“
The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.
We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.
We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships.
These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete...
Remember, to spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever. Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.
Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.
Remember, to say, "I love you" to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.
Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person might not be there again. Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.
”
”
Bob Moorehead (Words Aptly Spoken)
“
There is strange comfort in knowing that no matter what happens today, the Sun will rise again tomorrow.
”
”
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
“
The struggles we endure today will be the ‘good old days’ we laugh about tomorrow.
”
”
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
“
I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness―in a landscape selected at random―is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern―to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov
“
It's in those quiet little towns, at the edge of the world, that you will find the salt of the earth people who make you feel right at home.
”
”
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
“
Life's trials will test you, and shape you, but don’t let them change who you are.”
~ Aaron Lauritsen, ‘100 Days Drive
”
”
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
“
True friends don't come with conditions.
”
”
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
“
From this point forward, you don’t even know how to quit in life.”
~ Aaron Lauritsen, ‘100 Days Drive
”
”
Aaron Lauritsen
“
Those who achieve the extraordinary are usually the most ordinary because they have nothing to prove to anybody. Be Humble.
”
”
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
“
David Foster Wallace: Because I'd like to be the sort of person who can enjoy things at the time instead of having to go back in my head and enjoy them then.
”
”
David Lipsky (Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace)
“
I enjoy the wild things,
Call me at 3 am and tell me you're waiting at my door. Give me sunsets in different cities and road trips on dirt tracks not sighted on maps.
Whiskey for breakfast & cheap thrills for dinner.
Give me happiness in a smile and nothing of certainty but the way we make eachother feel.
There so much life in living while you're alive & id give absolutely anything to have it all with you.
”
”
Nikki Rowe
“
The freedom of the open road is seductive, serendipitous and absolutely liberating.
”
”
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
“
But I'm different now than I was then. Just like I was different at the end of the trip than I'd been in the beginning. And I'll be different tomorrow than i am today. And what that means is that i can never replicate that trip. Even if I went to the same places and met the same people, it would'nt be the same. My experience would'nt be the same. To me, that's what traveling should be about. Meeting people, learning to not only appreciate a different culture, but really enjoy it like a local, following whatever impulse strikes you. So how could I recommend a trip to someone else, if I don't even know what to expect? My advice would be to make a list of places on some index cards, shuffle them, and pick any fice at random. Then just . . . go and see what happens. If you have the right mind-set, it does'nt matter where you end up or how much money you brought. It'll be something you'll remember forever.
”
”
Nicholas Sparks (The Guardian)
“
Henry narrowed his eyes at me. "You going somewhere?"
"Lacrosse field trip," I said. "I enjoy whacking the hell out of people with mallets.
”
”
Robin Benway (The Extraordinary Secrets of April, May, & June)
“
The high road of grace will get you somewhere a whole lot faster then the freeway of spite.
”
”
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
“
We love our partners for who they are, not for who they are not.
”
”
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
“
THE GOOD LIFE requires that we take pleasure in new things; A GOOD LIFE requires that we take pleasure in moments.
To enjoy THE GOOD LIFE we have to get ahead; to enjoy A GOOD LIFE we have to make the trip worthwhile.
THE GOOD LIFE is supported by feeding our pocketbooks; A GOOD LIFE is supported by feeding our souls.
”
”
Steve Goodier
“
For most of life, nothing wonderful happens. If you don’t enjoy getting up and working and finishing your work and sitting down to a meal with family or friends, then the chances are that you’re not going to be very happy. If someone bases his happiness or unhappiness on major events like a great new job, huge amounts of money, a flawlessly happy marriage or a trip to Paris, that person isn’t going to be happy much of the time. If, on the other hand, happiness depends on a good breakfast, flowers in the yard, a drink or a nap, then we are more likely to live with quite a bit of happiness.
”
”
Andy Rooney
“
The anticipation is an essential part of this whole trip. The excitement of going, the places we'll see, the people we'll meet, that's part of the joy of this whole thing...Never forget that anticipation is an important part of life...without excitement you have nothing, you're cheating yourself if you refuse to enjoy what's coming.
”
”
Micah Sparks (Three Weeks with My Brother)
“
When people say the word "convention," they are usually referring to large gatherings of the employees of companies and corporations who attend a mass assembly, usually in a big hotel somewhere, for the purpose of pretending to learn stuff when they are in fact enjoying a free trip somewhere, time off work, and the opportunity to flirt with strangers, drink, and otherwise indulge themselves. The first major difference between a business convention and a fan-dom convention is that fandom doesn’t bother with the pretenses. They’re just there to have a good time. The second difference is the dress code— the ensembles at a fan convention tend to be considerably more novel.
”
”
Jim Butcher (Proven Guilty (The Dresden Files, #8))
“
Anyone can choose to have success, but only the patient ones will get rewarded by it. Be relentless in chasing your dreams.
”
”
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
“
life is a journey,” the metaphor guides you to some conclusions: You should learn the terrain, pick a direction, find some good traveling companions, and enjoy the trip, because there may be nothing at the end of the road.
”
”
Jonathan Haidt (The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom)
“
I would not have done anything differently. All of the moments in my life, everyone I have met, every trip I have taken, every success I have enjoyed, every blunder I have made, every loss I have endured has been just right. I am not saying that they were all good or that they happened for a reason...but they have been right. They have been okay. As far as revelations go its pretty lame, I know. Okay is not bliss or even happiness. Okay is not the basis for a new religion or self help movement. Okay won't get me on Oprah, but okay is a start and for that I am grateful. Can I thank Bhutan for this breakthrough? It's hard to say […] It is a strange place, peculiar in ways large and small. You lose your bearings here and when that happens a crack forms in your armor. A crack large enough, if you're lucky, to let in a few shafts of light.
”
”
Eric Weiner (The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World)
“
Books are a bad family - there are those you love, and those you are indifferent to; idiots and mad cousins who you would banish except others enjoy their company; wrongheaded but fascinating eccentrics and dreamy geniuses; orphaned grandchildren; and endless brothers-in-law simply taking up space who you wish you could send straight to hell. Except you can't, for the most part. You must house them and make them comfortable and worry about them when they go on trips and there is never enough room.
”
”
Elizabeth McCracken (The Giant's House)
“
Integrity is something we show, not proclaim.
”
”
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
“
Don't live off your past successes or failures, live for the next big pursuit.
”
”
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
“
Of course, not everybody likes camping trips. I do not myself enjoy them much, because I'm not outdoorsy, or at any rate, I'm not outdoorsy overnight-without-a-matress-wise. There's a limit to the outdoorsiness to which some academics can be expected to submit.
”
”
G.A. Cohen (Why Not Socialism?)
“
One of the secrets of life is to find joy in the journey."
But Grandma, you weren't on *this* journey. It was just crazy--"
Grandma held up her hand. "You have six brothers. You got to spend a whole day in the car with them. You're all healthy, well fed, happy... Someday, when you're a little older, I'll bet you'd give anything to be back in that van of yours with all of your brothers, smelly diapers and all."
I mulled that over.
Well what about Dad?" I pointed out. "He didn't find any joy in the journey. He was yelling at trees."
Grandma sat back, "Your father and mother are masters at finding joy in the journey."
I didn't understand.
Grandma continued, "Do you really think your parents would have had seven kids if they couldn't find joy in the journey?... I would be willing to wager that he'll be laughing about this trip on Monday morning with his friends at work."
Grandma took my hands into hers. "There are a lot of people in this life that will try to convince you that they're selling something that will bring you joy. The simple fact of the matter is that *things* don't bring you joy. You have to find joy in life experience. And if you take along somebody you love, then that journey is going to be all the more enjoyable.
I can promise you right now that both good and bad things are going to happen to you in your life. Good and bad things happen to everybody. Some people are good at finding the miserable things in life, and some are good at finding the joy. No matter what happens to you, what you remember is up to you.
”
”
Matthew Buckley (Chickens in the Headlights)
“
The first time you sit in comfortable silence;
The first time you realize you enjoy his company more than anyone else’s;
The first time you look like hell and he couldn't care less;
The first time you talk until dawn;
The first time you bring him home to meet the family;
The first time you're naked together and you don't feel a shred of insecurity;
The firt time you realize that you don't want anyone else but him;
The first time you see a future with him;
The first time you take a trip together;
The first big blowup fight;
The first time you realize he's your home;
The first time you realize taht he loves you as much as you love him.
”
”
Katy Regnery (The Vixen and the Vet)
“
The only real certainty is that if you get to live, you gotta die. Live life now.
”
”
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
“
Be a team player, not a bandwagon jumper.
”
”
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
“
We know that poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness. But don't expect us to do anything about it. We are sorry for you lower classes, just as we are sorry for a, cat with the mange, but we will fight like devils against any improvement of your condition. We feel that you are much safer as you are. The present state of affairs suits us, and we are not going to take the risk of setting you free, even by an extra hour a day. So, dear brothers, since evidently you must sweat to pay for our trips to Italy, sweat and be damned to you.
”
”
George Orwell (Down and Out in Paris and London)
“
Life is like a train ride.
The passengers on the train are seemingly going to the same destination as you, but based on their belief in you or their belief that the train will get them to their desired destination they will stay on the ride or they will get off somewhere during the trip.
People can and will get off at any stop.
Just know that where people get off is more of an reflection on them, than it is on you.
There will be a few people in your life that will make the whole trip with you, who believe in you, accept that you are human and that mistakes will be made along the way, and that you will get to your desired destination - together, no matter what.
Be very grateful of these people.
They are rare and when you find one, don't let go of them - ever.
Be blessed for the ones who get on at the worst stops when no one is there.
Remember those people, they are special.
Always hold them dear to your heart.
Be very wary of people sneaking on at certain stops when things are going good and acting like they have been there for the whole ride.
For they will be the first to depart.
There will be ones who secretly try to get off the ride and there will be those that very publicly will jump off.
Don't pay any heed to the defectors.
Pay heed to the passengers that are still on the trip.
They are the important ones.
If someone tries to get back on the train - don't be angry or hold a grudge, let them.
Just see where they are around the next hard turn.
If they are buckled in - accept them.
If they are pulling the hand rail alarm again - then let them off the train freely and waste no space in your head for them again, ever.
There will be times that the train will be moving slow, at almost a crawls pace.
Appreciate that you can take in the view.
There will be times where the train is going so fast that everything is a blur.
Enjoy the sense of speed in your life, as it is exhilarating but unsustainable.
There will also be the chance that the train derails.
If that does happen, it will hurt, a lot, for a long time.
But there will be people who will appear out of no where who will get you back on track.
Those will be the people that will matter most in your life.
Love them forever.
For you can never repay these people.
The thing is, that even if you could repay them, they wouldn't accept it anyway.
Just pay it forward.
Eventually your train will get to its final stop and you will need to deboard.
At that time you will realize that life is about the journey AND the destination.
Know and have faith that at the end of your ride your train will have the right passengers on board and all the passengers that were on board at one time or another were there for a distinct purpose.
Enjoy the ride.
”
”
JohnA Passaro
“
The road to Hades is easiest to travel. ––Diogenes Laertius Enjoy the trip, because the stay is going to be hell. ––Hades
”
”
Larissa Ione (Hades (Demonica Underworld, #2; Lords of Deliverance, #6.5; Demonica, #13))
“
Journeys up the Metaphoric River are hugely enjoyable and highly recommended. Since every genre is nourished by its heady waters, a paddle steamer can take even the most walk-shy tourists to their chosen destination. As a bonus, there is traditionally at least one murder on board each trip--a "consideration" to the head steward will ensure that it is not you.
”
”
Jasper Fforde (One of Our Thursdays Is Missing (Thursday Next, #6))
“
Practice this first." He laid his hands on her shoulders. "Have a good trip. Enjoy your vacation."
"You didn't say I had to speak to him." She blew out a breath at Roarke's calm stare. "All right, all right, it's worth it. Have a good trip." She stretched her lips into a smile. "Enjoy your vacation. Asshole. I'll leave off the asshole, I just wanted to say it now."
"Understood.
”
”
J.D. Robb (Portrait in Death (In Death, #16))
“
If you’re an introvert, find your flow by using your gifts. You have the power of persistence, the tenacity to solve complex problems, and the clear-sightedness to avoid pitfalls that trip others up. You enjoy relative freedom from the temptations of superficial prizes like money and status. Indeed, your biggest challenge may be to fully harness your strengths. You may be so busy trying to appear like a zestful, reward-sensitive extrovert that you undervalue your own talents, or feel underestimated by those around you. But when you’re focused on a project that you care about, you probably find that your energy is boundless.
So stay true to your own nature. If you like to do things in a slow and steady way, don’t let others make you feel as if you have to race. If you enjoy depth, don’t force yourself to seek breadth. If you prefer single-tasking to multitasking, stick to your guns. Being relatively unmoved by rewards gives you the incalculable power to go your own way. It’s up to you to use that independence to good effect.
”
”
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
Okay, news flash. Jealousy is not something I enjoy. I hadn’t felt it much before. But I’d also never been in love. And I’d never been 3,300 miles away from the girl I loved while some punk sat next to her on a couch. A punk who had designs on her, according to Dylan. I needed to lay eyes on this guy.
”
”
Laura Anderson Kurk (Perfect Glass)
“
Travel is such a wonderful experience! Especially when you forget you are traveling. Then you will enjoy whatever you see and do. Those who look into themselves when they travel will not think about what they see. In fact, there is no distinction between the viewer and the seen. You experience everything with the totality of yourself, so that every blade of grass, every mountain, every lake is alive and is a part of you. When there is no division between you and what is other, this is the ultimate experience of traveling.
”
”
Liezi (Lieh-tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living (Shambhala Dragon Editions))
“
There is no such thing as loving a child too much.
”
”
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
“
Enjoy your little field trip to the zoo—and, yes, some of the animals here do bite.
”
”
Jane Davitt (Bound and Determined)
“
I remember at one point starting a goofy story about a childhood field trip here, and I saw her eyes go blank, and I got secretly furious, spent ten minutes just winding myself up – because at this point of our marriage, I was so used to being angry with her, it felt almost enjoyable, like gnawing on a cuticle: You know you should stop, that it doesn’t really feel as good as you think, but you can’t quit grinding away.
”
”
Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl)
“
The funny thing about money is that you can't take it with you, so don’t try to.
”
”
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
“
There it was again: “Came in to see us”, as if it were an enjoyable little day trip that lots of people made, just because it was such a nice place to be.
”
”
Ruth Mancini (Swimming Upstream)
“
All trips end eventually. Is that any reason to renounce undertaking one and enjoying it? You only live once. Is that any reason to spoil the single life you do have?
”
”
André Comte-Sponville (The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality)
“
The highway of grace will get you somewhere a whole lot faster then the freeway of spite.
”
”
Aaron Lauritsen
“
Nobody turns so quickly into a bore as a traveler home from his travels. He enjoyed his trip so much that he wants to tell us all about it—and “all” is what we don’t want to hear. We only want to hear some.
”
”
William Zinsser (On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction)
“
Zohra's voice comes loudly from her camel: "Shut the fuck up! Enjoy the fucking sunset on your fucking camels! Jesus!"
It is , after all, almost a miracle they are here. Not because they've survived the booze, the hashish, the migraines. Not that at all. It's that they've survived everything in life, humiliations and disappointments and heartaches and missed opportunities, bad dads and bad jobs and bad sex and bad drugs, all the trips and mistakes and face-plants of life, to have made it to fifty and to have made it here: to this frosted-cake landscape, these mountains of gold, the little table they can now see sitting on the dune, set with olives and pita and glasses and wine chilling on ice, with the sun waiting more patiently than any camel for their arrival. So, yes. As with almost every sunset, but with this one in particular: shut the fuck up.
”
”
Andrew Sean Greer (Less (Arthur Less, #1))
“
Of course we will send postcards to Nutsawoo. And we shall bring him back a present as well. In fact,' she went on, with the instinctive knack every good governess has for turning something enjoyable into a lesson, and vice versa, 'I will expect all three of you to practice your writing by keeping a journal of our trip so that Nutsawoo may know how we spend our days. Why, by the time we return, he will think he has been to London himself! He will be the envy of all his little squirrel friends,' she declared.
Penelope had no way of knowing if this last statement was true. Could squirrels feel envy? Would they give two figs about London? Did Nutsawoo even have friends?
”
”
Maryrose Wood (The Hidden Gallery (The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, #2))
“
Then, he angled his large body toward me, eating a big chunk of the distance that had been separating us. The motion had been unexpected, and my breath hitched with surprise. Hyperaware of how close he had come, I stuttered. Suddenly not knowing what to say or if I was expected to say anything at all. Aaron’s arm reached out, the backs of his fingers gracing my temple. My lips parted, tingles spreading down my skin. It was him who lowered his voice then. “Always fighting me.” I looked up at his handsome and stern face, his assessing blue eyes surveying my reaction. “Resisting me.” My heart tripped, making my chest feel like I had just sprinted a mile or two. Aaron’s head dipped, his mouth coming close to where his fingers had been a few seconds ago. Almost as close as it had been when we danced. “It’s like you want me to beg. Is that something you’d enjoy? Me begging?” His voice sounded so … intimate. Hushed. But it was his next words that scattered my thoughts all over the place. “Is that what this is? You like bringing me to my knees?” Whoa.
”
”
Elena Armas (The Spanish Love Deception (Spanish Love Deception, #1))
“
That was Emma—she'd have enjoyed knowing she had something like that, something that could blow her whole fucking life and mine apart if it came out. Her little bit of power.
”
”
J.P. Delaney (The Girl Before)
“
Eric Harris wanted a prom date. Eric was a senior, about to leave Columbine High School forever. He was not about to be left out of the prime social event of his life. He really wanted a date. Dates were not generally a problem. Eric was a brain, but an uncommon subcategory: cool brain. He smoked, he drank, he dated. He got invited to parties. He got high. He worked his look hard: military chic hair— short and spiked with plenty of product—plus black T-shirts and baggy cargo pants. He blasted hard-core German industrial rock from his Honda. He enjoyed firing off bottle rockets and road-tripping to Wyoming to replenish the stash. He broke the rules, tagged himself with the nickname Reb, but did his homework and earned himself a slew of A’s. He shot cool videos and got them airplay on the closed-circuit system at school. And he got chicks. Lots and lots of chicks. On the ultimate high school scorecard, Eric outscored much of the football team. He was a little charmer. He walked right up to hotties at the mall. He won them over with quick wit, dazzling dimples, and a disarming smile.
”
”
Dave Cullen (Columbine)
“
Isn't it nice how we actually enjoy talking to each other now?" I said to her once on a trip home from college, after the bulk of the damage done in my teenage years had been allayed. "It is," she said. "You know what I realised? I've just never met someone like you." I've just never met someone like you, as if I were a stranger from another town or an eccentric guest accompanying a mutual friend to a dinner party. It was a strange thought to hear from the mouth of the woman who had birthed and raised me, with whom I shared a home for eighteen years, someone who was half me. My mother had struggled to understand me just as I struggled to understand her. Thrown as we were on opposite sides of a fault like—generational, cultural, linguistic—we wandered lost without a reference point, each of us unintelligible to the other's expectations, until these past few years when we had just begun to unlock the mystery, carve the psychic space to accommodate each other, appreciate the differences between us, linger in our refracted commonalities.
”
”
Michelle Zauner (Crying in H Mart)
“
My love, have you considered the possibility that you might enjoy our consummation sufficiently to want it more than once?"
How easily endearments seem to trip from his tongue. "No," Evie said firmly. "I won't."
"Mmm..." A sound almost like a cat's purr left his throat. "I like a challenge.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Winter (Wallflowers, #3))
“
Successes are those highlights of life we look back on with a smile. But it's the day to day grind of getting them that defines the laugh lines etched until the end of time. Enjoy each moment along the way
”
”
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
“
From the very first country I visited, I knew I was not on this trip just for sightseeing. I did enjoy all the new experiences, but I had a strange certainty that I was being guided toward something I could not yet see.
”
”
Loren Cunningham (Is That Really You, God?)
“
We do not do well when we are alone for a long period of time, and having friends and family alongside us through life’s journey makes the trip more enjoyable and successful. This is a fundamental truth of the world around
”
”
Anonymous
“
If you’re an introvert, find your flow by using your gifts. You have the power of persistence, the tenacity to solve complex problems, and the clear-sightedness to avoid pitfalls that trip others up. You enjoy relative freedom from the temptations of superficial prizes like money and status. Indeed, your biggest challenge may be to fully harness your strengths.
”
”
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
I’ve planned this trip, so I feel a certain ownership of it – the anxiety that people won’t enjoy themselves, that things might go wrong. And also a sense of pride, already, in its small successes … like this, the wild beauty outside the window.
