“
When love has left us in the lurch and nothing ever strikes a chord anymore, we may come to realize a vacuum of the lost vibrations of happiness and an absence of the ethereal and exalting feel of harmony that we only become aware of, after time passes by and everything has expired. (“Amour en friche”)
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
Just because the relationship ended doesn't mean it wasn't true or good or worth having. Everything expires eventually. Enjoy the good for what it was, not what it always has to be.
”
”
Iris Goodreads
“
Everything mattered and nothing did, and I was tired of trying to find out how both of those things were true. I was an itch that I'd scratched so hard I was bleeding. I had set out to do the impossible, whatever the impossible might be, only to find out that it was living with myself. Suicide became an expiration date, the day after which I no longer had to try.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (Forever (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #3))
“
And anyway, the truth isn't all that great. I mean, what's the truth? Planes falling out of the sky. Buses blowing up and ripping little kids into millions of pieces. Twelve-year-olds raping people and then shooting them in the head so they can't tell. I can't watch the news anymore or look at the papers. It's like whoever sits up there in Heaven has this big bag of really crappy stuff, and once or twice a day she or he reaches in and sprinkles a little bit of it over the world and makes everything crazy, like fairy dust that's past its expiration date.
”
”
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
“
It's like whoever sits up ther in Heaven had this big bag of really crappy stuff, and once or twice a day she or he reaches in and sprinkles a little bit of it over the world and it makes everything go crazy, like fairy dust that's past its expiration date.
”
”
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
“
Dear Max -
You looked so beautiful today. I'm going to remember what you looked like forever.
...
And I hope you remember me the same way - clean, ha-ha. I'm glad our last time together was happy.
But I'm leaving tonight, leaving the flock, and this time it's for good. I don't know if I'll ever see any of you again. The thing is, Max, that everyone is a little bit right. Added up all together, it makes this one big right.
Dylan's a little bit right about how my being here might be putting the rest of you in danger. The threat might have been just about Dr. Hans, but we don't know that for sure. Angel is a little bit right about how splitting up the flock will help all of us survive. And the rest of the flock is a little bit right about how when you and I are together, we're focused on each other - we can't help it.
The thing is, Maximum, I love you. I can't help but be focused on you when we're together. If you're in the room, I want to be next to you. If you're gone, I think about you. You're the one who I want to talk to. In a fight, I want you at my back. When we're together, the sun is shining. When we're apart, everything is in shades of gray.
I hope you'll forgive me someday for turning our worlds into shades of gray - at least for a while.
...
You're not at your best when you're focused on me. I mean, you're at your best Maxness, but not your best leaderness. I mostly need Maxness. The flock mostly needs leaderness. And Angel, if you're listening to this, it ain't you, sweetie. Not yet.
...
At least for a couple more years, the flock needs a leader to survive, no matter how capable everyone thinks he or she is. The truth is that they do need a leader, and the truth is that you are the best leader. It's one of the things I love about you.
But the more I thought about it, the more sure I got that this is the right thing to do. Maybe not for you, or for me, but for all of us together, our flock.
Please don't try to find me. This is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, besides wearing that suit today, and seeing you again will only make it harder. You'd ask me to come back, and I would, because I can't say no to you. But all the same problems would still be there, and I'd end up leaving again, and then we'd have to go through this all over again.
Please make us only go through this once.
...
I love you. I love your smile, your snarl, your grin, your face when you're sleeping. I love your hair streaming out behind you as we fly, with the sunlight making it shine, if it doesn't have too much mud or blood in it. I love seeing your wings spreading out, white and brown and tan and speckled, and the tiny, downy feathers right at the top of your shoulders. I love your eyes, whether they're cold or calculating or suspicious or laughing or warm, like when you look at me.
...
You're the best warrior I know, the best leader. You're the most comforting mom we've ever had. You're the biggest goofball, the worst driver, and a truly lousy cook. You've kept us safe and provided for us, in good times and bad. You're my best friend, my first and only love, and the most beautiful girl I've ever seen, with wings or without.
...
Tell you what, sweetie: If in twenty years we haven't expired yet, and the world is still more or less in one piece, I'll meet you at the top of that cliff where we first met the hawks and learned to fly with them. You know the one. Twenty years from today, if I'm alive, I'll be there, waiting for you. You can bet on it.
Good-bye, my love.
Fang
P.S. Tell everyone I sure will miss them
”
”
James Patterson
“
Keep everything young and soft, keep everything on the surface, even with the knowledge that the surface fades and can't be held together forever - take advantage before the expiration date appears in the nearing distance.
”
”
Bret Easton Ellis (Imperial Bedrooms)
“
When cells are no longer needed, they die with what can only be called great dignity. They take down all the struts and buttresses that hold them together and quietly devour their component parts. The process is known as apoptosis or programmed cell death. Every day billions of your cells die for your benefit and billions of others clean up the mess. Cells can also die violently- for instance, when infected- but mostly they die because they are told to. Indeed, if not told to live- if not given some kind of active instruction from another cell- cells automatically kill themselves. Cells need a lot of reassurance.
When, as occasionally happens, a cell fails to expire in the prescribed manner, but rather begins to divide and proliferate wildly, we call the result cancer. Cancer cells are really just confused cells. Cells make this mistake fairly regularly, but the body has elaborate mechanisms for dealing with it. It is only very rarely that the process spirals out of control. On average, humans suffer one fatal malignancy for each 100 million billion cell divisions. Cancer is bad luck in every possible sense of the term.
”
”
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
“
Maybe everything really does just have an expiration date—one that you can’t see until she tells you she’s leaving, and then she’s gone.
”
”
Laura Miller (By Way of Accident)
“
Nature is never static. It is always changing. Everything is in a constant state of flux. Nothing endures. Everything is in the process of either coming into being or expiring.
”
”
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
“
Of course,” I say. A wink. A smile. I’m watching you, or Everything is going to be all right. Love is a net. It can catch you long after the person is no longer there.
”
”
Rebecca Serle (Expiration Dates)
“
many medical schools inform their students that within several years half of what they’ve been taught will be wrong, and the teachers just don’t know which half.
”
”
Samuel Arbesman (The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date)
“
But the pill did nothing, probably expired like everything else on the premises.
