Era Girl Quotes

It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters.

It is a do-it-yourself era: health care, real estate, police investigation. Go online and f*ing figure it out for yourself because everyone’s overworked and understaffed.

For several years, I had been bored. Not a whining, restless child's boredom (although I was not above that) but a dense, blanketing malaise. It seemed to me that there was nothing new to be discovered ever again. Our society was utterly, ruinously derivative (although the word derivative as a criticism is itself derivative). We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can't recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn't immediately reference to a movie or TV show. A fucking commercial. You know the awful singsong of the blasé: Seeeen it. I've literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can't anymore. I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script. It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls. It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I'm not a real person and neither is anyone else. I would have done anything to feel real again.

...I have so many dreams of my own, and I remember things from my childhood, from when I was a girl and a young woman, and I haven't forgotten a thing. So why did we think of Mom as a mom from the very beginning? She didn't have the opportunity to pursue her dreams, and all by herself, faced everything the era dealt her, poverty and sadness, and she couldn't do anything about her very bad lot in life other than suffer through it and get beyond it and live her life to the very best of her ability, giving her body and her heart to it completely. Why did I never give a thought to Mom's dreams?

It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls.

In an era where women undress their outfits & give their bodies so carelessly, become the rare wild woman that undresses her mind and soul & knows the worth of what she has to offer.

Eventually, I’ll grow sick and perish. Die on the floor, a young girl—who even when in the presence of company, still feels the loneliness that looms over her heart.

But I have to say this in defense of humankind: In no matter what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got here. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these games going on that could make you act crazy, even if you weren't crazy to begin with. Some of the crazymaking games going on today are love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf, and girls' basketball.

Then, on the twenty-first day of December in the 109th year of the third era, Queen Channary gave birth to a baby girl. She was officially named Princess Selene Channary Jannali Blackburn of Luna,

One hot afternoon during the era in which you’ve gotten yourself ridiculously tangled up with heroin, you will be riding the bus and thinking what a worthless piece of crap you are when a little girl will get on the bus holding the strings of two purple balloons. She’ll offer you one of the balloons, but you won’t take it because you believe you no longer have a right to such tiny beautiful things. You’re wrong. You do.

Has anyone been corrupted or defiled?" "Since the age of twelve," West said. "I wasn't asking you, I was asking the girls." "Not yet," Cassandra replied cheerfully.

I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script. It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls. It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I'm not a real person and neither is anyone else. I would have done anything to feel real again.

All the girls, the most beautiful, the most heterosexual, the ones waiting for Prince Charming full of natural testosterone, are actually destined without knowing it to become bitches that my dildos penetrate.

in these shitty plastic days ...

Desde que la conocía se había dado cuenta de que ella jamás mentía directamente, pero también de que no siempre era del todo sincera. Su manera de mentir consistía en desviar el tema.

Lisbeth Salander era la mujer que odiaba a los hombres que odiaban a las mujeres.

And I suppose all the wishes come true,” Minya said, sarcastic. “Of course not, silly girl,” Suheyla retorted. She had not grown up in an era of optimism, but that didn’t mean they’d lived without dreams. “Wishes don’t just come true. They’re only the target you paint around what you want. You still have to hit the bull’s-eye yourself.

We want you to tell us about vampires." Simon grinned. "What do you want to know? Scariest is Eli in Let the Right One In, cheesiest is late-era Lestat, most underrated is David Bowie in The Hunger. Sexiest is definitely Drusilla, though if you ask a girl, she'll probably say Damon Salvatore or Edward Cullen. But..." he shrugged, "You know girls." Julie's and Beatriz's eyes were wide. "I didn't think you'd know so many!" Beatriz exclaimed. "Are they... are they your friends?" "Oh, sure, Count Dracula and I are like this," Simon said, crossing his fingers to demonstrate. "Also Count Chocula. Oh, and my BFF Count Blintzula. He's a real charmer...." He trailed off as he realized no one else was laughing. In fact, no one seemed to realize he was joking. "They're from TV," he prompted them. "Or, uh, cereal." "What's he talking about?" Julie asked Jon, perfect nose wrinkling up in confusion. "Who cares?" Jon said.

Era um dia de primavera desses que trazem esperança: cheio de brisas suaves e delicados aromas de terra aquecida.

The term “tomboy,” one nineteenth-century author recalled, looking back at the pre–Civil War era, “was applied to all little girls who showed the least tendency toward thinking and acting for themselves.

It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters.

Los momentos importantes de tu vida habían quedado tan incorporados a ti que ya ni siquiera eras capaz de verlos.

We were women in transition, raised in one era and coming of age in another, very different time...here we were, entering the workplace in the 1960s questioning--and often rejecting--many of the values we had been taught. We were the polite, perfectionist "good girls," who never showed our drive or our desires around men. Now we were becoming mad women, discovering and confronting our own ambitions, a quality praised in men but stigmatized--still--in women.

believe in egalitarianism über alles, not to be confused with being a communist, of course, I know enough about Stalin and Mao to be disabused of any fantasies in that direction at the same time, the truth is that hierarchies of power and privilege won’t disappear, every historian knows this, it’s innate to human nature and inherent in all societies in all eras and equally manifests in the animal kingdom, so I can’t pretend otherwise my job as a teacher is to help those who are disadvantaged

Stavolta lessi il titolo del quadro: Ragazza interrotta mentre suona. Interrotta mentre suona: com’era stata la mia vita, interrotta nella musica dei miei diciassette anni, com’era stata la sua vita, strappata e fissata su tela: un momento reso immobile, per tutti gli altri momenti, qualsiasi cosa fossero o avrebbero potuto essere. Quale vita può guarirne?

Era la encarnación del peor temor de cualquier escritor: un cliché

En aquel mundo opresivo en el que nadie era libre, Sierva María lo era: sólo ella y sólo allí.

Eu nunca quis ser qualquer coisa, exceto quem eu era.

It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters. And

We entered an era of false alarms.

No era la mejor decisión y sin duda tampoco una decisión lógica, pero era la decisión correcta.

Fuck soft girl era. He put me in my secure girl era. A place where I felt safe, seen, and secured.

Take a little thought experiment. Imagine all the rampage school shooters in Littleton, Colorado; Pearl, Mississippi; Paducah, Kentucky; Springfield, Oregon; and Jonesboro, Arkansas; now imagine they were black girls from poor families who lived instead in Chicago, New Haven, Newark, Philadelphia, or Providence. Can you picture the national debate, the headlines, the hand-wringing? There is no doubt we’d be having a national debate about inner-city poor black girls. The entire focus would be on race, class, and gender. The media would doubtless invent a new term for their behavior, as with wilding two decades ago. We’d hear about the culture of poverty, about how living in the city breeds crime and violence. We’d hear some pundits proclaim some putative natural tendency among blacks toward violence. Someone would likely even blame feminism for causing girls to become violent in a vain imitation of boys. Yet the obvious fact that virtually all the rampage school shooters were middle-class white boys barely broke a ripple in the torrent of public discussion. This uniformity cut across all other differences among the shooters: some came from intact families, others from single-parent homes; some boys had acted violently in the past, and others were quiet and unassuming; some boys also expressed rage at their parents (two killed their parents the same morning), and others seemed to live in happy families.

It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don’t have genuine souls.

Gran parte del deseo, a esa edad, era un acto deliberado. Nos empeñábamos en difuminar los bordes toscos y decepcionantes de los chicos para darles la forma de alguien a quien pudiéramos amar.

life was different before 9/11, Waris said, as they left the town behind and walked along a busy main road passing big old houses made of thick slabs of grey stone; she was too young to remember the 'before era', when her mother said people looked at hijabbed women with surprise, curiosity or pity

Like any girl, she still felt the echoes from earlier eras of repression. She'd been raised by a mother who'd fought hard to get a wage she deserved, to have access to education when she lacked every advantage, to travel on her own terms. The idea she was being asked-that she was expected to simply play along-made the blood throb in her veins. She was already in the damn stays. Wasn't the enough?

The elders say Shim Cheong was fashioned by the Goddess of Creation to be the Sea God’s final bride, the one to ease all his sorrows and usher in a new era of peace in the kingdom. She has skin forged from the purest of pearls. She has hair stitched from the deepest night. She has lips colored by the blood of men.

Once again, my new novel The Girl Who Stayed is something different for me, although with the same voice my readers have come to anticipate. I believe that people are pretty much the same, regardless of era, physical

Todo el tiempo que había dedicado a prepararme, esos artículos que enseñaban que la vida no era más que na sala de espera, hasta que alguien se fijara en ti ... Los chicos habían dedicado ese tiempo a convertirse en ellos mismos

Tutto il tempo che avevi trascorso a sistemarti, a leggere articoli che ti preparassero alla vita, era una sala d’aspetto in attesa di qualcuno che si accorgesse di te. Quel tempo i ragazzi lo avevano trascorso a diventare loro stessi.

And now, while he didn't particularly think any of these stories was a bit truer, he did realize that he didn't really know his wife at all; and that in fact the entire conception of knowing another person--of trust, of closeness, of marriage itself--while not exactly a lie since it existed someplace if only as an idea (in his parents' life, at least marginally) was still completely out-of-date, defunct, was something typifying another era, now unfortunately gone. Meeting a girl, falling in love, marrying her, moving to Connecticut, buying a fucking house, starting a life with her and thinking you really knew anything about her--the last part was a complete fiction, which made all the rest a joke.

the truth is that hierarchies of power and privilege won’t disappear, every historian knows this, it’s innate to human nature and inherent in all societies in all eras and equally manifests in the animal kingdom, so I can’t pretend otherwise

Yo era una chica del montón, y ésa era la mayor decepción de todas: no había en mí ningún destello de grandeza. No era tan guapa como para sacar aquellas notas; la balanza no se inclinaba con suficiente decisión del lado de la belleza o del de la inteligencia.

Now we will live!” This is what the hungry little boy liked to say, as he toddled along the quiet roadside, or through the empty fields. But the food that he saw was only in his imagination. The wheat had all been taken away, in a heartless campaign of requisitions that began Europe’s era of mass killing. It was 1933, and Joseph Stalin was deliberately starving Soviet Ukraine. The little boy died, as did more than three million other people. “I will meet her,” said a young Soviet man of his wife, “under the ground.” He was right; he was shot after she was, and they were buried among the seven hundred thousand victims of Stalin’s Great Terror of 1937 and 1938. “They asked for my wedding ring, which I….” The Polish officer broke off his diary just before he was executed by the Soviet secret police in 1940. He was one of about two hundred thousand Polish citizens shot by the Soviets or the Germans at the beginning of the Second World War, while Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union jointly occupied his country. Late in 1941, an eleven-year-old Russian girl in Leningrad finished her own humble diary: “Only Tania is left.” Adolf Hitler had betrayed Stalin, her city was under siege by the Germans, and her family were among the four million Soviet citizens the Germans starved to death. The following summer, a twelve-year-old Jewish girl in Belarus wrote a last letter to her father: “I am saying good-bye to you before I die. I am so afraid of this death because they throw small children into the mass graves alive.” She was among the more than five million Jews gassed or shot by the Germans.

Children weren’t color-coded at all until the early twentieth century: in the era before Maytag, all babies wore white as a practical matter, since the only way of getting clothes clean was to boil them. What’s more, both boys and girls wore what were thought of as gender-neutral dresses. When nursery colors were introduced, pink was actually considered the more masculine hue, a pastel version of red, which was associated with strength. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy, and faithfulness, symbolized femininity.

(Indeed there were outstanding examples of good governance in India at the time, notably the Travancore kingdom, which in 1819 became the first government in the world to decree universal, compulsory and free primary education for both boys and girls.) The British charges against the rulers they

Amanda olhou para ele - Tens de compreender que já não sou a rapariga que era dantes. Sou casada e sou mãe e, tal como toda a gente, não sou perfeita. Debato-me com as escolhas que fiz e cometo erros e passo grande parte do tempo a interrogar-me sobre quem sou realmente ou se a minha vida tem algum significado sequer. Não sou de modo nenhum uma pessoa especial, Dawson, e tens de perceber isso. Tens de compreender que sou apenas... uma pessoa vulgar.

