Fights Make Us Stronger Quotes

Struggle does not make you weak,” she whispers back. “Struggling against those who hold us is what makes us, over time, stronger than they are. Strong enough to fight back. Strong enough to win.

did you ever think the reason you haven't found the right man is because it's not your time? Sometimes God kets bad things happen to us as a sign that something is not right. He also does it to make us stronger. God got a plan for you, and you gotta stop fighting it. Focus on YOU, and let God lead that man to you.

This is an ode to all of those that have never asked for one. A thank you in words to all of those that do not do what they do so well for the thanking. This is to the mothers. This is to the ones who match our first scream with their loudest scream; who harmonize in our shared pain and joy and terrified wonder when life begins. This is to the mothers. To the ones who stay up late and wake up early and always know the distance between their soft humming song and our tired ears. To the lips that find their way to our foreheads and know, somehow always know, if too much heat is living in our skin. To the hands that spread the jam on the bread and the mesmerizing patient removal of the crust we just cannot stomach. This is to the mothers. To the ones who shout the loudest and fight the hardest and sacrifice the most to keep the smiles glued to our faces and the magic spinning through our days. To the pride they have for us that cannot fit inside after all they have endured. To the leaking of it out their eyes and onto the backs of their hands, to the trails of makeup left behind as they smile through those tears and somehow always manage a laugh. This is to the patience and perseverance and unyielding promise that at any moment they would give up their lives to protect ours. This is to the mothers. To the single mom’s working four jobs to put the cheese in the mac and the apple back into the juice so their children, like birds in a nest, can find food in their mouths and pillows under their heads. To the dreams put on hold and the complete and total rearrangement of all priority. This is to the stay-at-home moms and those that find the energy to go to work every day; to the widows and the happily married. To the young mothers and those that deal with the unexpected announcement of a new arrival far later than they ever anticipated. This is to the mothers. This is to the sack lunches and sleepover parties, to the soccer games and oranges slices at halftime. This is to the hot chocolate after snowy walks and the arguing with the umpire at the little league game. To the frosting ofbirthday cakes and the candles that are always lit on time; to the Easter egg hunts, the slip-n-slides and the iced tea on summer days. This is to the ones that show us the way to finding our own way. To the cutting of the cord, quite literally the first time and even more painfully and metaphorically the second time around. To the mothers who become grandmothers and great-grandmothers and if time is gentle enough, live to see the children of their children have children of their own. To the love. My goodness to the love that never stops and comes from somewhere only mothers have seen and know the secret location of. To the love that grows stronger as their hands grow weaker and the spread of jam becomes slower and the Easter eggs get easier to find and sack lunches no longer need making. This is to the way the tears look falling from the smile lines around their eyes and the mascara that just might always be smeared with the remains of their pride for all they have created. This is to the mothers.

Going back to the basis, the phrase ‘Fight Like A Girl’, and we’ve all heard that growing up. And by that they mean that you’re some kind of weakling and have no skills as a male. It’s said to little boys when they can’t fight yet, and it ridicules us. By the time we were born, the most of us hear things which program you to accept and know that you are less than your male counter part. It comes apparent in the way you’re paid for your job, it comes apparent when yóu are not allowed to go outside after a certain hour because you stand a good chance of getting raped while no one says that to your boyfriend. While women, anywhere, live in some kind of fear, there is no equality and that is mathematically impossible. We cannot see that change or solved in our lifetimes, but we have to do everything that we can. We should remind ourselves that we are fifty-one percent. Everyone should know that fighting like a girl is a positive thing and that there is not inherently anything wrong with us by the fact that we are born like ladies. That is a beautiful thing that we should never be put down because of. Being compared to a woman should only make a man feel stronger. It should be a compliment. In this world we’re creating it actually is. I remember this one guy who came to our show in Texas or something and he had painted his shirt “real men fight like a girl”, and I cried, because he was going away in the army next day. He bought my book because he wanted something he could read over there. I just hoped that this men, fully straight and fully male can maintain and retain all of those things that make him understand us, and what makes him so beautiful. A lot of military training is step one: you take all those guys and put them in front of bunch of hardcore videogames where you kill a bunch of people and become desensitised. But that is NOT power! I will not do that. I will not become less of a human being and I refuse to give up my femininity because that’s bullshit. I’m not going to have to shave my head and become all buff and all that to be able to say “now I’m powerful” because that’s bullshit. All of this, all of us, we are power. You don’t have to change anything to be strong.