”
”
Barbara Kingsolver (Flight Behavior)
“
Every day that we read the news we have the possibility of being confronted with a fact about our world that is wildly different from what we thought we knew.
”
”
Samuel Arbesman (The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date)
“
Nothing lasted forever. People, places, relationships…everything had an expiration date.
”
”
Ana Huang (King of Greed (Kings of Sin, #3))
“
Everything that was not so must go. All the beautiful literary lies and flights of fancy must be shot in mid-air! So they lined them up against a library wall one Sunday morning thirty years ago, in 2006; they lined them up, St. Nicholas and the Headless Horseman and Snow White and Rumpelstiltskin and Mother Goose--oh, what a wailing!--and shot them down, and burned the paper castles and the fairy frogs and old kings and the people who lived happily ever after (for of course it was a fact that nobody lived happily ever after!), and Once Upon A Time became No More! And they spread the ashes of the Phantom Rickshaw with the rubble of the Land of Oz; they filleted the bones of Glinda the Good and Ozma and the shattered Polychrome in a spectroscope and served Jack Pumpkinhead with meringue at the Biologists' Ball! The Beanstalk died in a bramble of red tape! Sleeping Beauty awoke at the kiss of a scientist and expired at a fatal puncture of his syringe. And they made Alice drink something from a bottle which reduced her to a size where she could no longer cry 'Curiouser and curioser,' and they gave the Looking Glass one hammer blow to smash it and every Red King and Oyster away!
”
”
Ray Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles)
“
We humans desperately seek stability in hopes, I think, that we can control our lives, though that isn't the way things work. Everything is in flux; we are dynamic beings born with expiration dates into an uncertain Universe.
”
”
Larry J. Dunlap (Night People (Things We Lost in the Night, #1))
“
As far as Aunty Lee was concerned, people ought to go through the ideas they carried around in their heads as regularly as they turned out their store cupboards. No matter how wisely you shopped, there would be things in the depths that were past their expiration dates or gone damp and moldy---or that has been picked up on impulse and were no longer relevant. Aunty Lee believed everything inside a head or cupboard could affect everything else in it by going bad or just taking up more space than it was worth.
”
”
Ovidia Yu (Aunty Lee's Delights (Singaporean Mystery #1))
“
Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in your
name, and beyond the grave they will find only death. But we
will keep the secret, and for their own happiness we will entice
them with a heavenly and eternal reward. —THE GRAND INQUISITOR TO HIS “SAVIOR” IN
THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything)
“
It is strange and ultimately insulting how, when someone you love dies, just expires without warning, time does not stop. For weeks after the funeral, everything is in limbo. Obligations disappear, routines crumble. It is enough to shuffle along the edge of one’s life. When the call back to normality comes, I ignore it
”
”
Kayla Rae Whitaker (The Animators)
“
Anyone who tells you life has greater value when it comes with an expiration date is full of shit. Immortality is worth the fortunes of galaxies.”
She regarded him too intently. “But it’s not worth everything. You gave it up for your freedom.”
His forced bravado faltered. That truth still petrified him today. “I did.
”
”
G.S. Jennsen (Relativity (Aurora Resonant, #1))
“
Facts change in regular and mathematically understandable ways.
”
”
Samuel Arbesman (The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date)
“
Science requires an idea to be refutable. It is not good enough for a concept to seem compelling; it must have the potential for a new fact to come along and render it false.
”
”
Samuel Arbesman (The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date)
“
Throw out everything that has reached its expiration date. Consumption might poison your future!
”
”
Joy Marino
“
The expiry date refers to a date on which you will expire your current self and everything that you are currently doing, to rise to the next level.
”
”
Santosh Nair (Eleven Commandments of Life Maximization)
“
The death of my father had unmoored her. After he was gone, the tight structure of our daily life got looser: the milk expired and was not replaced, our small patch of lawn overgrew, my mother stopped changing her sheets. And then, there would be a day during which she would whip everything back to the way it was before, a sudden tightening. But the loosening would come back. A slow easing at first, and then a swift, remorseless undoing—again and again.
”
”
Katy Hays (The Cloisters)
“
But only through replication can science be the truly error-correcting enterprise that it is supposed to be. Replication allows for the overturning of results, as well as an approach toward truth, and is what science is ultimately about.
”
”
Samuel Arbesman (The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date)
“
It's like whoever sits up there in Heaven has this big bag of really crappy stuff, and once or twice a day she or he reaches in and sprinkles a little bit of it over the world and it makes everything go crazy, like fairy dust that's past its expiration date.
”
”
Michael Thomas Ford
“
Everything you see, smell, taste, touch, and hear is an environment. That environment is either adding energy or draining energy. It’s either inspiring you or expiring you,” said the Ultimate Game of Life founder Jim Bunch on an episode of The Unmistakable Creative.
”
”
Srinivas Rao (An Audience of One: Reclaiming Creativity for Its Own Sake)
“
We were always eating expired things. Milk, bread, biscuits, cake. We forgot about them as they sat around the house and just as they had gone bad, we put them in our mouths. Chocolates I brought back with me from Australia, cheeses in last year's Christmas hamper, juice from the last time someone decided to go grocery shopping. We didn't always realize they tasted funny – not everything curdles and a two-month-old orange can be just as sweet. When we did, it was usually too late. Sometimes it wasn't. We finished what we had started anyway.
”
”
Cheryl Julia Lee (We Were Always Eating Expired Things)
“
We are committed to involving as many people as possible, as young as possible, as soon as possible. Sometimes too young and too soon! But we intentionally err on the side of too fast rather than too slow. We don’t wait until people feel “prepared” or “fully equipped.” Seriously, when is anyone ever completely prepared for ministry?
Ministry makes people’s faith bigger. If you want to increase someone’s confidence in God, put him in a ministry position before he feels fully equipped.
The messages your environments communicate have the potential to trump your primary message. If you don’t see a mess, if you aren’t bothered by clutter, you need to make sure there is someone around you who does see it and is bothered by it. An uncomfortable or distracting setting can derail ministry before it begins. The sermon begins in the parking lot.
Assign responsibility, not tasks.
At the end of the day, it’s application that makes all the difference. Truth isn’t helpful if no one understands or remembers it.
