Elusive Woman Quotes

I seek truth and beauty in the transparency of an autumn leaf, in the perfect form of a seashell on the beach, in the curve of a woman's back, in the texture of an ancient tree trunk, but also in the elusive forms of reality.

A woman simply is, but a man must become. Masculinity is risky and elusive. It is achieved by a revolt from woman, and it is confirmed only by other men.

I know women are taught by other women that they must never admit the full truth to a man. But the highest form of affection is based on full sincerity on both sides. Not being men, these women don't know that in looking back on those he has had tender relations with, a man's heart returns closest to her who was the soul of truth in her conduct. The better class of man, even if caught by airy affectations of dodging and parrying, is not retained by them. A Nemesis attends the woman who plays the game of elusiveness too often, in the utter contempt for her that, sooner or later, her old admirers feel; under which they allow her to go unlamented to her grave.

I want to give you whatever elusive, impossible, goddamned mysterious thing it is you need in order to be happy. Does that frighten you? Well, it frightens the hell out of me. Don't you think I'd stop feeling this way if I could? It's not as if you're the easiest woman in the world to—" He checked himself suddenly.

I now realize what Dorothy means in the final scene from The Wizard of Oz, when she says that if you have to look beyond your front door for your heart's desire, perhapsit was never there to begin with. Maybe, like Dorothy, I should embrace the love right in front of me and not search for some elusive dream that never mattered in the first place.

You'll be my wife," he said inexorably. "You want to own me!" she accused, trying to crawl away from him. "Yes." He flung her down on the bed and flattened his weight on her. As he spoke, his hot breath fanned her mouth and chin. "Yes. I want other people to look at you and know you're mine. I want you to take my name and my money. I want you to live with me. I want to be inside you . . . part of your thoughts . . . your body . . . all of you. I want you to trust me. I want to give you whatever elusive, impossible, goddamned mysterious thing it is you need in order to be happy. Does that frighten you? Well, it frightens the hell out of me. Don't you think I'd stop feeling this way if I could? It's not as if you're the easiest woman in the world!!

Some of us were made to believe that you need a man, or a woman, to be happy. I say you need to know yourself and love yourself to find that elusive emotion that we call happiness.

Even before I wholly knew I was a lesbian, it was the lesbian in me who pursued that elusive configuration. And I believe it is the lesbian in every woman who is compelled by female energy, who gravitates toward strong women, who seeks literature that will express that energy and strength. It is the lesbian in us who drives us to feel imaginatively, render in language, grasp, the full connection between woman and woman.

…Your hands bring a breath of inviolable distances as elusive as ideas. And the ambiguous sway of the moon, of the gentlest, if you rest your eyes on me, touches the spirit. You’re the woman who passes by like a leaf. And bequeaths an autumn flame to the trees.

There is, in the Army, a little known but very important activity appropriately called Fatigue. Fatigue, in the Army, is the very necessary cleaning and repairing of the aftermath of living. Any man who has ever owned a gun has known Fatigue, when, after fifteen minutes in the woods and perhaps three shots at an elusive squirrel, he has gone home to spend three-quarters of an hour cleaning up his piece so that it will be ready next time he goes to the woods. Any woman who has ever cooked a luscious meal and ladled it out in plates upon the table has known Fatigue, when, after the glorious meal is eaten, she repairs to the kitchen to wash the congealed gravy from the plates and the slick grease from the cooking pots so they will be ready to be used this evening, dirtied, and so washed again. It is the knowledge of the unendingness and of the repetitious uselessness, the do it up so it can be done again, that makes Fatigue fatigue.

But I must start at the beginning, if I can find it. Beginnings are elusive things. Just when you think you have hold of one, you look back and see another, earlier beginning, and an earlier one before that. Even if you start with "Chapter One: I am Born," you still have the problem of antecedents, of cause and effect. Why is young David fatherless? Because, Dickens tells us, his father died of a delicate constitution. Yes, but where did this mortal delicacy come from? Dickens doesn't say, so we're left to speculate. A congenital defect, perhaps, inherited from his mother, whose own mother had married beneath her to spite her cruel father, who'd been beaten as a child by a nursemaid who was forced into service when her faithless husband abandoned her for a woman he chanced to meet when his carriage wheel broke in front of the milliner's where she'd gone to have her hat trimmed. If we begin there, young David is fatherless because his great-great-grandfather's nursemaid's husband's future mistress's hat needed adornment.

Still others observe that women are particularly interested in seeing come-shots because men's ejaculations are generally hidden from them. In "normal" sex, women never see men come. To some of them, it may be as seductively elusive as the glimpse of a breast or lace panties is to a pubescent boy. In this context, the come-shot can be interpreted as almost romantic: The woman wishes to share in her lover's orgasm.

To pragmatists, the letter Z is nothing more than a phonetically symbolic glyph, a minor sign easily learned, readily assimilated, and occasionally deployed in the course of a literate life. To cynics, Z is just an S with a stick up its butt. Well, true enough, any word worth repeating is greater than the sum of its parts; and the particular word-part Z can, from a certain perspective, appear anally wired. On those of us neither prosaic nor jaded, however, those whom the Fates have chosen to monitor such things, Z has had an impact above and beyond its signifying function. A presence in its own right, it’s the most distant and elusive of our twenty-six linguistic atoms; a mysterious, dark figure in an otherwise fairly innocuous lineup, and the sleekest little swimmer ever to take laps in a bowl of alphabet soup. Scarcely a day of my life has gone by when I’ve not stirred the alphabetical ant nest, yet every time I type or pen the letter Z, I still feel a secret tingle, a tiny thrill… Z is a whip crack of a letter, a striking viper of a letter, an open jackknife ever ready to cut the cords of convention or peel the peach of lust. A Z is slick, quick, arcane, eccentric, and always faintly sinister - although its very elegance separates it from the brutish X, that character traditionally associated with all forms of extinction. If X wields a tire iron, Z packs a laser gun. Zap! If X is Mike Hammer, Z is James Bond. If X marks the spot, Z avoids the spot, being too fluid, too cosmopolitan, to remain in one place. In contrast to that prim, trim, self-absorbed supermodel, I, or to O, the voluptuous, orgasmic, bighearted slut, were Z a woman, she would be a femme fatale, the consonant we love to fear and fear to love.