Pero ¿Quién gana aquí? Gano yo, porque mi lista, la lista maestra titulada << Joder a Nick Dunne>>, era rigurosa, la lista más completa y minuciosa jamás creada.

Era tan sorprendente como humillante darse cuenta de la cantidad de tiempo que puedes pasarte con alguien al que no le importas tan poco, y viceversa.

Fingir que uno sentía cosas que en realidad no sentía no era una buena forma de ganarse la vida.

... era un mentiroso redomado, y esa clase de mentirosos se esconden a plena luz del día.

You can learn a lot about the longings and generalized gender anxieties of an era by the kinds of fake women it dreams up.

Para Amy, o amor era como drogas, álcool e pornografia: não havia limite. Cada exposiçao precisava ser mais intensa que a última para alcançar o mesmo resultado.

Nunca comprendió que era posible echar de menos y llorar lo que nunca se ha tenido.

Apenas discerni que repetir o que toda a gente pensava não era em política um sinal de inferioridade, mas de superioridade.

Nació en un páramo. Era un niñita nacida envuelta en un cuerpo de niño en un páramo

... el amor era como las drogas o el alcohol o el porno: no había techo. Cada dosis debía ser más intensa que la anterior para obtener el mismo resultado.

- Cole tornou-se mais importante - admite. - Em algum lugar ao longo do caminho, quem eu era e o que queria tornou-se irrelevante.

Y cuando ese amor no era correspondido, podía convertirse de inmediato en un implacable odio.

It is a do-it-yourself era: health care, real estate, police investigation. Go online and fucking figure it out for yourself because everyone’s overworked and understaffed.

[I]t was in the pairs that the prisoners kept alive the semblance of humanity concluded Elmer Luchterhand, a sociologist at Yale who interviewed fifty-two concentration camp survivors shortly after liberation. Pairs stole food and clothing for each other, exchanged small gifts and planned for the future. If one member of a pair fainted from hunger in front of an SS officer, the other would prop him up. Survival . . . could only be a social achievement, not an individual accident, wrote Eugene Weinstock, a Belgian resistance fighter and Hungarian-born Jew who was sent to Buchenwald in 1943. Finally the death of one member of a pair often doomed the other. Women who knew Anne Frank in the Bergen-Belsen camp said that neither hunger nor typhus killed the young girl who would become the most famous diarist of the Nazi era. Rather, they said, she lost the will to live after the death of her sister, Margot.

Por aquel entonces, yo estaba siempre pendiente de la atención de los demás. Me vestía para generar amor, me bajaba un poco el escote, adoptaba una mirada melancólica cuando me mostraba en público, una mirada que insinuaba muchos pensamientos profundos y prometedores, por si acaso a alguien le daba por echar un vistazo. […] Todo el tiempo que había dedicado a prepararme, esos artículos que enseñaban que la vida no era más que una sala de espera, hasta que alguien se fijara en ti… Los chicos habían dedicado ese tiempo a convertirse en ellos mismos.

Al mismo tiempo la atormentaban sus propios pensamientos, que se transforman constantemente en desagradables fantasías sobre lo que iba a ser de ella. Odiaba esa forzada indefensión. Por mucho que intentara concentrarse en otra cosa para pasar el tiempo y olvidarse de su situación, la angustia siempre acababa por aflorar. Flotaba en el aire como una nube de gas que amenazaba con penetrar en sus poros y envenenar su existencia. Había descubierto que la mejor manera de mantener alejada esa angustia era imaginándose algo que le transmitiera una sensación de fuerza.

Mitch me estudió con una sonrisa engreída e interrogante. Les era tan fácil, a los hombres, esa asignación inmediata de valor. Y daba la impresión de que querían que tú convinieras en el juicio.

Like Semmering Academy, the Grove School was a Gothic pile of bricks run by 1950s-era chalk drones, which maintained its cultural viability by perpetuating a weirdly seductive anxiety throughout its community. Mary herself was a victim of the seduction; despite the trying and repetitive emotional requirements of her job, she remained eternally fascinated by the wicker-thin girls and their wicker-thin mothers, all of them favoring dark wool skirts and macintoshes and unreadably far-away expressions; if she squinted, they could have emerged intact from any of the last seven decades.

You don't have to cheat to lose your girl or your woman. You can lose her from lack of communication, attention and disrespect. It's not all about what you do, sometimes it's about what you don't do.

A distanza di anni avrei capito questo: quant'era impersonale e disorientato il nostro amore, che mandava segnali in tutto l'universo sperando di trovare qualcuno che desse accoglienza e forma ai nostri desideri.

We are all working from the same dog-eared script. It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters.

The women's liberation movement of today in America, in its most oceanic sense, is a wish by women to be liked for something other than their reproductive abilities, especially since the planet is harrowingly overpopulated. And the rejection of the Equal Rights Amendment by male state legislators is this clear statement by men, in my opinion: "We're sorry, girls, but your reproductive abilities are about all we can really like you for." The truth.

It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don’t have genuine souls. It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I’m not a real person and neither is anyone else. I would have done anything to feel real again.

En todo caso, ella no iba a ir más allá mientras él estuviera con [alguien más], así que, ¿Qué más daba? Estar encaprichada de alguien que le daba brillo a su día; era una alegría gratuita y libre de calorías y elementos cancerígenos.

It was an aspiring neighbourhood that retained a faint edge of slum, typical of Shanghai. Pensioners in Mao-era padded jackets would sit on doorsteps playing mah-jong, oblivious to the Prada-clad girls sweeping past on their way to work.

Racconterò di tempi difficili, tempi in cui la vita delle persone valeva assai poco e la lotta per la sopravvivenza era tutto. Mi piacerebbe poter dire che l’umanità ha imparato la lezione. Ma gli esseri umani di rado guardano al passato, finché non commettono di nuovo gli stessi errori. E quando si diventa abbastanza saggi per dispensare consigli, si è anche troppo vecchi per essere ascoltati. Motivo per cui la razza umana resterà per sempre imperfetta e allo stesso tempo meravigliosa.

When boys unite hearts with all souls and creatures they become gentle men. When girls unite hearts with all souls and creatures they become gentle women. When humanity unites with the heart of the ONE, an era of peace and love shall return to earth.

Si algo había logrado inculcarle [él] era que siempre debía mantener la capacidad de salir, sin sentimentalismos, de una situación que se hubiera vuelto ingobernable. Ésa era la regla fundamental de la supervivencia. "No muevas un dedo por una causa perdida.

No estaba enamorado de ella —eran más o menos tan incompatibles como podrían serlo dos personas cualesquiera—, pero la quería mucho y echaba de menos a esa maldita y complicada mujer. Había creído que la amistad era mutua. En resumen, se sentía como un idiota.

The college strike didn’t happen overnight. It started years ago when the war against boys began after the feminist era. Initially, feminism was presented as being about equal rights between the sexes. Now it is often about revenge and special privileges for women and girls.

Nossas famílias. No entendimento geral, era por causa delas que estávamos ali. No entanto, elas não tinham a menor participação em nossa vida hospitalar. Ficávamos na dúvida: também estaríamos assim ausentes da vida delas, lá fora? Os lunáticos são como os rebatedores escalados em uma partida de beisebol. Muitas vezes, a família toda é louca, mas, como não se pode mandar uma família inteira para o hospício, um de seus membros é declarado louco e internado. Aí, dependendo da reação do resto da família, essa pessoa permanece internada ou é liberada, de forma que ateste alguma coisa sobre a saúde mental familiar. A maioria das famílias declarava a mesma tese: não somos loucos; ela é que é. Essas famílias continuavam a pagar. Outras famílias, porém, tinham de provar que ninguém era louco, e eram essas que ameaçavam parar de pagar.

It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls.

It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls.

It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don’t have genuine souls.

Per una ragazza era inevitabile: ci si rassegnava a qualunque risposta. Se ti incazzavi eri una pazza, se non reagivi eri una mignotta. L'unica cosa che potevi fare era sorridere dall'angolino in cui ti avevano incastrata. Stare allo scherzo anche se dello scherzo eri sempre la vittima.

It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don’t have genuine souls. It

— Vou tomar banho agora e quero depilar as pernas. — Deixa eu verificar as instruções para você. — Estou autorizada a depilar as pernas. Com supervisão. — Deixa eu ver – e toca a remexer, a revirar. — Tudo bem. Só um minutinho. — Estou indo. Na banheira do tamanho de uma piscina, do tamanho de uma piscina olímpica, funda e comprida, com pés em forma de garras. Clique, estalo, “ronda”... — Ei! Cadê meu aparelho de barbear? — Sou apenas a encarregada da ronda. — Era para eu estar depilando as pernas. Estalo, clique. Mais água quente: essas banheiras de hidroterapia são mesmo confortáveis. Clique, estalo, chega minha supervisora de depilação. — Trouxe o aparelho de barbear? Ela o passa para mim. Senta-se em uma cadeira junto à banheira. Eu tenho 18 anos. Ela tem 22. Fica me olhando depilar as pernas. Havia muitas pernas cabeludas em nosso pavilhão. Precursoras do feminismo.

- Cole tornou-se mais importante - admite. - Em algum lugar ao longo do caminho, quem eu era e o que queria tornou-se irrelevante. É uma cena que entendo. Quando se tem filhos, as expectativas transferem-se para eles. A nossa vida fica em segundo plano e dá-se prioridade ao que eles necessitam. Entendo.

Es una era difícil en la que ser persona. Simplemente una persona real, auténtica, en vez de una colección de rasgos seleccionados a partir de una interminable galería de personajes. Y si todos interpretamos un papel, es imposible que exista nada semejante a un compañero del alma, porque lo que tenemos no son almas de verdad.

E eu continuava resistindo. E essa resistência me custava cada vez menos esforço, porque, por muito apego que se tenha ao veneno que nos está fazendo mal, quando por uma necessidade se passa algum tempo sem ingeri-lo, não é possível deixar de apreciar o descanso, que antes era coisa desconhecida, e a ausência de emoções e sofrimentos.

The feminine mystique, elevated by Freudian theory into a scientific religion, sounded a single, overprotective, life-restricting, future-denying note for women. Girls who grew up playing baseball, baby-sitting, mastering geometry -- almost independent enough, almost resourceful enough, to meet the problems of the fission-fusion era -- were told by the most advanced thinkers of our time to go back and live their lives as if they were Noras, restricted to the doll's house by Victorian prejudice. And their own respect and awe for the authority of science -- anthropology, sociology, psychology share that authority now -- kept them from questioning the feminine mystique.

Taking pictures is not only about the background, the colorful scenery or the beautiful era but its all about the person who is hidden in that picture with deep feelings of happiness or sorrows. Don't only rely on physical outlook inspite of it go deep down in every single pixel because a picture can show you a lot about the hidden life story of that particular personality.

It is not just a coincidence that we are at an uncomfortable strategic inflection point for the rights of girls and women just as we face grave threats to democratic values and the health of the planet. One cannot be separated from the other. This is an era of angry women and women willing to make noise. This is not a luxury but a necessity. Be angry. Be loud. Rage becomes you.

He never approves of anything I do,” Kusha says from the garage, hiding her frown. She gets all her old cars and tools from places you don’t want your daughters to visit. And Rashad Gaumont certainly doesn’t want her to visit Magic Mama, the not-enough-evolved, middle-aged man from the Old City. “He’s not a citizen! He lives in a bus! So what if he made it himself? So what if he teaches you about machines? Don’t meet him.” “Why?” Kusha used to ask Rashad, and she’d always get the same answer: “The unevolved kind brings chaos and wars.” Kusha didn’t listen. She went again and bought this car, too, from an antique dealer. He almost gave it away, saying it will never run again. It has the old days’ engine, the kind you don’t find in this era. A change of engines and batteries, a new set of all-terrain-tires, some safety trackers, sensors, and, well, a whole list of other things with 300% luck to make it run again through the Junk Land—the land outside the cities where it’s only ruins and rubble. Needs hard work, yes. But Kusha instantly liked the color of its body, the moment she saw it—a sort of green with greyish tint, and a good load of rust.

new studies increasingly emphasized that for women, African Americans, and other workers excluded from the early labor movement, Christianity was often the main resource at their disposal. Scholars of the antebellum era found slaves making their master’s religion their own and mill girls rebuking their employers for the “heaps of shining gold” that stood between them “and a righteous God.

the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can’t anymore. I don’t know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script. It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters.

