stories have a way of fitting into the bigger story of redemption that overshadows all of life and all of history. Because that bigger story is the dirt box in which all the other stories play.

«It's not easy to believe.» «I» she told him, «I can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe.» «Really?» «I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in "War of the Worlds". I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kind of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.»

And, so, what was it that elevated Rubi from dictator's son-in-law to movie star's husband to the sort of man who might capture the hand of the world's wealthiest heiress? Well, there was his native charm. People who knew him, even if only casually, even if they were predisposed to be suspicious or resentful of him, came away liking him. He picked up checks; he had courtly manners; he kept the party gay and lively; he was attentive to women but made men feel at ease; he was smoothly quick to rise from his chair when introduced, to open doors, to light a lady's cigarette ("I have the fastest cigarette lighter in the house," he once boasted): the quintessential chivalrous gent of manners. The encomia, if bland, were universal. "He's a very nice guy," swore gossip columnist Earl Wilson, who stayed with Rubi in Paris. ""I'm fond of him," said John Perona, owner of New York's El Morocco. "Rubi's got a nice personality and is completely masculine," attested a New York clubgoer. "He has a lot of men friends, which, I suppose, is unusual. Aly Khan, for instance, has few male friends. But everyone I know thinks Rubi is a good guy." "He is one of the nicest guys I know," declared that famed chum of famed playboys Peter Lawford. "A really charming man- witty, fun to be with, and a he-man." There were a few tricks to his trade. A society photographer judged him with a professional eye thus: "He can meet you for a minute and a month later remember you very well." An author who played polo with him put it this way: "He had a trick that never failed. When he spoke with someone, whether man or woman, it seemed as if the rest of the world had lost all interest for him. He could hang on the words of a woman or man who spoke only banalities as if the very future of the world- and his future, especially- depended on those words." But there was something deeper to his charm, something irresistible in particular when he turned it on women. It didn't reveal itself in photos, and not every woman was susceptible to it, but it was palpable and, when it worked, unforgettable. Hollywood dirt doyenne Hedda Hoppe declared, "A friend says he has the most perfect manners she has ever encountered. He wraps his charm around your shoulders like a Russian sable coat." Gossip columnist Shelia Graham was chary when invited to bring her eleven-year-old daughter to a lunch with Rubi in London, and her wariness was transmitted to the girl, who wiped her hand off on her dress after Rubi kissed it in a formal greeting; by the end of lunch, he had won the child over with his enthusiastic, spontaneous manner, full of compliments but never cloying. "All done effortlessly," Graham marveled. "He was probably a charming baby, I am sure that women rushed to coo over him in the cradle." Elsa Maxwell, yet another gossip, but also a society gadabout and hostess who claimed a key role in at least one of Rubi's famous liaisons, put it thus: "You expect Rubi to be a very dangerous young man who personifies the wolf. Instead, you meet someone who is so unbelievably charming and thoughtful that you are put off-guard before you know it." But charm would only take a man so far. Rubi was becoming and international legend not because he could fascinate a young girl but because he could intoxicate sophisticated women. p124

I hung up the phone after saying good night to Marlboro Man, this isolated cowboy who hadn’t had the slightest probably picking up the phone to say “I miss you.” I shuddered at the thought of how long I’d gone without it. And judging from the electrical charges searing through every cell of my body, I realized just how fundamental a human need it really is. It was as fundamental a human need, I would learn, as having a sense of direction in the dark. I suddenly realized I was lost on the long dirt road, more lost than I’d ever been before. The more twists and turns I took in my attempt to find my bearings, the worse my situation became. It was almost midnight, and it was cold, and each intersection looked like the same one repeating over and over. I found myself struck with an illogical and indescribable panic--the kind that causes you to truly believe you’ll never, ever escape from where you are, even though you almost always will. As I drove, I remembered every horror movie I’d ever watched that had taken place in a rural setting. Children of the Corn. The children of the corn were lurking out there in the tall grass, I just knew it. Friday the 13th. Sure, it had taken place at a summer camp, but the same thing could happen on a cattle ranch. And The Texas Chain Saw Massacre? Oh no. I was dead. Leatherface was coming--or even worse, his freaky, emaciated, misanthropic brother. I kept driving for a while, then stopped on the side of the road. Shining my brights on the road in front of me, I watched out for Leatherface while dialing Marlboro Man on my car phone. My pulse was rapid out of sheer terror and embarrassment; my face was hot. Lost and helpless on a county road the same night I’d emotionally decompensated in his kitchen--this was not exactly the image I was dying to project to this new man in my life. But I had no other option, short of continuing to drive aimlessly down one generic road after another or parking on the side of the road and going to sleep, which really wasn’t an option at all, considering Norman Bates was likely wandering around the area. With Ted Bundy. And Charles Manson. And Grendel.