”
”
Lucy Foley (The Hunting Party)
“
I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness - in a landscape selected at random - is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern - to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov (Speak, Memory)
“
If you're an introvert, find your flow by using your gifts. You have the power of persistence, the tenacity to solve complex problems, and the clear-sightedness to avoid pitfalls that trip others up. You enjoy relative freedom from the temptations of superficial prizes like money and status. Indeed, your biggest challenge may be to fully harness your strengths. You may be so busy trying to appear like a zestful, reward-sensitive extrovert that you undervalue your own talents, or feel underestimated by those around you. But when you're focused on a project you care about, you probably find that your energy is boundless.
So stay true to your own nature. If you like to do things in a slow, steady way, don't let others make you feel as if you have to race. If you enjoy depth, don't force yourself to seek breadth. If you prefer single-tasking to multi-tasking, stick to your guns. Being relatively unmoved by rewards gives you the incalculable power to go your own way. It's up to you to use that independence to good effect.
”
”
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
I thought crocodiles lived under my bed and if my feet hung over the side, they'd get bitten off. So I slept in a ball. I think I still do actually." Oh God. Shut up. Shut up. "Out of habit, I mean, not crocodiles. I d-don't think that anymore. Obviously."
He was quiet a moment. And then, faintly accusingly, "You know that's adorable, don't you?"
I tripped hard over adorable and couldn't think how to answer. So I said nothing at all, and merely enjoyed my few minutes in a dangerous puddle with a man who maybe thought I was adorable.
”
”
Alexis Hall (Waiting for the Flood (Spires, #2))
“
Being rich towards God means
...growing a soul that is increasingly healthy and good.
... loving and enjoying the people around you.
...learning about your gifts and passion and doing good work to improve the world.
...becoming generous with your stuff.
...making that which is temporary become the servant of that which is eternal.
...savoring every roll of the dice and every trip around the board.
”
”
John Ortberg (When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box)
“
I think it is cruel to expect the constant presence of any one family member (to tend to the ill). Just as we have to breathe in and breathe out, people have to "recharge their batteries" outside the sickroom at times, live a normal life from time to time; we cannot function efficiently in the constant awareness of illness. I have heard many relatives complain that members of the family went on pleasure trips over weekends or continued to go to the theater or movie. They blamed them for enjoying things while someone at home was terminally ill. I think it is more meaningful for the patient and his family to see that the illness does not totally disrupt a household or completely deprive all members of any pleasurable activities; rather, the illness may allow for a gradual adjustment and change toward the kind of home it is going to be when the patient is no longer around...The family too has a need to deny or avoid the sad realities at times in order to face them better when their presence is really needed.
”
”
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (On Death and Dying: What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy and Their Own Families)
“
You know, sleeping outdoors isn’t all bad. You get to stare up at the stars and cool breezes ruffle your fur after a hot day. The grass smells sweet and,” he made eye contact with me, “so does your hair.”
I blushed and grumbled, “Well, I’m glad someone enjoyed it.”
He smiled smugly and said, “I did.”
I had a quick flash of him as a man snuggled up next to me in the forest, imagined him resting his head on my lap while I stroked his hair, and decided to focus on the matter at hand.
“Well, listen, Ren, you’re changing the subject. I don’t appreciate the way you manipulated me into being here. Mr. Kadam should’ve told me at the circus.”
He shook his head. “We didn’t think you’d believe his story. He made up the trip to the tiger reserve to get you to India. We figured once you were here, I could change into a man and clarify everything.”
I admitted, “You’re probably right. If you had changed to a man there, I don’t think I would have come”
“Why did you come?”
“I wanted to spend more time with…you. You know, the tiger. I would have missed him. I mean you.” I blushed.
He grinned lopsidedly. “I would have missed you too.”
I wrung the hem of my shirt between my hands.
Misreading my thoughts, he said, “Kelsey. I’m truly sorry for the deception. If there’d been any other way-“
I looked up. He hung his head in a way that reminded me of the tiger. The frustration and awkwardness I felt about him dissipated. My instincts told me that I should believe him and help him. The strong emotional connection that drew me to the tiger tugged at my heart even more powerfully with the man. I felt pity for him and his situation.
Softly, I asked, “When will you change into a tiger?”
“Soon.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Not as much as it used to.”
“Do you understand me when you are a tiger? Can I still speak to you?”
“Yes, I’ll still be able to hear and understand you.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll stay here with you until the shaman comes back. I still have a lot of questions for you though.”
“I know. I’ll try to answer them as best I can, but you’ll have to save them for tomorrow when I’ll be able to speak with you again. We can stay here for the night. The shaman should be back around dusk.”
“Ren?”
“Yes?”
“The jungle frightens me, and this situation frightens me.”
He let go of the apron string and looked into my eyes. “I know.”
“Ren?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t…leave me, okay?”
His face softened into a tender expression, and his mouth turned up in a sincere smile. “Asambhava. I won’t.”
I felt myself responding to his smile with one of my own when a shadow fell across his face. He clenched his fists and tightened his jaw. I saw a tremor pass through his body, and the chair fell forward as he collapsed to the ground on his hands and knees. I stood to reach out to him and was amazed to see his body morph back into the tiger form I knew so well. Ren the tiger shook himself, then approached my outstretched hand and rubbed his head against it.
”
”
Colleen Houck (Tiger's Curse (The Tiger Saga, #1))
“
When we were working on Jackass and I'd be traveling in the same bus, car, or van with Johnny Knoxville on road trips, he'd sometimes stick sedative pills in my food in the hope that they'd shut me up so he could enjoy some peace and quiet. Never once did it work. Each time, I think he was truly amazed at the doses of downers that failed to quiet me down.
”
”
Stephen "Steve-O" Glover (Professional Idiot: A Memoir)
“
One of the beautiful things about the US National Parks is that they created specifically for the enjoyment of all people -- in the beginning, now, and for the future.
”
”
Stefanie Payne (The National Parks Journal: Plan & Record Your Trips to the US National Parks)
“
Telling people to go to hell in such a way that they enjoy the trip,” the Hiver supplied. “It’s been a privilege having you on the diplomatic staff.
”
”
Adrian Tchaikovsky (Shards of Earth (The Final Architecture, #1))
“
He spoke of how he enjoyed reading the morning papers now, “without having to make plans for handling the problems that appear there.
”
”
Matthew Algeo (Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip)
“
Conversation, my friend. Conversation and again conversation! All the murderers I have ever come across enjoyed talking. In my opinion the strong silent man seldom commits a crime—and if he does it is simple, violent, and perfectly obvious. But our clever subtle murderer—he is so pleased with himself that sooner or later he says something unfortunate and trips himself up.
”
”
Agatha Christie (Hickory Dickory Dock (Hercule Poirot, #34))
“
Chris loved to look at every type of plant, animal, and bug he hadn’t seen before on the trail and point out those he did recognize. He enjoyed walking along small streams, listening to the water as it traveled, and searching for eddies where we could watch the minnows scurry amongst the rocks. On one Shenandoah trip, while we were resting at a waterfall, eating our chocolate-covered granola bars and watching the water pummel the rocks below, he said, “See, Carine ? That’s the purity of nature. It may be harsh in its honesty, but it never lies to you”.
Chris seemed to be most comfortable outdoors, and the farther away from the typical surroundings and pace of our everyday lives the better. While it was unusual for a solid week to pass without my parents having an argument that sent them into a negative tailspin of destruction and despair, they never got into a fight of any consequence when we were on an extended family hike or camping trip. It seemed like everything became centered and peaceful when there was no choice but to make nature the focus. Our parents’ attention went to watching for blaze marks on trees ; staying on the correct trail ; doling out bug spray, granola bars, sandwiches, and candy bars at proper intervals ; and finding the best place to pitch the tent before nightfall. They taught us how to properly lace up our hiking boots and wear the righ socks to keep our feet healthy and reliable. They showed us which leaves were safe to use as toilet paper and which would surely make us miserable downtrail. We learned how to purify water for our canteens if we hadn’t found a safe spring and to be smart about conserving what clean water we had left.
At night we would collect rocks to make a fire ring, dry wood to burn, and long twigs for roasting marshmallows for the s’more fixings Mom always carried in her pack. Dad would sing silly, non-sensical songs that made us laugh and tell us about the stars.
”
”
Carine McCandless (The Wild Truth: A Memoir)
“
2-Make eye contact. When someone is speaking, keep your eyes on him or her at all times. If someone makes a comment, turn and face that person.
3-During discussions, respect other students’ comments, opinions, and ideas. When possible, make statements like, “I agree with John, and I also feel that…” or “I disagree with Sarah. She made a good point I feel that…” or “I think Victor made an excellent observation, and it made me realize…”
4-If you win or do well at something, do not brag. If you lose, do not show anger. Instead, say something like, “I really enjoyed the competition, and I look forward to playing you again,” or “good game,” or don’t say anything at all. To show anger or sarcasm, such as “I wasn’t playing hard anyway” or “You really aren’t that good,” shows weakness.
5-“When you cough or sneeze or burp, it is appropriate to turn your head away from others and cover your mouth with the full part of your hand. Using a fist is not acceptable. Afterward, you should say, “Excuse me.”
6- “Do not smack your lips, tsk, roll your eyes, or show disrespect with gestures.”
7-“Always say thank you when I give you something.
8-“Surprise others by performing random acts of kindness. Go our of your way to do something surprisingly kind and generous for someone at least once a month.”
9-“You will make every effort to be as organized as possible.”
10-"Quickly learn the name of other teachers in the school and greet them by saying things like, "Good morning Mrs. Graham," or "Good afternoon Ms. Ortiz.
11-"When we go on field trips, we will meet different people. When I introduce you to people, make sure that you remember their names. Then, when we are leaving, make sure to shake their hands and thank them, mentioning their names as you do so."
12-“If you approach a door and someone is following you, hold the door. If the door opens by pulling, pull it open, stand to the side, and allow the other person
13-to pass through it first, then you can walk through. If the door opens by pushing, hold the door open after you push through."
"Be positive and enjoy life. Some things just aren't worth getting upset over. Keep everything in perspective and focus on the good in your life.
”
”
Ron Clark
“
The road to success and achievement can be a busy highway – crowded and noisy, full of hazards and tie-ups. Every now and then, you need to take the side roads, get away from the rush, and enjoy the trip.
”
”
John Patrick Hickey (On The Journey To Achievement)
“
Maybe I should simply enjoy this trip. Not overthink it. Get out of my own head. Have fun; let things happen naturally.
I don't know what this means—'let things happen naturally'—but I've heard it over and over. People say it to me a lot about relationships. Isn't that what we're doing? I'm letting myself consider these thoughts. It's natural. I'm not going to prevent doubts from blooming. Wouldn't that be more unnatural?
”
”
Iain Reid (I'm Thinking of Ending Things)
“
Some people live their life...they worry about the destination. They worry about where they're going. I enjoy the trip. Wherever you're going is where you'll end up. Don't worry about that. Enjoy the scenery on the way.
”
”
Noel Gallagher
“
Are you planning a holiday in Abu Dhabi or a Trip to Abu Dhabi? Get the lowest hotel rates for any Trip to Abu Dhabi on TravelerVIP. Get and compare the hotel rates for your holiday in Abu Dhabi, enjoy it with TravelerVIP.
holidays in abu dhabi
”
”
Mahluili
“
there are so many turquoise bodies of water left for us to dive in. there is family. blood or chosen. the possibility of falling in love. with people and places. hills high as the moon. valleys that roll into new worlds. and road trips. i find it deeply important to accept that we are not the masters of this place. we are her visitors. and like guests let’s enjoy this place like a garden. let us treat it with a gentle hand. so the ones after us can experience it too. let’s find our own sun. grow our own flowers. the universe delivered us with the light and the seeds. we might not hear it at times but the music is always on. it just needs to be turned louder. for as long as there is breath in our lungs — we must keep dancing.
”
”
Rupi Kaur (The Sun and Her Flowers)
“
I have a system with bathrooms. I spend a lot of time in them. They are sanctuaries, public places of peace spaced throughout the world for people like me. When I pop into Aaron’s, I continue my normal routine of wasting time. I turn the light off first. Then I sigh. Then I turn around, face the door I just closed, pull down my pants, and fall on the toilet— I don’t sit; I fall like a carcass, feeling my butt accommodate the rim. Then I put my head in my hands and breathe out as I, well, y’know, piss. I always try to enjoy it, to feel it come out and realize that it’s my body doing something it has to do, like eating, although I’m not too good at that. I bury my face in my hands and wish that it could go on forever because it feels good. You do it and it’s done. It doesn’t take any effort or any planning. You don’t put it off. That would be really screwed up, I think. If you had such problems that you didn’t pee. Like being anorexic, except with urine. If you held it in as self-punishment. I wonder if anyone does that? I finish up and flush, reaching behind me, my head still down. Then I get up and turn on the light. (Did anyone notice I was in here in the dark? Did they see the lack of light under the crack and notice it like a roach? Did Nia see?) Then I look in the mirror. I look so normal. I look like I’ve always looked, like I did before the fall of last year. Dark hair and dark eyes and one snaggled tooth. Big eyebrows that meet in the middle. A long nose, sort of twisted. Pupils that are naturally large—it’s not the pot— which blend into the dark brown to make two big saucer eyes, holes in me. Wisps of hair above my upper lip. This is Craig. And I always look like I’m about to cry. I put on the hot water and splash it at my face to feel something. In a few seconds I’m going to have to go back and face the crowd. But I can sit in the dark on the toilet a little more, can’t I? I always manage to make a trip to the bathroom take five minutes.
”
”
Ned Vizzini (It's Kind of a Funny Story)
“
In our interpersonal relations we should never forget that all our associates are human beings and hunger for appreciation. It is the legal tender that all souls enjoy. Try leaving a friendly trail of little sparks of gratitude on your daily trips. You
”
”
Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People)
“
and then there are days when the simple act of breathing leaves you exhausted. it seems easier to give up on this life. the thought of disappearing brings you peace. for so long i was lost in a place where there was no sun. where there grew no flowers. but every once in a while out of the darkness something i loved would emerge and bring me to life again. witnessing a starry sky. the lightness of laughing with old friends. a reader who told me the poems had saved their life. yet there i was struggling to save my own. my darlings. living is difficult. it is difficult for everybody. and it is at that moment when living feels like crawling through a pin-sized hole. that we must resist the urge of succumbing to bad memories. refuse to bow before bad months or bad years. cause our eyes are starving to feast on this world. there are so many turquoise bodies of water left for us to dive in. there is family. blood or chosen. the possibility of falling in love. with people and places. hills high as the moon. valleys that roll into new worlds. and road trips. i find it deeply important to accept that we are not the masters of this place. we are her visitors. and like guests let’s enjoy this place like a garden. let us treat it with a gentle hand. so the ones after us can experience it too. let’s find our own sun. grow our own flowers. the universe delivered us with the light and the seeds. we might not hear it at times but the music is always on. it just needs to be turned louder. for as long as there is breath in our lungs—we must keep dancing.
”
”
Rupi Kaur (The Sun and Her Flowers)
“
I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness―in a landscape selected at random―is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern―to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal. ― Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited ( Everyman's Library; Illustrated edition, March 23, 1999) Oribinally published January 1, 1966.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov (Speak, Memory)
“
If you have thirty dollars and rent is eighty, there’s no point in saving any of it. Drink till you’re drunk and pay for a ride home. You might as well enjoy your trip to the bottom. It’s when you’ve got eighty-seven dollars and the rent’s eighty that you need to save.
”
”
Ryan David Jahn (Good Neighbors)
“
But mostly, it’s hard to enjoy the faux–acid trip because I keep running into the same fears I had when I used to take psychedelics for real, like, What if this feeling never goes away? and What if I’m like this forever? I’m always scared that every feeling is going to be permanent.
”
”
Melissa Broder (So Sad Today: Personal Essays)
“
If you’re an introvert, find your flow by using your gifts. You have the power of persistence, the tenacity to solve complex problems, and the clear-sightedness to avoid pitfalls that trip others up. You enjoy relative freedom from the temptations of superficial prizes like money and status.
”
”
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
The Dilemma
of Human Suffering Nothing external ensures freedom from suffering. Even when we human beings possess all the things we typically use to gauge external success—great looks, loving parents, terrific children, financial security, a caring spouse—it may not be enough. Humans can be warm, well fed, dry, physically well—and still be miserable. Humans can enjoy forms of excitement and entertainment unknown in the nonhuman world and out of reach for all but a fraction of the population—high-definition TVs, sports cars, exotic trips to the Caribbean—and still be in excruciating psychological pain.
”
”
Steven C. Hayes (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: The Process and Practice of Mindful Change)
“
If you’re an introvert, find your flow by using your gifts. You have the power of persistence, the tenacity to solve complex problems, and the clear-sightedness to avoid pitfalls that trip others up. You enjoy relative freedom from the temptations of superficial prizes like money and status. Indeed, your biggest challenge may be to fully harness your strengths. You may be so busy trying to appear like a zestful, reward-sensitive extrovert that you undervalue your own talents, or feel underestimated by those around you. But when you’re focused on a project that you care about, you probably find that your energy is boundless.
”
”
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
As far as I could tell, this movie was about parents who had two cute children they were determined to spend as little time with as possible. And so they hire a woman who constantly gaslights the kids and makes them doubt their own sanity; she takes them on fantastical trips, then says they never happened. She gives them the powers of flight and time travel, encourages them to surrender to the magic and enjoy themselves, then acts all affronted and accuses them of lying when they mention how fun the adventure was. The whole movie seemed to be introducing the concept of what a nanny was and, at the same time, arguing against ever employing one.
”
”
Jennifer Longo (What I Carry)
“
So much of this trip had been spent gazing at spectacular sights, which always filled me, as this one did now, with agonizing frustration. Why couldn't I simply accept and enjoy beauty? What was it that stirred up this terrible discomfort? ...We agreed it was the impermanence, the inability to possess, the reminder of death.
”
”
Lily King (The Pleasing Hour)
“
Our cab set off down the crowded Victoria Street toward the heart of the city, trundling past drab buildings and gray street corners at an agonizingly slow speed rivaling that of a dying cow. To make the trip even more enjoyable, pungent city scents seeped through the hansom doors—strangely enough also reminding me of a dying cow.
”
”
Tarun Shanker (These Vicious Masks (These Vicious Masks, #1))
“
I started to understand that Mamaw saw returning to Jackson as a duty to endure rather than a source of enjoyment. To me, Jackson was about my uncles, and chasing turtles, and finding peace from the instability that plagued my Ohio existence. Jackson gave me a shared home with Mamaw, a three-hour road trip to tell and listen to stories, and a place where everyone knew me as the grandson of the famous Jim and Bonnie Vance. Jackson was something much different to her. It was the place where she sometimes went hungry as a child, from which she ran in the wake of a teenage pregnancy scandal, and where so many of her friends had given their lives in the mines. I wanted to escape to Jackson; she had escaped from it.
”
”
J.D. Vance (Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis)
“
I have the window seat. In the two seats beside me are two old ladies, old women, each with a knitted cardigan, each with yellowy-white hair and thick-lensed glasses with a chain for around the neck, each with a desiccated mouth lipsticked bright red with bravado... They seem to me amazingly carefree. They have saved up for this trip and they are damn well going to enjoy it, despite the arthritis of one, the swollen legs of the other. They're rambunctious, they're full of beans; they're tough as thirteen, they're innocent and dirty, they don't give a hoot. Responsibilities have fallen away from them, obligations, old hates and grievances; now for a short while they can play again like children, but this time without the pain.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (Cat’s Eye)
“
You may refer to me as Prince Merrick or simply Merrick for this trip. We are just two companions enjoying a simple horse ride together.”
“I don’t bite.”
“I thought…maybe your family would like to have it. To know you are…well cared for and…safe.”
What the prince had done for him…drawing his likeness with such skill and for Cassius’s family…why would he do something like that? He couldn’t make sense of it, not from their time in the barn, nor from their ride today. The truth lingered there, teased the edges of his brain, but Cassius couldn’t let himself believe it. There was no way Prince Merrick could be interested in him. Unless it was as Valor said and what Cassius knew to be true: men sometimes lay with other men, even if just to satisfy their carnal urges
”
”
Riley Hart (Ever After)
“
This is happy! Your face opening is in sad mode. Why, question?'
'Going to be a long trip and I'll be all alone.'
...
'You will miss me, question? I will miss you. You are friend.'
'Yeah. I'm going to miss you.' I take another swig of vodka. 'You're my friend. Heck, you're my best friend. And pretty soon we're going to say goodbye forever.'
He two tapped gloved claws together. They made a muffled sound instead of the usual click that comes along with the dismissive gesture. 'Not forever. We save planets. Then we have Astrophage technology. Visit each other.'