Su Internet avevo visto vecchi rossetti Yardley – lo stick ormai ridotto a un impasto ceroso sbriciolato – in vendita per quasi cento dollari. In modo che le donne di una certa età potessero sentirlo di nuovo, quell’odore chimico di fiori. Ecco quanto ci tenevano le persone, a sapere che la loro vita era accaduta davvero, che ciò che erano state un tempo esisteva ancora da qualche parte dentro di loro.

It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don’t have genuine souls. It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I’m not a real person and neither is anyone else.

Can I be a modern girl, if I acknowledge such thoughts? I must be modern; I live now. But like everybody else, as Hollier says, I live in a muddle of eras, and some of my ideas belong to today, and some to an ancient past, and some to periods of time that seem more relevant to my parents than to me. If I could sort them and control them I might know better where I stand, but when I most want to be contemporary the Past keeps pushing in, and when I long for the Past (like when I wish Tadeusz had not died, and were with me now to guide and explain and help me to find where I belong in life) the Present cannot be pushed away. When I hear girls I know longing to be what they call liberated, and when I hear others rejoicing in what they think of as liberation, I feel a fool, because I simply do not know where I stand.

If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script. It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don’t have genuine souls.

One hot afternoon during the era in which you've gotten yourself ridiculously tangled up with heroin, you will be riding the bus and thinking what a worthless piece of crap you are when a little girl will get on the bus holding the strings of two purple balloons. She'll offer you one of the balloons, but you won't take it because you believe you no longer have a right to such tiny beautiful things. You're wrong. You do.

Y, para sus adentros, advirtió que le complacía formar parte de un lugar menos frenético, impersonal y descontrolado. Si eso significaba que se hacía vieja, pues bienvenido fuera. Cuando era pequeña, Meg le había preguntado cómo era morirse. Ella le había contado, con mucha delicadeza, que era como un sueño profundo cuando se está muy cansado. Tal vez envejecer era como el placer de sentarse tras haber estado de pie todo el día.

Still his loud iniquity is still what only the Greatest of saints become-someone who dqes not lie : He because he cannot Stop the vivid present to think, they by having got Past reflection into A passionate obedience in time. We have our BoyMeets-Girl era of mirrors and muddle to work through, Without rest, without j oy. Therefore we love him because his judgements are so Frankly subjective that his abuse carries no Personal sting.

It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless automat of characters. And if all of us are playing-acting there can be no such thing as a soulmate, because we don't have genuine souls. It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because i'm not a real person and neither is anyone else. I would have done anything to feel real again

Take a little thought experiment. Imagine all the rampage school shooters in Littleton, Colorado; Pearl, Mississippi; Paducah, Kentucky; Springfield, Oregon; and Jonesboro, Arkansas; now imagine they were black girls from poor families who lived instead in Chicago, New Haven, Newark, Philadelphia, or Providence. Can you picture the national debate, the headlines, the hand-wringing? There is no doubt we’d be having a national debate about inner-city poor black girls. The entire focus would be on race, class, and gender. The media would doubtless invent a new term for their behavior, as with wilding two decades ago. We’d hear about the culture of poverty, about how living in the city breeds crime and violence. We’d hear some pundits proclaim some putative natural tendency among blacks toward violence. Someone would likely even blame feminism for causing girls to become violent in a vain imitation of boys.

—Con tus deseos, [lo]convertiste en algo que no era. Creo que las mujeres tendemos a hacerlo. No importa lo adultas e independientes que nos creamos; juro que tenemos una enfermedad mental desde la infancia, siempre pensando que va a aparece un príncipe en un caballo blanco y va a resolverlo todo. Y cuando no aparece, o incluso cuando sí aparece alguien pero no puede resolverlo todo, creemos que hemos hecho algo mal. Pero es que es príncipe nunca existió.

O HOSPITAL FICAVA EM UMA COLINA na periferia da cidade, igual aos hospitais que vemos em filmes sobre loucos. Nosso hospital era famoso e havia abrigado grandes poetas e cantores. O hospital se especializou em poetas e cantores, ou será que os poetas e cantores se especializaram na loucura? O mais famoso de todos os ex-pacientes era Ray Charles. Vivíamos esperando que ele voltasse e fizesse serenatas da janela do pavilhão de recuperação de drogados. Ele nunca voltou. Contudo, tínhamos a família Taylor: Kate e Livingston estavam lá, embora James tivesse sido promovido para outro hospital antes da minha chegada. Na falta de Ray Charles, seus blues com sotaque da Carolina do Norte eram o bastante para nos entristecer. Os tristes precisam ouvir o som de sua tristeza. Robert Lowell também não passou por ali durante a minha estada. Sylvia Plath chegara e partira. Por que será que a métrica, a cadência e o ritmo provocam loucura em quem os produz?

We are all working from the same dog-eared script. It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don’t have genuine souls. It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I’m not a real person and neither is anyone else. I would have done anything to feel real again.

I can't recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn't immediately reference to a movie or a TV show. A fucking commercial. You know the awful singsong of the blasé: Seeeen it. I've literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can't anymore. I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script. It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless automat of characters.

Es una era muy difícil en la que ser persona. Simplemente una persona real, auténtica, en vez de una colección de rasgos seleccionados a partir de una interminable galería de personajes. Y si todos interpretamos un papel, es imposible que exista nada semejante a un compañero del alma, porque lo que tenemos no son almas de verdad. Había llegado hasta tal extremo que ya nada parecía tener importancia, porque yo no era una persona real y tampoco nadie más lo era. Habría hecho cualquier cosa por volver a sentirme real.

Talvez tivesse ela obscuramente sentido que meu brinquedo tinha outro objetivo além daquele que eu confessara, mas não tinha sabido notar que eu já o atingira. E eu, que temia que o houvesse notado (e certo movimento retrátil e tenso de pudor ofendido que teve um instante depois me obrigou a pensar que meu temor não era infundado), aceitei a luta de novo, temeroso de que ela imaginasse que eu não me propunha outra coisa senão aquela que, depois de realizada, não me deixou mais desejos que de estar quieto a seu lado.

TALVEZ AINDA NÃO ESTEJA CLARO por que vim parar aqui. Deve ter sido por algo mais do que uma espinha. Não mencionei que nunca havia visto aquele médico antes, nem que ele levou quinze minutos – ou vinte, talvez – para resolver me internar. O que eu tinha de tão demente que em menos de meia hora um médico me despachou para o hospício? E ele me tapeou: tinha dito que eu ficaria algumas semanas. Fiquei quase dois anos. Eu tinha 18 anos. Minha internação foi voluntária. Tinha de ser, pois eu era maior de idade. Era isso ou um mandado judicial – se bem que, no meu caso, nunca teriam conseguido um mandado judicial –, mas eu não sabia disso e, portanto, internei-me voluntariamente. Eu não era uma ameaça para a sociedade. Seria uma ameaça para mim mesma? As cinquenta aspirinas... mas isso eu já expliquei. Eram metafóricas. Eu queria me livrar de certo aspecto da minha personalidade. O que fiz com aquelas aspirinas foi uma espécie de autoaborto. Por algum tempo, deu certo. Depois, o efeito passou, mas não tive coragem de tentar de novo.

Sem dúvida, os nomes são desenhistas fantasiosos que nos dão, das pessoas e dos lugares, um esboço tão pouco semelhante que muitas vezes sentimos uma espécie de estupor, quando temos à nossa frente, em vez do mundo imaginado, o mundo visível (que não é aliás o mundo verdadeiro, pois os nossos sentidos não possuem muito mais do que a imaginação o dom da semelhança, tanto assim que os desenhos aproximativos que se podem obter da realidade são pelo menos tão diferentes do mundo visto como este o era do mundo imaginado).

I ask him about his novel. I fancy that Leo writes historical fiction, and for some reason I'm convinced his era is the Roman Empire. I have no reason to suppose this...it's just a fancy. "Romance," he says. "I write romance." My surprise clearly needs no words because he continues to explain. "My agent will tell you it's a story about passionate friendships and reluctant relationships in modern America, but really it's a romance." "Oh...set today?" I'm still thinking gladiators. "Modern America, remember." "Have you...have you always written romance?" "Yes, and what's more, so have you. The mystery writers, the historical novelists, the political thriller writers, the science fiction writers...everybody but the people who write instruction manuals is writing romance. We dress our stories up with murders, and discussions about morality and society, but really we just care about relationships." "You can't be serious. You're saying Stephen King writes romances?" "Yes, ma'am!" Leo sits back in the sofa. "The killer clown is entertaining and all that, but what we're really interested in is whether the fat kid gets the pretty girl.

Like most people in the King-era civil rights movement, they were Gandhians because nonviolent passive resistance was the best way to highlight white racism as an immorality. Their rejection of violence, even as a weapon against racial oppression, gave them the extraordinary power of moral witness—the great power of the early civil rights movement. What could America think of itself when passive freedom riders were beaten or when a little black girl in crinoline and pigtails—an image of perfectly conventional human aspiration—had to be escorted into school past a screaming white mob?

O SUICÍDIO É UMA FORMA DE ASSASSINATO – assassinato premeditado. Não é algo que se faz da primeira vez que se pensa em fazer. A gente precisa se acostumar com a ideia. E precisa dos meios, da oportunidade, do motivo. Um suicídio bem-sucedido exige boa organização e cabeça fria, coisas geralmente incompatíveis com o estado de espírito de quem quer se suicidar. É importante cultivar um distanciamento. Uma forma de fazer isso é imaginar-se morta ou morrendo. Havendo uma janela, deve-se imaginar o próprio corpo caindo da janela. Havendo uma faca, deve-se imaginar essa faca penetrando na própria pele. Havendo um trem que já vai chegar, deve-se imaginar o próprio corpo esmagado sob as rodas. Esses exercícios são essenciais para atingir o distanciamento necessário. O motivo é de suma importância. Sem um motivo forte, vai tudo por água abaixo. Meus motivos eram fracos: um trabalho de História Americana que eu não queria fazer e a pergunta que eu me propusera meses antes: “Por que não me matar?”. Morta, eu não precisaria fazer o trabalho. Nem precisaria ficar ponderando aquela pergunta. Essa ponderação me desgastava. Depois que a gente se faz uma pergunta dessas, ela não nos larga mais. Acho que muita gente se mata só para pôr fim ao dilema de se matar ou não. Tudo o que eu pensava ou fazia era imediatamente incorporado ao dilema. Fiz um comentário idiota – por que não me mato? Perdi o ônibus – melhor acabar com tudo. Até o que era bom entrava no jogo. Gostei desse filme – talvez eu não devesse me matar. Na verdade, eu só queria matar uma parte de mim: a parte que queria se matar, que me arrastava para o dilema do suicídio e transformava cada janela, cada utensílio de cozinha e cada estação de metrô no ensaio de uma tragédia. Só fui descobrir tudo isso, porém, depois de engolir cinquenta aspirinas.