If you want a church full of biblically educated believers, just teach what the Bible says. If you want to make a difference in your community and possibly the world, give people handles, next steps, and specific applications. Challenge them to do something. As we’ve all seen, it’s not safe to assume that people automatically know what to do with what they’ve been taught. They need specific direction. This is hard. This requires an extra step in preparation. But this is how you grow people.
Your current template is perfectly designed to produce the results you are currently getting.
We must remove every possible obstacle from the path of the disinterested, suspicious, here-against-my-will, would-rather-be-somewhere-else, unchurched guests. The parking lot, hallways, auditorium, and stage must be obstacle-free zones.
As a preacher, it’s my responsibility to offend people with the gospel. That’s one reason we work so hard not to offend them in the parking lot, the hallway, at check-in, or in the early portions of our service. We want people to come back the following week for another round of offending!
Present the gospel in uncompromising terms, preach hard against sin, and tackle the most emotionally charged topics in culture, while providing an environment where unchurched people feel comfortable.
The approach a church chooses trumps its purpose every time.
Nothing says hypocrite faster than Christians expecting non-Christians to behave like Christians when half the Christians don’t act like it half the time.
When you give non-Christians an out, they respond by leaning in. Especially if you invite them rather than expect them. There’s a big difference between being expected to do something and being invited to try something.
There is an inexorable link between an organization’s vision and its appetite for improvement. Vision exposes what has yet to be accomplished. In this way, vision has the power to create a healthy sense of organizational discontent. A leader who continually keeps the vision out in front of his or her staff creates a thirst for improvement. Vision-centric churches expect change. Change is a means to an end. Change is critical to making what could and should be a reality.
Write your vision in ink; everything else should be penciled in. Plans change. Vision remains the same. It is natural to assume that what worked in the past will always work. But, of course, that way of thinking is lethal. And the longer it goes unchallenged, the more difficult it is to identify and eradicate. Every innovation has an expiration date. The primary reason churches cling to outdated models and programs is that they lack leadership.
”
”
Andy Stanley (Deep and Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend)
“
There’s no expiration date for grief. For me, there’s no getting over it. There’s no moving on. Death snuck into my life like a masked thief and stole everything from me, leaving me with a terminal disease that festers in my soul, slowly depleting the life from me, hindering the remotest chance of happiness, security, or peace of mind.
”
”
Carian Cole (The Lovely Return)
“
I can hear cars on the freeway, it’s like a distant sea
sludged with people
while over my other shoulder, far over on 7th street
near Western
is the hospital, that house of agony—
sheets and bedpans and arms and heads and
expirations;
everything is so sweetly awful, so continuously and
sweetly awful: the art of consummation: life eating
life…
”
”
Charles Bukowski (You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense)
“
Double the population of a city, and it doesn’t simply double its productivity; it yields productivity and innovation that is more than doubled. These relationships have been found in patents, a city’s gross metropolitan product, research and development budgets, and even the presence of so-called supercreative individuals, such as artists and academics.
”
”
Samuel Arbesman (The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date)
“
Change blindness in the world of facts and knowledge is also a problem. Sometimes we are exposed to new facts and simply filter them out. But more often we have to go out of our way in order to learn something new. Our blindness is not a failure to see the new fact; it’s a failure to see that the facts in our minds have the potential to be out-of-date at all.
”
”
Samuel Arbesman (The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date)
“
By shutting her eyes, by losing consciousness, Albertine had stripped off, one after another, the different human personalities with which we had deceived me ever since the day when I had first made her acquaintance. She was animated now only by the unconscious life of plants, of trees, a life more different from my own, more alien, and yet one that belonged more to me. Her psonality was not constantly escaping, as when we talked, by the outlets of her unacknowledged thoughts and of her eyes. She had called back into herself everything of her that lay outside, had withdrawn, enclosed, reabsorbed herself into her body. In keeping her in front of my eyes, in my hands, I had an impression of possessing her entirely which I never had when she was awake. Her life was submitted to me, exhaled towards me its gentle breath.
I listened to this murmuring, mysterious emanation, soft as a sea breeze, magical as a gleam of moonlight, that was her sleep. So long as it lasted, I was free to dream about her and yet at the same time to look at her, and when that sleep grew deeper, to touch, to kiss her. What I felt then was a love as pure, as immaterial, as mysterious, as if I had been in the presence of those inanimate creatures which are the beauties of nature. And indeed, as soon as her sleep became at all deep, she ceased to be merely the plant that she had been; her sleep,on the margin of which I remained musing, with a fresh delight of which I never tired, which I could have gone on enjoying indefinitely, was to me a whole lanscape. Her sleep brought within my reach something as serene, as sensually delicious as those nights of full moon on the bay of Balbec, calm as a lake over which the branches barely stir, where, stretched out upon the stand, one could listen for hours on end to the surf breaking and receding.
On entering the room, I would remain standing in the doorway, not venturing to make a sound, and hearing none but that of her breath rising to expire upon her lips at regular intervals, like the reflux of the sea, but drowsier and softer. And at the moment when my ear absorbed that divine sound, I felt that there was condensed in it the whole person, the whole life of the charming captive outstretched there before my eyes. Carriages went rattling past in the street, but her brow remained as smooth and untroubled, her breath as light, reduced to the simple expulsion of the necessary quantity of air. Then, seeing that her sleep would not be disturbed, I would advance cautiously, sit down on the chair that stood by the bedside, then on the bed itself.
”
”
Marcel Proust (The Captive / The Fugitive (In Search of Lost Time, #5-6))
“
Climb down into your idea, inhabit your idea, well-digger hanging from your rope. At first it was only an outline, a halo, and by now it has not got very far, and everywhere I touch upon things which are not that idea of yours, I touch that idea through everything that refutes it, the world expires along its shores. My idea, my idea clings to countless bonds. A long story and I am moved to pity by its scarred form, I kiss the imperfections of its foot.
”
”
Louis Aragon (Paris Peasant)
“
Simkin and Roychowdhury conclude, using some elegant math, that only about 20 percent of scientists who cite an article have actually read that paper. This means that four out of five scientists never take the time to track down a publication they intend to use to buttress their arguments. By examining these mutations we can trace these errors backward in time, and understand how knowledge truly spread from scientist to scientist, instead of how it appeared to spread.