I give a wry smile. 'Can we do all that within fifty Earth years?
'Probably not. Why so fast, question?'
'I only have fifty years or so left to live. Human's don't'- I hiccup- 'don't live long, remember?'
'Oh.' He's quiet for a moment. 'So we enjoy remaining time together, then go save planets. Then we are heroes!'
'Yeah!' I straighten up. I'm a little dizzy now. I've never been much of a drinker, and I'm hitting this vodka harder than I should. 'We're the moss imporn't people in the gal'xy! We're awesome!'
He grabs a nearby wrench and raises it in one of his hands. 'To us!'
I raise the vodka. 'To ush!
”
”
Andy Weir (Project Hail Mary)
“
Catarina hooked her hand around Magnus’s elbow and hauled him away, like a schoolteacher with a misbehaving student. They entered a narrow alcove around the corner, where the music and noise of the party was muffled. She rounded on him.
“I recently treated Tessa for wounds she said were inflicted on her by members of a demon-worshipping cult,” Catarina said. “She told me you were, and I quote, ‘handling’ the cult. What’s going on? Explain.”
Magnus made a face. “I may have had a hand in founding it.”
“How much of a hand?”
“Well, both.”
Catarina bristled. “I specifically told you not to do that!”
“You did?” Magnus said. A bubble of hope grew within him. “You remember what happened?”
She gave him a look of distress. “You don’t?”
“Someone took all my memories around the subject of this cult,” said Magnus. “I don’t know who, or why.”
He sounded more desperate than he would’ve liked, more desperate than he wanted to be. His old friend’s face was full of sympathy.
“I don’t know anything about it,” she said. “I met up with you and Ragnor for a brief vacation. You seemed troubled, but you were trying to laugh it off, the way you always do. You and Ragnor said you had a brilliant idea to start a joke cult. I told you not to do it. That’s it.”
He, Catarina, and Ragnor had taken many trips together, over the centuries. One memorable trip had gotten Magnus banished from Peru. He had always enjoyed those adventures more than any others. Being with his friends almost felt like having a home.
He did not know if there would ever be another trip. Ragnor was dead, and Magnus might have done something terrible.
“Why didn’t you stop me?” he asked. “You usually stop me!”
“I had to take an orphan child across an ocean to save his life.”
“Right,” said Magnus. “That’s a good reason.”
Catarina shook her head. “I took my eyes off you for one second.”
She had worked in mundane hospitals in New York for decades. She saved orphans. She healed the sick. She’d always been the voice of reason in the trio that was Ragnor, Catarina, and Magnus.
“So I planned with Ragnor to start a joke cult, and I guess I did it. Now the joke cult is a real cult, and they have a new leader. It sounds like they’re mixed up with a Greater Demon.”
Even to Catarina, he wouldn’t say the name of his father.
“Sounds like the joke has gotten a little out of hand,” Catarina said dryly.
“Sounds like I’m the punch line.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses, #1))
“
He handed her a plastic container of dried fruit Loreen had packed for the trip to use as a steering wheel so she could practice matching the turns....Fan's arms began to ache from holding up the container but she was beginning to enjoy herself, too, feeling an unlikely liberty and exhilaration, which if you think about it, can be seen as a good approximation of this life, where control is more believed than actual.
”
”
Chang-rae Lee (On Such a Full Sea)
“
Honestly, I wanted everyone to have what I had. Okay, so maybe not the whole insane, dark witch after me or the vampire attacks or the werewolves on a power trip, but the mate thing…that was the best. And the friends weren’t so bad. All in all, I was lucky. Lucky to be alive. To have the family and friends that I did. To have Dastien. War was coming, and until it was here, I planned to enjoy every minute I had with the people I loved the most.
”
”
Aileen Erin (Alpha Divided (Alpha Girl #3))
“
But I’m different now than I was then. Just like I was different at the end of the trip than I’d been at the beginning. And I’ll be different tomorrow than I am today. And what that means is that I can never replicate that trip. Even if I went to the same places and met the same people, it wouldn’t be the same. My experience wouldn’t be the same. To me, that’s what traveling should be about. Meeting people, learning to not only appreciate a different culture, but really enjoy it like a local, following whatever impulse strikes you. So how could I recommend a trip to someone else, if I don’t even know what to expect? My advice would be to make a list of places on some index cards, shuffle them, and pick any five at random. Then just… go and see what happens. If you have the right mind-set, it doesn’t matter where you end up or how much money you brought. It’ll be something you’ll remember forever.
”
”
Nicholas Sparks (The Choice)
“
Little Blaine: Welcome to Blaine. Praise the Imperium! Please make sure your transit card is available for collection and remember that false boarding is a serious crime punishable by law. We hope you enjoy your trip. (message repeats, speeding up, becoming the chatter of a human chipmunk and then a high-pitched, gabbly whine until a brief electronic curse cuts it out entirely)
Big Blaine: I SUPPOSE WE CAN DISPENSE WITH THAT BORING OLD SHIT, DON'T YOU?
”
”
Stephen King (The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower, #3))
“
I wonder if you’ll really enjoy this trip,” Carol said. “You so prefer things reflected in a glass, don’t you? You have your private conception of everything. Like that windmill. It’s practically as good as being in Holland to you. I wonder if you’ll even like seeing real mountains and real people.”
Therese felt as crushed as if Carol had accused her of lying. She felt Carol meant, too, that she had a private conception of her, and that Carol resented it.
”
”
Patricia Highsmith (The Price of Salt)
“
You’ll need a chaperone. I have no doubt that Great-Aunt Clara would stay at the terrace with you, or perhaps—”
“I’ll invite old Mrs. Smedley from the village,” Livia said. “She’s from a respectable family, and she would enjoy a trip to London.”
Aline frowned. “Dearest, Mrs. Smedley is hard of hearing, and as blind as a bat. A less effective chaperone I couldn’t imagine.”
“Precisely,” Livia said, with such satisfaction that Aline couldn’t help laughing.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Again the Magic (Wallflowers, #0))
“
When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip—to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The flight attendant comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.” “Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.” But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around . . . and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills . . . and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy . . . and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.” And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away . . . because the loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss. But . . . if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things . . . about Holland.
”
”
Lori Gottlieb (Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed)
“
All last night and then this morning, she’d had a feeling like Christmas Eve. She didn’t know what to expect of this trip. She was simultaneously thrilled and scared and hopeful—such a flurry of emotions all at the same time. And then every now and then she would ask herself what on earth she thought she was doing. Also, she was grateful that Peter had decided to come along, but she worried too that he wouldn’t enjoy himself, and that this would dampen her own enjoyment
”
”
Anne Tyler (Clock Dance)
“
Uh - I wanted my own room, out of respect for the family. With us being unmarried.”
“Oh. Well, that’s unnecessary. You’re welcome to share and enjoy your trip.” Mamma V drops to a near whisper. “The good lord and everyone else know Benjamino is over thirty years old and has needs.”
I look up at Benji, seeing my own horror reflected in his eyes. I could live a thousand lives and it’d still be too soon to hear Benji’s mother discuss his needs and how welcome I am to meet them.
”
”
Livy Hart (The Great Dating Fake Off)
“
Curran smiled.
“What’s so funny?”
“Your panties have a bow,” he said.
I looked down. I was wearing a short tank top—not mine—and my blue panties with a narrow white strip of lace at the top and a tiny white bow. Would it have killed me to check what I was wearing before I pulled the blanket down? “What’s wrong with bows?”
“Nothing.” He was grinning now. “I expected barbed wire. Or one of those steel chains.”
Wiseass. “I’m secure enough in myself to wear panties with bows on them. Besides, they are comfy and soft.”
“I bet.” He almost purred.
I gulped. Okay, I needed to either crawl back into bed and cover myself with the blanket or get the hell to the bathroom and back. Since I didn’t fancy peeing on myself, the bathroom was my only option.
“I don’t suppose you’d mind giving me a bit of privacy for my trip?”
“Not a chance,” he said.
I tried to get off the bed. Everything was under control until my weight actually hit my legs and then the room decided to crawl sideways. Curran caught me. His arm hugged my back, his touch sending an electric shiver along my skin. Oh no.
“Need some help, ass kicker?”
“I’m fine, thanks.” I pushed away from him. He held on to me for a second, letting me know that he could restrain me against my will with laughable ease, and let go. I clenched my teeth. Enjoy it while it lasts. I’ll be back on my feet soon.
I walked away from him, successfully maintaining vertical position, and zeroed in on the nearest door.
“That’s the closet.
”
”
Ilona Andrews (Magic Burns (Kate Daniels, #2))
“
For some, Halloween isn’t just a holiday; it’s a lifestyle, a season. Being spooky and dressing in your favorite horror movie tees and collecting everything jack-o’-lantern and Halloween has become a normal thing for a lot of people. You can’t do that for any other holiday. Every day is Christmas?—wouldn’t work. It would be really weird to see someone walking around with a snowman shirt and a pair of elf ears in July. Either that person really enjoys Christmas or he or she is on a bad trip.
”
”
E. Reyes (Devil's Hill: An Anthology)
“
Several years ago I was lecturing in British Columbia. Dr [Simon] Wessely was speaking and he gave a thoroughly enjoyable lecture on M.E. and CFS. He had the hundreds of staff physicians laughing themselves silly over the invented griefs of the M.E. and CFS patients who according to Dr Wessely had no physical illness what so ever but a lot of misguided imagination. I was appalled at his sheer effectiveness, the amazing control he had over the minds of the staid physicians….His message was very clear and very simple. If I can paraphrase him: “M.E. and CFS are non-existent illnesses with no pathology what-so-ever. There is no reason why they all cannot return to work tomorrow.
The next morning I left by car with my crew and arrived in Kelowna British Columbia that afternoon. We were staying at a patient’s house who had severe M.E. with dysautanomia and was for all purposes bed ridden or house bound most of the day. That morning she had received a phone call from her insurance company in Toronto. (Toronto is approximately 2742 miles from Vancouver). The insurance call was as follows and again I paraphrase:
“Physicians at a University of British Columbia University have demonstrated that there is no pathological or physiological basis for M.E. or CFS. Your disability benefits have been stopped as of this month. You will have to pay back the funds we have sent you previously. We will contact you shortly with the exact amount you owe us”.
That night I spoke to several patients or their spouses came up to me and told me they had received the same message. They were in understandable fear.
What is important about this story is that at that meeting it was only Dr Wessely who was speaking out against M.E. and CFS and how … were the insurance companies in Toronto and elsewhere able to obtain this information and get back to the patients within a 24 hour period if Simon Wessely was not working for the insurance industry… I understand that it was also the insurance industry who paid for Dr Wessely’s trip to Vancouver.
”
”
Byron Hyde
“
in Howard was in one of those moods during which crazy ideas sound perfectly sensible. A bullish, handsome man with decisive eyebrows and more hair than he could find use for, Lin had a great deal of money and a habit of having things go his way. So many things in his life had gone his way that it no longer occurred to him not to be in a festive mood, and he spent much of his time celebrating the general goodness of things and sitting with old friends telling fat happy lies. But things had not gone Lin’s way lately, and he was not accustomed to the feeling. Lin wanted in the worst way to whip his father at racing, to knock his Seabiscuit down a peg or two, and he believed he had the horse to do it in Ligaroti.1 He was sure enough about it to have made some account-closing bets on the horse, at least one as a side wager with his father, and he was a great deal poorer for it. The last race really ate at him. Ligaroti had been at Seabiscuit’s throat in the Hollywood Gold Cup when another horse had bumped him right out of his game. He had streaked down the stretch to finish fourth and had come back a week later to score a smashing victory over Whichcee in a Hollywood stakes race, firmly establishing himself as the second-best horse in the West. Bing Crosby and Lin were certain that with a weight break and a clean trip, Ligaroti had Seabiscuit’s measure. Charles Howard didn’t see it that way. Since the race, he had been going around with pockets full of clippings about Seabiscuit. Anytime anyone came near him, he would wave the articles around and start gushing, like a new father. The senior Howard probably didn’t hold back when Lin was around. He was immensely proud of Lin’s success with Ligaroti, but he enjoyed tweaking his son, and he was good at it. He had once given Lin a book for Christmas entitled What You Know About Horses. The pages were blank. One night shortly after the Hollywood Gold Cup, Lin was sitting at a restaurant table across from his father and Bing Crosby. They were apparently talking about the Gold Cup, and Lin was sitting there looking at his father and doing a slow burn.
”
”
Laura Hillenbrand (Seabiscuit: An American Legend)
“
Training builds discipline, perseverance and patience. Mountains are climbed with these superior characteristics, lives are saved and nations are shaped. Tough exercise puts order and rhythm in our lives, diminishing confusion and reducing stress, and that’s worth more than a few trips to a psychiatrist’s couch. As quality is added to life, so is it extended with useful and enjoyable years. When once we said, ‘I can’t,’ after gaining fitness and well-being through dedicated exercise, we say, ‘Don’t just sit there, let’s get moving.
”
”
Dave Draper (A Glimpse in the Rear View)
“
A white-winged gull flew by, with the flash of sunshine on its silvery breast; Beth watched it till it vanished, and her eyes were full of sadness. A little gray-coated sand-bird came tripping over the beach, "peeping" softly to itself, as if enjoying the sun and sea; it came quite close to Beth, looked at her with a friendly eye, and sat upon a warm stone dressing its wet feathers, quite at home. Beth smiled, and felt comforted, for the tiny thing seemed to offer its small friendship, and remind her that a pleasant world was still to be enjoyed.
”
”
Louisa May Alcott
“
Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert talks about this phenomenon in his 2006 book, Stumbling on Happiness. “The greatest achievement of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real,” he writes. “The frontal lobe—the last part of the human brain to evolve, the slowest to mature, and the first to deteriorate in old age—is a time machine that allows each of us to vacate the present and experience the future before it happens.” This time travel into the future—otherwise known as anticipation—accounts for a big chunk of the happiness gleaned from any event. As you look forward to something good that is about to happen, you experience some of the same joy you would in the moment. The major difference is that the joy can last much longer. Consider that ritual of opening presents on Christmas morning. The reality of it seldom takes more than an hour, but the anticipation of seeing the presents under the tree can stretch out the joy for weeks. One study by several Dutch researchers, published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life in 2010, found that vacationers were happier than people who didn’t take holiday trips. That finding is hardly surprising. What is surprising is the timing of the happiness boost. It didn’t come after the vacations, with tourists bathing in their post-trip glow. It didn’t even come through that strongly during the trips, as the joy of travel mingled with the stress of travel: jet lag, stomach woes, and train conductors giving garbled instructions over the loudspeaker. The happiness boost came before the trips, stretching out for as much as two months beforehand as the holiday goers imagined their excursions. A vision of little umbrella-sporting drinks can create the happiness rush of a mini vacation even in the midst of a rainy commute. On some level, people instinctively know this. In one study that Gilbert writes about, people were told they’d won a free dinner at a fancy French restaurant. When asked when they’d like to schedule the dinner, most people didn’t want to head over right then. They wanted to wait, on average, over a week—to savor the anticipation of their fine fare and to optimize their pleasure. The experiencing self seldom encounters pure bliss, but the anticipating self never has to go to the bathroom in the middle of a favorite band’s concert and is never cold from too much air conditioning in that theater showing the sequel to a favorite flick. Planning a few anchor events for a weekend guarantees you pleasure because—even if all goes wrong in the moment—you still will have derived some pleasure from the anticipation. I love spontaneity and embrace it when it happens, but I cannot bank my pleasure solely on it. If you wait until Saturday morning to make your plans for the weekend, you will spend a chunk of your Saturday working on such plans, rather than anticipating your fun. Hitting the weekend without a plan means you may not get to do what you want. You’ll use up energy in negotiations with other family members. You’ll start late and the museum will close when you’ve only been there an hour. Your favorite restaurant will be booked up—and even if, miraculously, you score a table, think of how much more you would have enjoyed the last few days knowing that you’d be eating those seared scallops on Saturday night!
”
”
Laura Vanderkam (What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend: A Short Guide to Making the Most of Your Days Off (A Penguin Special from Portfo lio))
“
You have the power of persistence, the tenacity to solve complex problems, and the clear-sightedness to avoid pitfalls that trip others up. You enjoy relative freedom from the temptations of superficial prizes like money and status. Indeed, your biggest challenge may be to fully harness your strengths. You may be so busy trying to appear like a zestful, reward-sensitive extrovert that you undervalue your own talents, or feel underestimated by those around you. But when you’re focused on a project that you care about, you probably find that your energy is boundless.
”
”
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
You never told me how everyone liked the sirupskake."
"It was splendid!" she said, her smile returning. "Your fa- my husband asked that you bake another one soon for me to bring him."
Freya was always tripping over her words like that. Anna did the same thing herself. She chalked it up to wanting to say so much in a short amount of time. She was like a pot of melting chocolate: the words bubbled over.
"Did he like the candied oranges I placed on top?"
"Yes! He said he'd never seen it done that way before."
Anna shrugged. "I love to put my own spin on recipes. I like to be unique, if you haven't noticed."
"I have." Freya smiled. "I think my husband would enjoy meeting you. You and I have a similar joyful spirit, while he"- she sighed- "carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, I'm afraid. Much like my daughter."
Freya talked about her daughter a lot but unfortunately never brought her along for visits. From what Anna knew, the girl seemed whip smart and serious. Anna wished she could meet her so she could shake her up a bit. Everyone needed to let their hair down sometimes. Plus it would be nice to have a friend close to her own age.
”
”
Jen Calonita (Conceal, Don't Feel)
“
Until that rainy Sunday at the movies 31 years ago, for me, companionship had been a mandate for life’s good times. After Orca, it became a choice. My trip to the theater helped me to distinguish between loneliness (experienced by default), and solitude (choosing when and how to enjoy my own company), as I began a journey of engaging the world on my own terms. Over the years, that journey deepened as I traveled life’s roads with increasing independence and confidence, whether I was attending graduate school at night while working during the day, buying my first house or changing careers.
”
”
Gina Greenlee (Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments on the Road)
“
I knew how severe I had been and how bad things had been. The one who is doing his work and getting satisfaction from it is not the one the poverty bothers. I thought of bathtubs and showers and toilets that flushed as things that inferior people to us had or that you enjoyed when you made trips, which we often made. There was always the public bathhouse down at the foot of the street by the river. My wife had never complained once about these things any more than she cried about Chèvre d’Or when he fell. She had cried for the horse, I remembered, but not for the money. I had been stupid when she needed a grey lamb jacket and had loved it once she had bought it. I had been stupid about other things too. It was all part of the fight against poverty that you never win except by not spending. Especially if you buy pictures instead of clothes. But then we did not think ever of ourselves as poor. We did not accept it. We thought we were superior people and other people that we looked down on and rightly mistrusted were rich. It had never seemed strange to me to wear sweatshirts for underwear to keep warm. It only seemed odd to the rich. We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.
”
”
Ernest Hemingway (A Moveable Feast)
“
If you’re an introvert, find your flow by using your gifts. You have the power of persistence, the tenacity to solve complex problems, and the clear-sightedness to avoid pitfalls that trip others up. You enjoy relative freedom from the temptations of superficial prizes like money and status. Indeed, your biggest challenge may be to fully harness your strengths. You may be so busy trying to appear like a zestful, reward-sensitive extrovert that you undervalue your own talents, or feel underestimated by those around you. But when you’re focused on a project that you care about, you probably find that your energy is boundless
”
”
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
If you're an introvert, find your flow by using your gifts. You have the power of persistence, the tenacity to solve complex problems, and the clear-sightedness to avoid pitfalls that trip others up. You enjoy relative freedom from the temptations of superficial prizes like money and status. Indeed, your biggest challenge may be to fully harness your strengths. You may be so busy trying to appear like a zestful, reward-sensitive extrovert that you undervalue your own talents, or feel underestimated by those around you. But when you're focused on a project that you care about, you probably find that your energy is boundless.
”
”
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness-- in a landscape selected at random-- is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern--to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal.
--*Speak, Memory*, p.139
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov
“
A slave, Marcus Cato said, should be working when he is not sleeping. It does not matter whether his work in itself is good in itself—for slaves, at least. This sentiment still survives, and it has piled up mountains of useless drudgery.
I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think. A rich man who happens to be intellectually honest, if he is questioned about the improvement of working conditions, usually says something like this:
"We know that poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness. But don’t expect us to do anything about it. We are sorry fort you lower classes, just as we are sorry for a cat with the mange, of your condition. We feel that you are much safer as you are. The present state of affairs suits us, and we are not going to take the risk of setting you free, even by an extra hour a day. So, dear brothers, since evidently you must sweat to pay for our trips to Italy, sweat and be damned to you.”
