Duncan's Death Quotes

At last the cold crept up my spine; at last it filled me from foot to head; at last I grew so chill and desolate that all thought and pain and awareness came to a standstill. I wasn't miserable anymore: I wasn't anything at all. I was a nothing-- a random configuration of molecules. If my heart still beat I didn't know it. I was aware of one thing only; next to the gaping fact called Death, all I knew was nothing, all I did meant nothing, all I felt conveyed nothing. This was no passing thought. It was a gnawing, palpable emptiness more real than the cold.

She understood the genre constraints, the decencies were supposed to be observing. The morally cosy vision allows the embrace of monstrosity only as a reaction to suffering or as an act of rage against the Almighty. Vampire interviewee Louis is in despair at his brother’s death when he accepts Lestat’s offer. Frankenstein’s creature is driven to violence by the violence done to him. Even Lucifer’s rebellion emerges from the agony of injured price. The message is clear: By all means become an abomination—but only while unhinged by grief or wrath.

Thus she's discovered the Conradian truth: The first horror is there's horror. The second is you accommodate it...You do what you do because it's that or death.

You better not tup our sister! Or you’ll be having us to deal with, Braden MacAllister! (Duncan) Could I please just deal with one threat of death at a time? (Braden)

She hated the predictability of herself, but knew life probably wouldn't be long enough for her to grow out of it.

Werewolves are not the subject of academe,” she said, “but you know what the professors would be saying if they were. ‘Monsters die out when the collective imagination no longer needs them. Species death like this is nothing more than a shift in the aggregate psychic agenda. In ages past the beast in man was hidden in the dark, disavowed. The transparency of modern history makes that impossible: We’ve seen ourselves in concentration camps, the gulags, the jungles, the killing fields, we’ve read ourselves in the annals of True Crime. Technology turned up the lights and now there’s no getting away from the fact: The beast is redundant. It’s been us all along.

That's the problem with being alive," she says, staring at the floor. "You've got to keep thinking of what to do.

He had a reservoir of tolerance for pain. Finite, though. Pain would empty it, eventually.

You have a good cry, lovey, you'll feel better afterwards. You did feel better afterwards, but as if you'd conned yourself, fobbed yourself off.

Maybe you were never meant to save the world, daughter of death, maybe you are doing exactly what you were supposed to. You danced on the edge of darkness and light and you fell. You were always going to fall. The darkness was always going to have you. There has never been any escape from it. It was exactly what you were born for.

Only a very special type of man can love one woman to the exclusion of everyone else. To the exclusion of everything else. To carry her memory across half the world and back again because of it, knowing that death is likely all that awaits him.’ He paused, purely for effect. ‘A very special type of man indeed.

The Russian drove. New York turned in his seat to make sure I wasn't peeking. He should have been a surfer. His face was full of masculine prettiness and immensely likeable. Which, by horror's law of inverted aesthetics, made me sure we were being taken to our deaths.

Today the average lifetime is over seventy years, long enough for a great number of accomplishments. But this development has occurred within the present century. Before that, people tended to die much younger than they do today, and among those early deaths were those of many brilliant and talented people who had much to give the world. It is those people to whom I reach out. It is to them I offer the opportunity to return.

Minor offenses at best. Nothing to deserve death by potato.

Open, the eyes of the dead are a travesty, a parody, make a fool of the deceased. Open, the eyes of the dead perform that most indecent subtraction, show the person without his life.

The bad smell around the transfer of lucre was that it smacked of providing for her after my death. Neither of us could quite keep that out. Therefore we gave it its moment in the spotlight. I plan on staying alive, I said. But in case I don’t you’ll have what you need. Just promise me you’ll always buy beautiful underwear. You drive a hard bargain, she said, but okay.

That was the treachery of suffering. It took you to the point from which you thought death must follow, then let you know it could hold you there indefinitely. That was when you stopped fearing death and started wanting it, praying for it, begging for it.

In that time while he was still aware, which was the worse, I wonder: the agony of his physical torture or the horror of their utter hatred, of their moral certainty that he was so beyond the bounds of what they could accept that he deserved not just a death but one of such brutality, such inhumanity, as would make the seraphs who burned Sodom bow their heads in cold respect? What is it like, I wonder, to learn the full capacity of hatred in a lesson hammered home with bone broken on wood and skin ripped on barbed wire?