”
”
Samuel Arbesman (The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date)
“
When its patent on Prozac expired, Eli Lilly put the same recipe into a pink pill, named it Serafem, and created a new "illness": premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) (Cosgrove, 2010). Many women become irritable when premenstrual, but it is one thing to say "I'm sorry I'm kind of cranky today; my period is due" and another to announce "I have PMDD." It seems to me that the former owns one's behavior, increases the likelihood of warm connection with others, and acknowledges that life is sometimes difficult, while the latter implies that one has a treatable ailment, distances others from one's experience, and supports an infantile belief that everything can be fixed.
”
”
Nancy McWilliams (Psychoanalytic Diagnosis: Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process)
“
A supernova occurs when a giant star, one much bigger than our own Sun, collapses and then spectacularly explodes, releasing in an instant the energy of a hundred billion suns, burning for a time more brightly than all the stars in its galaxy. “It’s like a trillion hydrogen bombs going off at once, supernovae
are extremely rare. A star can burn for billions of years, but it dies just once and quickly, and only a few dying stars explode. Most expire quietly, like a camp fire at dawn. In a typical galaxy, consisting of a hundred billion stars, a supernova will occur on average once every two or three hundred years. Looking for a supernova, therefore, was a little like standing on the observation platform of the Empire State Building with a telescope and searching windows around Manhattan in the hope of finding, let us say, someone lighting a twenty-first birthday cake.
”
”
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
“
Diddy, not really alive, had a life. Hardly the same. Some people are their lives. Others, like Diddy, merely inhabit their lives. Like insecure tenants, never knowing exactly the extent of their property or when the lease will expire. Like unskilled cartographers, drawing and redrawing erroneous maps of an exotic continent.
Eventually, for such a person, everything is bound to run dow. The walls sag. Empty spaces bulge between objects. The surfaces of objects sweat, thin out, buckle. The hysterical fluids of fear deposited at the core of objects ooze out along the seams. Deploying things and navigating through space becomes laborious. Too much effort to amble from kitchen to living room, serving drinks, turning on the hi-fi, pretending to be cheerful . . .
Everything running down: suffusing the whole of Diddy's well-tended life. Like a house powered by one large generator in the basement. Diddy has an almost palpable sense of the decline of the generator's energy. Or, of the monstrous malfunctioning of that generator, gone amok. Sending forth a torrent of refuse that climbs up into Diddy's life, cluttering all his floor space and overwhelming his pleasant furnishings, so that he's forced to take refuge. Huddle in a narrow corner. But however small the space Diddy means to keep free for himself, it won't remain safe. If solid material can't invade it, then the offensive discharge of the failing or rebellious generator will liquefy; so that it can travel everywhere, spread like a skin. The generator will spew forth a stream of crude oil, grimy and malodorous, that coats all things and persons and objects, the vulgar as well as the precious, the ugly as well as what little still remains beautiful. Befouling Diddy's world and rendering it unusable. Uninhabitable.
This deliquescent running-down of everything becomes coexistent with Diddy's entire span of consciousness, undermines his most minimal acts. Getting out of bed is an agony unpromising as the struggles of a fish cast up on the beach, trying to extract life from the meaningless air. Persons who merely have a life customarily move in a dense fluid. That's how they're able to conduct their lives at all. Their living depends on not seeing. But when this fluid evaporates, an uncensored, fetid, appalling underlife is disclosed. Lost continents are brought to view, bearing the ruins of doomed cities, the sparsely fleshed skeletons of ancient creatures immobilized in their death throes, a landscape of unparalleled savagery.
”
”
Susan Sontag (Death Kit)
“
All my longings lie open before you, Lord; my sighing is not hidden from you. —Psalm 38:9 (NIV) It was a rough start to the day. Spiritually, I was feeling flat. There were a few things that I really wanted for my family and my career. My prayers had turned repetitive. I felt like a broken record as I laid them before the Lord once again. And just like every other morning, I came up against a deafening silence that made me want to scream. Not only that, but my son woke up at 5:30 am—much too early. It didn’t take long for my sweet little boy to turn into a monster, the kind that whines and cries and throws temper tantrums and makes messes everywhere he goes. The kid was tired. With expiring patience, I carried him to his room and made him lie down while he screamed and cried and did everything humanly possible to get out of that bed. I sat outside his room, resting my head against the wall, and heard every single one of his heartbreaking cries for Mama. He wanted to get up, go to the park, play. But that’s not what was best for him. He needed sleep. After a thirty-minute battle, he finally gave in. The house was quiet. As I sat there in the silence, I couldn’t help but think how similar I was to my son, crying out to my Abba, mistaking His silence for absence, unable to see that He was right there. God knows what’s best and He knows what He’s doing. Thank You, Lord, for the promise that You hear every single one of our sighs, for being a God Who says no for the sake of a better yes. —Katie Ganshert Digging Deeper: Is 55:8–9; Mt 6:25–34
”
”
Guideposts (Daily Guideposts 2014)
“
Astrid felt a towering wave of disgust. She was furious with Sam. Furious with Little Pete. Mad at the whole world around her. Sickened by everyone and everything.
And mostly, she admitted, sick of herself.
So desperately sick of being Astrid the Genius.
“Some genius,” she muttered. The town council, headed by that blond girl, what was her name? Oh right: Astrid. Astrid the Genius. Head of the town council that had let half the town burn to the ground.
Down in the basement of town hall Dahra Baidoo handed out scarce ibuprofen and expired Tylenol to kids with burns, like that would pretty much fix anything, as they waited for Lana to go one by one, healing with her touch.
Astrid could hear the cries of pain. There were several floors between her and the makeshift hospital. Not enough floors.
Edilio staggered in. He was barely recognizable. He was black with soot, dirty, dusty, with ragged scratches and scrapes and clothing hanging in shreds.
“I think we got it,” he said, and lay straight down on the floor.
Astrid knelt by his head. “You have it contained?”
But Edilio was beyond answering. He was unconscious. Done in.
Howard appeared next, in only slightly better shape. Some time during the night and morning he’d lost his smirk. He glanced at Edilio, nodded like it made perfect sense, and sank heavily into a chair.
“I don’t know what you pay that boy, but it’s not enough,” Howard said, jerking his chin at Edilio.
“He doesn’t do it for pay,” Astrid said.
“Yeah, well, he’s the reason the whole town didn’t burn. Him and Dekka and Orc and Jack. And Ellen, it was her idea.