Life keeps moving on, and yet remains profoundly rooted in the present, seeking no result, for the present has spread out from its constriction in an elusive pin-point of strained consciousness to an all-embracing eternity. Feelings both positive and negative come and go without turmoil, for they seem to be simply observed, though there is no one observing. They pass trackless like birds in the sky, and build up no resistances which have to be dissipated in reckless action.

He knew he needed to release her, but once he allowed his physical connection to drop away, he was uncertain if he’d ever have a chance to reconnect. Instinctively, he knew Azami was elusive, like water flowing through fingers, or the wind shifting in the trees. He needed a way to seal her to him. “How does one court a woman in Japan? Do I need your brothers’ permission?” She blinked again. Shocked. A hint of uncertainty crept into her eyes. She frowned, and he bent his head to swallow her protest before she could utter it. Her mouth trembled beneath his, and then she opened to him, like a flower, luring him deeper. Her arms slid around his neck, her body pressing tightly against his. He tightened his fingers in her hair. He was burning, through and through, from the inside out, a hot melting of bone and tissue. He hadn’t known he was lonely or even looking for something. He’d been complete. He loved his wife. He was a man with teammates he trusted implicitly. He lived in wild places of beauty he enjoyed. He hadn’t considered there would be a woman who could ever fit with him, who would ever turn his insides soft and his body hard. Feel the same way, Azami. He didn’t lift his mouth, kissing her again and again because one he’d made the mistake, he was addicted and what was the use fighting it? Not when it felt so damn right. Somewhere along the line, his kiss went from sheer aggression and command, to absolute tenderness. The emotion for her rose like a volcano, encompassing him entirely, drawn from some part of him he’d never known even existed. His mouth was gentle, his hands on her, possessive, yet just as gentle. Another claiming, this coming from that deep unknown well. Feel the same way, Azami, he whispered into her mind. An enticement. A need. He waited, something in him going still, waiting for her answer. Tell me how you’re feeling? She hadn’t pulled away. If anything, her arms had tightened around his neck. He shared every single breath she took, feeling the slight movement of her rib cage and breasts against him, the warm air they exchanged. Like I’m burning alive. Drowning. Like I never want this moment to end. He wasn’t a man to say flowery things to a woman, nor did he even think them, but he shared the honest truth with her. Like we belong. Once he let her go, the world would slip back into kilter. He wanted her to stay with him, to give him a chance with her. She didn’t hesitate, and he loved that about her as well. She gave herself in truth in the same way he did. I feel the same, but one of us has to be sane. She initiated the kiss when he pulled back slightly, chasing after him with her soft mouth, fingers digging tightly into the heavy muscle at his neck, sighing when his lips settled once more over hers. He took his time, kissing her thoroughly, again and again, all the while slipping deeper into her spell and hoping she was falling under his. Is this your idea of sanity? He’d make it his reality. He was falling further down the rabbit hole and he’d make her his sanity if she’d fall with him. Her soft laughter slipped inside his heart, winding there until there was no shaking her loose. Not really, but you have to be the strong one. He kissed her again. And again. Why is that? You started this.

Legendary crime writer Joseph Wambaugh: “Death On A Dark Street" is a suspenseful, authentic, and well-researched manhunt for a serial killer. It introduces rookie homicide detective Jaye Peoria, a tough but tender young woman obsessed with proving herself and snaring an elusive killer. It's a good book.

It's figuring out the why of things; the final factor that makes a person act can be so damn elusive, but you can always find some motivation, if you look hard enough. The wrong word said at the wrong time, a gun in the wrong hand, the wrong woman who kisses you just right. Money, love, or fury - those are the causes for most everything.

In marriage, the woman compensates for her lack of external power by commandeering the story. Isn't that right? She fills the silence, the mystery of her own acts and aims, with a structured account of life whose relationship to the truth might sometimes be described as voluntary. I am familiar with that account: I spent my childhood listening to it. And what I noticed was how, over the years, its repetitions and elisions and exaggerations ceased to exasperate its listeners so much as silence them. After a while, people stopped bothering to try to put the record straight: on the contrary, they became, in a curious way, dependent on the teller of this tale, in which they featured as central characters. The sheer energy and wilful, self-constructing logic of narrative, which at first made one cringe and protest every time the truth was dented, came over time to seem preferable to elusive, chaotic reality.

Norman Cousins, an American journalist and author, asserts that “the human potential is the most magical but also most elusive fact of life. Men suffer less from hunger or dread than from living under their moral capacity. The atrophy of spirit that most men [and women] know and all men [and women] fear is tied not so much to deprivation or abuse as it is to their inability to make real the best that lies within them. Defeat begins more with a blur in the vision of what is humanly possible than with the appearance of ogres in the path.”11

He knew he needed to release her, but once he allowed his physical connection to drop away, he was uncertain if he’d ever have a chance to reconnect. Instinctively, he knew Azami was elusive, like water flowing through fingers, or the wind shifting in the trees. He needed a way to seal her to him. “How does one court a woman in Japan? Do I need your brothers’ permission?” She blinked again. Shocked. A hint of uncertainty crept into her eyes. She frowned, and he bent his head to swallow her protest before she could utter it. Her mouth trembled beneath his, and then she opened to him, like a flower, luring him deeper. Her arms slid around his neck, her body pressing tightly against his. He tightened his fingers in her hair. He was burning, through and through, from the inside out, a hot melting of bone and tissue. He hadn’t known he was lonely or even looking for something. He’d been complete. He loved his life. He was a man with teammates he trusted implicitly. He lived in wild places of beauty he enjoyed. He hadn’t considered there would be a woman who could ever fit with him, who would ever turn his insides soft and his body hard. Feel the same way, Azami. He didn’t lift his mouth, kissing her again and again because one he’d made the mistake, he was addicted and what was the use fighting it? Not when it felt so damn right. Somewhere along the line, his kiss went from sheer aggression and command, to absolute tenderness. The emotion for her rose like a volcano, encompassing him entirely, drawn from some part of him he’d never known even existed. His mouth was gentle, his hands on her, possessive, yet just as gentle. Another claiming, this coming from that deep unknown well. Feel the same way, Azami, he whispered into her mind. An enticement. A need. He waited, something in him going still, waiting for her answer.