This is particularly the attitude of intelligent, cultivated people; one can read the substance if it in a hundred essays. Very few cultivated people have less than (say) four hundred pounds a year, and naturally they side with the rich, because they imagine that any liberty conceded to the poor is a threat to their own liberty. foreseeing some dismal Marxian Utopia as the alternative, the educated man prefers to keep things as they are. Possibly he does not like his fellow-rich very much, but he supposes that even the vulgarest of them are less inimical to his pleasures, more his kind of people, than the poor, and that he had better stand by them. It is this fear of a supposedly dangerous mob that makes nearly all intelligent people conservative in their opinions.
Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothings else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty? In my copy of Villon’s poems the editor has actually thought it necessary to explain the line “Ne pain ne voyent qu'aux fenestres” by a footnote; so remote is even hunger from the educated man’s experience. From this ignorance a superstitious fear of the mob results quite naturally. The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day’s liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. “Anything,” he thinks, “any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose.
”
”
George Orwell (Down and Out in Paris and London)
“
I always loved Woolworth’s because of the pick ’n’ mix; the memory of all those cola bottles, cherry lips, and flying saucers still makes me smile. Lily’s favorite shops were Our Price, where she went to buy the latest cassettes and music posters, and Tammy Girl and C&A, where she and Rose shopped for clothes. I always enjoyed our trips to Blockbuster Video—even if I was rarely allowed to choose which film we would rent—and visits to the little independent bookshop with Nana were my favorite outings. Buying books was the only form of shopping she ever enjoyed. It makes me sad to realize that none of those shops exist now. So many high streets are more like ghost towns these days.
”
”
Alice Feeney (Daisy Darker)
“
William Slothrop was a peculiar bird. He took off from Boston, heading west in true Imperial style, in 1634 or -5, sick and tired of the Winthrop machine, convinced he could preach as well as anybody in the hierarchy even if he hadn’t been officially ordained. The ramparts of the Berkshires stopped everybody else at the time, but not William. He just started climbing. He was one of the very first Europeans in. After they settled in Berkshire, he and his son John got a pig operation going—used to drive hogs right back down the great escarpment, back over the long pike to Boston, drive them just like sheep or cows. By the time they got to market those hogs were so skinny it was hardly worth it, but William wasn’t really in it so much for the money as just for the trip itself. He enjoyed the road, the mobility, the chance encounters of the day—Indians, trappers, wenches, hill people—and most of all just being with those pigs. They were good company. Despite the folklore and the injunctions in his own Bible, William came to love their nobility and personal freedom, their gift for finding comfort in the mud on a hot day—pigs out on the road, in company together, were everything Boston wasn’t, and you can imagine what the end of the journey, the weighing, slaughter and dreary pigless return back up into the hills must’ve been like for William. Of course he took it as a parable—knew that the squealing bloody horror at the end of the pike was in exact balance to all their happy sounds, their untroubled pink eyelashes and kind eyes, their smiles, their grace in crosscountry movement. It was a little early for Isaac Newton, but feelings about action and reaction were in the air. William must’ve been waiting for the one pig that wouldn’t die, that would validate all the ones who’d had to, all his Gadarene swine who’d rushed into extinction like lemmings, possessed not by demons but by trust for men, which the men kept betraying . . . possessed by innocence they couldn’t lose . . . by faith in William as another variety of pig, at home with the Earth, sharing the same gift of life. . . .
”
”
Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow)
“
They didn't do things the way you would have. They're not you. That's what their declaration-of-independence rants were all about,when you used to fight, and why they kept telling us they want to do it their way.....Well, now, I get to do it my way......Well, now, I get to do it my way...And you know what? It's fun!...I can do anything I damn well please. It's called freedom. And I earned every minute of it. And that's the best feeling in the world. To me, that's our long-delayed reward for decades of hands-on parenting. And for the tape running through the backs of our minds, in mommy lobe, for the rest of our lives...Because it's really about being a woman at the wheel. We're always moving ahead. Enjoy the trip.
”
”
Lisa Scottoline (My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman)
“
But what Liberty would remember best was the feel of his own small hand gathered in the warm, comforting grip of the man, those times alone when all of Thatcher’s potent attention was concentrated on his son, as something inside Liberty always insisted, occasionally to contrary evidence that it should be, their trips together, their talks, the information about the sorry state of the world Thatcher shared reluctantly, almost sadly, with his son and heir out of a conviction that I do not enjoy having to tell you these things, but it is important you hear this news, no matter how distasteful, because, unfortunately, it is the truth, whereas it is lies and the promulgation of lies that will make you and the people in your life sick.
”
”
Stephen Wright (The Amalgamation Polka)
“
Globe-trotting is just the chance to feel bored more places, faster. A boring breakfast in Bali. A predictable lunch in Paris. A tedious dinner in New York, and falling asleep, drunk, during just another blow job in L.A. Too many peak experiences, too close together. “Like the Getty Museum,” Inky says. “Lather, rinse, and repeat,” says the Global Airlines wino. In the boring new world of everyone in the upper-middle class, Inky says, nothing helps you enjoy your bidet like peeing in the street for a few hours. Give up bathing until you stink, and just a hot shower feels as good as a trip to Sonoma for a detoxifying mud enema. “Think of it,” Inky says, “as a kind of poverty sorbet, a nice little window of misery that helps you enjoy your real life.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Haunted)
“
Even if these two didn't share the same short dark hair, the same violet eyes, and the same flawless olive skin, I'd know they were related because of their most dominant feature-their habit of staring.
"I'm Chloe. This is my friend Emma, who apparently just head-butted your boyfriend Galen. We were in the middle of apologizing."
I pinch the bridge of my nose and count to ten-Mississippi, but fifty-Mississippi seems more appropriate. Fifty allows more time to fantasize about ripping one of Chloe's new waves out.
"Emma, what's wrong? Your nose isn't bleeding, is it?" She chirps, enjoying herself.
Tingles gather at my chin as Galen lifts it with the crook of his finger. "Is your nose bleeding? Let me see," he says. He tilts my head side to side, leans closer to get a good look.
And I meet my threshold for embarrassment. Tripping is bad enough. Tripping into someone is much worse. But if that someone has a body that could make sculpted statues jealous-and thinks you've broken your nose on one of his pecs-well, that's when tripping runs a distant second to humane euthanasia.
He is clearly surprised when I swat his hand and step away. His girlfriend/relative seems taken aback that I mimic his stance-crossed arms and deep frown. I doubt she has ever met her threshold for embarrassment.
"I said I was fine. No blood, no foul."
"This is my sister Rayna," he says, as if the conversation steered naturally in that direction. She smiles at me as if forced at knifepoint, the kind of smile that comes purely from manners, like the smile you give your grandmother when she gives you the rotten-cabbage-colored sweater she's been knitting. I think of that sweater now as I return her smile.
”
”
Anna Banks (Of Poseidon (The Syrena Legacy, #1))
“
The BFMSS [British False Memory Syndrome Society]
The founder of the 'false memory' movement in Britain is an accused father. Two of his adult daughters say that Roger Scotford sexually abused them in childhood. He denied this and responded by launching a spectacular counter-attack, which enjoyed apparently unlimited and uncritical air time in the mass media and provoke Establishment institutions that had made no public utterance about abuse to pronounce on the accused adults' repudiation of it.
p171-172
The 'British False Memory Syndrome Society' lent a scientific aura to the allegations - the alchemy of 'falsehood' and 'memory' stirred with disease and science. The new name pathologised the accusers and drew attention away from the accused. But the so-called syndrome attacked not only the source of the stories but also the alliances between the survivors' movement and practitioners in the health, welfare, and the criminal justice system. The allies were represented no longer as credulous dupes but as malevolent agents who imported a miasma of the 'false memories' into the imaginations of distressed victims.
Roger Scotford was a former naval officer turned successful property developer living in a Georgian house overlooking an uninterrupted valley in luscious middle England. He was a rich man and was able to give up everything to devote himself to the crusade.
He says his family life was normal and that he had been a 'Dr Spock father'. But his first wife disagrees and his second wife, although believing him innocent, describes his children's childhood as very difficult. His daughters say they had a significantly unhappy childhood.
In the autumn of 1991, his middle daughter invited him to her home to confront him with the story of her childhood. She was supported by a friend and he was invited to listen and then leave. She told him that he had abused her throughout her youth. Scotford, however, said that the daughter went to a homeopath for treatment for thrush/candida and then blamed the condition on him. He also said his daughter, who was in her twenties, had been upset during a recent trip to France to buy a property. He said he booked them into a hotel where they would share a room. This was not odd, he insisted, 'to me it was quite natural'. He told journalists and scholars the same story, in the same way, reciting the details of her allegations, drawing attention to her body and the details of what she said he had done to her. Some seemed to find the detail persuasive. Several found it spooky.
p172-173
”
”
Beatrix Campbell (Stolen Voices: The People and Politics Behind the Campaign to Discredit Childhood Testimony)
“
I wonder if you’ll really enjoy this trip,” Carol said. “You so prefer things reflected in a glass, don’t you? You have your private conception of everything. Like that windmill. It’s practically as good as being in Holland to you. I wonder if you’ll even like seeing real mountains and real people.”
Therese felt as crushed as if Carol had accused her of lying. She felt Carol meant, too, that she had a private conception of her, and that Carol resented it. Real people? She thought suddenly of Mrs. Robichek.
And she had fled her because she was hideous.
“How do you ever expect to create anything if you get all your experiences second hand?” Carol asked, her voice soft and even, and yet merciless.
Carol made her feel she had done nothing, was nothing at all, like a wisp of smoke. Carol had lived like a human being, had married, and had a child.
”
”
Patricia Highsmith (The Price of Salt)
“
Years ago, when my wife and I were dating, she took me on a day trip to the seaside at Brighton. It was my first exposure to the British at play in a marine environment. It was a fairly warm day--I remember the sun came out for whole moments at a time--and large numbers of people were in the sea. They were shrieking with what I took to be pleasure, but now realize was agony. Naively, I pulled off my T-shirt and sprinted into the water. It was like running into liquid nitrogen. It was the only time in my life in which I have moved like someone does when a movie film is reversed. I dived into the water and then straight back out again, backward, and have never gone into an English sea again.
Since that day, I have never assumed that anything is fun just because it looks like the English are enjoying themselves doing it, and mostly I have been right.
”
”
Bill Bryson (The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain)
“
And so I suppose now, my Fellow Reader, comes the moment I assume you've all been waiting for - the Magnum Opus of this merry tale of absurd and inflammatory nonsense in which our Holy Protagonist sets out for adventure to find himself and seek a moment of astounding enlightenment amid daring trials and tribulations and perils and dangers and gallant quests and encounters with fascinating people and enlightening conversations and unforgettable sights and upon return from this great and wild journey a new discovery of himself and the world around him and an opportunity for you Oh Holy Noble Reader to live vicariously through these incredible experiences and to dream of YOUR one day when YOU will have the courage to undertake such a journey yourself. So sit back and enjoy the ride because Costa Rica has been one zany insaney psychobrainy fuck of a holy trip.
”
”
Yousef Alqamoussi (Chapter One: Costa Rica)
“
It had been obvious to me from a young age that my parents didn’t like one another. Couples in films and on television performed household tasks together and talked fondly about their shared memories. I couldn’t remember seeing my mother and father in the same room unless they were eating. My father had “moods.” Sometimes during his moods my mother would take me to stay with her sister Bernie in Clontarf, and they would sit in the kitchen talking and shaking their heads while I watched my cousin Alan play Ocarina of Time. I was aware that alcohol played a role in these incidents, but its precise workings remained mysterious to me. I enjoyed our visits to Bernie’s house. While we were there I was allowed to eat as many digestive biscuits as I wanted, and when we returned, my father was either gone out or else feeling very contrite. I liked it when he was gone out. During his periods of contrition he tried to make conversation with me about school and I had to choose between humoring and ignoring him. Humoring him made me feel dishonest and weak, a soft target. Ignoring him made my heart beat very hard and afterward I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror. Also it made my mother cry. It was hard to be specific about what my father’s moods consisted of. Sometimes he would go out for a couple of days and when he came back in we’d find him taking money out of my Bank of Ireland savings jar, or our television would be gone. Other times he would bump into a piece of furniture and then lose his temper. He hurled one of my school shoes right at my face once after he tripped on it. It missed and went in the fireplace and I watched it smoldering like it was my own face smoldering. I learned not to display fear, it only provoked him. I was cold like a fish. Afterward my mother said: why didn’t you lift it out of the fire? Can’t you at least make an effort? I shrugged. I would have let my real face burn in the fire too. When he came home from work in the evening I used to freeze entirely still, and after a few seconds I would know with complete certainty if he was in one of the moods or not. Something about the way he closed the door or handled his keys would let me know, as clearly as if he yelled the house down. I’d say to my mother: he’s in a mood now. And she’d say: stop that. But she knew as well as I did. One day, when I was twelve, he turned up unexpectedly after school to pick me up. Instead of going home, we drove away from town, toward Blackrock. The DART went past on our left and I could see the Poolbeg towers out the car window. Your mother wants to break up our family, my father said. Instantly I replied: please let me out of the car. This remark later became evidence in my father’s theory that my mother had poisoned me against him.
”
”
Sally Rooney (Conversations with Friends)
“
Once he traveled to a village to purchase a large rice harvest, but when he arrived the rice had already been sold to another tradesman. Nevertheless, Siddhartha remained in this village for several days; he arranged a feast for the peasants, distributed copper coins among their children, helped celebrate a marriage, and returned from his trip in the best of spirits.
Kamaswami reproached him for not having returned home at once, saying he had wasted money and time.
Siddhartha answered, "Do not scold me, dear friend! Never has anything been achieved by scolding. If there are losses, let me bear them. I am very pleased with this journey I made the acquaintance of many different people, a Brahmin befriended me, children rode on my knees, peasants showed me their fields, and no one took me for a tradesman."
"How very lovely!" Kamaswami cried out indignantly. "But in fact a tradesman is just what you are! Or did you undertake this journey solely for your own pleasure?"
"Certainly." Siddhartha laughed. "Certainly I undertook the journey for my pleasure. Why else? I got to know new people and regions, enjoyed kindness and trust, found friendship. You see, dear friend, had I been Kamaswami, I'd have hurried home in bad spirits the moment I saw my purchase foiled, and indeed money and time would have been lost. But by staying on as I did, I had some agreeable days, learned things, and enjoyed pleasures, harming neither myself nor others with haste and bad spirits. And if ever I should return to this place, perhaps to buy some future harvest or for whatever other purpose, I shall be greeted happily and in friendship by friendly people and I shall praise myself for not having displayed haste and displeasure on my first visit. So be content, friend, and do not harm yourself by scolding! When the day arrives when you see that this Siddhartha is bringing you harm, just say the word and Siddhartha will be on his way. But until that day, let us be satisfied with each other.
”
”
Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)
“
Steven’s words slush together as he gets to his feet. “Crossing this one off the bucket list.” Then he
unbuckles his belt and grabs the waist of his pants—yanking the suckers down to his ankles—tighty
whities and all.
Every guy in the car holds up his hands to try to block the spectacle. We groan and complain. “My
eyes! They burn!”
“Put the boa constrictor back in his cage, man.”
“This is not the ass I planned on seeing tonight.”
Our protests fall on deaf ears. Steven is a man on a mission. Wordlessly, he squats and shoves his lilywhite
ass out the window—mooning the gaggle of grannies in the car next to us.
I bet you thought this kind of stuff only happened in movies.
He grins while his ass blows in the wind for a good ninety seconds, ensuring optimal viewage. Then
he pulls his slacks up, turns around, and leans out the window, laughing. “Enjoying the full moon, ladies?”
Wow. Steven usually isn’t the type to visually assault the elderly.
Without warning, his crazy cackling is cut off. He’s silent for a beat, then I hear him choke out a single
strangled word.
“Grandma?”
Then he’s diving back into the limo, his face grayish, dazed, and totally sober. He stares at the floor.
“No way that just happened.”
Matthew and I look at each other hopefully, then we scramble to the window. Sure enough, in the
driver’s seat of that big old Town Car is none other than Loretta P. Reinhart. Mom to George; Grandma to
Steven.
What are the fucking odds, huh?
Loretta was always a cranky old bitch. No sense of humor. Even when I was a kid she hated me.
Thought I was a bad influence on her precious grandchild.
Don’t know where she got that idea from.
She moved out to Arizona years ago. Like a lot of women her age, she still enjoys a good tug on the
slot machine—hence her frequent trips to Sin City. Apparently this is one such trip.
Matthew and I wave and smile and in fourth-grader-like, singsong harmony call out, “Hi, Mrs.
Reinhart.”
She shakes one wrinkled fist in our direction. Then her poofy-haired companion in the backseat flips
us the bird. I’m pretty sure it’s the funniest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen.
The two of us collapse back into our seats, laughing hysterically.
”
”
Emma Chase (Tied (Tangled, #4))
“
Care of the soul doesn’t mean wallowing in the symptom, but it does mean trying to learn from depression what qualities the soul needs. Even further, it attempts to weave those depressive qualities into the fabric of life so that the aesthetics of Saturn—coldness, isolation, darkness, emptiness—makes a contribution to the texture of everyday life. In learning from depression, a person might dress in Saturn’s black to mimic his mood. He might go on a trip alone as a response to a saturnine feeling. He might build a grotto in his yard as a place of saturnine retreat. Or, more internally, he might let his depressive thoughts and feelings just be. All of these actions would be a positive response to a visitation of Saturn’s depressive emotion. They would be concrete ways to care for the soul in its darker beauty. In so doing, we might find a way into the mystery of this emptiness of the heart. We might also discover that depression has its own angel, a guiding spirit whose job it is to carry the soul away to its remote places where it finds unique insight and enjoys a special vision.
”
”
Thomas Moore (Care of the Soul: Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life)
“
The 8 Play Personalities The Collector loves to gather and organise, enjoying activities like searching for rare plants, or rummaging around in archives or garage sales. The Competitor enjoys games and sports, and takes pleasure in trying their best and winning. The Explorer likes to wander, discovering new places and things they’ve never seen, through hiking, road tripping and other adventures. The Creator finds joy in making things, and can spend hours every day drawing, painting, making music, gardening and more. The Storyteller has an active imagination and uses their imagination to entertain others. They’re drawn to activities like writing, dance, theatre and role-playing games. The Joker endeavours to make people laugh, and may play by performing stand-up, doing improv, or just pulling a lot of pranks to make you smile. The Director likes to plan, organise and lead others, and can fit into many different roles and activities, from directing stage performances to running a company, to working in political or social advocacy. The Kinesthete finds play in physical activities like acrobatics, gymnastics and free running.
”
”
Ali Abdaal (Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You)
“
Well, now, if we’d known we were going to have such…ah…gra…that is, illustrious company, we’d have-“
“Swept off the chairs?” Lucinda suggested acidly. “Shoveled off the floor?”
“Lucinda!” Elizabeth whispered desperately. “They didn’t know we were coming.”
“No respectable person would dwell in such a place even for a night,” she snapped, and Elizabeth watched in mingled distress and admiration as the redoubtable woman turned around and directed her attack on their unwilling host. “The responsibility for our being here is yours, whether it was a mistake or not! I shall expect you to rout your servants from their hiding places and have them bring clean linens up to us at once. I shall also expect them to have this squalor remedied by morning! It is obvious from your behavior that you are no gentleman; however, we are ladies, and we shall expect to be treated as such.”
From the corner of her eye Elizabeth had been watching Ian Thornton, who was listening to all of this, his jaw rigid, a muscle beginning to twitch dangerously in the side of his neck.
Lucinda, however, was either unaware of or unconcerned with his reaction, for, as she picked up her skirts and turned toward the stairs, she turned on Jake. “You may show us to our chambers. We wish to retire.”
“Retire!” cried Jake, thunderstruck. “But-but what about supper?” he sputtered.
“You may bring it up to us.”
Elizabeth saw the blank look on Jake’s face, and she endeavored to translate, politely, what the irate woman was saying to the startled red-haired man.
“What Miss Throckmorton-Jones means is that we’re rather exhausted from our trip and not very good company, sir, and so we prefer to dine in our rooms.”
“You will dine,” Ian Thornton said in an awful voice that made Elizabeth freeze, “on what you cook for yourself, madam. If you want clean linens, you’ll get them yourself from the cabinet. If you want clean rooms, clean them! Am I making myself clear?”
“Perfectly!” Elizabeth began furiously, but Lucinda interrupted in a voice shaking with ire: “Are you suggesting, sirrah, that we are to do the work of servants?”
Ian’s experience with the ton and with Elizabeth had given him a lively contempt for ambitious, shallow, self-indulgent young women whose single goal in life was to acquire as many gowns and jewels as possible with the least amount of effort, and he aimed his attack at Elizabeth. “I am suggesting that you look after yourself for the first time in your silly, aimless life. In return for that, I am willing to give you a roof over your head and to share our food with you until I can get you to the village. If that is too overwhelming a task for you, then my original invitation still stands: There’s the door. Use it!”