Having something to fight for will make us stronger than anything they can throw at us.

You’re a product of our language”, Brandy says, “and how our laws are and how we believe our God wants us. Every bitty molecule about you has already been thought out by some million people before you” she says. “Anything you can do is boring and old and perfectly okay. You're safe because you're so trapped inside your culture. Anything you can conceive of is fine because you can conceive of it. You can’t imagine any way to escape. There’s no way you can get out […] And if you can find any way out of our culture, then that’s a trap, too. Just wanting to get out of the trap reinforces the trap”. The books on plastic surgery, the pamphlets and brochures all promised to help me live a more normal, happy life; but less and less, this looked like what I'd want. What I wanted looked more and more like what I'd always been trained to want. What everybody wants. Give me attention. Flash. Give me beauty. Flash. Give me peace and happiness, a loving relationship, and a perfect home. Flash. Brandy says, "The best way is not to fight it, just go. Don't be trying all the time to fix things. What you run from only stays with you longer. When you fight something, you only make it stronger." She says, "Don't do what you want." She says, "Do what you don't want. Do what you're trained not to want." It's the opposite of following your bliss. Brandy tells me, "Do the things that scare you the most”.

Struggling against those who hold us is what makes us, over time, stronger than they are. Strong enough to fight back. Strong enough to win.

Some might read this and say to themselves, "Who gives a damn what happened to a terrorist after what they did on September 11?" But it's not about them. It never was. What makes us exceptional? Our wealth? Our natural resources? Our military power? Our big, bountiful country? No, our founding ideals and our fidelity to them at home and in our conduct in the world make us exceptional. They are the source of wealth and power. Living under the rule of law. Facing threats with confidence that our values make us stronger than our enemies. Acting as an example to other nations of how free people defend their liberty without sacrificing the moral conviction upon which it is based, respect for the dignity possessed by all God's children, even our enemies. This is what made us the great nation that we are.

Any critique of Islam is denounced as an expression of Western Islamophobia, Salman Rushdie is denounced for unnecessarily provoking Muslims and being (partially, at least) responsible for the fatwa condemning him to death, and so on. The result of such stances is what one should expect in such cases: the more the Western liberal Leftists probe into their guilt, the more they are accused by Muslim fundamentalists of being hypocrites who try to conceal their hatred of Islam. [T]his constellation perfectly reproduces the paradox of the superego: the more you obey what the Other demands of you, the guiltier you are. It is as if the more you tolerate Islam, the stronger its pressure on you will be. What this implies is that terrorist fundamentalists, be they Christian or Muslim, are not really fundamentalists in the authentic sense of the term--what they lack is a feature that is easy to discern in all authentic fundamentalists, from Tibetan Buddhists to the Amish in the US: the absence of resentment and envy, the deep indifference towards the non-believers' way of life. If today's so-called fundamentalists really believe they have found their way to Truth, why should they feel threatened by non-believers, why should they envy them? When a Buddhist encounters a Western hedonist, he hardly condemns. He just benevolently notes that the hedonist's search for happiness is self-defeating. In contrast to true fundamentalists, the terrorist pseudo-fundamentalists are deeply bothered, intrigued and fascinated by the sinful life of the non-believers. One can feel that, in fighting the sinful other, they are fighting their own temptation. The passionate intensity of a fundamentalist mob bears witness to the lack of true conviction; deep in themselves, terrorist fundamentalists also lack true conviction--their violent outbursts are proof of it. How fragile the belief of a Muslim would be if he felt threatened by, say, a stupid caricature in a low-circulation Danish newspaper? Fundamentalist Islamic terror is not grounded in the terrorists' conviction of their superiority and in their desire to safeguard their cultural-religious identify from the onslaught of global consumerist civilization. The problem with fundamentalists is not that we consider them inferior to us, but, rather, that they themselves secretly consider themselves inferior. This is why our condescending politically correct assurances that we feel no superiority towards them only makes them more furious and feed their resentment. The problem is not cultural difference (their effort to preserve their identity), but the opposite: the fact that the fundamentalists are already like us, that, secretly, they have already internalized our standards and measure themselves by them.