You were asleep. I wake you. The vast morning brings the illusion of a beginning. You had forgotten Virgil. Here are the hexameters. I bring you many things. The four Greek elements: earth, water, fire, air. The single name of a woman. The friendship of the moon. The bright colors of the atlas. Forgetting, which purifies. Memory, which chooses and rediscovers. The habits which help us to feel we are immortal. The sphere and the hands that measure elusive time. The fragrance of sandalwood. The doubts that we call, not without some vanity, metaphysics. The curve of the walking stick the hand anticipates. The taste of grapes and from “Obverse

Thich Nhat Hanh. a venerated Vietnamese Buddhist, speaks of a solution that is so utterly simple it seems profane. Be, body and mind, exactly where you are. That is, practice a mindfulness that makes you aware of each moment. Think to yourself, "I am breathing" when you're breathing; "I am anxious" when you're anxious; even, "I am washing the dishes" when you're washing the dishes. To be totally into this moment is the goal of mindfulness. Right now is precious and shall never pass this way again. A wave is a precious moment, amplified: a dynamic natural sculpture that shall never pass this way again. Out interaction with waves - to be fully in the moment, without relationship troubles, bills, or worries - is what frees us. Each moment that we are fully with waves is evidence of our ability to live in the here and now. There is nothing else in the universe when you're making that elegant bottom turn. Here. Now. Simple, but so elusive. A wave demands your attention. It is very difficult to be somewhere else, in your mind, when there is such a gorgeous creation of nature moving your way. Just being close to a wave brings us closer to being mindful. To surf them is the training ground for mindfulness. The ocean can seem chaotic, like the world we live in. But somehow we're forced to slice through the noise - to paddle around and through the adversities of life and get directly to the joy. This is what we need for liberation.

In the last year, ancestral DNA had become popular with people curious about their genealogy and, though this was much less publicized, as a tool for finding unidentified criminals. Many in law enforcement were wary. There were quality-assurance issues. Privacy issues. Holes knew DNA. Knew it well. In his opinion, ancestral DNA was a tool, not a certainty. He had a Y-DNA profile generated from the EAR’s DNA, which means he isolated the EAR’s paternal lineage. The Y-DNA profile could be input into certain genealogical websites, the kind that people use to find first cousins and the like. You input a set of markers from your Y-DNA profile, anywhere from 12 to 111, and a list of matches is returned, surnames of families with whom you might share a common ancestor. Almost always the matches are at a genetic distance of 1 from you, which doesn’t mean much, relative-seeking-wise. You’re looking for the elusive 0—a close match.

It is important to stress that no homogeneous Black woman's standpoint exists. There is no essential or archetypal Black woman whose experiences stand as normal, normative, and thereby authentic. an essentialist understanding of a Black woman's standpoint suppresses differences among Black women in search of an elusive group unity. Instead, it may be more accurate to say that a Black women's collective standpoint does exist, one characterized by the tensions that accrue to different responses to common challenges. Because it both recognizes and aims to incorporate heterogeneity in crafting Black women's oppositional knowledge, this Black women's standpoint eschews essentialism in favor of democracy. Since Black feminist thought both arises within and aims to articulate a Black women's group standpoint regarding experiences associated with intersecting oppressions, stressing this group standpoint's heterogeneous composition is significant.

How very small she seemed, tucked in the corner of the library with her knees drawn up. For the past hour and a half, she had been a commanding figure, strung tight with energy, her gaze stern and steely. She had worked in millimeters, doing tiny, crucial things to veins and cellular tissue with astonishing precision. Although West knew nothing about surgery, he'd understood that he was witnessing someone perform with rare skill. Now, in her exhaustion, the brilliant surgeon resembled an anxious schoolgirl who had taken a wrong turn on the way home. West liked her a great deal. In fact, he was rather sorry now that he'd kept shrugging off Helen's efforts to introduce them. He'd envisioned the female doctor as a severe matron, probably hostile toward men, and Helen's assurances that Dr. Gibson was quite pretty hadn't been at all convincing. Helen, with her completely unjustified affection for humanity, loved to overestimate people. But Garrett Gibson was more than pretty. She was riveting. An intelligent, accomplished woman with an elusive quality... a suggestion of hidden tenderness... that intrigued him.

In the Palacolithic period, for example, when agriculture was developing, the cult the Mother Goddess expressed a sense that the fertility which was transforming human life was actually sacred.Artists carved those statues depicting her as a naked pregnant woman which archaeologists have found all over Europe, the Middle East and India.The Great Mother remained imaginatively important for centuries.Like the old Sky God, she was absorbed into later pantheons and took her place alongside the older deities.She was usually of powerful of the gods, certainly more powerful than the Sky God, who remained a rather shadowy figure.She was called Inana in ancient Sumeria, Ishtar in Babylon, Anat in Canaan, Isis in Egypt and Aphrodite in Greece, and remarkably similar stories were devised in all these cultures to express her role in the spiritual lives of the people.These myths were not intended to be taken literally but were metaphorical attempts to describe a reality that was too complex and elusive to express in any other way.These dramatic and evocative stories of gods and goddesses helped people to articulate their sense of powerful but forces that surrounded them.

Some of his authors were so mulishly stubborn about altering their own work, one would think he had suggested changing text in the Bible. Amanda was easy to work with, and she did not harbor great pretensions about herself or her writing. In fact, she was relatively modest about her talents, to the extent of appearing surprised and uncomfortable when he praised her. The plot of 'Unfinished Lady' centered on a young woman who tried to live strictly according to society's rules, yet couldn't make herself accept the rigid confinement of what was considered proper. She made fatal errors in her private life- gambling, taking a lover outside of marriage, having a child out of wedlock- all due to her desire to obtain the elusive happiness she secretly longed for. Eventually she came to a sordid end, dying of venereal disease, although it was clear that society's harsh judgements had caused her demise fully as much as disease. What fascinated Jack was that Amanda, as the author, had refused to take a position on the heroine's behavior, neither applauding nor condemning it. Clearly she had sympathy for the character, and Jack suspected that the heroine's inner rebelliousness reflected some of Amanda's own feelings.