”
”
Michael Grant (Lies (Gone, #3))
“
Everything and Nothing*
There was no one inside him; behind his face
(which even in the bad paintings of the time
resembles no other) and his words (which were
multitudinous, and of a fantastical and agitated
turn) there was no more than a slight chill, a
dream someone had failed to dream. At first he
thought that everyone was like him, but the
surprise and bewilderment of an acquaintance
to whom he began to describe that hollowness
showed him his error, and also let him know,
forever after, that an individual ought not to
differ from its species. He thought at one point
that books might hold some remedy for his
condition, and so he learned the "little Latin
and less Greek" that a contemporary would
later mention. Then he reflected that what he
was looking for might be found in the
performance of an elemental ritual of humanity,
and so he allowed himself to be initiated by
Anne Hathaway one long evening in June.
At twenty-something he went off to London.
Instinctively, he had already trained himself to
the habit of feigning that he was somebody, so
that his "nobodiness" might not be discovered.
In London he found the calling he had been
predestined to; he became an actor, that person
who stands upon a stage and plays at being
another person, for an audience of people who
play at taking him for that person. The work of
a thespian held out a remarkable happiness to
him—the first, perhaps, he had ever known; but
when the last line was delivered and the last
dead man applauded off the stage, the hated
taste of unreality would assail him. He would
cease being Ferrex or Tamerlane and return to
being nobody.
Haunted, hounded, he began imagining
other heroes, other tragic fables. Thus while his
body, in whorehouses and taverns around
London, lived its life as body, the soul that lived
inside it would be Cassar, who ignores the
admonition of the sibyl, and Juliet, who hates
the lark, and Macbeth, who speaks on the moor
with the witches who are also the Fates, the
Three Weird Sisters. No one was as many men
as that man—that man whose repertoire, like
that of the Egyptian Proteus, was all the
appearances of being. From time to time he
would leave a confession in one corner or
another of the work, certain that it would not be
deciphered; Richard says that inside himself, he
plays the part of many, and Iago says, with
curious words, I am not what I am. The
fundamental identity of living, dreaming, and
performing inspired him to famous passages.
For twenty years he inhabited that guided
and directed hallucination, but one morning he
was overwhelmed with the surfeit and horror of
being so many kings that die by the sword and
so many unrequited lovers who come together,
separate, and melodiously expire. That very
day, he decided to sell his theater. Within a
week he had returned to his birthplace, where
he recovered the trees and the river of his
childhood and did not associate them with
those others, fabled with mythological allusion
and Latin words, that his muse had celebrated.
He had to be somebody; he became a retired
businessman who'd made a fortune and had an
interest in loans, lawsuits, and petty usury. It
was in that role that he dictated the arid last
will and testament that we know today, from
which he deliberately banished every trace of
sentiment or literature. Friends from London
would visit his re-treat, and he would once
again play the role of poet for them.
History adds that before or after he died, he
discovered himself standing before God, and
said to Him: I , who have been so many men in
vain, wish to be one, to be myself. God's voice
answered him out of a whirlwind: I, too, am not
I; I dreamed the world as you, Shakespeare,
dreamed your own work, and among the
forms of my dream are you, who like me, are
many, yet no one.
”
”
Jorge Luis Borges
“
Something diseased and furry had crawled into her mouth and expired while she slept. That was the only possible explanation as to why Neve had a rancid taste in her mouth and a heavy, viscous paste coating her teeth and tongue.
‘I think I’m dying,’ she groaned. The wretched state of her mouth was the least of it. There was a pounding in her head, echoed in the roiling of her gut, and her bones ached, her vital organs ached, her throat ached, even her hair follicles ached.
‘You’re not dying,’ said a voice in her ear, which sounded like nails scraping down a blackboard, even though Max’s voice had barely risen above a whisper. ‘You’ve got a hangover.’
Neve had had hangovers before and they just made her feel a tiny bit nauseous and grouchy. This felt like the bastard child of bubonic plague and the ebola virus.
‘Dying,’ she reiterated, and now she realised that she was in bed, which had been a very comfy bed the last time she’d slept in it, but now it felt as if she was lying on a pile of rocks, and even though she had the quilt and Max’s arm tucked around her, she was still cold and clammy. Neve tried to raise her head but her gaze collided with the stripy wallpaper and as well as searing her retinas, it was making her stomach heave. ‘Sick. Going to be sick.’
‘Sweetheart, I don’t think so,’ Max said, stroking the back of her neck with feather-soft fingers. ‘You’ve already thrown up just about everything you’ve eaten in the last week.’
‘Urgh …’ Had she? The night before was a big gaping hole in her memory. ‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know what happened but I got a phone call from the Head of Hotel Security at three in the morning asking me if I could identify a raving madwoman in a silver dress who couldn’t remember her room number but insisted that someone called Max Pancake was sleeping there. They thought you might be a hack from the Sunday Mirror pretending to be absolutely spannered as a way of getting into the hotel.’
‘Oh, no …’
‘Yeah, apparently Ronaldo’s staying in one of the penthouse suites and I saw Wayne and Coleen in the bar last night. Anyway, as you were staggering down the corridor, you told me very proudly that you’d lost your phone and you’d just eaten two pieces of KFC and a bag of chips.’
‘KFC? Oh, God …’
‘But I wouldn’t worry about that because after you’d tried to persuade me to have my wicked way with you, you started throwing up and you didn’t stop, not for hours. I thought you were going to sleep curled around the toilet at one point.’
‘Goodness …
”
”
Sarra Manning (You Don't Have to Say You Love Me)
“
I want you to be happy. Eat it.”
A wry smile curved Rose’s lips. “Am I to find happiness in a piece of chocolate cake?”
Eve already had a forkful en route to her mouth. “I stake my reputation on it.”
“Oh,” she replied dryly. “Surely heaven is just a bite away.”
“Speaking of heaven,” Eve said a few minutes later when Rose thought she might expire from the bliss the dessert inspired, “tell me about your evening at Saint’s Row.”
“Shh!” Her paranoid gaze darted around to see if anyone had overheard, but there was no one standing close enough to their whitewashed bench.
“Don’t shush me, Rose Danvers. I’m your best friend and you’ve kept me waiting four whole days! I demand details.”