The natural life in each of us is something self-centred, something that wants to be petted and admired, to take advantage of other lives, to exploit the whole universe. And especially it wants to be left to itself: to keep well away from anything better or stronger or higher than it, anything that might make it feel small. It is afraid of the light and air of the spiritual world, just as people who have been brought up to be dirty are afraid of a bath. And in a sense it is quite right. It knows that if the spiritual life gets hold of it, all its self-centredness and self-will are going to be killed and it is ready to fight tooth and nail to avoid that. Did

We have lived in the shadow of the rights and laws of men. But when the world is reborn, it will be of our own making. You’re fighting for that world, and you have the same right to armour as the rest of us. You are surrounded by women who want to see you empowered, and that is stronger than any fucking army in these realms. Don’t let the world – don’t let anyone convince you that you’re not enough. Only you define your story. You and you alone. When they tell you what you’re not, when they tell you what you can’t do, remember: you are the storm, Elwren. You split the skies and flood the plains. You make the ground tremble beneath their boots. No one can fucking stop you.

And an even stronger example of Mr. Wells's indifference to the human psychology can be found in his cosmopolitanism, the abolition in his Utopia of all patriotic boundaries. He says in his innocent way that Utopia must be a world-state, or else people might make war on it. It does not seem to occur to him that, for a good many of us, if it were a world-state we should still make war on it to the end of the world. For if we admit that there must be varieties in art or opinion what sense is there in thinking there will not be varieties in government? The fact is very simple. Unless you are going deliberately to prevent a thing being good, you cannot prevent it being worth fighting for. It is impossible to prevent a possible conflict of civilizations, because it is impossible to prevent a possible conflict between ideals. If there were no longer our modern strife between nations, there would only be a strife between Utopias. For the highest thing does not tend to union only; the highest thing, tends also to differentiation. You can often get men to fight for the union; but you can never prevent them from fighting also for the differentiation. This variety in the highest thing is the meaning of the fierce patriotism, the fierce nationalism of the great European civilization. It is also, incidentally, the meaning of the doctrine of the Trinity.