Knock it off,Finn!" I tried to pull my arm from him, but physically he was still stronger than me. "Loki is right. You are my tracker. You need to stop dragging me around and telling me what to do." "Loki?" Finn stopped so he could glare suspiciously at me. "You're on a first-name basis with the Vittra prisoner who kidnapped you? And you're lecturing me on propriety?" "I'm not lecturing you on anything!" I shouted, and I finally got my arm free from him. "But if I were to lecture you, it would be about how you're being such a jerk." "Hey,maybe you should just calm-" Duncan tried to interject. He'd been standing a few feet away from us, looking sheepish and worried. "Duncan,don't you dare tell me how to do my job!" Finn stabbed a finger at him. "You are the most useless, incompetent tracker I have ever met, and first chance I get,I'm going to recommend that the Queen dismiss you. And trust me, I'm doing you a favor. She should have you banished!" Duncan's entire face crumpled, and for a horrible moment I was certain he would cry. Instead,he just gaped at us, then lowered his eyes and nodded. "Finn!" I yelled, wanting to slap him. "Duncan did nothing wrong!" Duncan turned to walk away, and I tried to stop him. "Duncan,no. You don't need to go anywhere." He kept walking, and I didn't go after him. Maybe I should have,but I wanted to yell at Finn some more. "He repeatedly left you alone with the Vittra!" Finn shouted. "I know you have a death wish, but it's Duncan's job to prevent you from acting on it." "I am finding out more about the Vittra so I can stop this ridiculous fighting!" I shot back. "So I've been interviewing a prisoner. It's not that unusual,and I've been perfectly safe." "Oh,yeah, 'interviewing,'" Finn scoffed. "You were flirting with him." "Flirting?" I repeated and rolled my eyes. "You're being a dick because you think I was flirting? I wasn't, but even if I was,that doesn't give you the right to treat me or Duncan or anybody this way." "I'm not being a dick," Finn insisted. "I am doing my job, and fraternizing with the enemy is looked down on, Princess. If he doesn't hurt you, the Vittra or Trylle will." "We were only talking,Finn!" "I saw you,Wendy," Finn snapped. "You were flirting. You even wore your hair down when you snuck off to see him." "My hair?" I touched it. "I wore it down because I had a headache from training, and I wasn't sneaking. I was...No,you know what? I don't have to explain anything to you. I didn't do anything wrong, and I don't have to answer to you." "Princess-" "No,I don't want to hear it!" I shook my head. "I really don't want to do this right now.Just go away,Finn!

there is a central theme running through each story in the Scriptures – God is our Creator, and He knows what is best for us. When we walk in obedience, we enjoy His protection and His many blessings. But when we – like Cain – choose to walk in disobedience, then we suffer the results of sin. Death and destruction.

I saw our future together compressed into a moment; our faces changing, desire having to cope and reinvent itself at each new stratum of familiarity; I saw the gradual dissolution of mutual mystery and romance, its succession by friendship and a sort of tranquil and supernatural loyalty; I felt - with great lightness of being - the bearability of the idea of death, if the life preceding it was bloodily commingled (in children) with hers. A humble little truth: build a truly good life and it will reward you with mastery of the fear of death. It was simple. Having committed to the building of a marriage and family, all sorts of truths came forward and offered themselves.

Dear Church, we have to wage peace in the name of Jesus Christ for this generation. We have to break the chains of sin and death holding all of us captive.

I always thought that if I suffered enough in service of Art, if I laid down my life to please the world, I could live in peace," Duncan reflects shortly after the death of her children. "Now I know that the world will consume everything in its path. Art is not even an appetizer to the horrors of the world. The world consumes horror itself and savors it and is never sated.

She understood the genre constraints, the decencies we were supposed to be observing. The morally cosy vision allows the embrace of monstrosity only as a reaction to suffering or as an act of rage against the Almighty. Vampire interviewee Louis is in despair at his brother’s death when he accepts Lestat’s offer. Frankenstein’s creature is driven to violence by the violence done to him. Even Lucifer’s rebellion emerges from the agony of injured pride. The message is clear: By all means become an abomination—but only while unhinged by grief or wrath. By rights, Talulla knew, she should have been orphaned or raped or paedophilically abused or terminally ill or suicidally depressed or furious at God for her mother’s death or at any rate in some way deranged if she was to be excused for not having killed herself, once it became apparent that she’d have to murder and devour people in order to stay alive. The mere desire to stay alive, in whatever form you’re lumbered with—werewolf, vampire, Father of Lies—really couldn’t be considered a morally sufficient rationale. And yet here she was, staying alive. You love life because life’s all there is.