Have you talked about how many children you’d like to have?” “Yes, sir,” Marlboro Man said. “And?” Father Johnson prodded. “I’d like to have six or so,” Marlboro Man answered, a virile smile spreading across his face. “And what about Ree?” Father Johnson asked. “Well, she says she’d like to have one,” Marlboro Man said, looking at me and touching my knee. “But I’m workin’ on her.” Father Johnson wrinkled his brow. “How do you and Ree resolve conflict?” “Well…,” Marlboro Man replied. “To tell you the truth, we haven’t really had much conflict to speak of. We get along pretty darn well.” Father Johnson looked over his glasses. “I’m sure you can think of something.” He wanted some dirt. Marlboro Man tapped his boot on the sterile floor of Father Johnson’s study and looked His Excellence straight in the eye. “Well, she fell off her horse once when we went riding together,” he began. “And that upset her a little bit. And a while back, I dragged her to a fire with me and it got a little dicey…” Marlboro Man and I looked at each other. It was the largest “conflict” we’d had, and it had lasted fewer than twelve hours. Father Johnson looked at me. “How did you deal with that, Ree?” I froze. “Uh…uh…” I tapped my Donald Pliner mule on the floor. “I told him how I felt. And after that it was fine.” I hated every minute of this. I didn’t want to be examined. I didn’t want my relationship with Marlboro Man to be dissected with generic, one-size-fits-all questions. I just wanted to drive around in his pickup and look at pastures and curl up on the couch with him and watch movies. That had been going just fine for us--that was the nature of our relationship. But Father Johnson’s questioning was making me feel defensive, as if we were somehow neglecting our responsibility to each other if we weren’t spending every day in deep, contemplative thought about the minutiae of a future together. Didn’t a lot of that stuff just come naturally over time? Did it really serve a purpose to figure it out now? But Father Johnson’s interrogation continued: “What do you want for your children?” “Have you talked about budgetary matters?” “What role do your parents play in your life?” “Have you discussed your political preferences? Your stances on important issues? Your faith? Your religion?” And my personal favorite: “What are you both going to do, long term, to nurture each other’s creativity?” I didn’t have an answer for him there. But deep down, I knew that, somehow, gravy would come into play.

I can believe that things are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen – I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

I," she told him, "can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe." "Really?" "I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theatres from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in this universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, life is a cruel joke and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." She stopped, out of breath. Shadow almost took his hands off the wheel to applaud.

I am speaking of the evenings when the sun sets early, of the fathers under the streetlamps in the back streets returning home carrying plastic bags. Of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to deserted stations in the middle of winter, where sleepy sailors scrub the decks, pail in hand and one eye on the black-and-white television in the distance; of the old booksellers who lurch from one ϧnancial crisis to the next and then wait shivering all day for a customer to appear; of the barbers who complain that men don’t shave as much after an economic crisis; of the children who play ball between the cars on cobblestoned streets; of the covered women who stand at remote bus stops clutching plastic shopping bags and speak to no one as they wait for the bus that never arrives; of the empty boathouses of the old Bosphorus villas; of the teahouses packed to the rafters with unemployed men; of the patient pimps striding up and down the city’s greatest square on summer evenings in search of one last drunken tourist; of the broken seesaws in empty parks; of ship horns booming through the fog; of the wooden buildings whose every board creaked even when they were pashas’ mansions, all the more now that they have become municipal headquarters; of the women peeking through their curtains as they wait for husbands who never manage to come home in the evening; of the old men selling thin religious treatises, prayer beads, and pilgrimage oils in the courtyards of mosques; of the tens of thousands of identical apartment house entrances, their facades discolored by dirt, rust, soot, and dust; of the crowds rushing to catch ferries on winter evenings; of the city walls, ruins since the end of the Byzantine Empire; of the markets that empty in the evenings; of the dervish lodges, the tekkes, that have crumbled; of the seagulls perched on rusty barges caked with moss and mussels, unϩinching under the pelting rain; of the tiny ribbons of smoke rising from the single chimney of a hundred-yearold mansion on the coldest day of the year; of the crowds of men ϧshing from the sides of the Galata Bridge; of the cold reading rooms of libraries; of the street photographers; of the smell of exhaled breath in the movie theaters, once glittering aϱairs with gilded ceilings, now porn cinemas frequented by shamefaced men; of the avenues where you never see a woman alone after sunset; of the crowds gathering around the doors of the state-controlled brothels on one of those hot blustery days when the wind is coming from the south; of the young girls who queue at the doors of establishments selling cut-rate meat; of the holy messages spelled out in lights between the minarets of mosques on holidays that are missing letters where the bulbs have burned out; of the walls covered with frayed and blackened posters; of the tired old dolmuşes, ϧfties Chevrolets that would be museum pieces in any western city but serve here as shared taxis, huϫng and puϫng up the city’s narrow alleys and dirty thoroughfares; of the buses packed with passengers; of the mosques whose lead plates and rain gutters are forever being stolen; of the city cemeteries, which seem like gateways to a second world, and of their cypress trees; of the dim lights that you see of an evening on the boats crossing from Kadıköy to Karaköy; of the little children in the streets who try to sell the same packet of tissues to every passerby; of the clock towers no one ever notices; of the history books in which children read about the victories of the Ottoman Empire and of the beatings these same children receive at home; of the days when everyone has to stay home so the electoral roll can be compiled or the census can be taken; of the days when a sudden curfew is announced to facilitate the search for terrorists and everyone sits at home fearfully awaiting “the oϫcials”; CONTINUED IN SECOND PART OF THE QUOTE