In the modern era, teachers and scholarship have traditionally laid strenuous emphasis on the fact that Briseis, the woman taken from Achilles in Book One, was his géras, his war prize, the implication being that her loss for Achilles meant only loss of honor, an emphasis that may be a legacy of the homoerotic culture in which the classics and the Iliad were so strenuously taught—namely, the British public-school system: handsome and glamorous Achilles didn’t really like women, he was only upset because he’d lost his prize! Homer’s Achilles, however, above all else, is spectacularly adept at articulating his own feelings, and in the Embassy he says, “‘Are the sons of Atreus alone among mortal men the ones / who love their wives? Since any who is a good man, and careful, / loves her who is his own and cares for her, even as I now / loved this one from my heart, though it was my spear that won her’ ” (9.340ff.). The Iliad ’s depiction of both Achilles and Patroklos is nonchalantly heterosexual. At the conclusion of the Embassy, when Agamemnon’s ambassadors have departed, “Achilles slept in the inward corner of the strong-built shelter, / and a woman lay beside him, one he had taken from Lesbos, / Phorbas’ daughter, Diomede of the fair colouring. / In the other corner Patroklos went to bed; with him also / was a girl, Iphis the fair-girdled, whom brilliant Achilles / gave him, when he took sheer Skyros” (9.663ff.). The nature of the relationship between Achilles and Patroklos played an unlikely role in a lawsuit of the mid-fourth century B.C., brought by the orator Aeschines against one Timarchus, a prominent politician in Athens who had charged him with treason. Hoping to discredit Timarchus prior to the treason trial, Aeschines attacked Timarchus’ morality, charging him with pederasty. Since the same charge could have been brought against Aeschines, the orator takes pains to differentiate between his impulses and those of the plaintiff: “The distinction which I draw is this—to be in love with those who are beautiful and chaste is the experience of a kind-hearted and generous soul”; Aeschines, Contra Timarchus 137, in C. D. Adams, trans., The Speeches of Aeschines (Cambridge, MA, 1958), 111. For proof of such love, Aeschines cited the relationship between Achilles and Patroklos; his citation is of great interest for representing the longest extant quotation of Homer by an ancient author. 32

Hypothetically, then, you may be picking up in someone a certain very strange type of sadness that appears as a kind of disassociation from itself, maybe, Love-o.’ ‘I don’t know disassociation.’ ‘Well, love, but you know the idiom “not yourself” — “He’s not himself today,” for example,’ crooking and uncrooking fingers to form quotes on either side of what she says, which Mario adores. ‘There are, apparently, persons who are deeply afraid of their own emotions, particularly the painful ones. Grief, regret, sadness. Sadness especially, perhaps. Dolores describes these persons as afraid of obliteration, emotional engulfment. As if something truly and thoroughly felt would have no end or bottom. Would become infinite and engulf them.’ ‘Engulf means obliterate.’ ‘I am saying that such persons usually have a very fragile sense of themselves as persons. As existing at all. This interpretation is “existential,” Mario, which means vague and slightly flaky. But I think it may hold true in certain cases. My own father told stories of his own father, whose potato farm had been in St. Pamphile and very much larger than my father’s. My grandfather had had a marvelous harvest one season, and he wanted to invest money. This was in the early 1920s, when there was a great deal of money to be made on upstart companies and new American products. He apparently narrowed the field to two choices — Delaware-brand Punch, or an obscure sweet fizzy coffee substitute that sold out of pharmacy soda fountains and was rumored to contain smidgeons of cocaine, which was the subject of much controversy in those days. My father’s father chose Delaware Punch, which apparently tasted like rancid cranberry juice, and the manufacturer of which folded. And then his next two potato harvests were decimated by blight, resulting in the forced sale of his farm. Coca-Cola is now Coca-Cola. My father said his father showed very little emotion or anger or sadness about this, though. That he somehow couldn’t. My father said his father was frozen, and could feel emotion only when he was drunk. He would apparently get drunk four times a year, weep about his life, throw my father through the living room window, and disappear for several days, roaming the countryside of L’Islet Province, drunk and enraged.’ She’s not been looking at Mario this whole time, though Mario’s been looking at her. She smiled. ‘My father, of course, could himself tell this story only when he was drunk. He never threw anyone through any windows. He simply sat in his chair, drinking ale and reading the newspaper, for hours, until he fell out of the chair. And then one day he fell out of the chair and didn’t get up again, and that was how your maternal grandfather passed away. I’d never have gotten to go to University had he not died when I was a girl. He believed education was a waste for girls. It was a function of his era; it wasn’t his fault. His inheritance to Charles and me paid for university.’ She’s been smiling pleasantly this whole time, emptying the butt from the ashtray into the wastebasket, wiping the bowl’s inside with a Kleenex, straightening straight piles of folders on her desk.

Da parte sua, Charlotte era piuttosto tranquilla. Aveva raggiunto il suo scopo e aveva tempo di riflettere. Nel complesso era soddisfatta. Di sicuro, il signor Collins non era né intelligente né piacevole: la sua compagnia era noiosa e il suo attaccamento a lei doveva essere immaginario. Ma sarebbe stato comunque suo marito. Pur non avendo mai avuto un'opinione troppo alta né degli uomini né del matrimonio, aveva però sempre mirato a sposarsi: era l'unica sistemazione dignitosa per una ragazza di buona famiglia ma di scarsi mezzi; e, anche se non era certo che desse la felicità, era la soluzione migliore per mettersi al riparo dalla povertà.

Most of all, there had been a time when honor meant something at the Colgan School, when school property was respected, when the faculty was revered—when the headmaster’s mint-condition 1958 Porsche Speedster would never have been placed on top of the fountain in the quad with water shooting out of its headlights on an unusually warm evening in November. There had been a time when the girl responsible—the very one who had lucked into that last-minute vacancy only a few months before—would have had the decency to admit what she’d done and quietly taken her leave of the school. But unfortunately, that era, much like the headmaster’s car, was finished.

Despite my having grown up in the south, Portland is the most racist place I have ever lived. This is because being anti-racist isn't about using politically correct buzzwords and giving lip-service to sensitive conservation topics. Being anti-racist is about constructing a landscape that is safe for dark people to inhabit. It is not about white people trying to prove they are "woke" by putting up yard signs. That is not even what "woke" means. "Woke" is a territory of open-eyed, unsuperficial, cultural awareness white people are nowhere close to occupying; they are not even in the neighborhood. But being anti-racist in this dangerous era is something they can do, by going out of their way to make non-white people feel safe.

Gervex's painting had a lurid and well-known literary source: it was based on Alfred de Musset's poem "Rolla," published in 1833 and 1840. The poem, a paradigm of July Monarchy romanticism, chronicles the disgrace that befalls Jacques Rolla, a son of the bourgeoisie, in the big city. The narrative of his decline — he squandered his fortune and committed suicide — is interleaved with lamentations over the moral and spiritual decadence of contemporary life. Thenineteen-year-old Rolla becomes the "most debauched man" in Paris, "where vice is the cheapest, the oldest and the most fertile in the world." The poem tells a second story as well, that of Marie (or Maria or Marion), a pure young girl who becomes a degraded urban prostitute. Her story amplifies the poet's theme — a world in moral disarray - and provides the instrument of, and a sympathetic companion for, Rolla's climactic self-destruction. Musset is clear about his young prostitute's status: she was forced into a prostitution de la misère by economic circumstances ("what had debased her was, alas, poverty /And not love of gold"), and he frequently distinguishes her situation from that of the venal women of the courtesan rank ("Your loves are golden, lively and poetic; . . . you are not for sale at all"). He is also insistent about the tawdry circumstances in which the young woman had to practice her miserable profession ("the shameful curtains of that foul retreat," "in a hovel," "the walls of this gloomy and ramshackle room"). The segments of the poem from which Gervex drew his story — and which were published in press reviews of the painting — are these: With a melancholy eye Rolla gazed on The beautiful Marion asleep in her wide bed; In spite of himself, an unnameable and diabolical horror Made him tremble to the bone. Marion had cost dearly. — To pay for his night He had spent his last coins. His friends knew it. And he, on arriving, Had taken their hand and given his word that In the morning no one would see him alive. When Rolla saw the sun appear on the roofs, He went and leaned out the window. Rolla turned to look at Marie. She felt exhausted, and had fallen asleep. And thus both fled the cruelties of fate, The child in sleep, and the man in death! It was a moment of inaction, then, that Gervex chose to paint - that of weary repose for her and melancholic contemplation for Rolla, following the night of paid sex and just prior to his suicide.

I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with movies and TV and now the internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script. It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls. It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because i'm not a real person and neither is anyone else. I would have done anything to feel real again.

I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script. It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just like a real actual person, instead of a collective personality trait selected from an endless automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls. It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I'm not a real person and neither is anyone else. I would have done anything to feel real again.

The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can’t anymore. I don’t know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script. It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don’t have genuine souls.

In an era of young girls clad in pink “Princess” T-shirts, a worrisome message emerges. That we have cause for concern is backed up by data on narcissism from surveys of college students and young adults indicating a culture of specialness and entitlement. It seems that more and more young women (and men) are adopting a disturbing ideology of self-government that I refer to as a narcisstocracy. Under this self-serving administration, they come to believe that the only things that matter in life are looking great, excelling in performance and achievement, winning the attention of important people, and positioning themselves well, and that if they do these things, the world will come right to their door. They aren’t concerned about the needs of others or the impact of their behavior on others unless it stymies their winner-take-all ambition, and gets in the way of getting what they want.

and were willing to suffer pain if necessary.” A young woman in the spring and summer of 1967 was walking toward a door just as that door was springing open. A stage was set for her adulthood that was so accommodatingly extreme—so whimsical, sensual, and urgent—that behavior that in any other era would carry a penalty for the daring was shielded and encouraged. There was safety in numbers for every gorgeous madness; good girls wanting to be bad hadn’t had so much cover since the Jazz Age. San Francisco—glowing with psychedelic mystique, the whole city plastered with Fillmore and Avalon posters of tangle-haired goddess girls—was preparing for a convocation (of hapless runaways from provincial suburbs, it would turn out), the Summer of Love, through which the term “flower children” would be coined, while in harsh, emotion-sparking contrast, helicopters were dropping thousands of U.S. boys into the swamps of Vietnam.

Éramos la primera generación de seres humanos que jamás podría ver nada por primera vez. Contemplamos las maravillas del mundo con ojos mortecinos, de vuelta de todo. Mona Lisa, las pirámides, el Empire State Building. El ataque de un animal selvático, el colapso de antiquísimos glaciares, las erupciones volcánicas. No consigo recordar ni una sola cosa asombrosa que haya visto en persona que no me recordase de inmediato a una película o a un programa de televisión. A un puto anuncio. ¿Conocen el espantoso sonsonete del indiferente?: Ya lo he viiistooo. Bien, pues yo lo he visto literalmente todo. Y lo peor, lo que de verdad provoca que me entren ganas de saltarme la tapa de los sesos, es que la experiencia de segunda mano siempre es mejor. La imagen es más nítida, la visión más intensa, el ángulo de la cámara y la banda sonora manipulan mis emociones de un modo que ha dejado de estar al alcance de la realidad. No estoy seguro de que, llegados a este punto, sigamos siendo realmente humanos, al menos aquellos de nosotros que somos como la mayoría de nosotros: los que crecimos con la televisión y el cine y ahora internet. Si alguien nos traiciona, sabemos qué palabras decir; cuando muere un ser amado, sabemos qué palabras decir; si queremos hacernos el machote o el listillo o el loco, sabemos qué palabras decir. Todos seguimos el mismo guión manoseado. Es una era muy difícil en la que ser persona. Simplemente una persona real, auténtica, en vez de una colección de rasgos seleccionados a partir de una interminable galería de personajes. Y si todos interpretamos un papel, es imposible que exista nada semejante a un compañero del alma, porque lo que tenemos no son almas de verdad. Había llegado hasta tal extremo que ya nada parecía tener importancia, porque yo no era una persona real y tampoco nadie más lo era. Habría hecho cualquier cosa por volver a sentirme real.

Las últimas palabras me gustan tanto como las primeras, aunque no exactamente en el mismo sentido que a Miles Halter. Me encantan las últimas palabras que pronuncian los criminales antes de ser ejecutados, cuando intentan ser ingeniosos recordándole al pelotón de ejecución que no tienen todo el día; o cuando insisten en su inocencia, lo cual lleva a uno a comprender lo irreversible que es la pena de muerte. ¿Cuántas veces se ha demostrado que el asesino era otro después de la muerte de un inocente atrapado en una situación terrible? Me encantan las últimas palabras de los poetas, escritores y dramaturgos que dejan bellas notas de suicidio o cantan al amor en su lecho de muerte. Y también las de las personas que son fieles a la profesión hasta el último aliento, como los gramáticos o esos bichos raros obsesionados con los tecnicismos de las palabras, que antes de dejar esta vida exclaman algo similar a: «"Me estoy muriendo" o "Estoy a punto de morirme", ambas son correctas.