Catholicism fascinated him, the contortions it put itself through to make ends meet. Father Murray had kept returning to the word 'despair.' There'd been a little (bizarre, Luke thought) linguistic diversion into Latin. Desperare, formed by the 'de' prefex, signifying the removal of or from, and 'sperare,' meaning to hope. The removal of hope. That was despair. The reasoning being that you couldn't live without hope. What Murray hadn't said (but what, along with the story of the suicide ghost, Luke remembered from childhood) was that despair was classified as a sin against the Holy Spirit. That was the perverse beauty of the religion: that your daughter could be raped and murdered and yourself still condemned for giving up hope.

Some part of me . . . had been waiting, since Kelp's death, for certainty that God . . . was either dead or malicious. On the cot, now, in the rain-shadowed room with the medicine smells, I knew it was worse than that. They were a challenge, a dare: you must look at the horrors of the world and find a way back to faith in spite of what you saw. I had a glimpse of what the purer version of myself might be capable of: enduring the loss, keeping the rage and disgust down, finding meaning through suffering. But it was only a glimpse. There was so much shame, and the shame made me angry at the thought of getting better.

The wind of courage had died in my sails leaving me to flounder in the doldrums of my emotions. Was this because I was in a strange town? Because Violet had caused me pain herself? Maybe it was just because courage ebbs and flows and I hadn’t mastered my own emotions, but whatever the reason I was frozen and once again knew the stigma of shame.

They never look very big on the table, the bodies. It's built to accommodate the largest frames, there's that. And they're naked. But it's something else. That parcel of the being called the soul-weighing twenty-one grams, according to the experiments of the American doctor Duncan MacDougall-takes up a surprising amount of space, like aloud voice. In its absence, the body seems to shrink

In Sulla’s estimation the political upheavals that wracked Rome from the time of his birth in 138 until his death in 78 were the result of the Senate losing their dominant position. But what he did not realize is that the senatorial domination he had grown up with was a recent development. In fact, that domination was a leading cause of the problem, not a solution. Sulla thought he was resetting the constitutional balance to its natural state. Instead he was just winding back the clock on a ticking time bomb.

She walked across the room and stood before the shelf bearing the new skull. “What happened to you?” she murmured as she removed the skull's ID tag and tossed it on the work-bench. “An accident? Murder?” She hoped it wasn't murder, but it usually was in these cases. It hurt her to think of the terror the child had suffered before death. The death of a child. Someone had held this girl as a baby, had watched her take her first steps. Eve prayed that someone had loved her and given her joy before she had ended up lost in that hole in the forest.

Hamlet’s soliloquy, you know; the most celebrated thing in Shakespeare. Ah, it’s sublime, sublime! Always fetches the house. I haven’t got it in the book—I’ve only got one volume—but I reckon I can piece it out from memory. I’ll just walk up and down a minute, and see if I can call it back from recollection’s vaults.” So he went to marching up and down, thinking, and frowning horrible every now and then; then he would hoist up his eyebrows; next he would squeeze his hand on his forehead and stagger back and kind of moan; next he would sigh, and next he’d let on to drop a tear. It was beautiful to see him. By and by he got it. He told us to give attention. Then he strikes a most noble attitude, with one leg shoved forwards, and his arms stretched away up, and his head tilted back, looking up at the sky; and then he begins to rip and rave and grit his teeth; and after that, all through his speech, he howled, and spread around, and swelled up his chest, and just knocked the spots out of any acting ever I see before. This is the speech—I learned it, easy enough, while he was learning it to the king: To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so long life; For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane, But that the fear of something after death Murders the innocent sleep, Great nature’s second course, And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune Than fly to others that we know not of. There’s the respect must give us pause: Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The law’s delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take, In the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards yawn In customary suits of solemn black, But that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns, Breathes forth contagion on the world, And thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat i’ the adage, Is sicklied o’er with care, And all the clouds that lowered o’er our housetops, With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. ’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws, But get thee to a nunnery—go! Well,

The story told in these quaint words was, without any doubt, read by Shakespeare and in the alembic of his imagination grew into the the immortal play. Touched by his genius, the names Dunsinnane and Birnam, lying close to Scone, are luminous points on the map, upon which the eye loves to linger. The incidents told may not be authentic. We are told they are not. But Macbeth certainly slew Duncan and was King of Scotland, and finally met his Nemesis at Dunsinnane, near Birnam Wood, where Malcom III, called Canmore, avenged his father's death, slew the usurper, and was crowned king at Scone, 1054.