Scared?” Terrified. “Of you? Nah. If you grow claws, I might get my sword, but I’ve fought you in your human shape.” It took all my will to shrug. “You aren’t that impressive.” He cleared the distance between us in a single leap. I barely had time to jump to my feet. Steel fingers grasped my left wrist. His left arm clasped my waist. I fought, but he outmuscled me with ridiculous ease, pulling me close as if to tango. “Curran! Let . . . “ I recognized the angle of his hip but I could do nothing about it. He pulled me forward and flipped me in a classic hip-toss throw. Textbook perfect. I flew through the air, guided by his hands, and landed on my back. The air burst from my lungs in a startled gasp. Ow. “Impressed yet?” he asked with a big smile. Playing. He was playing. Not a real fight. He could’ve slammed me down hard enough to break my neck. Instead he had held me to the end, to make sure I landed right. He leaned forward a little. “Big bad merc, down with a basic hip toss. In your place I’d be blushing.” I gasped, trying to draw air into my lungs. “I could kill you right now. It wouldn’t take much. I think I’m actually embarrassed on your behalf. At least do some magic or something.” As you wish. I gasped and spat my new power word. “Osanda.” Kneel, Your Majesty. He grunted like a man trying to lift a crushing weight that fell on his shoulders. His face shook with strain. Ha-ha. He wasn’t the only one who got a boost from a flare. I got up to my feet with some leisure. Curran stood locked, the muscles of his legs bulging his sweatpants. He didn’t kneel. He wouldn’t kneel. I hit him with a power word in the middle of a bloody flare and it didn’t work. When he snapped out of it, he would probably kill me. All sorts of alarms blared in my head. My good sense screamed, Get out of the room, stupid! Instead I stepped close to him and whispered in his ear, “Still not impressed.” His eyebrows came together, as a grimace claimed his face. He strained, the muscles on his hard frame trembling with effort. With a guttural sigh, he straightened. I beat a hasty retreat to the rear of the room, passing Slayer on the way. I wanted to swipe it so bad, my palm itched. But the rules of the game were clear: no claws, no saber. The second I picked up the sword, I’d have signed my own death warrant. He squared his shoulders. “Shall we continue?” “It would be my pleasure.” He started toward me. I waited, light on my feet, ready to leap aside. He was stronger than a pair of oxen, and he’d try to grapple. If he got ahold of me, it would be over. If all else failed, I could always try the window. A forty-foot drop was a small price to pay to get away from him. Curran grabbed at me. I twisted past him and kicked his knee from the side. It was a good solid kick; I’d turned into it. It would’ve broken the leg of any normal human. “Cute,” Curran said, grabbed my arm, and casually threw me across the room. I went airborne for a second, fell, rolled, and came to my feet to be greeted by Curran’s smug face. “You’re fun to play with. You make a good mouse.” Mouse? “I was always kind of partial to toy mice.” He smiled. “Sometimes they’re filled with catnip. It’s a nice bonus.” “I’m not filled with catnip.” “Let’s find out.” He squared his shoulders and headed in my direction. Houston, we have a problem. Judging by the look in his eyes, a kick to the face simply wouldn’t faze him. “I can stop you with one word,” I said. He swiped me into a bear hug and I got an intimate insight into how a nut feels just before the nutcracker crushes it to pieces. “Do,” he said. “Wedding.” All humor fled his eyes. He let go and just like that, the game was over.

I was scared. I wasn't scared of monsters, or super-villains. But REAL things. What if the system doesn't work? Everything I've fought for. What if it's broken and unfair and unfixable? I don't know what makes you scared. What makes you rage, but superhero's never fix those things for us. Not even Batman. He can't fix REAL things because he's NOT REAL. He's a cautionary tale. A ghost. He fights our nightmares to teach us to fight the real terrors by light of day. He believes in us. He believes we will save ourselves. He's the superhero who sees in us the heroes we can be. And through him we're reminded that we're stronger for our differences than not. We might hate each other, or fear each other; but we're Gotham where brave new things are made. Truth is, I forgot that for a while. But, like everyone else our there, I remember now.

Rainey said you read Moby Dick. Perhaps you’re familiar with the line, ‘Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness’. It’s a good warning, don’t you think?” I shrugged, too weary to think. “Anger is a part of grief, but I think Melville saw the danger in letting it consume you. If you don’t overcome it, it will lead you down a path so dark you won’t be able to find your way back. You’re better off turning that anger into defiance and fighting for the best possible life you can live. That’s the only way forward.” “It’s not that easy.” Matthew smiled bitterly. “Nothing worthwhile is easy. That’s what makes it worthwhile. We have to fight for it, and the fighting makes us stronger, and the more we suffer, the stronger we become. Truthfully, I don’t think we can achieve greatness without suffering. We can be good, maybe, but not great.” I would have settled for good, I thought.

Lots of people have been taught to see homeless folks as the epitome of laziness, and to believe that laziness is the root cause of homeless people's suffering. This tendency to blame people for their own pain is comforting, in a twisted way; it allows us to close up our hearts and ignore the suffering of others. This same tendency also keeps us running endlessly on the hamster wheel of hyperproductivity. When we view homeless, unemployed, or impoverished people as victims of their own "laziness," our motivations to work backbreakingly hard gets stronger than ever. The fear of ending up homeless morphs into the fear of not working hard enough, which in turn makes life an endless slog of pushing ourselves past the brink and judging anyone who doesn't do the same. Lacking compassion for a struggling group of people actually makes it harder for us to be gentle with ourselves. Fighting the Laziness Lie can't stop at just encouraging people with full-time jobs to relax a bit and take more breaks.