Back in the twentieth century, American girls had used baseball terminology. “First base” referred to embracing and kissing; “second base” referred to groping and fondling and deep, or “French,” kissing, commonly known as “heavy petting”; “third base” referred to fellatio, usually known in polite conversation by the ambiguous term “oral sex”; and “home plate” meant conception-mode intercourse, known familiarly as “going all the way.” In the year 2000, in the era of hooking up, “first base” meant deep kissing (“tonsil hockey”), groping, and fondling; “second base” meant oral sex; “third base” meant going all the way; and “home plate” meant learning each other’s names. Getting to home plate was relatively rare, however. The typical Filofax entry in the year 2000 by a girl who had hooked up the night before would be: “Boy with black Wu-Tang T-shirt and cargo pants: O, A, 6.” Or “Stupid cock diesel”—slang for a boy who was muscular from lifting weights—“who kept saying, ‘This is a cool deal’: TTC, 3.” The letters referred to the sexual acts performed (e.g., TTC for “that thing with the cup”), and the Arabic number indicated the degree of satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10. In the year 2000, girls used “score” as an active verb indicating sexual conquest, as in: “The whole thing was like very sketchy, but I scored that diesel who said he was gonna go home and caff up [drink coffee in order to stay awake and study] for the psych test.” In the twentieth century, only boys had used “score” in that fashion, as in: “I finally scored with Susan last night.” That girls were using such a locution points up one of the ironies of the relations between the sexes in the year 2000. The continuing vogue of feminism had made sexual life easier, even insouciant, for men. Women had been persuaded that they should be just as active as men when it came to sexual advances. Men were only too happy to accede to the new order, since it absolved them of all sense of responsibility

The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can’t anymore. I don’t know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script. It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don’t have genuine souls. It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I’m not a real person and neither is anyone else. I would have done anything to feel real again.

Ora, as lembranças de amor não abrem exceção às leis gerais da memória, regidas também estas pelas leis mais gerais do hábito. Como o hábito enfraquece tudo, o que melhor nos recorda uma criatura é justamente o que havíamos esquecido (porque era insignificante e assim lhe havíamos deixado toda a sua força). Eis porque a maior parte da nossa memória está fora de nós, numa viração de chuva, num cheiro de quarto fechado ou no cheiro de uma primeira labareda, em toda parte onde encontramos de nós mesmos o que a nossa inteligência desdenhara, por não lhe achar utilidade, a última reserva do passado, a melhor, aquela que, quando todas as nossas lágrimas parecem estancadas, ainda sabe fazer-nos chorar. Fora de nós? Em nós, para melhor dizer, mas oculta a nossos próprios olhares, num esquecimento mais ou menos prolongado. Graças tão somente a esse olvido é que podemos de tempos a tempos reencontrar o ser que fomos, colocarmo-nos perante as coisas como o estava aquele ser, sofrer de novo porque não mais somos nós, mas ele, e porque ele amava o que nos é agora indiferente.

We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. (…) I’ve literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can’t anymore. (…) If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script. It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don’t have genuine souls. It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I’m not a real person and neither is anyone else.

If any actress best represents the snappy 1930s dame, it’s Joan Blondell. During that era she played a lively assortment of chorus girls, waitresses, golddiggers, reporters and secretaries in a total of 53 movies, 44 of them for Warner Bros. “Yet, for all that overwork,” Mick LaSalle writes in Complicated Women, “Blondell hardly ever had a false moment. Self-possessed, unimpressed, completely natural, always sane, without attitude or pretense … the greatest of the screen’s great broads. No one was better at playing someone both fun-loving yet grounded, ready for a great time, yet substantial, too.” She was fun-loving, but sometimes there were limits. As a flip waitress in Other Men’s Women (1931), Joan puts the breaks on a fresh customer: BLONDELL: Anything else you guys want? CUSTOMER (checking her out as she bends over): Yeah, give me a big slice of you—and some french fried potatoes on the side. BLONDELL: Listen, baby, I’m A.P.O. CUSTOMER (turning to friend): What does she mean, A.P.O.? BLONDELL: Ain’t Putting Out. “I was the fizz on the soda,” she once said. “I just showed my big boobs and tiny waist and acted glib and flirty.” While that’s a fair assessment of most of her early roles, it wasn’t the whole story.

Mr. President, Dr. Biden, Madam Vice President, Mr. Emhoff, Americans and the world, when day comes we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry asea we must wade. We’ve braved the belly of the beast. We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace. In the norms and notions of what just is isn’t always justice. And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it. Somehow we do it. Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished. We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one. And yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect. We are striving to forge our union with purpose. To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man. And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another. We seek harm to none and harmony for all. Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true. That even as we grieved, we grew. That even as we hurt, we hoped. That even as we tired, we tried that will forever be tied together victorious. Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division. Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid. If we’re to live up to her own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made. That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb if only we dare. It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit. It’s the past we step into and how we repair it. We’ve seen a forest that would shatter our nation rather than share it. Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy. This effort very nearly succeeded. But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated. In this truth, in this faith we trust for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us. This is the era of just redemption. We feared it at its inception. We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour, but within it, we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves so while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe? Now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us? We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be a country that is bruised, but whole, benevolent, but bold, fierce, and free. We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation. Our blunders become their burdens. But one thing is certain, if we merge mercy with might and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright. So let us leave behind a country better than one we were left with. Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one. We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the West. We will rise from the wind-swept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution. We will rise from the Lake Rim cities of the Midwestern states. We will rise from the sun-baked South. We will rebuild, reconcile and recover in every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country our people diverse and beautiful will emerge battered and beautiful. When day comes, we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid. The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light. If only we’re brave enough.

Chubby: A regular-size person who could lose a few, for whom you feel affection. Chubster: An overweight, adorable child. That kid from Two and a Half Men for the first couple of years. Fatso: An antiquated term, really. In the 1970s, mean sorority girls would call a pledge this. Probably most often used on people who aren’t even really fat, but who fear being fat. Fatass: Not usually used to describe weight, actually. This deceptive term is more a reflection of one’s laziness. In the writers’ room of The Office, an upper-level writer might get impatient and yell, “Eric, take your fat ass and those six fatasses and go write this B-story! I don’t want to hear any more excuses why the plot doesn’t make sense!” Jabba the Hutt: Star Wars villain. Also, something you can call yourself after a particularly filling Thanksgiving dinner that your aunts and uncles will all laugh really hard at. Obese: A serious, nonpejorative way to describe someone who is unhealthily overweight. Obeseotron: A nickname you give to someone you adore who has just stepped on your foot accidentally, and it hurts. Alternatively, a fat robot. Overweight: When someone is roughly thirty pounds too heavy for his or her frame. Pudgy: See “Chubby.” Pudgo: See “Chubster.” Tub o’ Lard: A huge compliment given by Depression-era people to other, less skinny people. Whale: A really, really mean way that teen boys target teen girls. See the following anecdote.

We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can't recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn't immediately reference to a movie or TV show. A fucking commercial. You know the awful singsong of the blasé: Seeeen it. I've literally seen it all, and the worst thing is, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can't anymore. I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script. It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls. It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I'm not a real person and neither is anyone else.

Cribbage!” I declared, pulling out the board, a deck of cards, and pen and paper, “Ben and I are going to teach you. Then we can all play.” “What makes you think I don’t know how to play cribbage?” Sage asked. “You do?” Ben sounded surprised. “I happen to be an excellent cribbage player,” Sage said. “Really…because I’m what one might call a cribbage master,” Ben said. “I bet I’ve been playing longer than you,” Sage said, and I cast my eyes his way. Was he trying to tell u something? “I highly doubt that,” Ben said, “but I believe we’ll see the proof when I double-skunk you.” “Clearly you’re both forgetting it’s a three-person game, and I’m ready to destroy you both,” I said. “Deal ‘em,” Ben said. Being a horse person, my mother was absolutely convinced she could achieve world peace if she just got the right parties together on a long enough ride. I didn’t know about that, but apparently cribbage might do the trick. I didn’t know about that, but apparently cribbage might do the trick. The three of us were pretty evenly matched, and Ben was impressed enough to ask sage how he learned to play. Turned out Sage’s parents were historians, he said, so they first taught him the precursor to cribbage, a game called noddy. “Really?” Ben asked, his professional curiosity piqued. “Your parents were historians? Did they teach?” “European history. In Europe,” Sage said. “Small college. They taught me a lot.” Yep, there was the metaphorical gauntlet. I saw the gleam in Ben’s eye as he picked it up. “Interesting,” he said. “So you’d say you know a lot about European history?” “I would say that. In fact, I believe I just did.” Ben grinned, and immediately set out to expose Sage as an intellectual fraud. He’d ask questions to trip Sage up and test his story, things I had no idea were tests until I heard Sage’s reactions. “So which of Shakespeare’s plays do you think was better served by the Globe Theatre: Henry VIII or Troilus and Cressida?” Ben asked, cracking his knuckles. “Troilus and Cressida was never performed at the Globe,” Sage replied. “As for Henry VIII, the original Globe caught fire during the show and burned to the ground, so I’d say that’s the show that really brought down the house…wouldn’t you?” “Nice…very nice.” Ben nodded. “Well done.” It was the cerebral version of bamboo under the fingernails, and while they both tried to seem casual about their conversation, they were soon leaning forward with sweat beading on their brows. It was fascinating…and weird. After several hours of this, Ben had to admit that he’d found a historical peer, and he gleefully involved Sage in all kinds of debates about the minutiae of eras I knew nothing about…except that I had the nagging sense I might have been there for some of them. For his part, Sage seemed to relish talking about the past with someone who could truly appreciate the detailed anecdotes and stories he’d discovered in his “research.” By the time we started our descent to Miami, the two were leaning over my seat to chat and laugh together. On the very full flight from Miami to New York, Ben and Sage took the two seats next to each other and gabbed and giggled like middle-school girls. I sat across from them stuck next to an older woman wearing far too much perfume.

For several years, I had been bored. Not a whining, restless child's boredom (although I was not above that) but a dense, blanketing malaise. It seemed to me that there was nothing new to be discovered ever again. Our society was utterly, ruinously derivative (although the word derivative as a criticism is itself derivative). We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can't recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn't immediately reference to a movie or TV show. A fucking commercial. You know the awful singsong of the blasé: Seeeen it. I've literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can't anymore. I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script. It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls. It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I'm not a real person and neither is anyone else. I would have done anything to feel real again.

Deoarece concepția imortalității sufletului exprimă probabil faptul că oamenii țin la viață, precum și atașamentul față de morții lor, a crede că pe lumea cealaltă sufletul își păstrează caracterul de aici al persoanei e doar o tradiție iluzorie și întristătoare; auzind că omul ia cu el pe lumea cealaltă nu numai înfățișarea din timpul vieții, dar până și sentimentele de dragoste și ură, că, deși separați de moarte, părinții și copiii ar rămâne părinți și copii, iar frații ar trăi mai departe acolo în aceeași relație, că spiritele morților în Occident descriu în general o lume a umbrelor asemănătoare cu societatea de aici, mie, dimpotrivă, mi se pare foarte tristă tradiția atașării de o existență care nu respectă decât ființa umană. Și în antichitate pitagoreicii credeau că sufletele celor răi vor trebui să sufere pe lumea cealaltă, înghesuite în corpuri de dobitoace sau păsări. În a treia zi, când sângele nu se uscase încă bine pe cruce, Isus Christos s-a urcat la Cer, iar trupul Domnului a dispărut. „…iată doi bărbați au stat înaintea lor, în veșminte strălucitoare. Și înfricoșându-se ele și plecându-și fețele la pământ, au zis aceia către ele: De ce căutați pe Cel viu între cei morți? Nu este aici, ci S-a sculat. Aduceți-vă aminte cum v-a vorbit, fiind încă în Galileea, zicând că Fiul Omului trebuie să fie dat pe mâinile oamenilor păcătoși și să fie răstignit, iar în a treia zi să învieze.”68 Când Raymond l-a întâlnit în Ceruri, Isus Christos purta o haină de lumină, la fel cu cei doi. Și nu numai Christos, dar toți oamenii în tărâmul spiritelor au veșminte țesute din lumină. Era convins că sunt haine făcute de acele spirite din propriul suflet,cu alte cuvinte, că viața spirituală dusă pe Pământ devine veșmântul lor după moarte. În relatarea lui se ascunde o concepție morală din această lume. La fel ca în lumea de dincolo buddhistă, și în cea descrisă de Raymond sunt șapte nivele, iar sufletele, pe măsură ce evoluează, le urcă unul câte unul.