In literature, plays, and cinema, substitutionary sacrifice is always the most riveting and moving plot point. In the movie The Last of the Mohicans, British major Duncan Heyward asks his Indian captors if he might die in the flames so that Cora, whom he loves, and Nathaniel can go free. When, as he is being dragged away, Duncan cries, “My compliments, sir! Take her and get out!” we are electrified by his unflinching willingness to die to save others, one of whom has been his rival. He dies with his arms bound and stretched out, as if he were on a cross. In Ernest Gordon’s memoir of being a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, he recounts how at the end of a day of forced labor the guards counted the shovels, and one was apparently missing. A furious guard threatened the British POWs that unless the guilty person confessed, he would kill them all. He cocked his gun to start shooting them one by one. At that moment, one prisoner stepped forward calmly and said, “I did it.” He stood quietly at attention, and “he did not open his mouth” (Isaiah 53: 7) as he was beaten to death. When they all got back to the camp and counted the shovels again, it turned out that they were all there. The man had sacrificed himself to save them all. In the first Harry Potter novel, the evil Lord Voldemort can’t touch Harry without being burned. Later Dumbledore explains it to him. “Your mother died to save you. . . . Love as powerful [as that] . . . leaves its own mark. . . . [T]o have been loved so deeply . . . will give us some protection forever.” Why do these stories move us? It’s because we know from the mundane corners of life to the most dramatic that all life-changing love is substitutionary sacrifice. We know that anybody who has ever done anything that really made a difference in our lives made a sacrifice, stepped in and gave something or paid something or bore something so we would not have to.

Werewolves are not a subject for academe,” she said, “but you know what the professors would be saying if they were. ‘Monsters die out when the collective imagination no longer needs them. Species death like this is nothing more than a shift in the aggregate psychic agenda. In ages past the beast in man was hidden in the dark, disavowed. The transparency of modern history makes that impossible: We’ve seen ourselves in the concentration camps, the gulags, the jungles, the killing fields, we’ve read ourselves in the annals of True Crime. Technology turned up the lights and now there’s no getting away from the fact: The beast is redundant. It’s been us all along.

If you’re hoping for a good meal, you’ve come to the wrong place. Miss Cameron has already attempted to sacrifice herself on the altar of domesticity this morning, and we both narrowly escaped death from her efforts. I’m cooking supper,” he finished, “and it may not be much better.” “I’ll try my hand at breakfast,” the vicar volunteered good-naturedly. When Elizabeth was out of earshot, Ian said quietly, “How badly is the woman hurt?” “It’s hard to say, considering that she was almost too angry to be coherent. Or it might have been the laudanum that did it.” “Did what?” The vicar paused a moment to watch a bird hop about in the rustling leaves overhead, then he said, “She was in a rare state. Quite confused. Angry, too. On the one hand, she was afraid you might decide to express your ‘tender regard’ for Lady Cameron, undoubtedly in much the way you were doing it when I arrived.” When his gibe evoked nothing but a quirked eyebrow from his imperturbable nephew, Duncan sighed and continued, “At the same time, she was equally convinced that her young lady might try to shoot you with your own gun, which I distinctly understood her to say the young lady had already tried to do. It is that which I feared when I heard the gunshots that sent me galloping up here.” “We were shooting at targets.” The vicar nodded, but he was studying Ian with an intent frown. “Is something else bothering you?” Ian asked, noting the look. The vicar hesitated, then shook his head slightly, as if trying to dismiss something from his mind. “Miss Throckmorton-Jones had more to say, but I can scarcely credit it.” “No doubt it was the laudanum,” Ian said, dismissing the matter with a shrug. “Perhaps,” he said, his frown returning. “Yet I have not taken laudanum, and I was under the impression you are about to betroth yourself to a young woman named Christina Taylor.” “I am.” His face turned censorious. “Then what excuse can you have for the scene I just witnessed a few minutes ago?” Ian’s voice was clipped. “Insanity.” They walked back to the house, the vicar silent and thoughtful, Ian grim. Duncan’s untimely arrival had not bothered him, but now that his passion had finally cooled he was irritated as hell with his body’s uncontrollable reaction to Elizabeth Cameron. The moment his mouth touched hers it was as if his brain went dead. Even though he knew exactly what she was, in his arms she became an alluring angel.