Cheeks flushed, Rose stared at the half-eaten cake on her plate. Eve’s timing might leave something to be desired, but at least she’d stopped Rose from eating the entire slice.
“What do you want to know?”
Eve’s expression was incredulous. “Everything, of course.” Then, as though realizing who she was talking to, she sighed. “Did you find him?”
Rose nodded. “I did.” The fire in her cheeks burned hotter, and she looked away. “Oh, Eve!”
Her friend grabbed her wrist, clattering fork against plate. “That arse didn’t hurt you did he?”
“No!” Then lowering her voice, “And he’s not an arse.” Using such rough language made her feel daring and bold.
The scowl on Eve’s face eased. “Then…he was good to you?”
Rose nodded, leaning closer. “It was the most amazing experience of my life.”
The blonde giggled, bringing her head nearer to Rose’s. “Tell me everything.”
So Rose did, within reason, looking up every once in awhile to make sure no one could hear.
Afterward, when she was finished, Eve looked at her with a peculiar expression. “It sounds wonderful.”
“It was.”
Eve’s ivory brow tightened. “So, why do you sound so…disappointed?”
Rose sighed. “It’s going to sound so pathetic, but when I saw Grey the next day he didn’t recognize me.”
“But I thought you didn’t want him to know it was you.”
Rose laughed darkly. “I don’t. That’s the rub of it.” She turned to more fully face her friend. “But part of me wanted him to realize it was me, Eve. I wanted him to see me as a woman, not as his responsibility or burden.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t view you as any such thing.”
Shaking her head Rose set the plate of cake aside, her appetite gone for good. "I thought this scheme would make everything better, and it's only made things worse." Worse because her feelings for Grey hadn't lessened as she'd hoped they might, they'd only deepened.
Eve worried her upper lip with her bottom teeth. "Are you going to meet him again?"
Another shake of her head, vehement this time. "No."
"But. Rose, he wants to see you."
"Not me, her." This was said with a bit more bitterness than Rose was willing to admit. He might have whispered her name, but it wasn't her he wanted to meet.
Eve chuckled. "But you are her." She squeezed her wrist again. "Rose, don't you see? You're who he wants to see again, whether he knows it was you or not."
Rose hadn't looked at it that way. She wasn't quite convinced her friend was right, but it was enough to make her doubt her own conclusions. She shook her head again. Blast, but she was making herself lightheaded. "I just don't know."
"You'll figure it out," Eve allowed. "You always do.
”
”
Kathryn Smith (When Seducing a Duke (Victorian Soap Opera, #1))
“
Ah, hell. Even now, insulated by so many intervening years, I could choke on the pity of it. They started out so young and brave, my parents, and ended up such sordid messes. Only one thing saved my father from dying as a slobbering drunk, and that was Alzheimer’s disease, alcohol being unavailable in the nursing home he finally expired in. As for my mother, she didn’t live long enough to find out that I grew up to have all the things she craved, that the entire package, plus some, would be delivered exactly a generation late—the adventure, the causes, the friends and hot romances. She died, too, before we could settle things between us, on her third suicide attempt.
”
”
Barbara Ehrenreich (Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything)
“
But we can also be aided by something more general, to which this book has hopefully acted as a guide: recognizing the regularities in how knowledge changes around us.
”
”
Samuel Arbesman (The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date)
“
Part of me has always thought that if the world found out what I really was, it would reject me. The people in my life could not be ready for what I saw within myself. I was tempted, for the longest time, to walk away from the human world and remain on my own until I expired. Having already acquired the independence I would need to survive, both physically and spiritually, I had grown comfortable with my existence and did not fear isolation. I saw no way for the person I was becoming to coexist with the world as I perceived it. Similar sentiments have echoed endlessly in the past as individuals have grown aware of themselves. In my recent past, my ambition changed. Maybe I got stronger. Maybe I became more aware of what the problem was and realized what I could do about it. I reached the conclusion that I had a place somewhere. I would still be something of an outsider – living on the fringe and doing things the way I wanted– but I would not completely abandon the trappings of society. Everything I have seen so far gives me a vantage place from which to plot my involvement in the world. I see better now what people need, and I understand what I am equipped to provide.
”
”
Gregory V. Diehl (Travel as Transformation: Conquer the Limits of Culture to Discover Your Own Identity)
“
She couldn’t bear the platitudes of the people at the hospital—time is the only healer, it gets better, blah blah blah. Time did not make it better. Time made it worse, just like it made everything worse. Most horrifically of all, people expected her to be over it by now, as if her grief had a neat expiration date like the carton of milk she had left on the counter a week ago.
”
”
Chana Porter (The Seep)
“
My trouble is
I always try to save
everything
old clocks and calendars
expired words buried
in open graves
But hoarded grains of sand
keep shifting as rivers
redefine boundaries and seasons
”
”
Naomi Long Madgett (Exits and Entrances)
“
We have taxes upon every article that enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot; taxes upon everything which it is pleasant to feel, smell, or taste; taxes on everything in the earth, or in the waters under the earth; on everything that comes from abroad or that is grown at home ; taxes on the raw material; taxes on every value that is added to it by the industry of man ; taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and on the drug which restores him to health ; on the ermine which covers the judge, and the rope that hangs the criminal; on the poor man's salt, and the rich man's spice; on the brass nails of the coffin, and the ribbons of the bride; — on bed and board — couchant or levant — we must pay.
The schoolboy whips his taxed top; the beardless youth manages a taxed horse, with a taxed bridle, on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid seven per cent, into a spoon which has paid fifteen per cent, flings himself back upon his chintz bed, which has paid twenty-two per cent, and expires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a license of one hundred pounds for the privilege of presiding at his death-bed. His whole property is then taxed from two to twenty per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel ; his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble, and he is gathered to his fathers to be taxed no more.
”
”
Sydney Smith
“
Everything was predictable. Cinema had act structures. Music had beats. Poets had tricks. Books had arcs. Food tasted delicious as long as it was on the surface of one’s tongue. Any chance of happiness was but one single carousel round, so naturally, after a while, the passenger felt expired. To Andrei, there ceased to be anything worth chasing and this feeling of “running out” in an abundant globe confused him. He wished there was something in the world that was infinite or lasted forever—or was at least worth remembering forever. This was why the sleeper could not dream—his imagination writhed in his true-to-life gluttony.