I suggest you stand slowly and walk out with my men,” Zrakovi said, tapping a napkin against his lying, two-faced mouth and putting a twenty on the table to cover the drinks. “If you make a scene, innocent humans will be injured. I have a Blue Congress cleanup team in place, however, so if you want to fight in public and damage a few humans, knock yourself out. It will only add to your list of crimes.” I stood slowly, gritting my teeth when Squirrel Chin patted me down while feeling me up and making it look like a romantic moment. He’d been so busy feeling the naughty bits that he missed both Charlie, sitting in my bag next to my foot, and the dagger attached to my inner forearm. Idiot. Alex would never have been so sloppy. If Alex had patted me down, he’d have found not only the weapons but also the portable magic kit. From the corner of my eye, I saw a tourist taking mobile phone shots of us. He’d no doubt email them to all his friends back home with stories of those crazy New Orleanians and their public displays of affection. I considered pretending to faint, but I was too badly outnumbered for it to work. Like my friend Jean Lafitte, whose help I could use about now, I didn’t want to try something unless it had a reasonable chance at succeeding. I also didn’t want to pull Charlie out and risk humans getting hurt. “Walk out the door onto Chartres and turn straight toward the cathedral.” Zrakovi pulled his jacket aside enough for me to see a shoulder holster. I hadn’t even known the man could hold a gun, although for all I knew about guns it could be a water pistol. The walk to the cathedral transport was three very long city blocks. My best escape opportunity would be near Jackson Square. When the muscular goons tried to turn me left toward the cathedral, I’d try to break and run right toward the river, where I could get lost among the wharves and docks long enough to draw and power a transport. Of course in order to run, I’d have to get away from the clinch of Dreadlocks and Squirrel Chin. Charlie could take care of that. I slipped the messenger bag over my head slowly, and not even Zrakovi noticed the stick of wood protruding from the top by a couple of inches. Not to be redundant, but . . . idiots. None of us spoke as we proceeded down Chartres Street, where, to our south, the clouds continued to build. The wind had grown stronger and drier. The hurricane was sucking all the humidity out of the air, all the better to gain intensity. I hoped Zrakovi, a Bostonian, would enjoy his first storm. I hoped a live oak landed on his head.

posttraumatic growth. Many people who suffer shattering experiences are scarred for life, with little hope of recovery. But for others, shattering experiences prompt them to face their fears, transcend the horrors of the past, and become resilient. PTSD is not a life sentence. POSTTRAUMATIC GROWTH While PTSD grabs the headlines, news stories about posttraumatic growth are rare. Up to two thirds of those who experience traumatic events do not develop PTSD. This estimate is based on studies of the mental health of people who have undergone similar experiences. Studies of US veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan show this two-thirds to one-third split. What’s the difference between the two groups? Research reveals a correlation between negative childhood events and the development of adult PTSD. Yet some people emerge from miserable childhoods stronger and more resilient than their peers. Adversity can sometimes make us even stronger than we might have been had we not suffered it. Research shows that people who experience a traumatic event but are then able to process and integrate the experience are more resilient than those who don’t experience such an event. Such people are even better prepared for future adversity. When you’re exposed to a stressor and successfully regulate your brain’s fight-or-flight response, you increase the neural connections associated with handling trauma, as we saw in Chapter 6. Neural plasticity works in your favor. You increase the size of the signaling pathways in your nervous system that handle recovery from stress. These larger and improved signaling pathways equip you to handle future stress better, making you more resilient in the face of life’s upsets and problems.