Elizabeth knew the man was irrational, and it wasn’t worth riling herself to reply to him, so she turned instead to Lucinda. “Lucinda,” she said with weary resignation, “do not upset yourself by trying to make Mr. Thornton understand that his mistake has inconvenienced us, not the other way around. You will only waste your time. A gentleman of breeding would be perfectly able to understand that he should be apologizing instead of ranting and raving. However, as I told you before we came here, Mr. Thornton is no gentleman. The simple fact is that he enjoys humiliating people, and he will continue trying to humiliate us for as long as we stand here.”
Elizabeth cast a look of well-bred disdain over Ian and said, “Good night, Mr. Thornton.” Turning, she softened her voice a little and said, “Good evening, Mr. Wiley.
”
”
Judith McNaught (Almost Heaven (Sequels, #3))
“
The biggest fear for homeschooled children is that they will be unable to relate to their peers, will not have friends, or that they will otherwise be unable to interact with people in a normal way. Consider this: How many of your daily interactions with people are solely with people of your own birth year? We’re not considering interactions with people who are a year or two older or a year or two younger, but specifically people who were born within a few months of your birthday. In society, it would be very odd to section people at work by their birth year and allow you to interact only with persons your same age. This artificial constraint would limit your understanding of people and society across a broader range of ages. In traditional schools, children are placed in grades artificially constrained by the child’s birth date and an arbitrary cut-off day on a school calendar. Every student is taught the same thing as everyone else of the same age primarily because it is a convenient way to manage a large number of students. Students are not grouped that way because there is any inherent special socialization that occurs when grouping children in such a manner. Sectioning off children into narrow bands of same-age peers does not make them better able to interact with society at large. In fact, sectioning off children in this way does just the opposite—it restricts their ability to practice interacting with a wide variety of people. So why do we worry about homeschooled children’s socialization? The erroneous assumption is that the child will be homeschooled and will be at home, schooling in the house, all day every day, with no interactions with other people. Unless a family is remotely located in a desolate place away from any form of civilization, social isolation is highly unlikely. Every homeschooling family I know involves their children in daily life—going to the grocery store or the bank, running errands, volunteering in the community, or participating in sports, arts, or community classes. Within the homeschooled community, sports, arts, drama, co-op classes, etc., are usually sectioned by elementary, pre-teen, and teen groupings. This allows students to interact with a wider range of children, and the interactions usually enhance a child’s ability to interact well with a wider age-range of students. Additionally, being out in the community provides many opportunities for children to interact with people of all ages. When homeschooling groups plan field trips, there are sometimes constraints on the age range, depending upon the destination, but many times the trip is open to children of all ages. As an example, when our group went on a field trip to the Federal Reserve Bank, all ages of children attended. The tour and information were of interest to all of the children in one way or another. After the tour, our group dined at a nearby food court. The parents sat together to chat and the children all sat with each other, with kids of all ages talking and having fun with each other. When interacting with society, exposure to a wider variety of people makes for better overall socialization. Many homeschooling groups also have park days, game days, or play days that allow all of the children in the homeschooled community to come together and play. Usually such social opportunities last for two, three, or four hours. Our group used to have Friday afternoon “Park Day.” After our morning studies, we would pack a picnic lunch, drive to the park, and spend the rest of the afternoon letting the kids run and play. Older kids would organize games and play with younger kids, which let them practice great leadership skills. The younger kids truly looked up to and enjoyed being included in games with the older kids.
”
”
Sandra K. Cook (Overcome Your Fear of Homeschooling with Insider Information)
“
The Netherlands capital of Amsterdam amsterdam cruise is a thriving metropolis and one from the world's popular cities. If you are planning a trip to the metropolis, but are unclear about what you should do presently there, why not possess a little fun and spend time learning about how it's stereotypically known for? How come they put on clogs? When was the wind mill first utilised there? In addition, be sure to include all your feels on your journey and taste the phenomenal cheeses along with smell the stunning tulips. It's really recommended that you stay in a city motel, Amsterdam is quite spread out and residing in hotels close to the city-centre allows for the easiest access to public transportation.
Beyond the clichés
So that you can know precisely why a stereotype exists it usually is important to discover its source.
Clogs: The Dutch have already been wearing solid wood shoes, as well as "Klompen" as they are referred to, for approximately 700 years. They were originally made out of a timber sole along with a leather top or band tacked for the wood. Nevertheless, the shoes had been eventually created completely from wood to safeguard the whole base. Wooden shoe wearers state the shoes are usually warm during the cold months and cool during the warm months. The first guild associated with clog designers dates back to a number exceeding 1570 in Holland.
When making blockages, both shoes of a set must be created from the same kind of timber, even the same side of a tree, in order that the wood will certainly shrink in the same charge. While most blocks today are produced by equipment, a few shoemakers are left and they normally set up store in vacationer areas near any city hotel. Amsterdam also offers a clog-making museum, Klompenmakerij De Zaanse Schans, that highlights your shoe's history and significance.
Windmills: The first windmills have been demonstrated to have existed in Netherlands from about the year 1200. Today, there are eight leftover windmills in the capital. The most effective to visit is De Gooyer, which has been built in 1725 over the Nieuwevaart Canal. Their location in the east involving city's downtown area signifies it is readily available from any metropolis hotel. Amsterdam enjoys its beer and it actually has a brewery right on the doorstep to the wind generator. So if you are enjoying a historic site it's also possible to enjoy a scrumptious ice-cold beer - what more would you ask for?
Mozerella: It's impossible to vacation to Amsterdam without sampling several of its wonderful cheeses. In accordance with the locals, probably the most flavourful cheeses are available at the Wegewijs Emporium. With over 50 international cheese and A hundred domestic parmesan cheesse, you will surely have a wide-variety to pick from.
”
”
Step Into the Stereotypes of Amsterdam
“
Even after the funeral, the trips to Kensington Palace, and the consolation of friends, I still couldn’t accept Diana’s death. Then, Mr. Jeffrey Ling, the British consul general in New York, invited me to speak at the memorial service for Diana in Central Park the weekend after the funeral. I was grateful for the chance to speak about Diana in my own words and at my own pace. Pat and I rewrote my three-minute speech over and over. I practiced it several times the night before.
On Sunday afternoon I visited backstage with Mr. Ling and Mayor Giuliani before the service began. The mayor was engaging and down to earth. Mr. Ling was gracious and reassuring, a true gentleman. We watched the North Meadow fill up with more than ten thousand people and were grateful to see such a big turnout on a hot, sunny day. As I sat on the stage, I grew more nervous by the minute. I delivered my heartfelt speech, trembling with emotion as I spoke about “the Diana we knew.”
As I looked out at the crowded meadow, I pondered the incredible path I’d traveled, all because I’d needed a part-time nanny in London seventeen years ago. I’d enjoyed a remarkable friendship, attended the most famous ceremonies of my lifetime, dined and danced in palaces, visited with royalty--extraordinary experiences for me and my family.
Now, tragically, it was all ending here, as I spoke from my heart in memory and praise of my friend Diana.
”
”
Mary Robertson (The Diana I Knew: Loving Memories of the Friendship Between an American Mother and Her Son's Nanny Who Became the Princess of Wales)
“
#25. Valuing Yourself and Your Needs (As a Parent): This is about taking care of your OWN needs as a parent because when you consistently put yourself last to be taken care of and habitually continue to sacrifice your basic necessities to make everyone else happy…Essentially, what you’re teaching your children is that they’re here to be of service to others, then themselves. In other words, you’re teaching them to take advantage of you and use you as they please, which in turn communicates to them that they’re most likely to be used. To prevent this from happening, you need to set consistent limits that protect you from demands that could be overbearing and unfair. That way, you’re communicating that your basic needs are just as important as theirs. It’s true…often times parents that are constantly sacrificing themselves are idealized and praised by other parents. You know… the ones that have no hobbies, no friends and no avenue of enjoyment. Is this really desirable? Parents constantly stressed about the needs of others in the family are usually irritable, and unmotivated to try anything new, fun or exciting. How can parents do this long term with no outlet? Instead, us parents need to enjoy ourselves and focus on being re-energized. When you take good care of yourself, you provide the means to take better care of your children. Going out to dinner or cocktails, trips to the gym 3 or 4 times a week, date night with your spouse or even some alone time reading or going for a walk allows you to be a more productive, interested and patient parent.
”
”
Brian Tracy (How to Build Up Your Child Instead of Repairing Your Teenager)
“
I also discovered that the same principle works in a hundred different little personal ways. For example, I used to worry and fume about having to go to the dentist, and other unpleasant tasks. Then I said to myself, “This is silly. You know the unpleasantness involved before you make the decision to go. If the unpleasantness is all that important to cause so much concern, and not worth the worry involved, you can simply decide not to go. But, if the decision is that the trip is worth a little unpleasantness, and a definite decision is made to go—then forget about it. Consider the risk before the wheel starts turning.” I used to worry the night before I had to make a speech at a board meeting. Then I said to myself, “I’m either going to make the speech or I’m not. If the decision is to make it, then there’s no need in considering not making it—or trying to mentally run away from it.” I have discovered that much nervousness and anxiety is caused by mentally trying to escape or run away from something that you have decided to go through with physically. If the decision is made to go through with it—not to run away physically—why mentally keep considering or hoping for escape? I used to detest social gatherings and go along only to please my wife, or for business reasons. I went, but mentally I resisted it, and was usually pretty grumpy and uncommunicative. Then I decided that if the decision was to go along physically, I might as well go along mentally—and dismiss all thoughts of resistance. Last night I not only went to what I would formerly have called a stupid social gathering, but I was surprised to find myself thoroughly enjoying it.
”
”
Maxwell Maltz (Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded (The Psycho-Cybernetics Series))
“
We were on a family holiday to Cyprus to visit my aunt and uncle. My uncle Andrew was then the brigadier to all the British forces on the island, and as such a senior military figure I am sure he must have dreaded us coming to town.
After a few days holed up in the garrison my uncle innocently suggested that maybe we would enjoy a trip to the mountains. He already knew the answer that my father and I would give. We were in.
The Troodos Mountains are a small range of snowy peaks in the center of the island, and the soldiers posted to Cyprus use them to ski and train in. There are a couple of ski runs, but the majority of the peaks in winter are wild and unspoiled.
In other words, they are ripe for an adventure.
Dad and I borrowed two sets of army skis and boots from the garrison up in the hills and spent a great afternoon together skiing down the couple of designated runs. But designated runs can also be quite boring. We both looked at each other and suggested a quick off-piste detour.
It was all game…age eleven.
It wasn’t very far into this between-the-trees deep-powder detour that the weather, dramatically, and very suddenly, took a turn for the worse.
A mountain mist rolled in, reducing visibility to almost zero. We stopped to try and get, or guess, our directions back to the piste, but our guess was wrong, and very soon we both realized we were lost. (Or temporarily geographically challenged, as I have learned to call it.)
Dad and I made the mistake that so many do in that situation, and plowed on blind, in the vain hope that the miraculous would occur. We had no map, no compass, no food, no water, no mobile telephone (they hadn’t even been invented yet), and in truth, no likelihood of finding our way.
We were perfect candidates for a disaster.
”
”
Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
“
it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip—to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The flight attendant comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.” “Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.” But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around . . . and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills . . . and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy . . . and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.” And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away . . . because the loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss. But . . . if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things . . . about Holland.
”
”
Lori Gottlieb (Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed)
“
Variations on a tired, old theme Here’s another example of addict manipulation that plagues parents. The phone rings. It’s the addict. He says he has a job. You’re thrilled. But you’re also apprehensive. Because you know he hasn’t simply called to tell you good news. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen. Then comes the zinger you knew would be coming. The request. He says everybody at this company wears business suits and ties, none of which he has. He says if you can’t wire him $1800 right away, he won’t be able to take the job. The implications are clear. Suddenly, you’ve become the deciding factor as to whether or not the addict will be able to take the job. Have a future. Have a life. You’ve got that old, familiar sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. This is not the child you gladly would have financed in any way possible to get him started in life. This is the child who has been strung out on drugs for years and has shown absolutely no interest in such things as having a conventional job. He has also, if you remember correctly, come to you quite a few times with variations on this same tired, old story. One variation called for a car so he could get to work. (Why is it that addicts are always being offered jobs in the middle of nowhere that can’t be reached by public transportation?) Another variation called for the money to purchase a round-trip airline ticket to interview for a job three thousand miles away. Being presented with what amounts to a no-choice request, the question is: Are you going to contribute in what you know is probably another scam, or are you going to say sorry and hang up? To step out of the role of banker/victim/rescuer, you have to quit the job of banker/victim/rescuer. You have to change the coda. You have to forget all the stipulations there are to being a parent. You have to harden your heart and tell yourself parenthood no longer applies to you—not while your child is addicted. Not an easy thing to do. P.S. You know in your heart there is no job starting on Monday. But even if there is, it’s hardly your responsibility if the addict goes well dressed, badly dressed, or undressed. Facing the unfaceable: The situation may never change In summary, you had a child and that child became an addict. Your love for the child didn’t vanish. But you’ve had to wean yourself away from the person your child has become through his or her drugs and/ or alcohol abuse. Your journey with the addicted child has led you through various stages of pain, grief, and despair and into new phases of strength, acceptance, and healing. There’s a good chance that you might not be as healthy-minded as you are today had it not been for the tribulations with the addict. But you’ll never know. The one thing you do know is that you wouldn’t volunteer to go through it again, even with all the awareness you’ve gained. You would never have sacrificed your child just so that you could become a better, stronger person. But this is the way it has turned out. You’re doing okay with it, almost twenty-four hours a day. It’s just the odd few minutes that are hard to get through, like the ones in the middle of the night when you awaken to find that the grief hasn’t really gone away—it’s just under smart, new management. Or when you’re walking along a street or in a mall and you see someone who reminds you of your addicted child, but isn’t a substance abuser, and you feel that void in your heart. You ache for what might have been with your child, the happy life, the fulfilled career. And you ache for the events that never took place—the high school graduation, the engagement party, the wedding, the grandkids. These are the celebrations of life that you’ll probably never get to enjoy. Although you never know. DON’T LET YOUR KIDS KILL YOU A Guide for Parents of Drug and Alcohol Addicted Children PART 2
”
”
Charles Rubin (Don't let Your Kids Kill You: A Guide for Parents of Drug and Alcohol Addicted Children)
“
Jung’s remarks about how in North Africa he “felt cast back many centuries to an infinitely more naïve world of adolescents who were preparing, with the aid of a slender knowledge of the Koran, to emerge from their original state of twilight consciousness” may seem politically incorrect from our oversensitive perspective, but they highlight the core insight of the trip. Although Jung knew a great deal about mythology and mythological thinking, his own thinking was decidedly Western and rational—he described himself as a “thorough Westerner”26—and in many ways, Jung was a typical “left-brainer,” with his detestation of “fantasy,” his formality and punctuality, his precision and need to be “scientific.” In his travels in North Africa, and later Taos and Central Africa, Jung was looking for signs of a consciousness not as differentiated from the unconscious matrix—what in the Seven Sermons he called “the Pleroma”—as ours, with its sharp distinction between conscious and unconscious. What Jung found in places such as Tunis, Sousse, Sfax, and the oasis city of Tozeur was a completely different sense of time. Coming from the land of cuckoo clocks and appointment books, this must have been a shock. Jung had entered a “dream of a static, age-old existence,” a kind of perpetual now, a condition associated with the right brain, which lacks a sense of time; there was none of the incessant activity that characterized even a relatively small city like Zürich. Jung enjoyed the contrast, which gave him an opportunity to entertain criticisms of modernity, a practice that would become something of a habit in later years, but he also felt this timelessness was threatened. Thinking of his pocket watch, “the symbol of Europe’s accelerated tempo,” Jung worried that the “god of time” and its demon, progress, would soon “chop into bits and pieces”—hours, minutes, seconds—the “duration” he sensed here and which was the “closest thing to eternity.
”
”
Gary Lachman (Jung the Mystic: The Esoteric Dimensions of Carl Jung's Life & Teachings)
“
While she was enjoying this heady control, she decided to test a few minor spells on the werewolf—because it would be good practice, and by good practice she meant amusing for her.
She caused a root to hike up directly in front of his feet. When he tripped, she folded her lips in, biting back a laugh.
Magick . . . good.
For the next hour, whenever his boots came untied just in time for the laces to collect bullet ants, or limbs whacked him across the face, or he scarcely dodged bird and monkey droppings, he always regarded her with narrow-eyed suspicion. She would casually glance over at him with a “Whaaa . . . ?” expression.
But he hadn’t said anything, and as for her, well, she could do this all day—
Out of the corner of her eye she spied movement. What looked like a vine suddenly uncoiled from the ground and came flying toward her. With a shriek, she attempted a pulse of energy to ward it off. But MacRieve had already snatched the snake; her magick caught him and sent him flying, his body crashing through the brush, felling the trees in his way.
After landing one hundred feet away and angrily tossing the snake, he shot to his feet, charging back to her, eyes ice blue with fury. “Goddamn it, witch, no’ again!”
“It was an accident!” the witch cried, and she might have been truthful, but Bowe was beyond caring.
“All morning you’ve toyed with me, have you no’?” He stalked closer to her, letting her see a good glimpse of the beast within.
Yet after swallowing loudly and retreating several steps, she seemed to force herself to stand her ground.
He was dumbfounded that she wasn’t cowering. Battle hardened vampires recoiled in the face of a Lykae’s werewolf form, but she’d planted her boots, and she hadn’t budged.
She even raised her chin.
Cade had started hurrying down the embankment as if to protect her. The very idea made Bowe draw his lips back from his fangs. No doubt thinking his renewed fury was for her, she pulled magick into her hands.
”
”
Kresley Cole (Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night (Immortals After Dark, #3))
“
The day after setting foot upon the deck of the whale-ship, Snowball was appointed chef de caboose, in which distinguished office he continued for several years; and only resigned it to accept of a similar situation on board a fine bark, commanded by Captain Benjamin Brace, engaged in the African trade. But not that African trade carried on by such ships as the Pandora. No; the merchandise transported in Captain Brace’s bark was not black men, but white ivory, yellow gold-dust, palm-oil, and ostrich-plumes; and it was said, that, after each “trip” to the African coast, the master, as well as owner, of this richly laden bark, was accustomed to make a trip to the Bank of England, and there deposit a considerable sum of money. After many years spent thus professionally, and with continued success, the ci-devant whalesman, man-o’-war’s-man, ex-captain of the Catamaran, and master of the African trader, retired from active life; and, anchored in a snug craft in the shape of a Hampstead Heath villa, is now enjoying his pipe, his glass of grog, and his otium cum dignitate. As for “Little William,” he in turn ceased to be known by this designation. It was no longer appropriate when he became the captain of a first-class clipper-ship in the East Indian trade,—standing upon his own quarter-deck full six feet in his shoes, and finely proportioned at that,—so well as to both face and figure, that he had no difficulty in getting “spliced” to a wife that dearly loved him. She was a very beautiful woman, with a noble round eye, jet black waving hair, and a deep brunette complexion. Many of his acquaintances were under the impression that she had Oriental blood in her veins, and that he had brought her home from India on one of his return voyages from that country. Those more intimate with him could give a different account,—one received from himself; and which told them that his wife was a native of Africa, of Portuguese extraction, and that her name was Lalee. They had heard, moreover, that his first acquaintance with her had commenced on board a slave bark; and that their friendship as children,—afterwards ripening into love,—had been cemented while both were castaways upon a raft—Ocean Waifs in the middle of the Atlantic. The End.
”
”
Walter Scott (The Greatest Sea Novels and Tales of All Time)
“
We need to leave as soon as possible."
"Okay," Luce said. "I have to go home, then, pack, get my passport..." Her mind whirled in a hundred directions as she started making a mental to-do list. Her parents would be at the mall for at least another couple of hours, enough time for her to dash in and get her things together...
"Oh, cute." Annabelle laughed, flitting over to them, her feet inches off the ground. Her wings were muscular and dark silver like a thundercloud, protruding through the invisible slits in her hot-pink T-shirt. "Sorry to butt in but...you've never traveled with an angel before, have you?"
Sure she had. The feeling of Daniel's wings soaring her body through the air was as natural as anything. Maybe her flights had been brief, but they'd been unforgettable. They were when Luce felt closest to him: his arms threaded around her waist, his heart beating close to hers, his white wings protecting them, making Luce feel unconditionally and impossibly loved.