Scrolling through the rest of the 3,500 documents in Michelle’s hard drive, one comes upon a file titled “RecentDNAresults,” which features the EAR’s Y-STR markers (short tandem repeats on the Y chromosome that establish male-line ancestry), including the elusive rare PGM marker. Having the Golden State Killer’s DNA was always the one ace up this investigation’s sleeve. But a killer’s DNA is only as good as the databases we can compare it to. There was no match in CODIS. And there was no match in the California penal system’s Y-STR database. If the killer’s father, brothers, or uncles had been convicted of a felony in the past sixteen years, an alert would have gone to Paul Holes or Erika Hutchcraft (the current lead investigator in Orange County). They would have looked into the man’s family, zeroed in on a member who was in the area of the crimes, and launched an investigation. But they had nothing. There are public databases that the DNA profile could be used to match, filled not with convicted criminals but with genealogical buffs. You can enter the STR markers on the Y chromosome of the killer into these public databases and try to find a match, or at least a surname that could help you with the search.

Marvel comes quickly, cloaked in the mundane. It's the woman waking to the smell of smoke as fire spreads, miles away, through her brother's house. It's the sharp flash of recognition as a young man glimpses, in the ordinary hubbub, the stranger with whom he will share his life. It's a mother's dream of her baby, blue in the cold store, six months before he comes, stillborn, into the world. Even the Church Fathers admitted the category of marvelous- or mirabilis, as they knew it. For them it was an irksome classification. A grey area. Compare the marvel with it's less troublesome metaphysical kin. In the thirteenth century, the miracle reflected the steady-handed authorship of the divine- truth made manifest. Similarly magic, or magicus, demonstrated with tell-tale showmanship the desperate guile of the devil. The marvel, however, was of poor performance and tended, therefore, towards ambiguity. It took shape in the merely mortal sphere. It seemed to lack the requisite supernatural chutzpah. Here, the clergy were typically surplus to requirements. Yet, if less outwardly compelling, the marvel was also less easily contained than either the miraculous or the magical. It remained more elusive. More stubborn. And if finally reducible in time, with the erosions of memory, to rationalization, anecdote, drinking tale or woman's lore, the marvel also rarely failed to leave behind a certain residual uncertainty. A discomfiting sense of possibility. Or, on bolder occasions, an appetite for wonder.

Sometimes, though, friendship is like love. You can’t plan for it. It finds you in unlikely places. Or in the most obvious place imaginable. One evening, I get back from a run and am doubled over, recovering and panting in front of my building. The entrance opens and a woman pops out, taking out her rubbish. ‘I’m not loitering,’ I tell her when she gives me a funny look. ‘Oh, I didn’t think you were loitering,’ she says. ‘I thought you lived here.’ ‘Oh. I do. I do live here. On the third floor.’ We introduce ourselves. Her name is Hannah and she’s from the Netherlands. As she turns to go back inside, I say, ‘Hey! Do you want to swap numbers? Just in case … there’s a fire or something?’ I can tell my year is already changing me. Talking to strangers has made me less shy and even though I still had to make it a bit weird with the whole fire thing. A few weeks later, Hannah and her husband have Sam and me over for dinner in their flat because we stored a package for them when they were on holiday. Hannah has hundreds of books and I leave her flat with an armful to borrow. A few months later Hannah texts out of the blue, saying, ‘Want to grab a coffee with me right now?’ And I do. The elusive perfect friend-date: spontaneous, with good coffee, great conversation and no commute. We’d also had the spark, both having read several of the same books, both of us the same age, both of us struggling with similar things. She’d been living downstairs the entire time. But if I hadn’t gone through so many friend-dates and false starts, I know I would have asked for her number when we met. In fact, given how I normally treated my neighbours in London and how insular I was before all this began, I probably would have just pretended to be loitering.

it isn’t also true for a poor single Christian mom in Haiti, it isn’t true. If a sermon promises health and wealth to the faithful, it isn’t true, because that theology makes God an absolute monster who only blesses rich westerners and despises Christians in Africa, India, China, South America, Russia, rural Appalachia, inner-city America, and everywhere else a sincere believer remains poor. If it isn’t also true for a poor single Christian mom in Haiti, it isn’t true. If doctrine elevates a woman’s married-with-children status as her highest calling, it isn’t true, because that omits single believers (whose status Paul considered preferable), widows, the childless by choice or fate or loss, the divorced, and the celibate gay. If these folks are second-class citizens in the kingdom because they aren’t married with children, then God just excluded millions of people from gospel work, and I guess they should just eat rocks and die. If it isn’t also true for a poor single Christian mom in Haiti, it isn’t true. Theology is either true everywhere or it isn’t true anywhere. This helps untangle us from the American God Narrative and sets God free to be God instead of the My-God-in-a-Pocket I carried for so long. It lends restraint when declaring what God does or does not think, because sometimes my portrayal of God’s ways sounds suspiciously like the American Dream and I had better check myself. Because of the Haitian single mom. Maybe I should speak less for God. This brings me to the question at hand, another popular subject I am asked to pontificate on: What is my calling? (See also: How do I know my calling? When did you know your calling? How can I get your calling? Has God told you my calling? Can you get me out of my calling?) Ah yes, “The Calling.” This is certainly a favorite Christian concept over in these parts. Here is the trouble: Scripture barely confirms our elusive calling—the bull’s-eye, life purpose, individual mission every hardworking Protestant wants to discover. I found five scriptures, three of which referred to