There was no mistaking it, throughout the 1950’s, Liberia proudly brandished its American roots by flaunting the palatial homes overlooking the Atlantic Ocean near Monrovia or the antebellum style mansions dominating rubber plantations owned by wealth Americo Liberians who considered themselves privileged. Their homes were closely modeled after the affluent homes of the pre-civil war era in the Confederacy. These beautiful homes stood out when compared to the dirt floor, thatch roofed village homes most Liberians lived in. The best visual description of Liberian architecture,would be in film clips taken from the movie Gone With The Wind.. In the 1950's, Liberia had all the trappings of an American colony stuck in the past. To a great extent it was this great social divide between the indigenous natives and the Americo-Liberians that brought on the two civil wars in Liberia. This aspect of life in Liberia is highlighted in Seawater Two and will be covered in my upcoming book about the history of West Africa. Many of the Americo Liberians including President Talbert, have been killed of displaced. Because of the fierce civil wars in Liberia the coastal ships of the Farrell Lines fleet were sunk in “The Port of Monrovia” and much of Liberia’s antebellum architecture has been destroyed .

The focus of that week was “learning how to listen to the voice of God” in what was dubbed “My Quiet Time with God.” You have to admire the camp leaders’ intent, but let’s be honest. Most pre-adolescents are clueless about such deeply spiritual goals, let alone the discipline to follow through on a daily basis. Still, good little camperettes that we were, we trekked across the campground after our counselors told us to find our “special place” to meet with God each day. My special place was beneath a big tree. Like the infamous land-run settlers of Oklahoma’s colorful history, I staked out the perfect location. I busily cleared the dirt beneath my tree and lined it with little rocks, fashioned a cross out of two twigs, stuck it in the ground near the tree, and declared that it was good. I wiped my hands on my madras Bermudas, then plopped down, cross-legged on the dirt, ready to meet God. For an hour. One very long hour. Just me and God. God and me. Every single day of camp. Did I mention these quiet times were supposed to last an entire hour? I tried. Really I did. “Now I lay me down to sleep . . . ” No. Wait. That’s a prayer for babies. I can surely do better than that. Ah! I’ve got it! The Lord’s Prayer! Much more grown-up. So I closed my eyes and recited the familiar words. “Our Father, Who art in heaven . . .” Art? I like art. I hope we get to paint this week. Maybe some watercolor . . . “Hallowed by Thy name.” I’ve never liked my name. Diane. It’s just so plain. Why couldn’t Mom and Dad have named me Veronica? Or Tabitha? Or Maria—like Maria Von Trapp in The Sound of Music. Oh my gosh, I love that movie! “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done . . . ” Be done, be done, be done . . . will this Quiet Time ever BE DONE? I’m sooooo bored! B-O-R-E-D. BORED! BORED! BORED! “On earth as it is in Heaven.” I wonder if Julie Andrews and I will be friends in heaven. I loved her in Mary Poppins. I really liked that bag of hers. All that stuff just kept coming out. “Give us this day, our daily bread . . . ” I’m so hungry, I could puke. I sure hope they don’t have Sloppy Joes today. Those were gross. Maybe we’ll have hot dogs. I’ll take mine with ketchup, no mustard. I hate mustard. “And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” What the heck is a trespass anyway? And why should I care if someone tresses past me? “And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil . . . ” I am so tempted to short-sheet Sally’s bed. That would serve her right for stealing the top bunk. “For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.” This hour feels like forever. FOR-E-VERRRR. Amen. There. I prayed. Now what?