She had flown with Daniel dozens of times in dreams, but only three times in her waking hours: once over the hidden lake behind Sword & Cross, another time along the coast at Shoreline, and down from the clouds to the cabin just the previous night.
"I guess we've never flown that far together," she said at last.
"Just getting to first base seems to be a problem for you two," Cam couldn't resist saying.
Daniel ignored him. "Under normal circumstances, I think you'd enjoy the trip." His expression turned stormy. "But we don't have room for normal for the next nine days."
Luce felt his hands on the backs of her shoulders, gathering her hair and lifting it off her neck. He kissed her along the neckline of her sweater as he wrapped his arms around her waist. Luce closed her eyes. She knew what was coming next. The most beautiful sound there was-that elegant whoosh of the love of her life letting out his driven-snow-white wings.
The world on the other side of Luce's eyelids darkened slightly under the shadow of his wings, and warmth welled in her heart. When she opened her eyes, there they were, as magnificent as ever. She leaned back a little, cozying into the wall of Daniel's chest as he pivoted toward the window.
"This is only a temporary separation," Daniel announced to the others. "Good luck and wingspeed.
”
”
Lauren Kate (Rapture (Fallen, #4))
“
Cultivating loyalty is a tricky business. It requires maintaining a rigorous level of consistency while constantly adding newness and a little surprise—freshening the guest experience without changing its core identity.” Lifetime Network Value Concerns about brand fickleness in the new generation of customers can be troubling partly because the idea of lifetime customer value has been such a cornerstone of business for so long. But while you’re fretting over the occasional straying of a customer due to how easy it is to switch brands today, don’t overlook a more important positive change in today’s landscape: the extent to which social media and Internet reviews have amplified the reach of customers’ word-of-mouth. Never before have customers enjoyed such powerful platforms to share and broadcast their opinions of products and services. This is true today of every generation—even some Silent Generation customers share on Facebook and post reviews on TripAdvisor and Amazon. But millennials, thanks to their lifetime of technology use and their growing buying power, perhaps make the best, most active spokespeople a company can have. Boston Consulting Group, with grand understatement, says that “the vast majority” of millennials report socially sharing and promoting their brand preferences. Millennials are talking about your business when they’re considering making a purchase, awaiting assistance, trying something on, paying for it and when they get home. If, for example, you own a restaurant, the value of a single guest today goes further than the amount of the check. The added value comes from a process that Chef O’Connell calls competitive dining, the phenomenon of guests “comparing and rating dishes, photographing everything they eat, and tweeting and emailing the details of all their dining adventures.” It’s easy to underestimate the commercial power that today’s younger customers have, particularly when the network value of these buyers doesn’t immediately translate into sales. Be careful not to sell their potential short and let that assumption drive you headlong into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Remember that younger customers are experimenting right now as they begin to form preferences they may keep for a lifetime. And whether their proverbial Winstons will taste good to them in the future depends on what they taste like presently.
”
”
Micah Solomon (Your Customer Is The Star: How To Make Millennials, Boomers And Everyone Else Love Your Business)
“
The school is teeming with activity. The rooms are small and large, many are special-purpose rooms, like shops and labs, but most are furnished like rather shabby living or dining rooms in homes: lots of sofas, easy chairs, and tables. Lots of people sitting around talking, reading, and playing games. On an average rainy day—quite different from a beautiful suddenly snowy day, or a warm spring or fall day—most people are inside. But there will also be more than a few who are outside in the rain, and later will come in dripping and trying the patience of the few people inside who think the school should perhaps be a “dry zone.” There may be people in the photo lab developing or printing pictures they have taken. There may be a karate class, or just some people playing on mats in the dance room. Someone may be building a bookshelf or fashioning chain mail armor and discussing medieval history. There are almost certainly a few people, either together or separate, making music of one kind or another, and others listening to music of one kind or another. You will find adults in groups that include kids, or maybe just talking with one student. It would be most unusual if there were not people playing a computer game somewhere, or chess; a few people doing some of the school’s administrative work in the office—while others hang around just enjoying the atmosphere of an office where interesting people are always making things happen; there will be people engaged in role-playing games; other people may be rehearsing a play—it might be original, it might be a classic. They may intend production or just momentary amusement. People will be trading stickers and trading lunches. There will probably be people selling things. If you are lucky, someone will be selling cookies they baked at home and brought in to earn money. Sometimes groups of kids have cooked something to sell to raise money for an activity—perhaps they need to buy a new kiln, or want to go on a trip. An intense conversation will probably be in progress in the smoking area, and others in other places. A group in the kitchen may be cooking—maybe pizza or apple pie. Always, either in the art room or in any one of many other places, people will be drawing. In the art room they might also be sewing, or painting, and some are quite likely to be working with clay, either on the wheel or by hand. Always there are groups talking, and always there are people quietly reading here and there. One
”
”
Russell L. Ackoff (Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track)
“
I have been all over the world cooking and eating and training under extraordinary chefs. And the two food guys I would most like to go on a road trip with are Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlmann, both of whom I have met, and who are genuinely awesome guys, hysterically funny and easy to be with. But as much as I want to be the Batgirl in that trio, I fear that I would be woefully unprepared. Because an essential part of the food experience that those two enjoy the most is stuff that, quite frankly, would make me ralph.
I don't feel overly bad about the offal thing. After all, variety meats seem to be the one area that people can get a pass on. With the possible exception of foie gras, which I wish like heckfire I liked, but I simply cannot get behind it, and nothing is worse than the look on a fellow foodie's face when you pass on the pate. I do love tongue, and off cuts like oxtails and cheeks, but please, no innards.
Blue or overly stinky cheeses, cannot do it. Not a fan of raw tomatoes or tomato juice- again I can eat them, but choose not to if I can help it. Ditto, raw onions of every variety (pickled is fine, and I cannot get enough of them cooked), but I bonded with Scott Conant at the James Beard Awards dinner, when we both went on a rant about the evils of raw onion. I know he is often sort of douchey on television, but he was nice to me, very funny, and the man makes the best freaking spaghetti in tomato sauce on the planet.
I have issues with bell peppers. Green, red, yellow, white, purple, orange. Roasted or raw. Idk. If I eat them raw I burp them up for days, and cooked they smell to me like old armpit. I have an appreciation for many of the other pepper varieties, and cook with them, but the bell pepper? Not my friend.
Spicy isn't so much a preference as a physical necessity. In addition to my chronic and severe gastric reflux, I also have no gallbladder. When my gallbladder and I divorced several years ago, it got custody of anything spicier than my own fairly mild chili, Emily's sesame noodles, and that plastic Velveeta-Ro-Tel dip that I probably shouldn't admit to liking. I'm allowed very occasional visitation rights, but only at my own risk. I like a gentle back-of-the-throat heat to things, but I'm never going to meet you for all-you-can-eat buffalo wings. Mayonnaise squicks me out, except as an ingredient in other things. Avocado's bland oiliness, okra's slickery slime, and don't even get me started on runny eggs.
I know. It's mortifying.
”
”
Stacey Ballis (Off the Menu)
“
TWO YEARS AGO I FOUND AN IMAGE OF A KID WITH HER HANDS COVERING HER FACE. A SEATBELT REACHED ACROSS HER TORSO, RIDING
UP HER NECK AND A MOP OF BLONDE HAIR STAYED SWEPT, FOR THE MOMENT, BEHIND HER EARS. HER EYES SEEMED CLEAR AND CALM
BUT NOT BLANK, THE ROAD BEHIND HER SEEMED THE SAME, I PUT MYSELF IN HER SEAT THEN I PLAYED IT ALL OUT IN MY HEAD. THE CLAUSTROPHOBIA HITS AS THE SEATBELT TIGHTENS, PREVENTING ME FROM EVEN LEANING FORWARD IN MY SEAT, THE PRESSING ON INTERNAL ORGANS. I LEAN BACK AND FORWARD TO RELEASE IT, THEN BACKWARDS AND FORWARD AGAIN. THERE IT IS I GOT FREE. HOW MUCH OF MY LIFE HAS HAPPENED INSIDE OF A CAR? I WONDER IF THE ODDS ARE THAT I'LL DIE IN ONE, KNOCK ON WOOD-GRAIN. SHOULDN'T SPEAK LIKE THAT. WE LIVE IN CARS IN SOME CITIES, COMMUTING ACROSS SPACE EITHER FOR OUR LIVELIHOOD, OR DEVOURING FOSSIL FUELS FOR JOY. IT'S CLOSE TO AS MUCH TIME AS WE SPEND IN OUR BEDS, MORE FOR SOME. THE FIRST TIME I DID SHROOMS, MY MANAGER HAD TO COME RESCUE ME FROM CALTECH'S 'TRIP DAY. AS I GOT INTO HER CAR, I SWEAR TO GOD THE ALUMINUM CENTER CONSOLE IN HER PORSCHE TRUCK LOOKED LIKE IT WAS BREATHING, LIKE THE THROAT OF SOMETHING. ON THE FREEWAY, LEAVING PASADENA, WE SPOKE AND I LOOKED AWAY, OUTSIDE, AT THE WHEELS AND TIRES OF CARS DOING THAT OPTICAL ILLUSION THING THEY DO WHERE IT LOOKS LIKE THEY'RE SPINNING BACKWARDS, WHICH, ACCORDING TO GOOGLE, HAPPENS BECAUSE OUR BRAINS ARE ASSUMING SOMETHING COMPLETELY WRONG AND SHOWING IT TO US. STARING, I WAS TRANSFIXED BY ALL THE INDICATOR LIGHTS OSCILLATING AND THROBBING AGAINST THE WIND. WE DROVE THRU DOWNTOWN LA HEADED WEST, FLYING ON THE SAME FREEWAYS I USED TO RUN OUTTA GAS ON. WELCOMED IN BY THE PERENNIAL CREATURES, IMPERIAL PALM TREES AND CLIMBING VINES LIVING THEIR LIVES OUT JUST OFF THE SHOULDER. THE FEELING OF FAMILIAR ENHANCED, ON THE 10. I USED TO RIDE AROUND IN MY SINEWY CROSSOVER SUV, SMOKE AND LISTEN TO ROUGH MIXES OF MY OLD SHIT BEFORE IT CAME OUT, OR WHATEVER SOMEONE WANTED TO PLAY WHEN THEY HOOKED UP THEIR IPHONE TO THE AUX CORD A FEW YEARS AND A FEW DAILY-DRIVERS LATER I'M NOT DRIVING MUCH ANYMORE, IT'S BEEN A YEAR SINCE I MOVED TO LONDON, AT THE TIME OF WRITING THIS, AND THERE'S NO PRACTICAL REASON TO DRIVE IN THIS CITY. I ORDERED A GT3 RS AND IT'LL KEEP LOW MILES OUT HERE BUT I GUESS IT'S GOOD TO HAVE IN CASE OF EMERGENCY :) RAF SIMONS ONCE TOLD ME IT WAS CLICHE, MY WHOLE CAR OBSESSION MAYBE IT LINKS TO A DEEP SUBCONSCIOUS STRAIGHT BOY FANTASY. CONSCIOUSLY THOUGH, I DON'T WANT STRAIGHT A LITTLE BENT IS GOOD. I FOUND IT ROMANTIC, SOMETIMES, EDITING THIS PROJECT. THE WHOLE TIME I FELT AS THOUGH I WAS IN THE PRESENCE OF A $16M MCLAREN F1 ARMED WITH A DISPOSABLE CAMERA. MY MEMORIES ARE IN THESE PAGES, PLACES CLOSEBY AND LONG ASS-NUMBING FLIGHTS AWAY. CRUISING THE SUBURBS OF TOKYO IN RWB PORSCHES. THROWING PARTIES AROUND ENGLAND AND MOBBING FREEWAYS IN FOUR PROJECT M3S THAT I BUILT WITH SOME FRIENDS. GOING TO MISSISSIPPI AND PLAYING IN THE MUD WITH AMPHIBIOUS QUADS. STREET-CASTING MODELS AT A RANDOM KUNG FU DOJO OUT IN SENEGAL. COMMISSIONING LIFE-SIZE TOY BOXES FOR THE FUCK OF IT SHOOTING A MUSIC VIDEO FOR FUN WITH TYRONE LEBON, THE GENIUS GIANT. TAKING A BREAK-SLASH-RECONNAISSANCE MISSION TO TULUM, MEXICO, ENJOYING SOME STAR VISIBILITY FOR A CHANGE. RECORDING IN TOKYO, NYC, MIAMI, LA, LONDON, PARIS. STOPPING IN BERLIN TO WITNESS BERGHAIN FOR MYSELF, TRADING JEWELS AND SOAKING IN PARABLES WITH THE MANY-HEADED BRANDON AKA
BASEDGOD IN CONVERSATION, I WROTE A STORY IN THE MIDDLE-IT'S CALLED 'GODSPEED', IT'S BASICALLY A REIMAGINED PART OF MY BOYHOOD. BOYS DO CRY, BUT I DON'T THINK I SHED A TEAR FOR A GOOD CHUNK OF MY TEENAGE YEARS. IT'S SURPRISINGLY MY FAVORITE PART OF LIFE SO FAR. SURPRISING, TO ME, BECAUSE THE CURRENT PHASE IS WHAT I WAS ASKING THE COSMOS FOR WHEN I WAS A KID. MAYBE THAT PART HAD IT'S ROUGH STRETCHES TOO, BUT IN MY REARVIEW MIRROR IT'S GETTING SMALL ENOUGH TO CONVINCE MYSELF IT WAS ALL GOOD. AND REALLY THOUGH... IT'S STILL ALL GOOD.
”
”
Frank Ocean (Boys Don't Cry (#1))
“
Okay,let's do it," Robbie said, slapping his hands together as he stood. He stepped towards me with his arms outstreched and I tripped back. " What? No" " What? Yes," he said. He hit the rewind button and the tape zipped backward. He paused it right as the dance began. " You don't really expect me to ask Tama to dance with me without any practice. Even I'm not that stupid." I was suddenly very aware of my heartbeat. " There's no way I'm dancing with you." " You really know how to stroke a guy's ego," Robbie joked. "Come on. I'm not that repulsive." "You're not repulsive at all, it's just-" " Well, that's good to hear," Robbie said with a teasing smile. He was enjoying this. "it's just that I don't dance," I admitted. Never had. Not once. Not with a guy. I was a dance free-zone. " Well, neither do II mean, except on stage. But i've never danced like this, so we're even" he said. He hit "play". The music started and Robbie pulled me toward him by my wrist. he grabbed my hand, which was sweating, and held it, then put his other hand on my waist. My boobs pressed sgsinst his chest and I flinched, but Robbie didn't seem to notice. He was too busy consulting the TV screen. " Here goes nothing," he said. "Okay, it's a waltz, so one, two, three,,, one, two, three. Looks like a big step on one and two little steps on two and three. Got it?" "Sure." I so didn't have it. " Okay, go." He started to step in a circle, pulling me with him.I staggered along, mortified. " One, two, three. One two, three," he counted under his breath. My foot caught on his ankle. " Oops! Sorry." I was sweating like mad now, wishing I'd taken off my sweater, at least. " I got ya," he said, his grip tightiening on my hand. " K eep going." " One, two, three," I counted, staring down at our feet. He slammed one of his hip into one of the set chairs. " Ow. Dammit!" " Are you okay?"I asked."Yeah. Keep going," he said through his teeth. " One, two, three," I counted. I glanced up at the Tv screen, and the second I took my eyes off our feet, they got hopelessly tangled. I felt that instant swoop of gravity and shouted as we went down. The floor was not soft. " Oof?" " Ow. Okay, ow," Robbie said, grabbing his elbow. " That was not a good bone to fall on." He shook his arm out and I brought my knees up under my chin. " Maybe this wasn't the best idea." "No! No. We cannot give up that easily," Robbie said, standing. He took my hands and hoisted my up. " Maybe we just need to simplify it a little. " Actually i think its the twirl and the dip at the end that are really important," I theorized. It seemed like the most romantic part to me. " Okay, good." Robbie was phsyched by this development. "So maybe instead of going in circles, we just step side to side and do the twirl thing a couple of times. " Sounds like a plan," I said. " Let's do it." Robbie rewound the tape and we started from the beginning of the music. He took my hand again and held it up, then placed his other hand on my waist. This time we simply swayed back and forth. I was just getting used to the motion, when I realized that Robbie was staring at me.Big time." What?" i said, my skin prickling. " Trying to make eye contact," he said. " I hear eye contact while dancing is key." " Where would you hear something like that?" I said. " My grandmother. She's a wise woman," he said. His grandmother. How cute was that? His eyes were completely focused on my face. I tried to stare back into them, but I keep cracking up laughing. And he thought I'd make a good actress. " Wow. You suck at eye contact," he said. "Come on. Give me something to work here." I took a deep breath and steeled myself. It's just Robbie Delano, KJ. You can do this. And so I did. I looked right back into his eyes. And we continued to sway at to the music. His hand around mine. His hand on my waist. Our chests pressed together. I stared into his eyes, and soon i found that laughing was the last thing on my mind. " How's this working for you?
”
”
Kieran Scott (Geek Magnet)
“
Haridwar Chopta taxi at guaranteed lowest fare at Haridwar taxi services and get amazing deals on Haridwar Chopta One way taxi & round trip cab booking. Haridwar to Chopta is completely hill area so trains are not available for Chopta. Mostly people hire a taxi from Haridwar to Chopta where Haridwar Taxi services provides best price. Haridwar Taxi services Provide Haridwar to Chopta outstation car rental Services with verified Drivers, Latest car and assured service. You can Enjoy our car rental services for Haridwar to Chopta for Local Sightseeing, Business services and special occasion rentals.
So if you plan you can also wrap it. Haridwar Taxi services serve you a wide range Cab services we have Cabs like indica, indigo, swift dzire, etios, innova, xuv, xylo and tempo traveler. Our all drivers know the root very well and have up to 10 years experience in hill station. So enjoy our Haridwar to Chopta Cab very lowest price. We Provides Best range of taxi and cab, air conditioned vehicles, including Toyota Innova, Indigo, swift dzire and luxury car on rent. Price will be depending on your group size and Tour plane. For more information & booking taxi or cab between Haridwar to Chopta call or missed call at 9720678777.
# HaridwarChoptaTaxi #HaridwarChoptaCab #HaridwarChoptaTaxiService
”
”
haridwar taxi services
“
There happens to be a coffee bar in the lobby of the hotel. One afternoon while on a business trip in Las Vegas, I went to buy myself a cup of coffee. The barista working that day was a young man named Noah. Noah was funny and engaging. It was because of Noah that I enjoyed buying that cup of coffee more than I generally enjoy buying a cup of coffee. After standing and chatting for a while, I finally asked him, “Do you like your job?” Without skipping a beat Noah immediately replied, “I love my job!”
Now, for someone in my line of business, that’s a significant response. He didn’t say, “I like my job,” he said, “I love my job.” That’s a big difference. “Like” is rational. We like the people we work with. We like the challenge. We like the work. But “love,” love is emotional. Love is something harder to quantify. It’s like asking someone “Do you love your spouse,” and they respond, “I like my spouse a lot.” It’s a very different answer. You get my point, love is a higher standard. So when Noah said, “I love my job,” I perked up. From that one response, I knew Noah felt an emotional connection to the Four Seasons that was bigger than the money he made and the job he performs.
Immediately, I asked Noah a follow-up question. “Tell me specifically what the Four Seasons is doing that you would say to me that you love your job.” Again without skipping a beat, Noah replied, “Throughout the day, managers will walk past me and ask me how I’m doing, ask me if there is anything I need, anything they can do to help. Not just my manager … any manager. I also work for [another hotel],” he continued. He went on to explain that at his other job the managers walk past and try to catch people doing things wrong. At the other hotel, Noah lamented, “I keep my head below the radar. I just want to get through the day and get my paycheck. Only at the Four Seasons,” Noah said, “do I feel I can be myself.”
Noah gives his best when he’s at the Four Seasons. Which is what every leader wants from their people. So it makes sense why so many leaders, even some of the best-intentioned ones, often ask, “How do I get the most out of my people?” This is a flawed question, however. It’s not a question about how to help our people grow stronger, it’s about extracting more output from them. People are not like wet towels to be wrung out. They are not objects from which we can squeeze every last drop of performance. The answers to such a question might yield more output for a time, but it often comes at a cost of our people and to the culture in the longer term. Such an approach will never generate the feelings of love and commitment that Noah has for the Four Seasons. A better question to ask is, “How do I create an environment in which my people can work to their natural best?