The soil, where family seeds are laid in this city, is rotten. Boys and men still believe in the illusion that their crowning achievements are sleeping with as many women as they can. The more women, the more they are revered as a man. They are left in the dark, completely oblivious to the truth that a part of them is given away or dies with every meaningless sexual exploit. The ignorant remain content until one day, and that day may come when they are on their deathbed, where the veil is removed and the harsh reality slaps them with a sobering truth. And that truth, wrapped with regret, sucks the nectar out of all the names, the faces, the bodies, the women who they thought they conquered. They are left free-falling in a never-ending pit. It could be in a flash, and time and space no longer hold ground. That split second will feel like their entire lifetime. That never-ending pit is their hell. As for the girls and women, they too are lost souls. They dive into a virtual world of selfies, likes, hearts and fire emojis. They get chased by men, their sense of self-worth builds to a crescendo, filling them with a sense of desire. A sense of being wanted. The dopamine, the deceitful dopamine, gives them a false sense of value. They lose sight of the difficult “real world” questions: What am I worth? What is my purpose? What are my principles? They lose themselves in pixels and scrolls. It starts with a selfie and pouchy lips. Then a collarbone. Then the breasts. Then the ass. This never-ending loop of reward tricks them into baring themselves naked, physically and emotionally, for men behind a screen to admire. They buy into the idea that every man desires them. They entertain them. And they do. Only for a brief period of time. Then time starts plotting. They get old. The same breasts that got likes and drooling emoji faces from men start to sag. Her ass no longer the peach standard emoji. Her womb, no longer able to bear children. She is left empty. Hollow. All of those likes, comments and meaningless nights with men who do not even remember her name leave her shattered. They gave in their youth for cheap thrills unaware that Father Time comes after every living soul. They then too plunge into that never-ending pit with the men they lived a lie in. That also becomes their hell.

In the past, a young man from a village of average size could choose among maybe twenty girls of similar age with whom he went to school. He knew their families and vice versa, leading to a decision based on several well-known attributes. Nowadays, in the era of online dating, millions of potential partners are at our disposal. It has been proven that the stress caused by this mind-boggling variety is so large that the male brain reduces the decision to one single criterion: physical attractiveness. The consequences of this selection process you already know- perhaps even from personal experience. ..The more choice you have the more unsure and therefore dissatisfied you are afterward." ~ The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli

of the reward circuitry leads to a localized rebellion. If DeltaFosB is the gas pedal for bingeing, the molecule CREB functions as the brakes. CREB dampens our pleasure response.[134] It inhibits dopamine. CREB is trying to take the joy out of bingeing so that you give it a rest. Oddly enough, high levels of dopamine stimulate the production of both CREB and DeltaFosB. Our bodies are equipped with countless feedback mechanisms to keep us alive and functioning well. It makes perfect sense for mammals also to have evolved a braking system for bingeing on food or sex. There comes a time to move on and take care of the kids or maybe hunt and gather. But the glitch in the CREB/DeltaFosB balancing act is that it evolved long before humans were exposed to powerful reinforcers such as whiskey, cocaine, ice cream, or porn tube sites. All have the potential to override evolved satiation mechanisms, including CREB’s brakes. Put simply, CREB doesn’t stand much chance in the era of supernormal stimuli and widely available prescription and illicit drugs. What’s CREB to do in face of a Big Mac, fries and milkshake dinner, followed by 3-hour Mountain Dew-fuelled Call of Duty session, and two hours of surfing PornHub while smoking a joint? What array of enticements did a 19-year old hunter-gatherer encounter to goose his dopamine? Perhaps a second helping of overcooked rabbit meat or watching the four girls he’d known since birth tan hides.

The seventies were crazy everywhere, but crazier in Los Angeles. It was the era of freewheeling drugs and sex, the rag end of the sixties. I refer to sprees, to strange couplings and triplings, to nights that started with beer and wine and ended with cocaine and capsules, to debaucheries too various to chronicle. In a sense, we were all Robert Mitchum, smoking rope in bed with two girls while the sun was still noon high. We thought it was normal. You would walk into a house for a pool party, and there, on the cocktail table in the center of the living room, as if it were nuts or cooked shrimp, would be a platter of cocaine. We did it because we were stupid, because we did not know the danger. When I talk about my drug years, I am talking about twenty-four months in the middle of the seventies. I was in the rock and roll world, which meant I was around the stuff all the time. Of course, it was more than mere proximity. I was fun when I was high, talkative and all-encompassing. I could go forever, never be done talking. To some extent, I was really self-medicating, using the drugs to skate over issues in my own life. The fact is, money and success had come so fast, while I was away doing something else, not paying attention, that, when I finally realized where I was and just what I had, I could not understand it. There was this voice in my head, saying, Who do you think you are? What do you think you did? You are a fraud! You don’t deserve any of this! I tortured myself, and let the anxiety well up, then beat back the anxiety with the drugs, on and on, until one day, I stood up and said, “Screw it. That’s over. I’m done.” No rehab, no counseling, nothing like that. Just a moment of clarity, in which I saw myself from the outside, the mess I was making, the waste. I was slipping, not working as hard as I used to. I started leaving the office early on Fridays, then skipping Fridays altogether. Then I started leaving early on Thursdays, then arriving late on Mondays. I was letting myself go. Then one day, I just decided, It has to stop. I threw away the pills and bottles, took a cold shower, had a barbershop shave, and stepped into the cool of Sunset Boulevard, and began fresh. Maybe it had to do with my family situation. I was a father again.

Una de ellas preguntó en voz alta cómo podía ser que una flor oliera de esa forma, y otra que era una saboinda contestó que algunas flores son polinizadas por las moscasy por eso tienen que oler a carne podrida: para atraerlas. Pero no por eso dejan de ser hermosas y magnéticas, capaces de dejar mudas a un grupo de travestis que ejercen su íntimo ritual de bautismos.

Una de ellas preguntó en voz alta cómo podía ser que una flor oliera de esa forma, y otra que era una sabionda contestó que algunas flores son polinizadas por las moscas y por eso tienen que oler a carne podrida: para atraerlas. Pero no por eso dejan de ser hermosas y magnéticas, capaces de dejar mudas a un grupo de travestis que ejercen su íntimo ritual de bautismos

The whole set of stylizations that are known as 'camp' (a word that I was hearing then for the first time) was, in 1926, self-explanatory. Women moved and gesticulated in this way. Homosexuals wished for obvious reasons to copy them. The strange thing about 'camp' is that it has become fossilized. The mannerisms have never changed. If I were now to see a woman sitting with her knees clamped together, one hand on her hip and the other lightly touching her back hair, I should think, 'Either she scored her last social triumph in 1926 or it is a man in drag.' Perhaps 'camp' is set in the 'twenties because after that differences between the sexes—especially visible differences—began to fade. This, of course, has never mattered to women in the least. They know they are women. To homosexuals, who must, with every breath they draw, with every step they take, demonstrate that they are feminine, it is frustrating. They look back in sorrow to that more formal era and try to re-live it. The whole structure of society was at that time much more rigid than it has ever been since, and in two main ways. The first of these was sexual. The short skirts, bobbed hair and flat chests that were in fashion were in fact symbols of immaturity. No one ever drew attention to this, presumably out of politeness. The word 'boyish' was used to describe the girls of that era. This epithet they accepted graciously. They knew that they looked nothing like boys. They also realized that it was meant to be a compliment. Manliness was all the rage. The men of the 'twenties searched themselves for vestiges of effeminacy as though for lice. They did not worry about their characters but about their hair and their clothes. Their predicament was that they must never be caught worrying about either. I once heard a slightly dandified friend of my brother say, 'People are always accusing me of taking care over my appearance.' The sexual meaning of behaviour was only sketchily understood, but the symbolism of clothes was recognized by everyone. To wear suede shoes was to be under suspicion. Anyone who had hair rather than bristle at the back of his neck was thought to be an artist, a foreigner or worse. A friend of mine who was young in the same decade as I says that, when he was introduced to an elderly gentleman as an artist, the gentleman said, 'Oh, I know this young man is an artist. The other day I saw him in the street in a brown jacket.' The other way in which society in the 'twenties was rigid was in its class distinctions. Doubtless to a sociologist there were many different strata merging here and there but, among the people that I was now getting to know, there were only two classes. They never mingled except in bed. There was 'them', who acted refined and spoke nice and whose people had pots of money, and there was 'us', who were the salt of the earth.

What people are saying about WAR EAGLES ​5 out of 5 stars! WW2 with a dash of fantasy! I really enjoyed stepping back in time as the race for air travel was developing. One could truly feel the passion these pilots and engineers had for these magnificent machines. The twist of stepping back into a land of Vikings and dinosaurs was very well executed. Well done to both the author and the narrator. ​ Reminiscent of Golden Age Sci Fi This audio book reminded me of some of the 40's and 50's era tales, but what it happens to be is an alternative timeline World War II era fun adventure story. Think of a weird mash-up of a screw-up Captain America wanna-be mixed with the Land of the Lost mixed with Avatar where Hitler is the real villain and you might come close. At any rate, it's load of good fun and non stop action. But don't get distracted for a minute or you'll miss something! There are american pilots, Polish spies, Vikings, giant prehistoric eagles and, of course, Nazis! What more could you ask for to while away an afternoon? Our hero even gets the (Viking) girl! Put your feet up an get lost in what might have been.... 4 out of 5 stars! it's Amelia Earnhart meets WWII This is not an accurate historical fiction book, but rather an action-packed book set an historical time. I normally listen to my books at a higher speed, however the amount of drama and action in this book I had to slow it down. I like the storyline and the narrator however, the sound effects throughout the book did kind of throw me since I'm not used to that and most audible books. still I would recommend this is a good read.​ 5 out of 5 stars! I Would Like to See this on the Silver Screen Back in the late 1930s, the director of King Kong started planning War Eagles as his next block buster film. Then World War II intervened and the project languished for decades. It helps to know this background to fully appreciate this novel. It’s a big cinematic adventure waiting to find the screen. The heroes are larger than life, but more importantly, the images are bigger and more vivid than the mighty King Kong who reinvented the silver screen. And what are those images you may ask? Nazis developing super-science weapons for a sneak attack on America, Viking warriors riding gargantuan eagles in a time-forgotten land of dinosaurs, and of course, those same Vikings fighting Nazis over the skyline of New York City. This book is a heck of a lot of fun. It starts a little bit slow but once the Vikings enter the story it chugs along at a heroic pace. There is a ton of action and colorful confrontations. Narrator William L. Hahn pulls out all the stops adding theatrical sound effects to his wide repertoire of voices which adds a completely appropriate cinematic feel to the entire story. If you’re looking for some genuinely heroic fantasy, you should try War Eagles. Wonderful story War Eagles is a really good adventure story. ​5 out of 5 stars!

— Que faça esse inferno se transformar no paraíso que era antes. Faça a Grace se apaixonar por você de novo.

— O que quer que eu faça? — Suspiro o encarando. — Que faça esse inferno se transformar no paraíso que era antes. Faça a Grace se apaixonar por você de novo.

Sim. É loucura, cara. Ela te amar e não saber disso? Loucura. Ela não lembrar de você, de nós? É loucura. E ela achar normal um estranho pintá-la em um quadro? É totalmente loucura. A propósito, precisamos rever isso, cara. Porra, ela também era minha amiga. Sinto falta de uma parceira pra montar isso comigo. Alguém pra zoar você. Sinto falta pra caralho.

Seth era sinônimo do próprio inferno quando o vi pela primeira vez. Mas me sinto no céu quando seus dedos me tocam. Ele é meu paraíso e minha ruína. Agora, meu coração sabe o que quer. Ele quer Seth.

Su voz daba a entender que era posible hacer cualquier cosa, cualquiera, y quitarle importancia diciendo que era una broma, una broma a costa de toda la gente solemne y culpable, toda la gente moral y emotiva del mundo, la gente que «se tomaba a sí misma en serio». Eso era lo que él no podía soportar de los demás.

Did the girls know, the guide asked, that the Mona Lisa was a real woman, one who had lived and breathed and smiled at Leonardo da Vinci himself? That Lisa Gherardini, wife of a Florentine cloth merchant named Francesco del Giocondo, would become an icon, an embodiment of ideal beauty, a symbol of the Italian Renaissance itself? That the man who painted her would become one of the most famous names in history? That the painter captured not just a woman sitting, hands quietly folded, but an entire era in one portrait?