Remember the first time you ever came? Tell the truth. You were dreading it." His brown eyes laughed warmly. "What wasn't to dread? A godforsaken island in the middle of the Atlantic-" "It's only eleven miles out." "Same difference. If it didn't have a hospital, it wasn't on my radar screen." "You thought there'd be dirt roads and nothing to do." He gave a wry chuckle. Between lobstering, clamming, and sailing, then movie nights at the church and mornings at the cafe, not to mention dinners at home, in town, or at the homes of friends, Nicole had kept him busy. "You loved it," she dared. "I did," he admitted. "It was perfect. A world away.

There comes a time in every story when the hero finally gets everything they ever wanted. And that's usually when the music swells and the credits roll or the last page turns or we just flip the channel. I believe there's a reason for that. We don't want to spend too much time with somebody once they've gotten everything they've ever wanted. They become insufferable. They become unsympathetic. They start using words like whom properly in a sentence. There's no more mountain left for them to climb, so we're out. We're underdog people. Get out of here with your all my dream already came true nonsense. Just take your football and go home, Rudy. Go live your happy life and let us be. We're already on to the next unlikely story. But what if success was where the real trouble began? What if we got everything we ever wanted, only to find out it doesn't change a thing about not liking this skin we have to do life in, this dirt still caked under our fingernails. That once we go home and tuck ourselves between the cool cotton sheets, where it's just us and the darkness settled in, it hasn't changed a thing about how easily we can lay our head down and fall asleep at night. ... The hero, it turns out, is flawed. Deeply, deeply, deeply flawed. And no amount of success is going to undo that. No relentless pursuit of more is going to erase what was missing. It's going to take digging in and doing the hard work of healing if there's any hope of changing all that. but how do e you gather up the nerve when it already feels so damaged? And is that the kind of story anybody will ever care about? ... We don't really make movies about what happened after someone got everything they ever wanted. About what happens when the hero at last has to come face-to-face with what no amount of success will ever fix. But that's the story we're living now.

We need laughter. We need joy. As parents, we need to facilitate that or so much of regular life will simply steal it from us. Make a point to find things that are funny and laugh at them. Find ways to laugh at yourselves when things don’t go exactly as you planned. Watch a funny movie or read a funny story or tell a stupid dad joke, but find a way to bring laughter into your home as often as you can. Even in the hard times, laughter is good medicine.

Tell me what you want me to do,” Gary said almost eagerly. He was sick of bullies pushing him around. “You are going to walk in by yourself and fish for as much information as you can get before they try to kill you,” Gregori answered. “Try. I hope that’s the operative word,” Gary said nervously. “Try to kill me.” “You will not have to worry about yourself,” Gregori informed him, his voice utterly confident. “But it is necessary that the police do not come looking for you. That means no dead bodies in your room.” “Right, messy. If I have vampires and nut cases from the society hunting me, we don’t need the cops, too,” Gary admitted. He was sweating now, his palms so wet he kept rubbing them on his jeans. “Do not worry so much.” Gregori flashed a smile meant to reassure, the one that left vivid images of open graves. “I will be with you every step of the way. You might even have fun playing Rambo.” “He had a big gun,” Gary pointed out. “’ m going up there with my bare hands. I think it might be pertinent to say I’ve never won a single fistfight. I’ve been put in trash cans and toilets and had my face rubbed in the dirt. I’m no good in a fight.” “I am,” Gregori said softly, his hand suddenly on Gary’s shoulder. It was the first time Gary could remember the Carpathian voluntarily touching him out of camaraderie. “Gary is saying all these things, chérie, yet he intended to go up against a man brandishing a knife with only his lab jacket for protection.” Gary blushed a fiery red. “You know why I was in the lab,” he reminded Gregori, ashamed. “I made a tranquilizer that works on your blood, and they turned it into a poison of some kind. We’ve got to do something about that. If something goes wrong tonight, and they get me, all my notes on the formula are in my laptop, too.” “This is beginning more and more to sound like a bad movie.” Gregori sighed. “Come on, you two amateurs.” He was impassive on the outside, but he couldn’t help laughing on the inside. “Do not worry about the formula. I allowed one of the members to inject me with it, so we know its components and are working on an antidote now.” “It didn’t work?” Gary was appalled. He had spent a tremendous amount of time on that formula. Although Morrison and his crew had perverted it, he was still disappointed. “You cannot have it both ways, Gary.” Exasperated, Gregori gave him a little shove toward the entrance to the hotel. “You should not want the damn thing to work.” “Hey, my reputation is on the line.” “So was mine. I neutralized the poison.” Gregori nudged him again. “Get moving.