*SNEAK PEAK* An Excerpt from Grace Prevailing, to be released TOMORROW!!! :) “Agabus.” Mary smiled warmly as she reached him, her luminous gray eyes twinkling with welcome and a hint of mirth. “How brave of you to join us this evening.” Agabus’ dark eyes met hers, flickering in annoyance. So much for his clever disguise! “I must ask you to lower your voice, please,” the young Pharisee hissed under his breath, wondering how many of her guests had overheard the use of his name. “You needn’t fear, Agabus,” Mary assured him, lowering her dulcet tone to placate him. “None of us wish to give you away.” “One careless slip of the tongue could very well prove ruinous,” Agabus told her, his glittering eyes sweeping cautiously about the room. “Possibly even deadly.” “Not nearly so deadly as rejecting the Way Christ has clearly revealed to you.” “He hasn’t revealed anything to me,” Agabus argued, though his tone was far from convincing. “At least, not personally.” “No?” Mary prompted, her slender brow lifting in question. “Then why are you here? And why do you persist in your questions?” “This is not about me,” Agabus insisted, his voice rising in frustration. When several believers glanced his way, he shifted uncomfortably, pulling his hooded shawl to further obscure his bearded face. “I must speak with you,” he finally concluded, his gaze shifting anxiously about the crowded room. “Alone.” “If you wish to speak, then we may speak here.” “For heaven’s sake, Mary,” Agabus breathed, his frustration mounting. “Go on,” Mary prodded, appearing perfectly composed. Maddeningly aware of the chatter and movement surrounding them, Agabus took a step closer, so close Mary could smell his spice-scented breath. “I come bearing ill tidings.” “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Mary responded, smiling faintly. “What kind of ill tidings?” “It’s about Saul of Tarsus.” “I see,” Mary nodded, her expression sobering beneath her pale blue head covering. “What has he done now?” “It’s what he is about to do,” Agabus warned her, his obsidian eyes growing serious. “At this moment, he is attempting to obtain permission to target churches beyond Jerusalem.” “Preposterous,” Mary declared, her eyes flashing. “He hasn’t the jurisdiction to do so.” “The high priest is seriously considering granting his request,” Agabus told her grimly. “Your sect endangers the very office he holds.” “On what grounds will Saul make his arrests?” “By order of the high priest,” Agabus sighed. “I imagine Jewish men and women will be dragged from other provinces by order of the Great Sanhedrin.” “Women, too?” Mary asked, surprised. “I’m afraid no one is safe,” Agabus replied grimly. “Once within the grasp of the high priest and the Sanhedrin here in Jerusalem, I imagine far more serious political charges will be fabricated against the prisoners, resulting in life in prison—possibly even the death penalty.” Releasing a steadying sigh, Mary brushed cool fingertips across her smooth forehead, deep in thought. “This isn’t good, Mary,” Agabus warned her, daring yet another step closer. “Up to this point, your friends have been safe beyond our borders. But now… if Saul has his way, they cannot run. They cannot hide. In time, they will be hunted down and exterminated one by one. And their cause shall perish with them.” “Never,” Mary said firmly, her eyes flashing. “The gospel will reach the ends of the earth, Agabus. Mark my words.” “There’s just no way,” Agabus countered, shaking his covered head. “God has already made a Way,” Mary told him, her eyes alight with conviction. “And His name is Jesus. Jesus is the Way.

but just let me tell you what Kadie did the other day …” Death Bird waited with ill-concealed impatience until Rap’s tale was complete. Without even a smile at the punchline, he launched into a dull and pointless account of how his oldest son, Blood Beak, had killed his first bear.