”
”
Simon Sinek (The Infinite Game)
“
From the moment the Russians arrived in Prague, my husband, laureate of the Klement Gottwald state prize, always expected a car to turn in off the road, to come down the lane for him, and his fear of this possibility kept him
on edge .. That's why he so enjoyed roaming the forests and villages, and sometimes he took the bus into Prague, my husband loved riding the bus, forget the car! The car was torture for him, where to park, and you couldn't have a beer, and he loathed being stuck in traffic and waiting for red lights
and green lights, he fumed, and his eyesight wasn't the best anymore, he much rather rode the bus and daydreamed the trip through,
”
”
Bohumil Hrabal (Gaps)
“
Hue To Bach Ma National Park Private Car
If you stay in Hue city and have done the Hue city tour, Hue countryside Tour, and Hue cooking class tour already but still would like to have a full day to admire pure nature. Hue to Bach Ma National Park private car with an English-speaking driver will be a great option.
For more information about Private Tours, Transfers, please contact us via:
Email: phamvanhoa28@gmail.com
Address: The 1st floor, 17 Tran Thuc Nhan, Vinh Ninh, Hue city.
Phone: +84349825119
Book now to get the full enjoyment of your trip.
”
”
Vietnamvacation
“
That Washer guy is gross,” Tory Vega’s voice caught my attention and my head snapped sideways as I spotted her and Darcy walking down the path with Geraldine Grus in tow.
“He’s the most bothersome babbalumbaduke I ever saw,” Geraldine agreed.
Tory rolled her eyes, looking away from her, clearly not enjoying the girl’s company nor in any mood to indulge it. And I knew exactly why. Darcy on the other hand, gave Geraldine a polite smile and answered her. Ever the sweetheart. You won’t be so sweet when you embrace your inner Fae, Blue.
“What’s a babbalumba-thing?” Darcy frowned and Geraldine flapped her arms and gasped like someone had just dropped dead in front of her.
“You haven’t heard of a babbalumbaduke!? My queen-”
“Darcy,” she interjected and my brows arched at her dismissal of the royalist’s bullshit.
“Pish-posh!” Geraldine waved a hand. “A babbalumbaduke is the most creepsome creature you can imagine. It crawls from sewers and pulls unsuspecting virgins into its grasp, never to let go. The legend says it feasts upon their innocent flesh with nothing but its two-pronged armensprout.”
“To be fair, that does sound like Washer,” Tory said with a smirk.
“Yeah, but what’s an armensprout?” Darcy wrinkled her nose and my lips twitched up at the corner at how fucking cute she looked. Then I murdered that lip twitch and gritted my jaw, replacing the curiosity within me about her with a healthy dose of hatred. She was a Vega. Their name alone was a curse on this land.
“My good lady!” Geraldine wailed. They were close now, about to pass me by on the path as they circled The Orb, probably headed for dinner. “An armensprout is a dilly dongle. A war-willy wingle. A goblin of the grouse. A terrible Leroy.”
“A dick?” Tory guessed and a snort escaped my lips that made Darcy’s head snap around to look into the trees. My heart bolted up into my throat even though I knew she couldn’t see me. But I swear her eyes found my fucking soul anyway.
“Wait, that monster thing eats people with its dick?” Darcy snorted.
“Why yes! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” Geraldine guffawed.
Darcy suddenly tripped over her own feet and almost went flying to the ground, but my fingers flicked and I cast air magic before I knew what I was even doing, catching her so she didn’t hit the ground. She looked confused as hell and Tory chuckled, linking her arm through hers and pulling her along.
What the fuck did I just do?
I’d just spent the past ten minutes tripping up students and Darcy hadn’t even had her shirt tucked in. So why hadn’t I taken the opportunity to send her flying into the mud?
“Come on, clumsy butt,” Tory said and Darcy laughed.
“Are you okay, my sweet lady?” Geraldine gasped, hovering around her and Darcy’s cheeks pinked as she waved her away.
“Yup, just hungry,” she said brightly and the only way I could describe Geraldine’s next movement was a high-kneed gallop as she beckoned the girls after her down the path.
“Make way – make way!” she cried at the other students, blasting some of them off the path with her water magic. “The true queens are coming through!”
Tory whispered in Darcy’s ear and I tuned my senses on them to catch it. “Do you think we can outrun her if we turn back and skip dinner?”
“No chance. Look at those legs go,” Darcy said and they both fell into silent laughter, leaning on each other, their bond shining clearly between them.
(Orion POV)
”
”
Caroline Peckham (The Awakening as Told by the Boys (Zodiac Academy, #1.5))
“
The latter has a poor alcohol tolerance but is happy to spend her husband’s money so our shopping trips are enjoyable. She has since moved to Nigeria, though, and no shopping trip is worth that long a flight.
”
”
Ore Agbaje-Williams (The Three of Us)
“
a healthy person does not think about his health. A person who plans to take a trip around the world must be very healthy indeed, or he would not be able to concentrate on planning such an enterprise, much less able to enjoy it. In such a case, good health is simply a given.
”
”
Robert Wild (The Tumbler of God: Chesterton as Mystic)
“
I try to shake off the nostalgia and keep in the moment, to stop fantasising about what might have been and try to enjoy what we have now. You can't ever go back
”
”
Kate Galley (The Golden Girls Road Trip)
“
Carter felt that pounding the table was pointless. Karin Ryan noticed that her boss had a quality of looking people in the eye and making them think he was their friend. “He can tell you to go to hell, and you think you’ll enjoy the trip,” Andrew Young recalled. “He has the ability to reach for the best in that person—an almost magical power to inspire someone by telling them, ‘You can make history.
”
”
Jonathan Alter (His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life)
“
Enjoy your trip on the…what are the Boundary Waters? Is it that dotted line across Lake Superior? —A newspaper editor in Texas wishing the author a good trip
”
”
Stephen Wilbers (A Boundary Waters History: Canoeing Across Time)
“
was finally living a fantasy I had cherished for years. Of course, I got sick and hardly enjoyed a minute of the trip. At the time, I thought I must be neurotically robbing myself of my big moment. Now, understanding this trait, I see that the trip was just too exciting.
”
”
Elaine N. Aron (The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You)
“
The beaches in Dubai are well-known for their cleanliness and tranquility. While many individuals enjoy a relaxing weekend at the beach, thrill-seekers prefer to participate in thrilling water sports. Jet skiing is one of Dubai's most popular water activities, and adventure seekers love to try it. Do you want to know what the most extraordinary Dubai marine adventures are? What is the best method to see this magnificent city? There is plenty to do in this city-state of the UAE, and we have several fun aquatic activities for you to enjoy while on vacation or to live in the Emirates! How about a Jet Ski Ride along the Dubai waterfront? It can be done with your family, as a couple, with friends, or by yourself. We jet ski around all of Dubai's most famous attractions, skyscrapers, and landmarks. All of our Jet Ski trips include a stop at the luxury Burj Al Arab hotel, which is constructed into the sea, where you can have fun and receive a photo souvenir of Dubai. Jet skiing in Dubai is unquestionably the most acceptable way to see the city and have a good time during your vacation.
Dubai Yacht Rental Experience
When it comes to a luxury Boat Party in Dubai for those who can afford it, the pleasure and adventure that Yachts can provide cannot be overstated. Yachting is, without a doubt, the most beautiful sport on the planet. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to splash around in the ocean's deep blue waves and lose yourself in an environment that is both soothing and calming to the soul. The sensation you get from a yacht requires a whole new set of words to explain it. It's a fantastic experience that transports people to another zone while also altering their mental state. People who have the advantage of owning private yachts go sailing to have a relaxing excursion and clear their minds whenever they feel the need. Those who cannot afford to purchase a yacht can enjoy the thrill of cruising from one coastal region to the other by renting an economical Dubai yacht. It is not a challenging task to learn to sail. Some people believe that yachting can only be done by experts, which is a ridiculous misconception. Anyone willing to acquire a few tactics and hints can master the art of yachting.
READ MORE
About Dubai Jet Ski:
Get lost in the tranquility of blue waters while waiting to partake in action. With the instructor sitting right behind you, you’ll learn astonishing stunts and skills for riding a Jet ski. This adventure will take your excitement to a new level of adventure in the open sea. While sailing past the picturesque shorelines of the islands, take in stunning views of prominent Dubai monuments such as the Burj Al Arab and more.
About the activity:
Jumeirah Beach is the meeting site for this activity.
You have the option of riding for 30 minutes or 60 minutes
Jet Ski around the beaches while being accompanied at all times by an instructor, as your safety is our top priority. Begin your journey from the marina and proceed to the world-famous Burj-Al-Arab, a world well known hotel, for a photo shoot. where you may take as many pictures as you want
”
”
uaebestdesertsafar
“
Isn't it nice how we actually enjoy talking to each other now?" I said to her once on a trip home from college, after the bulk of the damage done in my teenage years had been allayed. "It is," she said. "You know what I realised? I've just never met someone like you." I've just never met someone like you, as if I were a stranger from another town or an eccentric guest accompanying a mutual friend to a dinner party. It was a strange thought to hear from the mouth of the woman who had birthed and raised me, with whom I shared a home for eighteen years, someone who was half me. My mother had struggled to understand me just as I struggled to understand her. Thrown as we were on opposite sides of a fault like—generational, cultural, linguistic—we wandered lost without a reference point, each of us unintelligible to the other's expectations, until these past few years when we had just begun to unlock the mystery, carve the psychic space to accommodate each other, appreciate the differences between us, linger in our refracted commonalities. Then, what would have been the most fruitful years of understanding were cut violently short, and I was left alone to decipher the secrets of inheritance without its key.
”
”
Michelle Zauner (Crying in H Mart)
“
The last damn thing I needed was to have some rangers out here looking for a naked man or to have to march back to Simon with my ass out. Though I did enjoy watching him squirm when I was freeballing. I’d never seen someone concentrating so hard on keeping eye contact.
I think he protests too much.
Or maybe I was just really horny for some contact. This whole damn trip had left me painfully unfucked, and it was starting to get to me. The hunt would help burn some energy, and a full stomach would help me sleep without needing to jack off.
”
”
Maz Maddox (Smash & Grab (RELIC #1))
“
a main theme for many of the participants in these trials is realizing how important their relationships are, how their response to their illness is negatively affecting the people they love, and that they want to spend the last chapter of their lives enjoying the presence of others.45 “It helps people live until they die,” Richards tells me, “not just lie in their beds, feeling sorry for themselves and preoccupied with pain. It could transform palliative and hospice care dramatically in the next few years. It’s a very exciting frontier.
”
”
Michelle Janikian (Your Psilocybin Mushroom Companion: An Informative, Easy-to-Use Guide to Understanding Magic Mushrooms—From Tips and Trips to Microdosing and Psychedelic Therapy)
“
You can paint in two ways. You can paint to compete with other painters; you want to be the greatest painter in the world, you want to be a Picasso or a Van Gogh. Then your painting will be second-rate, because your mind is not interested in painting itself; it is interested in being the first, the greatest painter in the world. You are not going deep into the art of painting. You are not enjoying it, you are only using it as a stepping-stone. You are on an ego trip, and the problem is that to really be a painter, you have to drop the ego completely. To really be a painter, the ego has to be put aside. Only then can existence flow through you. Only then can your hands and your fingers and your brush be used as vehicles. Only then can something of superb beauty be born. Real beauty is never created by you but only through you. Existence flows; you become only a passage. You allow it to happen, that’s all; you don’t hinder it, that’s all.
”
”
Osho (Joy: The Happiness That Comes from Within)
“
pilgrim’s progress” or “paradise regained.” Worse still, the impression is conveyed that this progress will somehow automatically take place through the normal course of life, if only the pilgrim holds on to certain beliefs. Certainly I do not attack this literature in its own right as literature. But it has entered into a fatal combination with the general Protestant overreaction against ascetic or disciplinary practices. A “head trip” of mental assent to doctrine and the enjoyment of pleasant imagery and imagination is quietly substituted for a rigorous practice of discipleship that would bring a true transformation of character.
”
”
Dallas Willard (The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives)
“
learned walking slowly along the Camino is a blessing for me. Although my knee occasionally hurts, I enjoy the walk, enjoy the country and the people I meet. For me, enjoying the journey is more important than reaching the destination. It’s the experiences leading to the destination that make the trip enjoyable and memorable, truth that applies to your journey through life, as well. Enjoy your walk through life, even if your knee hurts. Enjoy the world around you and the people you meet. That is what the journey is all about.
”
”
John Seegers (Another Camino Story: Learning to walk my own Camino through life on 500 miles to Santiago de Compostela, Spain (The Camino de Santiago Chronicles))
“
Much of the way we're taught to view eternal life is as a destination we reach, and until we get there, we're like anxious kids on a long car trip asking, "Are we there yet?" We think we're just biding time until we get there, when the real enjoyment will begin. But what if we're missing out along the way?
This book contrasts two ways of thinking about Jesus' gospel. The more common version is thought to involve how people ensure they will go to heaven when they die. It's about how to go from "down here" to "up there." It usually involves affirming certain beliefs or praying a particular prayer that is thought to make a person a "Christian."
The other understanding is that the gospel announces the availability of life under God's reign and power now. It's about "up there" coming "down here." By grace. Through Jesus. Transcending death. To all who will. For the sake of the world.
The first version tends to produce consumers of Jesus' merit. The second tends to produce disciples of Jesus' Way.
”
”
John Ortberg (Eternity Is Now in Session: A Radical Rediscovery of What Jesus Really Taught about Salvation, Eternity, and Getting to the Good Place)
“
There weren’t many women who were so beautiful that they made it hard to breathe. A better man would have bowed out of this trip when he’d learned his ex-girlfriend was coming along. A better man would have let her enjoy the weekend with her friends. Except I wasn’t a better man. And it had been too damn long. “What’s it been? Five years?” I asked. Her nostrils flared. “Six.” “Six. Huh.” I took a sip of my beer. “If you’ve been counting, does that mean you’ve missed me?
”
”
Devney Perry (The Edens - A Legacy Short Story (The Edens, #4.5))
“
But her territory was currently getting a fresh coat of paint. Much needed too. Her little cottage was long overdue for a sprucing up. And this was only a short trip. Jayne would be back Saturday night. In time to enjoy the next day, New Year’s Eve, with the new man in her life, Sinclair Crowe.
”
”
Kristen Painter (When Birdie Babysat Spider (Jayne Frost, #4.5))
“
At home that night, Audrey watches the eleven o’clock news in her pyjamas, sipping a chamomile tea. There’s nothing new about the Merton case. She sits in bed, seething at the television set, thinking unhappily about her lost inheritance, which she had so hoped to be able to enjoy. She’d imagined a house of her own in Brecken Hill, fine clothes, and trips to Europe and the Bahamas. There’s brief footage of them searching Dan’s house earlier that day, but she has no idea if they found anything incriminating. They’re not saying. She remembers how frightened she was when Dan came toward her car window, the rage in his fist as it hit her car
”
”
Shari Lapena (Not a Happy Family)
“
The more familiar we are with the particular conditions that connect or disconnect us from presence, the easier it becomes to spot them in our lives. For example, I tend to lose presence when I’m rushing. This means that I’m more apt to make physical or relational blunders: I might drop something in the kitchen, forget my lunch, or even say something sharp. I learned a painful lesson about this a few years ago. I was at a farewell party for my girlfriend, Evan, who had just finished a year of service at a meditation retreat center. We had plans to drive north up the coast of California after the party, and I’d made an appointment to install a car radio for the trip. In that classic, romantic way, I wanted everything to be perfect. As our departure time approached, I grew more and more anxious about missing the appointment. With no sign of a formal send-off, I finally spoke up and said that we needed to leave soon. To avoid any awkwardness, Evan went along with my request, but she was in tears by the time we arrived at the auto shop. She was incensed at me for cutting short a meaningful experience and at herself for not speaking up. In my fixation to create “the perfect trip,” I’d missed the fact that she was already enjoying herself. I reflected a lot on that incident, how losing presence had unintended, painful consequences.
”
”
Oren Jay Sofer (Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication)
“
We all wake up with a choice: live like NOTHING MATTERS or that EVERYTHING MATTERS.
Sweetheart, it’s all about your daily choices & mindset.
If nothing matters, then why bother, right? Actually, WRONG. If nothing matters, then go wild! Make the most of this short, weird trip, every day...
If something does matter to you, Then get after it! Pursue your passions, build strong relationships, contribute to your community & create something awesome.
Darling listen – You know what makes you tick & what you want.. Point is - everything you say or do shapes your world. Choose wisely.
May you not leave a single dance move you haven’t busted out unexpressed (leave NO dream unchased)
Blessings!
”
”
Rajesh Goyal, राजेश गोयल
“
tried not to think about the time before Mum died. The three of them had been so happy. Dad had settled into a good job, buildings manager for a large company headquarters after years working worldwide as a project manager on construction sites. Mum worked part time in a creche for babies and toddlers, and Matt was in his first year at senior school, making new friends, struggling a bit during French and English lessons but doing well at maths and enjoying the chance to show his skills at football. Weekends were brilliant. Picnics and trips to adventure parks, the seaside, football matches, the swimming pool – always the three of them together, having fun, laughing. Then, just a year ago, it ended. On one of her days off Mum had gone shopping in the nearest big town. A gang of older boys racing along the pavement had knocked her into the path of a bus and she had died before an ambulance could reach the scene. After that all Matt could remember was the silence. The silent house, Dad sitting huddled in front of the television screen, the volume turned to mute, Matt sitting in his bedroom not knowing what to do, feeling it was wrong to play computer games or phone his mates. His mates were silent anyway – they didn’t know what to say to someone whose Mum had been killed so suddenly and shockingly.
”
”
Joy Wodhams (The Mystery of Craven Manor)
“
Katie: That’s my experience. I don’t make decisions. I don’t bother with them, because I know they’ll be made for me right on time. My job is to be happy and wait. Decisions are easy. It’s the story you tell about them that isn’t easy. When you jump out of a plane and you pull the parachute cord and it doesn’t open, you feel fear, because you have the next cord to pull. So you pull that one, and it doesn’t open. And that’s the last cord. Now there’s no decision to make. When there’s no decision, there’s no fear, so just enjoy the trip! And that’s my position—I’m a lover of what is. What is: no cord to pull. It’s already happening. Free fall. I have nothing to do with it.
”
”
Byron Katie (Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life)
“
When Father Thomas returned from his trip to Chicago at Matthew Fox’s institute . . .” She looked at me in the dark. “Yes?” I said. “Several of us noticed a change. I asked him about the trip, but he didn’t wish to speak of it. This was unusual. He always enjoyed regaling us with stories
”
”
Brian Swimme (Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe)
“
It takes skill and precision to weave magic with your words, and it’s something I discovered at a young age I had a knack for. Even as a child, I could trick people into thinking that my ideas were theirs, so I spent years fine-tuning the craft until I was able to tell people to go to hell in a way that they enjoyed the trip.
”
”
Emily McIntire (Scarred (Never After, #2))
“
Your youngster looks like he knows his way around a deck. When you think he’s ready to try a term under a different captain, he’d be welcome aboard Tarman. Things are a bit more rustic and he’s be sleeping in the deckhouse with the crew, but I’d be glad to foster him for a trip or two.”
Brashen and Althea exchanged a look, but it was not his mother who said, “Not quite old enough yet. But I’ll take you up on that offer when he is. I know he’d like to see his aunt and uncle soon. Not to mention his cousin Ephron.” Brashen smiled as he attempted to change the subject. “When do you think Malta and Reyn might be bringing the baby downriver for a visit?”
“You’d take Boy-o off my decks?” Paragon was appalled.
“Only for a short time, ship. I know he’s yours as much as ours,” Brashen replied placatingly. “But a slightly wider circulation of experience wouldn’t hurt him.”
“Hmph.” The figurehead crossed his arms on his carved chest. His mouth went to a flat line. “Perhaps when Ephron is old enough to take his place here for a time. An exchange of hostages, as it were.”
Brashen rolled his eyes at them. “He’s in a mood today,” he said in a low voice.
“I am not in a mood! Merely pointing out that you are a liveship family, and that you should think well before letting one of your own go off on another liveship, with no guarantees that he will be returned. Ideally, the exchange should be a member of Tarman's family.” He turned his gaze to Leftrin and Alise. “Do you expect to breed soon?”
Leftrin choked on his tea.
“Not that I'm aware,” Alise replied demurely.
“A pity. It might be productive for you just now.”Paragon was politely enthused.
“Can we please just not?” Althea asked him, almost sharply. “It's bad enough to have you offering Brashen and me your helpful insights into productive breeding without you extending your wisdom to our guests.”
Alise could not tell if Brashen were embarrassed or red from suppressing laughter.
“It was Tarman’s suggestion that they might find such information helpful, as so far they have enjoyed breeding, but fruitlessly. That’s all.” Paragon was unflustered.
Brashen cleared his throat suddenly. “Well, speaking of hostages—”
“Were we?” his ship interjected curiosity.
“We were. Speaking of hostages, how did all that work out? There were rumors in Bingtown, but we left to go south and pick up your stock, and then returned right up the river. So wr haven’t heard much of that.