ABOUT PRECIOUS YOU An obsessive power struggle between an editor and her millennial intern turns dangerous in this debut psychological thriller—for readers of Luckiest Girl Alive and You. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS • “Hypnotic . . . an addictive thriller.”—People Trusting you was my first mistake. To Katherine, twenty-four-year-old Lily Lunt is a typical “snowflake.” It seems like the privileged, politically correct millennial will do whatever she can to make it big as a writer, including leveraging her family’s connections. To Lily, Katherine Ross, a career woman in her early forties, is a holdover from another era: clueless, old-fashioned, and perfectly happy to build her success on the backs of her unpaid interns.

One shall be a light-love book, a girl training to be a veterinarian, fighting against the restrictions of her sex in that field. Her goal will be to overcome those man-made restrictions, assert the efficiency of her sex, and attain the happiness she desires. And the other will be a story of Leyte, and the title is already in my mind, the plot in sketchy form, and the title shall be Her Name Was Leyte. Where do you get your ideas? The next time a would-be author asks that question of me I shall not answer.

But for every student who fought back there were several more who lived in loneliness or fear. Said one student from the era, “I can remember my first day at RVA, scared, intimidated…being put into the ‘hatchery’ with twenty-four other girls in bunk beds, never accepted but trying to get attention. It was all a bad scene and never got better. No one tried to help me”. Yet it was not the emotional stress or lack of sufficient adult mentors that inspired the greatest vitriol from parents. What triggered the most urgent letters was the appearance of worldy rebellion…ven in the darkest hour, when perhaps one-fourth of the senior class was experimenting with drugs, the vast majority of the school’s students were not using drugs or having sex, let alone dancing or indulging in any of the cosmetic misdemeanors that were so offensive to some within the missionary community. p159

That is what indices are like, of course. Not the fan-shaped spread of rice bursting from a gunnysack. Not the thunder roll of barrels of turpentine cascading down a plank. And not a seventeen-year-old girl with a tree-shaped scar on her knee—and a name. History is percentiles, the thoughts of great men, and the description of eras. Does the girl know that the reason that she died in the sea or in a twenty-foot slop pit on a ship named Jesus is because that was her era?

My girl deserves her first date.” “We’re really going to date?” Grasping my hand, Ford leads me to the couch, then he pulls me onto his lap. “I’m going to date the fuck out of you.

For the city girls in their cowboy romance era. And for the country girls who know a fictional cowboy is always better than the real thing.

This girl is going to blow up my world, and I’m going to stand back and let her.

She’s a dichotomy. This sweet girl I want to destroy. The woman beneath the public persona, the hottest fucking tease, the dirtiest little thing, whimpering and begging for me to fuck her until she can’t walk.

As the profession of social work evolved, it became a common practice to describe unmarried mothers in psychiatric terms. The unmarried mother was no longer viewed as having “bad blood,” but instead as a criminal needing correction or as a “girl” needing “a cure” for her neurosis. In other words, the mother as sick, but her soon-to-be-born baby was not. Once unmarried mothers were no longer viewed as having genetic deficiencies - the “bad blood” that could be passed on to their children - their babies became highly adoptable. Hastings Hornell Hart, an ordained pastor with a national reputation in penology and prison reform, described the standard procedure for admitting an unmarried mother to a maternity home and referring to her and the home’s “inmates” as “homeless and wayward white girls and women” who came from any part of the United States, who required physical examinations to detect the presence of venereal disease, who could be used to do the chores and thus save money for the institution, which was maintained  for the care of “inmates” by public monies from the District Board of Charities (Hart, 1924).

Pero era mi trabajo. Y no solo eso, yo era la única persona que tenía problemas con las reglas. Todos los demás las aceptaban. ¿Era esto una marca de mi locura?

Algo ocurría también con mis percepciones de la gente. Cuando miraba el rostro de alguien, a menudo no mantenía una conexión ininterrumpida con el concepto de rostro. Cuando empiezas a analizar sistemáticamente una cara, es un ente peculiar: blanda, puntiaguda, con muchas aberturas de aire y manchas de humedad. Este era el reverso de mi problema con los patrones. En lugar de ver demasiado significado, no veía ninguno.

In steering me back to that time, I have been forced to look at the girl I was then and, knowing what I do about myself now, be able to reframe and understand why I did this,

The subject of unmarried mothers was even addressed by the mainstream advice columnist Ann Landers (1961) who believe that “single girls who hang on to their babies” displayed a “sick kind of love” and “an unwholesome blend of self-pity mixed with self-destruction and a touch of martyrdom.

[T]here is no question about society’s instinctive response to her plight. It is simply to ostracize her…she will probably be expelled from school…such swift action is not meted out to the unmarried school boy father…Says former U.S. Commissioner of Education, Lawrence Derthick, ‘Many school systems …are prevented by law from providing teachers…or making homebound programs available from public funds for unwed mothers…there is no way a girl can earn credits for any scholastic work she does during pregnancy…there is no way by which she can conceal the fact that the earning was done in a maternity home…

They—those experts who seem to know everything—say that online dating is the biggest change to the mating ritual in a millennium. Once upon a time, your dating pool was limited to a small group of say fifty-to-a-hundred-plus people. It was an intimate, if somewhat shallow pool—your neighborhood, town, school, church. The first big change was the rise of agriculture and the growth of cities and towns. The pool got bigger, but ways to connect remained somewhat consistent in that you had to meet someone somewhere, or through someone else you know. Close tie connections—family, friends, geography. Then, enter the internet and the rise of dating websites, and that pool grew to essentially everyone else in the world looking for—whatever. Sex. Love. The fulfillment of whatever other appetite, need, desire. Some might view this is as a positive thing—this new era of choice, of plenty. But the truth is that these loose tie connections are almost never lasting. There’s no social obligation to treat people well. You’re not going to find yourself sitting in the church pew next your Torch date’s grandmother on Sunday. So, when you’re done with someone, you can potentially discard him, and realistically expect to never see him or anyone he knows again.

This mastectomy craze of removing healthy breasts that is happening to our young girls and women today will probably be the era that we look back on in the future and ask ourselves how and why we ever allowed and glorified self-harm.

The copper pots on the walls of the vast kitchen, unchanged from a bygone era, gleamed in the moonlight, creating a mosaic of patterned light on the flagstones. The scratchy scent of dried rosemary and sage seemed to crinkle time as the girls waited, scarcely breathing. They listened to the house.

Y claro, con esa presencia que derrochaba glamur, a muchas de nosotras se nos subieron a la cabeza las aspiraciones, las pretensiones. María la Muda quiso vestirse como ellas y un día entró a comprar ropa en una tienda de moda del centro: las vendedoras se asustaron como si hubieran visto un muerto. Flaca, negra, con los brazos cubiertos de esos canutillos de plumas y su lenguaje de mugidos, por favor, que no se malinterprete, era una escena de pesadilla para esas empleaduchas tilingas de tres por cuatro. La pobre María sólo estaba tratando de entrar en otro mundo tal como Las Cuervas entraban en el nuestro cada vez que querían. Pero esa operación al revés era inaceptable: las vendedoras se rieron escandalizadas y hostiles, llamaron al guardia de seguridad y echaron a los empujones a María, que nunca más, hasta que fue pájaro, intentó cagar más alto que el culo.

I was clearly in my lucky girl era.

And yet, consider the dramatic conclusion to Valentiner’s essay. In his final sentence he highlighted two qualities above all others that made The Lacemaker a masterpiece. First, “The face of the girl is unusually pretty, as the features are smaller than in some of the artist’s other types.” Vermeer had painted a girl, in other words, who suited modern taste. In a second way, too, Valentiner noted approvingly, Vermeer had transcended the bounds of his own era. He had managed “a subtlety in the distribution of light and diffusion of color rarely to be found in the genre paintings of Holland in the seventeenth century.” It was as if Vermeer lived in the same world as twentieth-century art connoisseurs.

Algunas mantuvieron contacto conmigo porque yo era la más joven de la manada y todas querían atribuirse alguna matriapotestad sobre mí. Algunas me aconsejaron bien, otras como pudieron.

La velocidad de la caminata era consecuencia de nuestro afán por ser transparentes. Cada vez que nuestra humanidad se volvía sólida, tanto los hombres como las mujeres, los niños, los viejos y los adolescentes nos gritaban que no, que no éramos transparentes: éramos travestis, éramos todo lo que en ellos despertaba el insulto, el rechazo.

Si la muerte era ese negro vacío del que acababa de despertarse, entonces no había nada de lo que preocuparse. Nunca notaría la diferencia. (Pág 72/73)

And everywhere you looked there were throngs of book characters, dressed in clothes from every era imaginable: a man in a toga surrounded by a gaggle of girls in dresses with enormous crinolines and ruffs, soldiers marching past them with laser guns, magicians in colorful hats, businesswomen in court shoes and trouser suits, orcs with grotesque misshapen faces. Fairies with dragonfly wings buzzed in and out of the crowd. A goose with a tiny boy riding on its back pecked at the instant happy endings, and was shooed away loudly by the fat lady. Then I spotted a tomcat wearing a pair of riding boots and walking on its hind legs, and followed it through the crowd until it disappeared into a pub called the Inkpot. Not really fancying the "ink cocktail" being advertised on a board outside, I decided to keep walking.

When Shi Qingluo, an agriculture expert, opened her eyes again after dying, she realised she had transmigrated as a farm girl in an ancient era. Her story started from when she was sold by her family, and was currently being forcibly taken away. She subdued evil with greater evil, and violence with greater violence, forcing the troublemakers to cry in defeat and ended up giving in to her. Then, she married off to another village. She became the wife of Scholar Xiao Hanzheng who was in a coma, and had just been abandoned by his extended family. Qingluo looked at Scholar Xiao’s frail mother, delicate younger sister, and obedient younger brother, and rubbed her chin out of satisfaction. From now on, they were all hers to protect. Since then, she took on the crucial role as the family’s breadwinner, led the family towards prosperity and accidentally became the nation’s wealthiest individual. Xiao Hanzheng woke up to find that his brother, who supposedly died from drowning, was alive and kicking. His sister was still at home. And their mother, who was supposedly eaten by wild beasts when she entered the forest in hopes of earning money to buy medicine, was still alive. More importantly, he even gained a capable wife after waking up. All of his immediate family members loved and relied on her. He looked at her and asked, “If you’re the breadwinner, what should I do?” His wife said, “You just have to look pretty, and earn a position in the government so that you can support me.” Xiao Hanzheng’s frozen heart suddenly came alive. “Sure!” Since then, he has worked hard in his career. He went from being an elementary scholar to a distinguished minister with great influence. He knew that from the moment he woke up, his wife was his saviour.

Betsy was flattered but apparently unmoved by the admiration of local suitors. If she assumed, as surely all girls of her class and era did, that marriage and motherhood were an inevitable part of female life, she nevertheless nurtured a hope that someone would rescue her from the dull and constricting married life that lay ahead. And in 1803 that hope seemed to become a reality when a handsome stranger appeared in staid Baltimore City. His name was Jérôme Bonaparte, and he was the youngest brother of the first consul of France, Napoleon.

Berns wasn’t the greatest of the era, although his best work was as good as anybody’s. But his unique voice as a songwriter, producer, and record man is so deeply ingrained in the vocabulary of pop music it has become common parlance. Songs of his such as “Twist and Shout,” “My Girl Sloopy,” or “Piece of My Heart” have been covered, quoted, cannibalized, used as salvage parts, and recycled so many times, his touch has just dissolved into the literature. His name may be lost, but his music is everywhere.

Nu am știut niciodată că libertatea poate fi ceva atât de crud și de dificil. [...] Acum îmi dădeam seama că trebuia să gândesc tot timpul - și asta era extrem de obositor. Erau momente când mă întrebam dacă, în caz că nu ar fi existat foamea aceea perpetuă, nu mi-ar fi fost mai bine în Coreea de Nord, unde alții gândeau și alegeau în locul meu.