Fairly examined, truly understood, no man is wholly bad, nor wholly good

Mother Duncan, do kisses wash off?............"Lord, na! Freckles," she cried. "At least, the anes ye get from people ye love dinna. They dinna stay on the outside. They strike in until they find the centre of your heart and make their stopping-place there, and naething can take them from ye-I doubt if even death-Na, lad, ye can be reet sure kisses dinna wash off!

There is not much mystery about death. It's being alive that's the mystery. Death is the normality, life is the exception.

Kincaid wondered what universal formula required that a person should sit down to receive bad news. Was it merely a precaution against fainting or falling, or had it become a kind of foreshadowing, effective in easing the shock?

But mostly she did it because she needed the money to pay the legal fees in a $10 million wrongful-death suit filed against her by the widow of a deputy who’d killed himself after Eve exposed his involvement in covering up a rape. Eve had arranged for Duncan to

Because what is an offering, really? what can human beings actually give to God? What can they give to each other even?. . . .Laura Chance had placed ten percent of all she'd earned in this same blue box before offering it -- in the full faith that it would be accepted -- to her Lord. So now, just as faithfully, she'd placed a hundred percent of her husband in the same box. That was her answer to the questions. And I'm hard put to think of another that would do greater honor to her husband, her Lord or her little blue box.

tomorrow, or years later, things will be better. The irony is that we spend most of our lives waiting for that time to come, during which death only gets

Sally Li had her feet on the desk, her hands behind her head. “Look, Scott, you want me to go through the rigmarole of how amazing the science of pathology has become, or do you want me to bottom-line it?” “Skip the rigmarole.” “At the time of her death, your sister was pregnant.” Duncan

Of course, even though Peter and I have had our disagreements, we share a bond I'd defend to the death if needs be. If all goes according to the natural order of things, siblings will know us longer than our parents, longer than our spouses and friends." Lord Westdale to Duncan

They say that nothing can stand against such a man, for the one gun – that marked Mutiny – deals instant death, but the other – the one marked Matelotage – deals instant love, like the very darts of Eros. And who, I ask ye, who can stand up to love?

Whenever the creation order is inverted, there is disorder, destruction, and death. When we tamper with this order, even a little, we become life-takers rather than life-givers.

suspected more than a hint of narcissism in those who chose physical mirror images of themselves as mates.

nothing in his life Became him like the leaving it; he died 10 As one that had been studied in his death To throw away the dearest thing he ow’d, As ’twere a careless trifle. DUNCAN

We’ve had two stabbing deaths in the past three days. Both worked in the same hospital. The second victim had Sandra Beaumont’s obituary in his pocket. According to his cousin, he and Beaumont had worked together.” He explained their theories about the envelope and how it might have come into Chowdhury’s possession. “You think someone sent him Beaumont’s obit as a threat?” Gill asked, her skepticism evident. “Her death wasn’t exactly news. She was killed in early October.

Adherbal was apprehended and tortured to death.

Swift as thought, Hawkeye seized the advantage and discharged his fatal weapon into the top of the oak. The leaves were unusually agitated; the dangerous rifle fell from its commanding elevation, and after a few moments of vain struggling, the form of the savage was seen swinging in the wind, while he still grasped a ragged and naked branch of the tree, with hands clenched in desperation. “Give him, in pity give him — the contents of another rifle!” cried Duncan, turning away his eyes in horror from the spectacle of a fellow-creature in such awful jeopardy. “Not a karnel!” exclaimed the obdurate Hawkeye; “his death is certain, and we have no powder to spare, for Indian fights sometimes last for days; ’tis their scalps or ours! — and God, who made us, has put into our natures the craving to keep the skin on the head!

We all strayed, in that depressingly mature and adult way, in three different directions. It was the sort of drift that only death or grave illness can interrupt

Dr. Duncan MacDougall, Haverhill, once attempted to prove that the human soul had weight by placing dying patients on a giant scale at the exact moment of death. Believe it or not, at the exact moment of death, there was a slight decrease in weight.

Kincaid refrained from saying that few children seemed to appreciate being given advantages their parents lacked—they saw such benefits as their due.