”
”
Robin Hobb (Blood of Dragons (Rain Wild Chronicles, #4))
“
Every time I am shown to an old, dimly lit, and, I would add, impeccably clean toilet in a Nara or Kyoto temple, I am impressed with the singular virtues of Japanese architecture. The parlor may have its charms, but the Japanese toilet is truly a place of spiritual repose. It always stands apart from the main building, at the end of a corridor, in a grove fragrant with leaves and moss. No words can describe that sensation as one sits in the dim light, basking in the faint glow reflected from the shoji, lost in meditation or gazing out at the garden. The novelist Natsume Sōseki counted his morning trips to the toilet a great pleasure, “a physiological delight” he called it. And surely there could be no better place to savor this pleasure than a Japanese toilet where, surrounded by tranquil walls and finely grained wood, one looks out upon blue skies and green leaves.
As I have said there are certain prerequisites: a degree of dimness, absolute cleanliness, and quiet so complete one can hear the hum of a mosquito. I love to listen from such a toilet to the sound of softly falling rain, especially if it is a toilet of the Kantō region, with its long, narrow windows at floor level; there one can listen with such a sense of intimacy to the raindrops falling from the eaves and the trees, seeping into the earth as they wash over the base of a stone lantern and freshen the moss about the stepping stones. And the toilet is the perfect place to listen to the chirping of insects or the song of the birds, to view the moon, or to enjoy any of those poignant moments that mark the change of the seasons. Here, I suspect, is where haiku poets over the ages have come by a great many of their ideas. Indeed one could with some justice claim that of all the elements of Japanese architecture, the toilet is the most aesthetic. Our forebears, making poetry of everything in their lives, transformed what by rights should be the most unsanitary room in the house into a place of unsurpassed elegance, replete with fond associations with the beauties of nature.
”
”
Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (In Praise of Shadows)
“
Surely, many people could live normal lives during martial law. But, for the dreamer who sought a better world, the Philippines was a dangerous place. Is it not arrogant to dismiss the suffering of many simply because the squares enjoyed cleaner streets? Freedom protects the totality of the human being; order just makes things easier for those who are comfortable to begin with.
”
”
Lisandro E. Claudio (Basagan ng Trip: Complaints about Filipino Culture and Politics)
“
It’s just a few days for my favorite girls to go enjoy themselves.” She again didn’t say anything, and I could’ve sworn I heard George gulp, most likely terrified. She seethed into the phone, “We’ll go on your little trip, Russel, but just know I’m onto you… I know you’re hiding something from me, and the second I find out what, it’s not going to be pretty.” She hung up, and I sighed as I looked down at my phone. “God, I love you, woman.
”
”
S.K. Angel (His Possession In Discretion (The Discretion Dynasty, #1))
“
1. Sri Lanka’s Cultural and Historical Richness
"Sri Lanka is a place where history lives in harmony with the present. From ancient temples to colonial fortresses, every corner of this island tells a story."
Sri Lanka’s history stretches over 2,500 years, featuring incredible landmarks like the Sigiriya Rock Fortress and Anuradhapura's ancient ruins. The country is also home to the famous Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, an important religious site for Buddhists around the world. Each historic site tells a different story, making Sri Lanka a treasure trove of cultural and spiritual experiences. Find out more about planning a visit here.
________________________________________
2. Nature’s Bounty and Biodiversity
"In Sri Lanka, nature isn't merely observed; it's experienced with all the senses — from the scent of spice plantations to the sight of vibrant tea terraces and the sound of waves on pristine beaches."
Sri Lanka’s national parks, like Yala and Udawalawe, are among the best places to see elephants, leopards, and a diverse range of bird species. The island’s ecosystems, from rainforests to coastal mangroves, create an incredible array of landscapes for nature lovers to explore. For those planning to visit these natural wonders, start your journey with a visa application.
________________________________________
3. Sri Lankan Hospitality and Warmth
"The true beauty of Sri Lanka is found in its people — hospitable, welcoming, and ready to share a smile or story over a cup of tea."
The warmth of Sri Lankans is a common highlight for visitors, whether encountered in bustling cities or quiet villages. Tourists are frequently invited to join meals or participate in local festivities, making Sri Lanka a welcoming destination for international travelers. To experience this hospitality firsthand, ensure you have the right travel documents, accessible here.
________________________________________
4. Beaches and Scenic Coastal Areas
"Sri Lanka’s coastline is a place where sun meets sand, and every wave brings with it a sense of peace."
With over 1,300 kilometers of beautiful coastline, Sri Lanka offers something for everyone. The south coast is famous for relaxing beaches like Unawatuna and Mirissa, while the east coast’s Arugam Bay draws surfing enthusiasts from around the globe. To enjoy these beaches, start by obtaining a Sri Lanka visa.
________________________________________
5. Tea Plantations and the Hill Country
"The heart of Sri Lanka beats in the hill country, where misty mountains and lush tea plantations stretch as far as the eye can see."
The central highlands of Sri Lanka, with towns like Ella and Nuwara Eliya, are dotted with tea plantations that produce some of the world’s finest teas. Visiting a tea plantation offers a chance to see tea processing and sample fresh brews, with the cool climate adding to the serene experience. Secure your entry to the hill country with a visa application.
________________________________________
6. Sri Lankan Cuisine: A Feast for the Senses
"In Sri Lanka, food is more than sustenance — it’s an art form, a burst of flavors that range from spicy curries to sweet desserts."
Sri Lankan cuisine is a rich blend of spices and textures. Popular dishes like rice and curry, hoppers, and kottu roti offer a true taste of the island. Food tours and local markets provide immersive culinary experiences, allowing visitors to discover the flavors of Sri Lanka. For a trip centered on food and culture, start your journey here.
”
”
parris khan
“
Isn’t it nice how we actually enjoy talking to each other now?” I said to her once on a trip home from college, after the bulk of the damage done in my teenage years had been allayed. “It is,” she said. “You know what I realized? I’ve just never met someone like you.” I’ve just never met someone like you, as if I were a stranger from another town or an eccentric guest accompanying a mutual friend to a dinner party. It was a strange thought to hear from the mouth of the woman who had birthed and raised me, with whom I shared a home for eighteen years, someone who was half me. My mother had struggled to understand me just as I struggled to understand her.
”
”
Michelle Zauner (Crying in H Mart)
“
Top Reasons to Go to Vietnam
There's just no dearth of things to do in Vietnam and you can be rest assured that your Vietnam getaways will not have a single dull moment. Vietnam tours are another name of enjoyable and excitement. There are lots of tour operators that conduct interesting Vietnam tours and journeys through a number of Vietnam bundle trip.
Holidaying in Vietnam is fantastic undoubtedly for sightseeing in Vietnam. The country is dotted with numerous well-known tourist websites in Vietnam. Amongst many places of interest in Vietnam astounding natural charm, tranquil villages, serene lakes, old pagodas, gorgeous lakes especially allure the travel freaks. Even the history fans like to discover the popular traveler destinations. Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hue, Hoi An are significant cities of Vietnam that are frequented by visitors.
Sightseeing tours in Vietnam take the travelers to various places of historic, spiritual significance and Vietnam Culture Trip. Fantastic architecture of the citadels, royal tombs, temples and palaces is marvelous site. Dien Bien Phu, C? Loa citadel, Hoa Lo prison, Ho Chi Minh mausoleum and Ba Dinh square and Quang Tri are not to be missed out on while exploring in Vietnam.
Things to do in Vietnam give a broad variety of options. Some locations like Hoi Chin Minh City and Hanoi are finest locations to have trendy clothes and actual antique pieces. People also like to have Vietnam War- Army watches and military clothes as momentums of the nation.
Entertainment in Vietnam has numerous alternatives. Night life of Vietnam is pulsating and the celebration enthusiasts are thrilled by the revitalizing nightlife here. Vietnam tourist guide will assist you know more about nightlife in Vietnam. Pool, Nightclubs, bars, clubs are an usual website below. Even in the far-flung and remote mountainous areas like Sapa, Karaoke bars are popular amongst the different nightspots of Vietnam.
There are numerous bars and clubs in Ho Chin Minh City, vietnam tours, the most popular ones among them being Apocalypse Now, Q Bar, Underground Bar and Grill and Carmen Bar. Nha Trang too offers a selection of choices with regards to bars and bars. With these options, you certainly wouldn't need to stress over things to do in Vietnam after dusk sets in.
There's just no dearth of things to do in Vietnam and you can be rest assured that your Vietnam trips will not have a single dull moment. There are many trip operators that conduct remarkable Vietnam tours and moves through a number of vietnam holiday packages.
Holidaying in Vietnam is terrific certainly for sightseeing in Vietnam. Touring tours in Vietnam take the travelers to various places of historical, spiritual significance and Vietnam Culture Trip. Vietnam traveler guide will help you know more about night life in Vietnam.
”
”
Vietnam
“
And I commend to you the simple practice of extending unconditional love to another person at least once a day, every day, for the rest of your life. You’ll heal your world in delightful and surprising ways. Yet it is important to understand that love’s power can be trivialized. “Love heals” has been a popular notion for centuries. It has enjoyed a recent resurgence that has had an unfortunate side effect. Many people who do not get well, in the sense of a clinical cure, are made to feel guilty that they were not able to care enough or demonstrate ample enough compassion to effect healing. For them, love does not heal. Love is a cruel master. This “guilt-tripping,” this illusion that we have total control, misses the point entirely. It damages the individual and it relegates unconditional loving to a technique, a modality in health and healing. Love is much more than a prescription. There is no formula that
”
”
Greg Anderson (The 22 Non-Negotiable Laws of Wellness: Feel, Think, and Live Better Than You Ever Thought Possible)
“
And I commend to you the simple practice of extending unconditional love to another person at least once a day, every day, for the rest of your life. You’ll heal your world in delightful and surprising ways. Yet it is important to understand that love’s power can be trivialized. “Love heals” has been a popular notion for centuries. It has enjoyed a recent resurgence that has had an unfortunate side effect. Many people who do not get well, in the sense of a clinical cure, are made to feel guilty that they were not able to care enough or demonstrate ample enough compassion to effect healing. For them, love does not heal. Love is a cruel master. This “guilt-tripping,” this illusion that we have total control, misses the point entirely. It damages the individual and it relegates unconditional loving to a technique, a modality in health and healing. Love is much more than a prescription. There is no formula that universally links spiritual perfection and clinical cures. Those who make such claims are misguided. Rather, love transforms suffering — a crucial distinction. That transformation may include a clinical cure; it may not. Cure is not the standard for judging. For even the process of death is transformed by unconditional loving. We can leave the world filled with joyful memories, an example of how to love. That’s healing of the highest order. Arid death cannot be counted, then, as failure.
”
”
Greg Anderson (The 22 Non-Negotiable Laws of Wellness: Feel, Think, and Live Better Than You Ever Thought Possible)
“
Hal particularly enjoyed drawing and painting as he traveled. He took postcard-sized art paper and, while waiting in an airport or taking a private moment in the home of a generous host, would capture a scene of an intriguing place or person. On a long trip, Kathy and the children might receive one of these original postcards in the mail. Upon his return home, Hal would send a similar custom-made thank-you note to his host. He found drawing and painting not only diverting but spiritually uplifting and even revelatory.
”
”
Robert I. Eaton (I Will Lead You Along: The Life of Henry B. Eyring)
“
His horse, who had picked up the rather unfortunate name of Fat Ninny from Miles’s grandfather in the first few weeks of his life as a foal, came to greet Miles at his call, nickering, and Miles faithfully rewarded him with peppermints from his pocket. He petted the big roan’s wide, velvety nose. The beast, rising . . . twenty-three years old now?—had more gray among his red hairs, and wheezed from his canter across the pasture. So dare he ride, with this seizure-thing? Probably not the sort of days-long camping trips up into the hills he most enjoyed. If he trained Martin to be his spotter, he could perhaps risk a few turns around the pastures. He wasn’t likely to break any of his synthetic bones, falling off, and he trusted Ninny not to step on him. Swimming,
”
”
Lois McMaster Bujold (Memory (Vorkosigan Saga, #10))
“
We live in a world with an ever-growing population. Personal space these days is at a premium. Physically, we are practically tripping over our fellow man. Mentally and spiritually, the divide among us seems to widen.
”
”
Carlos Wallace (The Other 99 T.Y.M.E.S: Train Your Mind to Enjoy Serenity)
“
PUBLISH YOUR BOOK TODAY
The following is a direct quote from Amazon, and, if you are a real writer, it is one of the most fun things you will ever see in your life:
This royalty payment notification is for Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) sales recorded in the Kindle Store. Payment will be made to your bank account and should appear in your available balance within 2 to 5 business days after the Payment Date. Details of the payment will be available on the Payment Report after it has been processed by your bank.
The email that the above is quoted from comes for you every month, along with notes about payments from the various Kindle Stores in which you are selling, and they make you feel terrific. What a knockout: there is my money, flowing in as receivables each and every month, like clockwork, from all around the globe and waiting for me in my personal bank account, sitting there to use as I see fit.
The statements show up in your every month, along with those from all your stores. They are a bit longer than the above quote, but sit back, close your eyes and visualize how wonderful it will be to have money rolling into your bank electronically, eliminating the bother of dithering around with checks.
Right now, as your read this, the opportunity to earn a solid living, even to make a fortune with your books is real world and readily available for you. The revenue stream is just sitting there; it’s waiting for you to get busy, to write books and to learn to use Amazon as an amazing marketing tool poised and ready for your decision to pursue your dream.
The trick for getting hot at book marketing—so you can actually be in a place for fully enjoying your life as an author/publisher—is to believe in yourself: to move right on past all your previous confusion: discouraging feedback from peers, friends and family; all self-doubt and blaming games; rejection slips from agents, publishers and magazines; and yes, even the ego trip of your treasured writer’s block . . . .
”
”
Terry Kennedy (The Zen of Marketing Kindle Ebooks: The Publishing Guide To Selling Ebooks On Amazon (The Zen of Indie Books #1))
“
His book For Whom the Bell Tolls was an instant success in the summer of 1940, and afforded him the means to live in style at his villa outside of Havana with his new wife Mary Welsh, whom he married in 1946. It was during this period that he started getting headaches and gaining weight, frequently becoming depressed. Being able to shake off his problems, he wrote a series of books on the Land, Air and Sea, and later wrote The Old Man and the Sea for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in May 1954. Hemingway on a trip to Africa where he barely survived two successive airplane crashes. Returning to Cuba, Ernest worked reshaping the recovered work and wrote his memoir, A Moveable Feast. He also finished True at First Light and The Garden of Eden. Being security conscious, he stored his works in a safe deposit box at a bank in Havana.
His home Finca Vigía had become a hub for friends and even visiting tourists. It was reliably disclosed to me that he frequently enjoyed swinger’s parties and orgies at his Cuban home. In Spain after divorcing Frank Sinatra Hemingway introduced Ava Gardner to many of the bullfighters he knew and in a free for all, she seduced many of hotter ones. After Ava Gardner’s affair with the famous Spanish bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguín crashed, she came to Cuba and stayed at Finca Vigía, where she had what was termed to be a poignant relationship with Ernest. Ava Gardner swam nude in the pool, located down the slope from the Hemingway house, after which he told his staff that the water was not to be emptied. An intimate friendship grew between Hemingway’s forth and second wife, Mary and Pauline. Pauline often came to Finca Vigia, in the early 1950s, and likewise Mary made the crossing of the Florida Straits, back to Key West several times. The ex-wife and the current wife enjoyed gossiping about their prior husbands and lovers and had choice words regarding Ernest.
In 1959, Hemingway was in Cuba during the revolution, and was delighted that Batista, who owned the nearby property, that later became the location of the dismal Pan Americana Housing Development, was overthrown. He shared the love of fishing with Fidel Castro and remained on good terms with him. Reading the tea leaves, he decided to leave Cuba after hearing that Fidel wanted to nationalize the properties owned by Americans and other foreign nationals. In the summer of 1960, while working on a manuscript for Life magazine, Hemingway developed dementia becoming disorganized and confused. His eyesight had been failing and he became despondent and depressed. On July 25, 1960, he and his wife Mary left Cuba for the last time.
He never retrieved his books or the manuscripts that he left in the bank vault. Following the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban government took ownership of his home and the works he left behind, including an estimated 5,000 books from his personal library. After years of neglect, his home, which was designed by the Spanish architect Miguel Pascual y Baguer in 1886, has now been largely restored as the Hemingway Museum. The museum, overlooking San Francisco de Paula, as well as the Straits of Florida in the distance, houses much of his work as well as his boat housed near his pool.
”
”
Hank Bracker
“
They may enjoy the trip up here, but y’all, that doesn’t mean I’m gonna answer the door.
”
”
Bobby Akart (The Innocents (Pandemic #2))
“
Before we took the trip, he had never been on an elevator, eaten a hamburger, or enjoyed a chocolate milkshake. He’d never seen a vacuum cleaner, dishwasher, trash compactor, ATM, vending machine, car with automatic locks, or Western-style movie theater. He had never been to a shopping mall, ridden in a car on the Interstate, or traveled at over 40 miles an hour. He’d never seen a rodeo, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the Rubin Museum of Art in New York filled with Himalayan art, or drunk a single-malt scotch. Now he counts all of these marvels of Western culture as some of his favorite things.
”
”
Linda Leaming (Married to Bhutan)
“
A road trip with Richard Nixon would seem like gum surgery on wheels. But Hunter S. Thompson actually went on a road trip with Nixon—or, anyway, on a car ride—in New Hampshire during the 1968 presidential campaign. Hunter described it in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72: There were only two of us in the back: just me and Richard Nixon, and we were talking football in a serious way. . . . It was a very weird trip; probably one of the weirdest things I’ve ever done, and especially weird because both Nixon and I enjoyed it. What’s weirder yet is that Nixon might have had greater success than Kennedy as president. He
”
”
P.J. O'Rourke (How the Hell Did This Happen?: The Election of 2016)
“
Barnard caught the word. “Comfortable?” he echoed raucously. “Why, of course we’re comfortable. We’re just enjoying the trip. Pity we haven’t a pack of cards—we could play a rubber of bridge.” Conway welcomed the spirit of the remark, though he disliked bridge. “I don’t suppose Miss Brinklow plays,” he said, smiling. But the missionary turned round briskly to retort: “Indeed I do, and I could never see any harm in cards at all. There’s nothing against them in the Bible.” They all laughed, and seemed obliged to her for providing an excuse. At any rate, Conway thought, she wasn’t hysterical.
”
”
James Hilton (Lost Horizon)
“
A few more years passed before I understood the distance between that satellite and the stars. Back then I was reading a popular set of basic science books called A Hundred Thousand Whys. From the astronomy volume, I learned the concept of a light-year. Before then, I had already known that light could traverse a distance equal to seven and a half trips around the Earth in a single second, but I had not contemplated what kind of terrifying distance could be crossed by flying at such a speed for a whole year. I imagined a ray of light passing through the cold silence of space at the speed of 300,000 kilometers per second. I struggled to grasp the bone-chilling vastness and profundity with my imagination, felt the weight of an immense terror and awe, and simultaneously enjoyed a druglike euphoria. From
”
”
Liu Cixin (The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1))
“
Invite Friends for Invite Travel – Best FREE Android Travel App For Travel Lovers
Find friends for Invite Travel the app that helps you find like-minded travel companions with whom you can visit your dream destinations together. Search members according to your budget and destination. This application will help you to suggest members that match your budget and want to travel to the same destination as you.
Plan your budget and communicate with your selected companion to travel around the world. Select the desire gender as your companion and travel together who you want to be with you till your destination.
Browse your friends and match the best-selected mates to travel with according to your budget.
# DATING CHAT
Maybe you’re wondering: “I’ve found some girls or guys that interest me, would they want to meet me? Is it a good idea to arrange a trip dating and have them meetme?” Before you decide if they want to meet them for a vacation dating or just to hang out, you can engage them in a conversation. Use our Message feature for chatting and getting to know people who interest you.
# MEET GIRLS AND GUYS FROM AROUND THE WORLD
Browse profiles of girls and guys from around the world. You can contact them prior to your visit and meet them after you arrive for some fun vacation dating. Travelling is more exciting when you meet the local people who really know the place. Having a trip dating with them? Even better!
Please feel free to download the Invite Friends for Invite here and enjoy your travel journey with best Android travel app.
If you have any query please contact us now at: fouzia124.idrees@gmail.com
”
”
hamayoun jhangeer
“
at some point, your trip to the amusement park will end. And you’ll feel like an idiot if you spent the whole time complaining instead of enjoying the ride. Risk
”
”
Jesse Tevelow (Hustle: The Life Changing Effects of Constant Motion)