1479You never stop learning until there is dirt between your ears.

says Robert Faris, a sociologist at UC Davis. If you were to screen the movie Cool Hand Luke for an audience of chimps—something he has not done—they would have no trouble determining who prevails in the prison boxing scene: the hulking boss, Dragline, beats Luke until the title character can barely stand. But the next scene would leave the chimps scratching their heads. Luke, the loser, has become the new leader of the prisoners. A human moviegoer could attempt to explain. Because Luke kept getting up out of the dirt, even when he was beat, he won the other prisoners’ respect. But the chimps would just not get it. “That’s a complexity of humans,” Faris says: it was not until after the human-chimpanzee split that Homo sapiens developed a newer, uniquely human path to power. Scholars call it “prestige.

But this is no ordinary village. Every now and then, a shiny four-wheel drive bounces down the dirt track that leads to a refuge center of an organization whose name in French is Agir Pour Les Femmes en Situation Précaire, or AFESIP. (Rough translation: Helping Women in Danger.) Inside the vehicle you may spot a powerful government official, a heavyweight journalist or even an American movie star. They all come to meet with AFESIP's president and co-founder, Somaly Mam, and support her courageous work fighting sex traffickers.

Apple may not do customer research to decide what products to make, but it absolutely pays attention to how customers use its products. So the marketing team working on the iMovie HD release scheduled for Macworld, on January 11, 2005, decided to shoot a wedding. The ceremony it filmed was gorgeous: a sophisticated, candlelit affair at the Officers’ Club of San Francisco’s Presidio. The bride was an Apple employee, and the wedding was real. There was one problem with the footage, however. Steve Jobs didn’t like it. He watched it the week before Christmas, recalled Alessandra Ghini, the marketing executive managing the launch of iLife. Jobs declared that the San Francisco wedding didn’t capture the right atmosphere to demonstrate what amateurs could do with iMovie. “He told us he wanted a wedding on the beach, in Hawaii, or some tropical location,” said Ghini. “We had a few weeks to find a wedding on a beach and to get it shot, edited, and approved by Steve. The tight time frame allowed for no margin for error.” With time short and money effectively no object, the team went into action. It contacted Los Angeles talent agencies as well as hotels in Hawaii to learn if they knew of any weddings planned—preferably featuring an attractive bride and groom—over the New Year’s holiday. They hit pay dirt in Hollywood: A gorgeous agency client and her attractive fiancé were in fact planning to wed on Maui during the holiday. Apple offered to pay for the bride’s flowers, to film the wedding, and to provide the couple with a video. In return, Apple wanted rights for up to a minute’s worth of footage of its choosing.

I’m so in love with you, it feels unreal sometimes. Like maybe it’s a dream, and I made it all up. Basically, my entire life, I thought I was content by myself. I thought maybe being in love wasn’t for me because I’ve never felt anything close to it. I thought the movies and the books and the TV shows were overly exaggerated and, surely, there’s no way people actually felt like that in real life. The jittery feeling. The butterflies. The endless hope that sits in your chest when you look at them and think about your future.