Losing

It’s the little lies, the accumulation of self-deception.

all armor, hiding behind armor, like some soft-bodied sea creature. Afraid of…

Jordan worked at Blackstone, running their internal venture portfolio. Because venture is usually tiny compared to the types of deals a giant like Blackstone usually funds, Jordan was frustrated by the lack of internal interest in his work. He was ready to take a risk, even if it meant being the head of investments at a firm that didn’t even exist yet. That helped. But we needed more. Matt Yale had been our client at Tusk Strategies. Matt was running government relations, investor relations, and public relations for Laureate, the world’s largest higher-education company with over a million students on campuses around the world. Matt and I knew each other in Chicago, he had backed Obama for president, and spent two and a half years at the U.S. Department of Education as one of Arne Duncan’s top aides and advisers.

It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more." ​— ​Albus Dumbledore

To the well-organized mind, death is nothing but the next great adventure.” ​— ​J.K. Rowling

He was carried along as easily as a shell in a wave.

Life and Death, Heaven and Hell, the Past, the Present and Future—all of this is nothing more than a hyper-realistic dream of the waking mind.

Percy is, indeed, a bold and engaging character, and I think that in Percy we can detect something of the artistic dilemmas Peake himself was confronting at the time. Percy is a natural actor, but happens also to be painfully shy, and so adopts the persona of the wild artist – October Trellis – after faking his own suicide, in order to woo Sally Devius. To bury oneself in a false identity, albeit to attain the object of one’s dreams, is indeed a kind of suicide or death. Peake’s pursuit of theatrical success, likewise, was at the cost of the fundamental fidelity of the artist to his own imagination. Ultimately, Peake and Percy rip away “the little civilized twigs” and arrive at “the original branch/ Naked and unadorned”, succeeding in winning Sally as well as remaining true to his real identity. Sadly, financial success eluded Peake, and in The Wit to Woo, when it is considered artistically, his powerful, individual imagination is muted, and is only in evidence once we look beneath the play’s more conventional façade.

Percy is, indeed, a bold and engaging character, and I think that in Percy we can detect something of the artistic dilemmas Peake himself was confronting at the time. Percy is a natural actor, but happens also to be painfully shy, and so adopts the persona of the wild artist – October Trellis – after faking his own suicide, in order to woo Sally Devius. To bury oneself in a false identity, albeit to attain the object of one’s dreams, is indeed a kind of suicide or death. Peake’s pursuit of theatrical success, likewise, was at the cost of the fundamental fidelity of the artist to his own imagination. Ultimately, Peake and Percy rip away “the little civilized twigs” and arrive at “the original branch/ Naked and unadorned”, succeeding in winning Sally as well as remaining true to his real identity. Sadly, financial success eluded Peake, and in The Wit to Woo, when it is considered artistically, his powerful, individual imagination is muted, and is only in evidence once we look beneath the play’s more conventional façade.

One of the biggest frustrations for all military personnel deployed anywhere involving a flight are the movers. Sure, they have a job to do, but it’s the attitude of many of them that pisses people off.

When force closes the mouth of inquiry,” Duncan said, “that is the death of civilization.

She thought of herself wondering how he was going to breathe in the coffin and marveled at the stubbornness of mental habits.

Have ye never wondered if Baron Arundel’s death was due in part to the aid he offered us?” Duncan frowned as he weighed the notion in his mind. “’Tis possible.” “’Tis more than possible.” Gavin looked Duncan straight in the eye. “We will aid her and her son. The McLendons pay their debts. Always.

I thought I needed to heal the pain Take my lesson and run But I learned That nothing is ever really in vain What I needed was a space to hold the pain Under the sun Let the light shine upon it Illuminating the parts in me that I could not see Revealing What I was too afraid to admit That death In any form Has a fearless way of setting everyone free

Our neighborhoods are being colonized by well-meaning hipsters, and our deaths are on display on social media for all of Jerusalem to see. We carry our lynching tree up the hill like our savior before us.

The truth is, we have allowed the church to become married to the dominant culture of North America and the cross to become a symbol of its original purpose—to inspire fear, to intimidate, to be a symbol of death rather than life, of punishment rather than restoration, the harbinger of chains rather than liberation

Dad

We have allowed the narrative of death that has fallen over the Protestant church in America to become our new lectionary.

Attractive, too, in a sleek, bony way, if one cares for women who look intelligent.

This country informed me of my blackness in the way it often informs little black boys and girls: with death. It greeted us with gun culture and a fear of black bodies and the knowledge that we will be held to much different standards than the white children around us.