”
”
Kristian Ventura (A Happy Ghost)
“
They found that just being in the same building as your collaborators makes your work better.
”
”
Samuel Arbesman (The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date)
“
The term rolling, or rolling over, is commonly used to describe the practice of offsetting a trade in a contract that is facing expiration and entering a similar position in a contract with a distant expiration date. Rolling over is simply offsetting one position and getting into another.
”
”
Carley Garner (A Trader's First Book on Commodities: Everything you need to know about futures and options trading before placing a trade)
“
Nope, attachments scare me.” “Why?” “Because nothing is really yours. Everything has an expiration date.
”
”
Ladii Nesha (Losin Control)
“
we all must act with a sense of urgency and tune into that ticking clock in the back of our minds. Because there is a drop-dead time on everything we do in life. All our dreams and visions come with expiration dates etched in invisible ink. Windows of opportunity can and do close, so it is imperative that we do not waste time on bullshit.
”
”
David Goggins (Never Finished)
“
Really to die and to be with Christ will be a gala day’s enjoyment compared with our misery when a worse than physical death has cast its dreadful shadow over us. Death would be welcome as a relief by those whose depressed spirits make their existence a living death. Are good men ever permitted to suffer thus? Indeed they are; and some of them are even all their lifetime subject to bondage.... It is a sad case when our only hope lies in the direction of death, our only liberty of spirit amid the congenial horrors of corruption.... He felt as if he were utterly forgotten as those whose carcasses are left to rot on the battlefield. As when a soldier, mortally wounded, bleeds unheeded amid the heaps of slain, and remains to his last expiring groan, unpitied and unsuccoured, so did Heman sigh out his soul in loneliest sorrow, feeling as if even God Himself had quite forgotten him. How low the spirits of good and brave man will sometimes sink. Under the influence of certain disorders everything will wear a somber aspect, and the heart will dive into the profoundest deeps of misery.
”
”
David P. Murray (Christians Get Depressed Too)
“
people ought to go through the ideas they carried around in their heads as regularly as they turned out their store cupboards. No matter how wisely you shopped, there would be things in the depths that were past their expiration dates or gone damp and moldy—or that had been picked up on impulse and were no longer relevant. Aunty Lee believed everything inside a head or cupboard could affect everything else in it by going bad or just taking up more space than it was worth.
”
”
Ovidia Yu (Aunty Lee's Delights (Singaporean Mystery #1))
“
What the leave left me on deposit after the grace period expired: a crazy sad elation, as sad as it was exciting. A wretched happiness, yet another affect I've never suspected I could feel, a tearful happiness, lightened, raked by claws, to discover that death lets pass, that it may sheathe its claws, admit exceptions. As if one could do everything one imagines doing, all of us living dead dying life death and other beings subject to laws so harsh but open to interpretation, natural phenomena. An extra-mortal joy that doesn't take its eyes off death. No denials. I don't deny the sentence, its execution, its terrible consequences, the solitude, the weakening, the ruination of beauties the carnage of skies, global chlorosis, anxiety, that demolish us, the butchery of living moments, the pulling out by the roots of the hearts of things and beings. But that day it was clear to me we had found: the answer. This was the Granting of Leave. It will suffice.
”
”
Hélène Cixous (Hyperdream)
“
I don’t know how old you are. But I know the lie you hear. You are too young. You are too old. You don’t know enough, or you know too much. The truth is that courage doesn’t have an expiration date. Courage doesn’t have a marker that says, “You must be taller than THIS to ride this ride.
”
”
Annie F. Downs (Let's All Be Brave: Living Life with Everything You Have)
“
It's like whoever sits up there in Heaven has this big bag of really crappy stuff, and once or twice a day she or he reaches in and sprinkles a little bit of it over the world and it makes everything go crazy, like fairy dust that's past its expiration date
”
”
Michael Ford
“
Like medics on the scene of a car accident, we all must act with a sense of urgency and tune into that ticking clock in the back of our minds. Because there is a drop-dead time on everything we do in life. All our dreams and visions come with expiration dates etched in invisible ink. Windows of opportunity can and do close, so it is imperative that we do not waste time on bullshit. None of us have any clue what’s coming for us or when our time might run out, which is why I do my best to ignore anything that is counterproductive.
”
”
David Goggins (Never Finished)
“
But when it came, all I felt was fear. Fear that he wouldn't be who I'd imagined. Fear that I wasn't ready. Fear that I wouldn't feel the way I was supposed to. Fear that I'd fuck up even this, this thing I was meant for. But what I was not afraid of, maybe, was that it was over. It's hard to be single, but it's also something you can get good at. And I was good at it. It's easy to love the things we are good at.
Yes, I wanted epic love. Weak-in-the-knees, movie-kiss-in-the-rain epic love. What I never realized, not up until this very moment, is that I got it - everything I'd been asking for. I'd been on the back of a motorcycle in Paris and across the Golden Gate Bridge at sunrise. I'd been on the beach in Santa Monica at sunset. My life has been filled with magical moments, I was just so busy waiting I didn't see them when they were here.
”
”
Rebecca Serle (Expiration Dates)
“
That’s the beauty of LA—it’s sprawling, searching, a horizontal buffet of experiences. In New York, everything is happening on top of everything else—energy and expectation, stacked up like dominoes. Here, you have to hunt for what comes next.
”
”
Rebecca Serle (Expiration Dates)
“
Nothing lasted forever. People, places, relationships…everything had an expiration date. But for the first time in my life, I allowed myself to believe someone when they said they would stay.
”
”
Ana Huang (King of Greed (Kings of Sin, #3))
“
Because nothing is really yours. Everything has an expiration date.
”
”
Ladii Nesha (Losin Control)
“
Forever. The concept seemed laughable a year ago. Nothing lasted forever. People, places, relationships… everything had an expiration date. But for the first time in my life, I allowed myself to believe someone when they said they would stay.
”
”
Ana Huang (King of Greed (Kings of Sin, #3))
“
Death don’t scare you?” “Nope, attachments scare me.” “Why?” “Because nothing is really yours. Everything has an expiration date.
”
”
Ladii Nesha (Losin Control)
“
Just because a relationship ended doesn't mean it wasn't true or good or worth having. Everything expires eventually. Enjoy the good for what it was, not what it always has to be.