I have a friend—she is the kind of friend that all of us have—who is a true believer in astrology and psychic phenomenon, a devotee of reiki, a collector of crystals, a woman who occasionally sends me emails with cryptic titles and a single line of text asking, for example, the time of day that I was born or whether I have any mental associations with moths. None that come immediately to mind, I write back. But then of course moths are suddenly everywhere: on watercolor prints in the windows of art shops, in Virginia Woolf’s diaries, on the pages of the illustrated children’s book I read to my nieces. This woman, whom I have known since I was very young, also experiences strange echoes and patterns, but for her they are not the result of confirmation bias or the brain’s inclination toward narrative. She believes that the patterns are part of the very fabric of reality, that they refer to universal archetypes that express themselves in our individual minds. Transcendent truths, she has told me many times, cannot be articulated intellectually because higher thought is limited by the confines of language. These larger messages from the universe speak through our intuitions, and we modern people have become so completely dominated by reason that we have lost this connection to instinct. She claims to receive many of these messages through images and dreams. In a few cases she has predicted major global events simply by heeding some inchoate sensation—an aching knee, the throbbing of an old wound, a general feeling of unease. This woman is a poet, and I tend to grant her theories some measure of poetic license. It seems to me that beneath all the New Agey jargon, she is speaking of the power of the unconscious mind, a realm that is no doubt elusive enough to be considered a mystical force in its own right. I have felt its power most often in my writing, where I’ve learned that intuition can solve problems more efficiently than logical inference. This was especially true when I wrote fiction. I would often put an image in a story purely by instinct, not knowing why it was there, and then the image would turn out to be the perfect metaphor for some conflict that emerged between the characters—again, something that was not planned deliberately—as though my subconscious were making the connections a step or two ahead of my rational mind. But these experiences always took place within the context of language, and I couldn’t understand what it would mean to perceive knowledge outside that context. I’ve said to my friend many times that I believe in the connection between language and reason, that I don’t believe thought is possible without it. But like many faith systems, her beliefs are completely self-contained and defensible by their own logic. Once, when I made this point, she smiled and said, “Of course, you’re an Aquarius.

Suddenly, Joni was at the door and nothing else mattered. It had been a few months since we'd last seen each other - and that was, in fact, the first time we'd met - but our connection was instant. Joni Mitchell was the whole package: a lovely, sylphlike woman with a natural blush, like windburn, and an elusive quality that seemed lit from within. Her beauty was almost as big a gift as her talent, and I'd been pulled into her orbit, captivated from the get go.

Where is your wife Sarah? It could be inferred from the angel’s question that it was unusual for Sarah not to be there—either in a serving capacity or joining them in the meal (there is no evidence of women eating separately in the ancient world). It could also be inferred from Abraham’s curt response (“there, in the tent”) that this was not just the circumstance of the moment and that she could be sent for. These are not necessary inferences, but there is a possibility that something is indicated here that was transparent to the Israelite reader, yet elusive to us. That is, it is possible that Sarah has had to retreat to the tent and is now confined there—that she has suddenly, much to her shock and consternation, become “indisposed.” Menstruation rendered a woman unclean in the ancient world and would have prohibited her from social contact and from food preparation and serving. The text specifically indicates that she had already gone through menopause (v. 11), but if she were to bear a child, her period would need to restart. The timing would have to be precise here. In v. 6 Abraham asked Sarah to bake some bread, an activity often forbidden to menstruating women in Abraham’s time, so at that point her period had not begun. Yet she would not be confined to her tent unless she actually had her period. If this is the issue, she experienced the onset of her period as dinner is being served. We know even from the Biblical narratives that menstruating women were at times confined to their tents (cf. 31:34–35). This view is also attested in the ancient Near East. Though somewhat speculative, this line of thinking would explain why the announcement that Sarah would bear a child is introduced by a question concerning Sarah’s whereabouts, leading the somewhat embarrassed Abraham to offer the euphemistic explanation that she is “in the tent” as a way of explaining that she is indisposed (note our modern euphemism, “it’s that time of the month”). One could almost imagine a transitional, “Indeed, and that is just the beginning . . .” It would have constituted a remarkable sign of the resumption of her fertility.

Teachers of philosophy tie their dewy-eyed students in knots attempting to answer the elusive riddle, ‘What is the meaning of life?’ It is a classic example of the trick question since there is no pat answer to this timeless paradox that we colloquially refer to as 'life.' No man, woman, or child is identical. Similar to other animals, we each are the product of our entire womb of bodily cravings and comprised of the communal filament of the human mind’s eccentric gyrations. In order to take stock of who we are we must take into account the sensory ingredients of innumerable occurrences that create the tapestry of interwoven sensations making up a rooted way of living. Life is a chummed collection of eclectic personal incidents.

It’s an intelligent woman who prepares in advance for any mishaps by ordering a drink the same color as her dress.

Patience. Over the next five days, Hunter’s became as elusive as dandelion fuzz caught in a high wind. He was living with not one but two angry yellow-hairs, Loretta because he refused to take Amy home and had made mention of the possibility that he might marry more than one woman. Amy because he was forcing Swift Antelope’s company upon her. On all counts, Hunter felt justified and carried on with implacable determination, trying to ignore the glares to which he was treated every time he set foot inside his lodge. By the fifth night his perseverance was rewarded with a smile from Amy after Swift Antelope escorted her home from their daily walk. With flushed cheeks, Amy regaled Loretta with the details of her time spent with Swift Antelope, about the doe and twin fawns they had spied upon, about the flowers Swift Antelope had picked for her, about the birdcalls and sign language he was teaching her, about the silly tricks he played on her. Clearly Swift Antelope was making headway with Amy; the girl was beginning to heal. Hunter’s already low spirits plummeted. It was a sad state of affairs when an untried boy had more luck with women than a grown man. It was especially upsetting because Hunter knew he had paid dearly, not once but twice, for the right to possess Loretta, that he could exercise his rights at any time he chose, yet found himself hesitating because of the shadows in her eyes. Recalling his father’s advice, he could only scoff. The way things were going, if he was to become his woman’s friend before he became her lover, they might never move on to the second stage of their relationship.

Red Wine Pot Roast I cracked the pot roast code years and years ago, and I’m so very, very glad I did. Once you master the (very simple but initially elusive) steps to the perfect pot roast, a whole world of comfort and goodness opens up. I have a standby pot roast that has never left my side since I first started making it, and this is its crazy, full-of-life, drunk-on-red-wine first cousin. (A first cousin who brings along a jar of orange marmalade and a bag of root vegetables whenever he visits, by the way. You’ll see what I mean here in a second.) This is a tremendously rich and delightful pot roast, and you’ll make it again and again.

She thinks in a straight line,” said Tsanko. “There are no detours in this woman.

The scent of roses came in waves through the open window, alternately sickening sweet and then as elusive as a half-caught memory.