Dicen que te has dejado el pelo largo, y que te lo has teñido de otro color. No serás tú. Yo te recuerdo distinta, sin ropa y de noche. Una vez hicimos el amor en la playa. Follamos como conejos que se dejaban domesticar por nuestras bocas. Ha pasado menos de un año, pero ya no me siento como aquel que perdía la consciencia oliendo tu cuello. Me hubiese hecho caníbal de haber sido legal. Sólo te habría comido a ti. No preguntes tantas cosas. Te odio como aquel a quien todo lo que ha querido le ha naufragado. Y me ahogué. En aquella misma playa, supongo. Es el único recuerdo que aún no ha aprendido a discutir. Entonces ahora te has dejado el pelo largo y te lo has teñido de otro color. ¿Tus orgasmos seguirán sonando igual? Tampoco me importa saberlo. Tú y yo ya no somos nosotros. Mis manos no se hablan con tus caderas, aunque a veces griten en sueños. Sucedieron cosas. Fuímos felices y eso no se olvida haciendo turismo sexual por otras camas. Te lo aseguro. Cuando amas –cuando amas de verdad– se te abre una brecha en el pecho y se queda ahí. Lo queramos o no. Podría decirte que lo siento. Que te necesito y que la masturbación no es lo que era. ¿Sabes?, pero es tarde. Subiste al coche y encendiste la radio. "I need my girl" de The National. Esa canción nos duró todo el viaje, y al llegar ya no nos conocíamos. No llovió, pero tú también lo sentiste, una tormenta empezó a desatarte en alguna parte. Quizá en aquella playa. Tal vez. Pero para entonces no podíamos volver allí. Y te quería, y tú a mí, pero aunque ninguno de los dos lo dijo en voz alta, ambos sabíamos que las cosas rotas no saben mantener una relación. Abrimos los ojos. Y la luz nos jodió, porque cuando comentaron aquello de que la verdad nos haría libres, se les olvidó recordarnos que también nos haría daño. Lo entendimos luego. Eso sí que nunca lo olvidarás.

Aprendí que, para sobrevivir, lo más conveniente era vivir en el presente.

Home, home-a few small rooms, stiflingly over-inhabited by a man, by a periodically teeming woman, by a rabble of boys and girls of all ages. No air, no space; an understerilized prison; darkness, disease, and smells. And home was as squalid psychically as physically. Psychically, it was a rabbit hole, a midden, hot with the frictions of tightly packed life, reeking with emotion. What suffocating intimacies, what dangerous, insane, obscene relationships between the members of the family group! Maniacally, the mother brooded over her children (her children)… brooded over them like a cat over its kittens; but a cat that could talk, a cat that could say, "My baby, my baby," over and over again. "My baby, and oh, oh, at my breast, the little hands, the hunger, and that unspeakable agonizing pleasure! Till at last my baby sleeps, my baby sleeps with a bubble of white milk at the corner of his mouth. My little baby sleeps…" / Hogar, hogar... Unos pocos cuartitos, superpoblados por un hombre, una mujer periódicamente embarazada, y una turbamulta de niños y niñas de todas las edades. Sin aire, sin espacio; una prisión no esterilizada; oscuridad, enfermedades y malos olores. Y el hogar era tan mezquino psíquicamente como físicamente. Psíquicamente, era una conejera, un estercolero, lleno de fricciones a causa de la vida en común, hediondo a fuerza de emociones. ¡Cuántas intimidades asfixiantes, cuán peligrosas, insanas y obscenas relaciones entre los miembros del grupo familiar! Como una maniática, la madre se preocupaba constantemente por los hijos (sus hijos)..., se preocupaba por ellos como una gata por sus pequeños; pero como una gata que supiera hablar, una gata que supiera decir: Nene mío, nene mío una y otra vez. Nene mío, y, ¡oh, en mi pecho, sus manitas, su hambre, y ese placer mortal e indecible! Hasta que al fin mi niño se duerme, mi niño se ha dormido con una gota de blanca leche en la comisura de su boca. Mi hijito duerme ...

A girl who adore letters in envelope and sent'em through skies is in era of texting and social media.

The book presents a broad world of women coming from all eras, countries, backgrounds, races, and ethnicities. They’re rabble-rousers from all sorts of disciplines: artists, activists, astronauts, daredevils, outlaws, scientists, warriors, writers, and everything in between.

En el seu cas, tot quedava clar, el promès era transparent, ximple i gens subtil, i a ella l'esperava un destí tèrbol, però tenia els ulls plens de llàgrimes de felicitat.

Se eu soubesse o quanto sentiria saudade dessas sensações, eu poderia tê-las vivenciado de outra forma, reconhecido seu glamour banal e respeitado o tique-taque do relógio que definiu toda essa experiência. Teria colocado meu ressentimento de lado, abaixado a guarda. Eu poderia ter um conhecimento básico da história ou da economia europeia. De uma forma mais abstrata, poderia sentir que de fato tinha estado em algum lugar, aberta, porosa e com vontade de aprender. Porque ser estudante era uma identidade invejável. (Pg. 203)

How would a princess spend her day?” “Like any young lady,” answered the Count. With a nod of the head, the girl encouraged him to continue. “In the morning, she would have lessons in French, history, music. After her lessons, she might visit with friends or walk in the park. And at lunch she would eat her vegetables.” “My father says that princesses personify the decadence of a vanquished era.” The Count was taken aback. “Perhaps a few,” he conceded. “But not all, I assure you.” She waved her fork. “Don’t worry. Papa is wonderful and he knows everything there is to know about the workings of tractors. But he knows absolutely nothing about the workings of princesses.

A former Red Guard relates, “I believe many little girls and boys of my generation dreamed of being a geological prospector… Propaganda for recruiting young people to work in this area was very effective. When my neighbor’s daughter was accepted by the geology department of a prestigious university, we all envied her for her future prospects of an adventurous life.

for me, although with the same voice my readers have come to anticipate. I believe that people are pretty much the same, regardless of era, physical space, or culture, and this is the essence of my storytelling. I strive for characters you will relate to, no matter where or when they may have lived. The Girl Who Stayed is also a book of the heart and I couldn’t be more thrilled to see its publication. In my twenty-six years of publishing, it’s my first major hardcover release and brings me full circle to work with Lou Aronica, whom I first had the pleasure of working with while at Avon Books. It’s also my very first non-genre novel, although you will find it a signature

[Ella] estaba tan confundida por la oxitocina, o la hormona de amor que fuera, que no podía admitir la verdad cuando estaba bojo el influjo de [él]. Tal vez fuese una simple cuestión de química. era difícil aceptar que alguien que te causaba tanto placer, a la vez te estuviera causando tanto dolor.

Y también porque iba por ahí diciendo que era posmoderna. No importa dónde estés, Nunca Hagas Eso. Por convención la gente lo considera pomposo y estúpido. Ella desobedecía muchas convenciones pero incluso sus desobediencias resultaban antipáticas. Nos daba la impresión de que era sinceramente incapaz de ver más allá del orgullo que sentía por su inteligencia tan elaborada y eso le impedía separar la actitud de la afectación, el deseo de la súplica. No era uno de esos espíritus libres que caen bien: hacía lo que quería pero ni era libre ni tenía mérito.

Kerala’s Christians belong to the oldest Christian community in the world outside Palestine. And when St Thomas, one of Jesus’s twelve apostles, brought Christianity to Kerala, it is said he was welcomed on shore by a flute-playing Jewish girl. St Thomas made converts among the high-born elite, the Namboodiri Brahmins, which meant there were Indians whose families had practised Christianity for far longer than the ancestors of any Briton could lay claim to.

Anna shouted, “Help me! I’m naked and covered in honey!” Wolf slid across the kitchen tile, heading for the basement stairs like Hermes in a footrace. “Hold tight, honeybun! Here I come!” Joe Singer charged behind him with the lantern. Wolf was not going to see Anna in her honey, even if he had to shoot him. This was not police work. This was personal. He hurled himself at Wolf. “She’s my girl!” “Not anymore!

Anna lifted her chin, “Forgive my interruption, Mr. President, but I am Assistant Matron Anna Blanc, and I’ve come about the singsong girls.” She remembered herself and bowed. No one bowed back. They simply stared at her. After a moment, Tom Foo Yuen said, in his tar-thick accent, “You are a brave, strange woman, Matron Blanc.” Anna had heard that before.

When the fugitives arrived in Lawrence, most had only the clothes on their backs, and in many cases those were rags. “They were strong and industrious,” Rev. Cordley wrote, “and by a little effort, work was found for them and very few, if any of them, became objects of charity.” But while they were eager to make their new lives in freedom, they needed help translating their industriousness into livelihoods. Nearly all were illiterate because most slaveholding states had strict laws making it illegal to teach slaves to read or write. Fugitives arriving in Lawrence equated learning with liberty, so their thirst for education was overwhelming. But the town’s fine educational system was not able to accommodate the number of eager new students. Mr. S. N. Simpson, one of the town’s 1855 pioneers, had started the first Sunday schools in town when he arrived, and he conceived a system of education for the fugitives based on his Sunday school model. Classes would be taught by volunteers in the evenings, and the curriculum would include basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, along with lectures designed to help them establish themselves in the community. The people of Lawrence were as excited to teach as their students were excited to learn, and enough volunteers were available to split the first class of about one hundred men and women into groups of six or eight.214 Josiah C. Trask, the editor of the Lawrence State Journal, spent an evening in January 1862 visiting the school and devoted an article to his observations. Eighty-three students, taught by twenty-seven teachers, met in the courthouse. “One young man who had been to the school only five nights,” Trask wrote, “began with the alphabet, [and] now spells in words of two syllables.” He observed that there was a class of little girls, “eager and restless,” a class of grown men, “solemn and earnest,” a class of “maidens in their teens,” and “another of elderly women.” Trask observed that the students were “straining forward with all their might, as if they could not learn fast enough.” He concluded, observing that all eighty-three students came to class each evening “after working hard all day to earn their bread,” while the twenty-seven teachers, “some of them our most cultivated and refined ladies and gentlemen,” labored night after night, “voluntarily and without compensation.” It was “a sight not often seen.”215

The two of us locked up our own little secrets from the real world. We had experienced countless sleepless nights when we would share our fears, our worries, and our passions; when we would gossip about the school and the other girls. We had played too many pranks and snuck out more than enough times to be expelled if the teachers ever found out. We were professionals at the art of being discreet; however, we had never found sneaking out of a residence necessary, especially when the reason was not to play a prank.

There was a sudden flash of lightning which brightly illuminated our faces. I squinted against the harsh light. It was soon followed by the crack of thunder. The strong wind whipped our hair around our faces, and the younger girls squealed as they quickly ran across the grass to get inside the school. Rose and I sat up, smiles on our faces as we listened to the weather’s dangerous melody. The third flash of lightning finally ripped open the sky’s belly. Freezing rain cascaded out, drenching us in a matter of seconds, the flower garlands drooping and lying limp on our matted hair.

Cuando cruzamos el paso de Malakand vi a una niña pequeña vendiendo naranjas. Con un lápiz estaba haciendo rayas en un trozo de papel para llevar la cuenta de las naranjas que había vendido, pues no sabía leer ni escribir. Le hice una foto y prometí que haría todo lo que estuviera en mi mano para que las niñas como ella pudieran recibir una educación. Ésa era la guerra que iba a librar.

While he was in school, we needed to pay our bills. I had to get a job. I'd majored in music (piano). I had no business credentials, connections, or confidence, so I started as a secretary to a retail sales broker at Smith Barney in midtown Manhattan. It was the era of Liar's Poker, Bonfire of the Vanities, and Working Girl. Working on Wall Street was exciting. I started taking business courses at night and I had a boss who believed in me, which allowed me to bridge from secretary to investment banker. This rarely happens. Later I became an equity research analyst and subsequently cofounded the investment firm Rose Park Advisors with Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School. When I walked onto Wall Street through the secretarial side door, and then walked off Wall Street to become an entrepreneur, I was a disruptor. "Disruptive innovation" is a term coined by Christensen to describe an innovation at the low end of the market that eventually upends an industry. In my case, I had started at the bottom and climbed to the top—now I wanted to upend my own career. No wonder my friend thought I'd lost my sanity. According to Christensen's theory, disruptors secure their initial foothold at the low end of the market, offering inferior, low-margin products. At first, the disrupter's position is weak. For example, when Toyota entered the U.S. market in the 1950s, it introduced the Corona, a small, cheap, no-frills car that appealed to first-time car buyers on a tight budget.