”
”
Iris
“
Clutter is anything for which you have no use or need — everything from outgrown clothes to expired coupons. It’s stuff you don’t want anymore — things you bought too soon or held on to for too long. Uncluttering is the act of restoring balance to your life by eliminating these unimportant things — and doing it will free up time, energy, and space for the things that really matter.
”
”
Donna Smallin (Unclutter Your Home: 7 Simple Steps, 700 Tips & Ideas (Simplicity Series))
“
By the time the national team prepared to compete in the 2013 Algarve Cup in late February and early March, collective bargaining agreement negotiations had ramped up considerably. With the team’s existing contract having been expired since the end of 2012, the players were also no longer bound by the no-strike clause in their contract and a boycott was on the table. In February 2013, while the team was in Nashville for their final friendly match before the Algarve Cup started, discussion turned to whether they should go on strike and skip the upcoming tournament in Portugal. “We decided as a team that we want to go on strike to get more money for our new CBA, and we were going to go on strike until we understood everything about the NWSL, before we were forced to decide which team to play for in allocation,” says Hope Solo. “There were a few players in the room that didn’t know how to vote, but the rest of the team raised our hands and said it’s time to take a stand.
”
”
Caitlin Murray (The National Team: The Inside Story of the Women who Changed Soccer)
“
Everything perishes, but the soul never expires.
”
”
Ehsan Sehgal
“
If you are scared to lose the things that you love, then you might as well not have the blessing of obtaining them. Everything in our lives has an expiration date.
”
”
Dushawn Banks (True Blue)
“
Good boy,” she crooned against his hair. “You’re cumming so much for me. Such a good boy.” This is how I want to die. It was a thought he’d had previously. Then, he’d thought the best circumstances of expiration would have been in what had been his favorite sexual position — the filling a threesome sandwich, his cock buried balls-deep in a beautiful girl, with someone else’s cock kissing his prostate, everyone paying attention to him, the center of everything, exactly where he was meant to be — getting his pleasure from every side. He was forced to amend that now. He disliked words like straight or anything that indicated the contrary of whatever that meant; he liked feeling good, and sex felt good, regardless of with whom he had it . . . but his heart was rarely ever a factor. You could fall in love with this girl.
”
”
C.M. Nascosta (Moon Blooded Breeding Clinic (Cambric Creek, #3) (Hemming Brothers, #1))
“
Just remember, every conversation has an expiration date.
”
”
Andy Kalan (Finding the Place Where Everything Lives)
“
Typically when I speak at a conference, there is a countdown clock letting me know how much time I have remaining on the stage. Sometimes I pretend that the clock is a countdown of my life. I imagine that I’ll be standing face-to-face with God when that timer expires. This gives me courage to say everything I think He would want me to say. If I really was going to die, I would care very little about people’s complaints. I would be obsessed with seeing the face of God and wanting His approval.
”
”
Francis Chan (Letters to the Church)
“
Katie had said that motherhood had no expiration date, and Jill had agreed, believing to the bone that that it transcended everything—biology, law, even time and space.
”
”
Lisa Scottoline (Come Home)
“
I don’t want to give up my home, the garden where I can remember planting every flower, the circle of stones that marks Paolo’s resting place, where he lies in an endless embrace with his sex bunny. But it isn’t mine to keep. I want to be fertile. I never want to expire. But death comes for us. What first? What else? What next? As everything else has fallen apart, what has stayed intact is something I always had, the thing that made me a writer: curiosity. Hope. 31 The night before I left, Africa was golden and pulsating in my mind. I emptied the wool socks and maternity jeans from my suitcase, which I had shoved under the bed when I got back from Mongolia. I
”
”
Ariel Levy (The Rules Do Not Apply)
“
Every night was a night of limitless possibility expired, of a life forfeited, of a foreclosed opportunity to expand, explore, risk, hope, and live. These were my thoughts as I tried falling back asleep. Inside my head, where I lived, wars were breaking out, valleys flooding, forests catching fire, oceans breaching the land, and storms dragging it all to the bottom of the sea, with only a few days or weeks remaining before the entire world and everything sweet and surprising we'd done with it went against the vast backdrop of the universe.
”
”
Joshua Ferris (To Rise Again at a Decent Hour)
“
Become one with your divine self to know and experience the divine existence of God within yourself. Your cosmic self will emerge from this manifestation of divine self.
One who has seen and expirence the divine existence within, will see it in outside world, in everything as well.
Life is not a chaos of questions, it is full of answers. You limit it by your own perception, open your eyes, and let the sight be born.
Don't let possessions of material world be an attachment inside. One who is unpossessed by nothing inside can not be touched by anything outside.
”
”
Harsh Ranga Neo
“
I believe that whether we live in America or in any part of the world, we need to stand against turning ourselves into customers. We are first and foremost humans and citizens, and those attributes allow us to have a dialogue with each other, to fight injustice and violence together, to hold those in power accountable together, to protect the vulnerable and the disempowered members in our society together, and to help each other in times of need collectively. As customers, we are just lonely and isolated individuals measured by our paychecks, the expiration dates on our corporate cards, and the ability to afford or not afford this or that corporate service. It weakens our collective power. Being a customer or a consumer turns everything human, beautiful, and enjoyable into an unpleasant job responsibility. It robs us the pleasure of living.
”
”
Louis Yako
“
The reasons of even the tiniest human gesture are the only thing that separate us from a rock that falls because of gravity. Reasons are all we have, so we might as well make them beautiful ones. Everything expires, except our decisions. Choice is immortal. They are like indelible soulwaves to the universe. Why climb higher and higher when you can ride the straight, rare line that is truth?
”
”
Kristian Ventura (The Goodbye Song)
“
Almost everything in this inbox is expired. Look.” She handed him a yellowed scrap of paper from the bottom of the pile. Dear God: Please get me tickets to C+C Music Factory. Tania Banks, March 3, 1991
”
”
Simon Rich (What in God's Name)
“
Is there something you are allowing to escape your grasp or to expire that was clearly within our reach? Are you stuck with the mentality that if God wants you to have it, He'll give it to you? Or if its meant to be, it will be? Don't fool yourself; Nothing just happens! There is a cause and effect to everything in life and you need to be an active participant in the creation of your destiny. Becoming a silent partner with God is still not enough because faith without works is dead.
”
”
Dwaun S. Cox