No one has described fully the horror of this illness called anxiety. Worse than any physical illness, this illness of the soul, for it is insidious, elusive, and arouses no pity. You have just been caressed. You are walking into a summer day. No great catastrophe threatens you. You are crossing a street. The automobile does not strike you down. It is not you who are inside teh ambulance being taken to St Vincent’s Hospital. […] But as you cross the street the wind lifts the dirt and before it touches your face you feel as if all these horrors had happened to you, you feel the nameless anxiety, the shrinking of the heart, the asphyxiation, the suffocation of pain, the horror of the soul being stabbed. Invisible drama. Every other illness is understood, shared with other human beings. Not this one. It is mysterious and solitary, it is as ineffectual and unmoving to others as the attempted crying out of a mute person. […] Anxiety is a woman screaming without a voice, out of a nightmare.

All her life, Elizebeth assumed that her restlessness was a defect that adulthood would somehow remove. She had called it “this little, elusive, buried splinter” and hoped for it to be “pricked from my mind.” But she was learning to see the splinter as a permanent piece of her, impossible to remove. “I am never quite so gleeful as when I am doing something labeled as an ‘ought not.’ Why is it? Am I abnormal?

But what Agatha really liked about archaeology was the glimpse it offered into a different daily life: here, picked up by me, this broken fragment of a clay pot, hand-made, with a design of dots and cross-hatching in black paint, is the forerunner of the Woolworth cup out of which this very morning I have drunk my tea.9 These two quotations show two distinct

There are fragments of earlier, Archaic writers, including the elusive Stesichorus, who tell a similar story,27 that it is an eidolon, an image of Helen, that goes to Troy while the real woman waits out the war somewhere else, usually Egypt.

Hauth turned to the side, gesturing forward someone I could not see. Two lights warred for dominance. One burgundy, the other pink, carried by a strikingly beautiful woman with yellow hair. My heart plummeted into my stomach as Hauth’s voice rattled over the din. “Tonight,” he declared, “thanks to his generous contribution, my father has knighted Tyrn Hawthorn. We are proud to offer his daughter a place in our royal family.” Applause erupted around me, glass clinking and cheers sounding, the clamor enormous. Next to me, Ravyn Yew exhaled, as if all the wind in his lungs had frozen. Across the table, Elm Rowan and Jespyr Yew had gone ghostly pale, their faces arrested in shock. Hauth took the hand of the beautiful woman. She passed him the burgundy light, a smile on her full lips. Hauth, goaded by the crowd’s uproar, held up the Providence Card trimmed by dark burgundy velvet. “I present to you,” he called, “the elusive Nightmare Providence Card, and my future wife, Ione Hawthorn.

War, on the other hand, is something different. At heart I am a warrior. Attacking belongs to my instincts. To be able to be an enemy, to be an enemy—maybe these things presuppose a strong nature; in any case all strong natures involve these things. Such natures need resistance, consequently they go in search of obstacles: the pathos of aggression belongs of necessity to strength as much as the feelings of revenge and of rancour belong to weakness. Woman, for instance, is revengeful; her weakness involves this passion, just as it involves her susceptibility in the presence of other people's suffering. The strength of the aggressor can be measured by the opposition which he needs; every increase of growth betrays itself by a seeking out of more formidable opponents—or problems: for a philosopher who is combative challenges even problems to a duel. The task is not to overcome opponents in general, but only those opponents against whom one has to summon all one's strength, one's skill, and one's swordsmanship—in fact, opponents who are one's equals.... To be one's enemy's equal—this is the first condition of an honourable duel. Where one despises, one cannot wage war. Where one commands, where one sees something beneath one, one ought not to wage war. My war tactics can be reduced to four principles A First, I attack only things that are triumphant—if necessary I wait until they become triumphant. Secondly, I attack only those things against which I find no[Pg 24] allies, against which I stand alone—against which I compromise nobody but myself.... I have not yet taken one single step before the public eye, which did not compromise me: that is my criterion of a proper mode of action. Thirdly, I never make personal attacks—I use a personality merely as a magnifying-glass, by means of which I render a general, but elusive and scarcely noticeable evil, more apparent. ourthly, I attack only those things from which all personal differences are excluded, in which any such thing as a background of disagreeable experiences is lacking. On the contrary, attacking is to me a proof of goodwill and, in certain circumstances, of gratitude. By means of it, I do honour to a thing, I distinguish a thing; whether I associate my name with that of an institution or a person, by being against or for either, is all the same to me.

Dreaming about and trying new possibilities is one benefit of taming the distractions of our technological age. But if your soul is seeking quietness and all you’re doing is substituting rushing around the Internet with rushing around the clock or project list, peace will still be elusive. The real issue is the distraction and disquiet themselves, not whether they have wireless service attached.

Perfection I love the irony that only something flagrantly flawed, like us, can create perfect contempt (perfection being the most elusive of states), and something flawless, like a diamond (a solitaire which boasts no inclusions or blemishes), can create endless misgivings if it winds up on the finger of the wrong woman. On the other hand, marrying that bitch was a perfect mistake.

What you DO is quite separate from who you ARE. Please

My father came first," says a Missouri painter who consistently faces a work slump whenever she commits herself to submitting paintings for a show. "My mother was defined by him. If she behaved well he would love her, buy her presents, and take care of her - she was a queen. He did take care of her. She behaved, she ran the house. He bought her presents all the time." "Was she smart?" I asked. "I don't know," the woman replied. "I think she may have been, once. She stopped thinking." One reason Mother remains shadowy is that she was intimidated by the forceful, vivid personality of her husband. The peacemaker, a kind of half-person who chooses to tag along safely behind her husband, Mother is protected from the more abrasive aspects of life in the world. Huge fights, open power struggles - these were not characteristic of the girl's relationship with her elusive mother. (...) Mother was there (...). But she was also not there. (...) Father is active; Mother is passive. Father is able to rely on himself; Mother is helpless and dependent.