Young Hans Reiter also liked to walk, like a diver, but he didn’t like to sing, for divers never sing. Sometimes he would walk east out of town, along a dirt road through the forest, and he would come to the Village of Red Men, where all they did was sell peat. If he walked farther east, there was the Village of Blue Women, in the middle of a lake that dried up in the summer. Both places looked like ghost towns, inhabited by the dead. Beyond the Village of Blue Women was the Town of the Fat. It smelled bad there, like blood and rotting meat, a dense, heavy smell very different from the smell of his own town, which smelled of dirty clothes, sweat clinging to the skin, pissed-upon earth, which is a thin smell, a smell like Chorda filum. In the Town of the Fat, as was to be expected, there were many animals and several butcher shops. Sometimes, on his way home, moving like a diver, he watched the Town of the Fat citizens wander the streets of the Village of Blue Women or the Village of Red Men and he thought that maybe the villagers, those who were ghosts now, had died at the hands of the inhabitants of the Town of the Fat, who were surely fearsome and relentless practitioners of the art of killing, no matter that they never bothered him, among other reasons because he was a diver, which is to say he didn’t belong to their world, where he came only as an explorer or a visitor. On other occasions his steps took him west, and he walked down the main street of Egg Village, which each year was farther and farther from the rocks, as if the houses could move on their own and chose to seek a safer place near the dells and forests. It wasn’t far from Egg Village to Pig Village, a village he imagined his father never visited, where there were many pigstys and the happiest herds of pigs for miles around, pigs that seemed to greet the passerby regardless of his social standing or age or marital status, with friendly grunts, almost musical, or in fact entirely musical, while the villagers stood frozen with their hats in their hands or covering their faces, whether out of modesty or shame it wasn’t clear. And farther on was the Town of Chattering Girls, girls who went to parties and dances in even bigger towns whose names the young Hans Reiter heard and immediately forgot, girls who smoked in the streets and talked about sailors at a big port who served on this or that ship, the names of which the young Hans Reiter immediately forgot, girls who went to the movies and saw the most thrilling films, with actors who were the handsomest men on the planet and actresses who, if one wanted to be fashionable, one had to imitate, and whose names the young Hans Reiter immediately forgot. When he got home, like a night diver, his mother asked him where he’d spent the day and the young Hans Reiter told her the first thing that came to mind, anything but the truth. Then his mother stared at him with her blue eye and the boy held her gaze with his two blue eyes, and from the corner near the hearth, the one-legged man watched them both with his two blue eyes and for three or four seconds the island of Prussia seemed to rise from the depths.

From college professors and authors and judges and ministers! Everybody! Dirt farmers and international names!...I don't know what she does to them all - but she does something. She's not a movie star to them - she's a goddess.

You don't know what to do with the jam jar, the chicken stink, the sinister mountain fog that is everywhere, but the adults pretend to ignore when you are in the room. It seems the only thing you can do is listen for it. You hear it in the four measures of Vivaldi's "Winter" that you can still remember from Sarah and the Squirrel, and once you make the connection between the music and mountain fog you play the notes over and over again inside your head. You paw up the trash-strewn ravine. The sky is low and gray, the color of the cinder blocks the men in your town manufacture from ash and dust. The dirt-filled strawberry jam jar is in your denim coat pocket. Vivaldi is in your head. The music you hear is like the blaze-orange clothing the men wear on the mountainsides while deer hunting in autumn. The music is like a bulletproof vest, a coiled copperhead, a rabies shot. The music is both a warning and a talisman. The music tells you things: You're not imagining this. Better children than you die in the snow for no reason. The music says: What's hidden beneath this picture of strawberry jam? The music says: This isn't a Disney movie. Death doesn't just take the wicked villain. Look at that dirt in the jar. It will take you. It will take everyone, and everyone, and everyone. The music says: What you feel is real. Follow me. Run.

Who's Vanessa?" "I don't believe you. She's only the most popular girl in the whole school." She pointed a finger at the girl in the middle of the three who were still watching Tianna closely. "Everyone knows Vanessa." Vanessa had perfect skin, large blue eyes, and luxurious blond hair that curled over her shoulders. "Are those extensions?" Tianna asked. "All hers." Corrine sighed. Vanessa was dressed in a funky white coat of fake fur that went down to her brown suede boots; underneath was a low-hanging party-girl skirt with two gold belts draped around her tan waist. "Where'd she get the clothes? They're so cool." Tianna glanced self-consciously at her own jeans. The knees were soiled, and there was a long black mark on the side, as if she had skidded in dirt or oil. "Her mom's a costume designer for the movies," Corrine confided. Tianna felt a pang of jealousy- not for the clothes, but from the mention of Vanessa's mother. She wondered where hers was. Why hadn't she been with her this morning?

Cal lived in the foothills west of Denver, off of Highway 285 past the mountain community of Pine Junction. I followed a winding dirt road to 285, turned left and on to 285, and drove in the moonlight back to Denver. I was alone on the road, but still