A woman in Bower Bank, Jamaica, had eight children. The father was in jail in the United States, no longer sending remittances. Her fourteen-year-old daughter "get burn up from her face, breast, chest, down to her legs with boiling water February 2 1999. That night just because I never have any money earlier to cook, me go town and get a money, buy something to cook cause them never eat from morning. Me daughter bend down, to pick up something near the stove and bounce off the pot of boiling water pan herself. Me tek her to hospital and me never have the money fe register her. Me beg somebody the money and register her. Me owe the hospital $10,500 for the bill, a caan [can't] pay it. She's to go back for treatment because her hand caan stretch out or go up, but the hospital will not see her if I don't pay the bill.

Westcott gets a ginger ale and a Heineken. He doesn’t want the latter. He has to make the pretense. Sitting beside Regn ("Wren") the front of her black dress opens enough. It is respectable and nothing more. He does not like a woman who flaunts her cleavage. Regn is not one of those women. Westcott cautiously looks to see the elusive hummingbird etched above her right breast. He finds himself inhaling deeply, with complete imperceptibility to anyone who might be watching—though no one is—to catch the scent of her perfume. Sharon drags him onto the dance floor. Her husband doesn’t mind. After all it is innocent. They meander across the floor to Regn who is shaking out a rhythm by herself like so many of the dancers. None of the men ask Regn to dance. Everyone more or less has a date or spouse. Regn and Sharon each take one of Westcott’s hands. The three move together. Or rather they move his limbs. He wants to step lightly, freely, to sweep across the floor. He knows he could if it was just he and Regn and no one was watching. But no, that won’t do either. He wants to dance as a gentleman—to lead and direct this woman with precision, the precision and deliberateness with which he’s pursued her, unwittingly. He wants the world to look upon them and see what he hides. He wants to be applauded and yes, even envied a bit, for his grace and certainty of step. More than anything he wants Regn to move with him. Had he the confidence, the experience, were he a true man, it could never have happened. It is the slow advance that makes her love him. In many ways he is just a boy. She wants to protect him, but sometimes that look, that expression, is so old, determined. He knows what she wants. She can’t deny the way the feeling of being loved makes her feel. It’s been so long.

Jason levels a glare at me and says slowly, “You cannot stop me from pursuing this farm.” I taste the bitterness of adrenaline and betrayal in my constricted throat. Thoughts bing around my head in an enraged electrical storm. How dare you cast me as the pisser-on-er of dreams! I put up a halfhearted fight against angry tears and succumb. Having done my fair share of food industry service, I can tell you that nothing, nothing unnerves waitstaff like the fighting couple with the crying woman seated in one’s station. I remember glancing up for a second and seeing our waitress do a sort of horrified back-and-forth shuffle with our meals as she looked for an opportunity to throw them on our table and bolt. But that right moment was elusive, as I wasn’t engaged in dignified weeping into one’s napkin. I rarely cry, but when I do, it’s full-on bawling with shallow, gasping breaths. The kind that can really get the snot flowing. The kind that produces honking.

One day, the soldiers chased out everybody in the street where we were "Yudengasse" (Jew Street). My parents and myself took our sacks to go to the rail road station. While we were going with the rest of that day's contingent, half way to the station, a woman walked by and said: "They called your name at the certificate station." On the spur of the moment, I said to my parents: "You continue going. I am going back, get the certificate and will take you out." Nobody would have let all three of us go back without a permit. Of course, it was easier said than done. The military watched all along the roads and they said that Jews can go only one way - toward the rail road station, not back. I was a young girl, 21 years old and desperate to go look for that elusive piece of paper.

With every sentence the shadow of approaching separation and a kind of graveyard gloom began to settle more emphatically upon us. I found myself noticing and loving all sorts of little mannerisms and expressions in him such as we notice always in a woman we love, but notice in a man only as the last hours of his leave run out or the date of the probably fatal operation draws near. I felt our nature’s incurable incredulity, and could hardly believe that what was now so close, so tangible, and (in a sense) so much at my command, would in a few hours be wholly inaccessible, an image—soon, even an elusive image—in my memory. And finally a sort of shyness fell between us because each knew what the other was feeling. It had got very cold.

Evil people are those who will not or cannot grow up,' Agatha wrote. 'A man who is a child,' says one of her characters, 'is the most frightening thing in the world.

Jesus said the truth will set us free. What he didn’t mention was how nothing is quite as elusive as getting to that truth.

Speaking of dreams…I fold my arms behind my head and luxuriate in the bliss of sprawling flat on my back in bed for the first time in years, without the encumbrance of wings. I’ve always been a back sleeper, and since I didn’t get to fuck today and it’s now too late for me to find a woman that wouldn’t require coin in exchange (that chivalrous Keltar romantic still beats powerfully in my heart), I’ve no doubt I’ll be dreaming about sex for the paltry few hours I drift. I don’t need to sleep anymore, but the human part of me enjoys it and keeps trying. My window of slumber, however, continues to shrink and grow more elusive. Mac says princes don’t sleep at all. If that’s true, I’m not looking forward to completing the transformation. What is life without dreams?

She winks, her tough exterior melts for an instant, and I see a glimpse of the elusive and vulnerable woman inside. We often see vulnerability as a weakness, but the truth is that strength is about being honest, authentic, and brave enough to show people who we are. I’m learning. Slowly.

it was surely not so fanciful for Tolstoy to imagine that there was a common sense which linked the young countess to every Russian woman and every Russian man. For, as this book will seek to demonstrate, there is a Russian temperament, a set of native customs and beliefs, something visceral, emotional, instinctive, passed on down the generations, which has helped to shape the personality and bind together the community. This elusive temperament has proved more lasting and more meaningful than any Russian state: it gave the people the spirit to survive the darkest moments of their history,

In the light of Christianity’s absolute law of charity, we came to see what formerly we could not: the autistic or Down syndrome or otherwise disabled child, for instance, for whom the world can remain a perpetual perplexity, which can too often cause pain but perhaps only vaguely and fleetingly charm or delight; the derelict or wretched or broken man or woman who has wasted his or her life away; the homeless, the utterly impoverished, the diseased, the mentally ill, the physically disabled; exiles, refugees, fugitives; even criminals and reprobates. To reject, turn away from, or kill any or all of them would be, in a very real sense, the most purely practical of impulses. To be able, however, to see in them not only something of worth but indeed something potentially godlike, to be cherished and adored, is the rarest and most ennoblingly unrealistic capacity ever bred within human souls. To look on the child whom our ancient ancestors would have seen as somehow unwholesome or as a worthless burden, and would have abandoned to fate, and to see in him or her instead a person worthy of all affection—resplendent with divine glory, ominous with an absolute demand upon our consciences, evoking our love and our reverence—is to be set free from mere elemental existence, and from those natural limitations that pre-Christian persons took to be the very definition of reality. And only someone profoundly ignorant of history and of native human inclinations could doubt that it is only as a consequence of the revolutionary force of Christianity within our history, within the very heart of our shared nature, that any of us can experience this freedom. We deceive ourselves also, however, if we doubt how very fragile this vision of things truly is: how elusive this truth that only charity can know, how easily forgotten this mystery that only charity can penetrate.

And that childless singletons – both Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple are unmarried – don’t need a conventional family round them to thrive.3

What I want is irreplaceable. What I want comes from a feeling so intimate, and so increasingly elusive, that to obtain it is like a kind of nirvana.

emotionally immature people are more like an amalgam of various borrowed parts, many of which don’t go together well. Because they had to shut down important parts of themselves out of fear of their parents’ reactions, their personalities formed in isolated clumps, like pieces of a puzzle that don’t fit together. This explains their inconsistent reactions, which make them so difficult to understand. Because they probably weren’t allowed to express and integrate their emotional experiences in childhood, these people grow up to be emotionally inconsistent adults. Their personalities are weakly structured, and they often express contradictory emotions and behaviors. They step in and out of emotional states, never noticing their inconsistency. When they become parents, these traits create emotional bafflement in their children. One woman described her mother’s behavior as chaotic, “flip-flopping in ways that made no sense.” This inconsistency means that, as parents, emotionally immature people may be either loving or detached, depending on their mood. Their children feel fleeting moments of connection with them but don’t know when or under what conditions their parent might be emotionally available again. This sets up what behavioral psychologists call an intermittent reward situation, meaning that getting a reward for your efforts is possible but completely unpredictable. This creates a tenacious resolve to keep trying to get the reward, because once in a while these efforts do pay off. In this way, parental inconsistency can be the quality that binds children most closely to their parent, as they keep hoping to get that infrequent and elusive positive response.

Part of the intensity of her relief—she thought, as she walked silently by his side—was the shock of a contrast: she had seen, with the sudden, immediate vividness of sensory perception, an exact picture of what the code of self-sacrifice would have meant, if enacted by the three of them. Galt, giving up the woman he wanted, for the sake of his friend, faking his greatest feeling out of existence and himself out of her life, no matter what the cost to him and to her, then dragging the rest of his years through the waste of the unreached and unfulfilled—she, turning for consolation to a second choice, faking a love she did not feel, being willing to fake, since her will to self-deceit was the essential required for Galt’s self-sacrifice, then living out her years in hopeless longing, accepting, as relief for an unhealing wound, some moments of weary affection, plus the tenet that love is futile and happiness is not to be found on earth—Francisco, struggling in the elusive fog of a counterfeit reality, his life a fraud staged by the two who were dearest to him and most trusted, struggling to grasp what was missing from his happiness, struggling down the brittle scaffold of a lie over the abyss of the discovery that he was not the man she loved, but only a resented substitute, half-charity-patient, half-crutch, his perceptiveness becoming his danger and only his surrender to lethargic stupidity protecting the shoddy structure of his joy, struggling and giving up and settling into the dreary routine of the conviction that fulfillment is impossible to man—the three of them, who had had all the gifts of existence spread out before them, ending up as embittered hulks, who cry in despair that life is frustration—the frustration of not being able to make unreality real.

Like any infamous, unsolved crime, the authorship mystery has attracted a certain class of cranks who sometimes call in claiming to have arrived, irrefutably, at the elusive solution. The authorities seize on these figures, painting all skeptics with the same brush. Those who doubt Shakespeare suffer from an “intellectual aberration,” Sir Sidney Lee declared in the early twentieth century; it was “madhouse chatter,” a “foolish craze,” “morbid psychology.” But the ranks of skeptics have included many formidable minds: novelists, poets, statesmen, Supreme Court justices, scientists, and professors of history, philosophy, theater, anthropology, psychology, and, only occasionally, English. To ask Shakespeare scholars to research the authorship is “like asking the College of Cardinals to honestly research the Resurrection,” wrote Robin Fox, professor of social theory at Rutgers University. At York University in Canada, a professor of theater named Don Rubin created a course on the authorship question. His colleagues in English scoffed, assuring him that no one would sign up, but there was a waiting list every year.

The fictional representation of the feminine is doubly elusive because the feminine is already a representation, a sign ... So far we have largely considered women as productive of the uncanny when viewed as objects by men, the uncanny effect being generated by 'slippage' between the woman as sign and the discontinuous expression of the 'something else', or woman-as-other, that exists within the sign (not, of course, the 'real self' of the woman, whatever that might be).

In one corner of the large bar room I saw a pit filled with mud and a pig. I watched a buxom, mature woman as she rolled around in this soup, trying to catch a pig that seemed to be more elusive than expected. Squealing the pig escaped from the pit and ran for his life. Everyone joined in trying to catch the critter and eventually some guys did return him to the pit he called home. Picking him up with a mud covered towel the woman and her pig disappeared behind a curtain, only to be replaced by two other women who started wrestling each other. It was an expected typically crude performance that everyone seemed to enjoy. After finishing my overpriced beer I hightailed out of there and took the city rapid transit back to the ship.

Love is a foggy sea. The right woman, an elusive fish.

As difficult as financial freedom was for a woman to achieve, sexual freedom seemed even more elusive.

Music, like magic, flows through us, Drifts in the wind and touches the stars, We may die but our song lives on, My elusive woman of the wilds.

Ah, the elusive Alpha. The cream of the crop, so to speak. He is masculine in the purest form of the word; confident, capable, fiercely protective of those he cares about, a good father to his children, and a good lover to his woman. He won’t always go along with what you want because he’s got his own ideas of how things should be done, but when it really matters, he’ll listen to your opinion. And your feelings. Though he doesn’t often talk about them, he’s not afraid of feelings—yours or his own—and he’s not afraid of commitment like an Asshole is.