Zubaydah was transferred in 2006 to the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. The videotapes of his interrogations, along with recordings of the torture of other detainees, were ordered destroyed by the head of the CIA’s clandestine service, Jose Rodriguez, despite standing orders from the White House Counsel’s Office to preserve them. According to his attorney, Zubaydah, who remains in Guantánamo today, has “permanent brain damage,” has suffered hundreds of seizures, and “cannot picture his mother’s face or recall his father’s name.” Some might read this and say to themselves, “Who gives a damn what happened to a terrorist after what they did on September 11?” But it’s not about them. It never was. What makes us exceptional? Our wealth? Our natural resources? Our military power? Our big, bountiful country? No, our founding ideals and our fidelity to them at home and in our conduct in the world make us exceptional. They are the source of our wealth and power. Living under the rule of law. Facing threats with confidence that our values make us stronger than our enemies. Acting as an example to other nations of how free people defend their liberty without sacrificing the moral conviction upon which it is based, respect for the dignity possessed by all God’s children, even our enemies. This is what made us the great nation we are. My fellow POWs and I could work up very intense hatred for the people who tortured us. We cussed them, made up degrading names for them, swore we would get back at them someday. That kind of resistance, angry and pugnacious, can only carry you so far when your enemy holds most of the cards and hasn’t any scruples about beating the resistance out of you however long it takes. Eventually, you won’t cuss them. You won’t refuse to bow. You won’t swear revenge. Still, they can’t make you surrender what they really want from you, your assent to their supremacy. No, you don’t have to give them that, not in your heart. And your last resistance, the one that sticks, the one that makes the victim superior to the torturer, is the belief that were the positions reversed you wouldn’t treat them as they have treated you. The ultimate victim of torture is the torturer, the one who inflicts pain and suffering at the cost of their humanity.

Dear Dex, We’ve been meaning to write you this letter for months, and I’m sorry it took us so long. We could never quite figure out the right words to say to you, because words are simply not enough to express to you just how grateful we are to you. Not many people are lucky enough to experience the kind of friendship that you and Teddy had. You were only little kids when you met, but the bond you formed was something special. From then on, it was you and Teddy against the world. The greatest kind of friends are the ones who bring out the best in one another, and that’s what you and Teddy did every day. You made each other stronger, wiser and braver, and you learned from each other. Most importantly, you stood by each other, right until the very end. We are eternally grateful to you for being there by his side in his final moments. For holding his hand and letting him know that he wasn’t alone and that, even in death, someone he loved was there with him. We take comfort in knowing that he didn’t leave this world alone. There’s no doubt in our minds that you did everything you could to try and save him, Dex. We know that there’s nothing you could have done differently, and we can only hope that you know it too. Not everyone can be saved – sometimes God has a greater purpose for the ones we love, and we must fight through the pain and learn to accept that they are somewhere far better than here. We know that you miss him, and we miss him too… every single day. But with each day that passes, it becomes a little bit easier. Some days are harder than others, but our frowns no longer outweigh our smiles. We no longer cry when we see his pictures around the house, and memories of him no longer bring pain to our hearts, but instead put a smile on our faces as we remember who he was. We all must honor his memory by focusing on what we gained by having him in our lives, rather than on what we lost when he passed. It’s what he would have wanted for all of us. Teddy loved life. He reveled in the simple things, and he saw a positive light in even the worst situations. He would never want his death to bring you sadness or to rob you of the joys of life. He would want you to remember the good times and focus on the memories of him that make you smile – because he is someone who could make anyone smile! You have such a big heart, Dex, and because of that you’ve always felt things a little bit stronger and more deeply than everyone else. Don’t let your grief weigh you down. Don’t carry the burden of your loss with you forever. Our scars become a part of us, but you cannot let them define you. We will carry him with us in our hearts forever, and moving on does not mean that we’re forgetting him or leaving him behind. It means choosing to live. Thank you for being a part of our son’s life. Of our lives. You brought so much joy and laughter to his time here on this earth, and we will forever cherish those moments. Take solace in your memories of him, do not let them bring you pain. Teddy loved you so much, and he always will. So will we.

Our past makes us the people we are today, and forgetting is the last thing I want to do. It makes you stronger and forces you to learn from your previous mistakes, only to make you better as a person.

The horrible mismanagement of the AIDS crisis makes me want to grab [disease minimizers] by the shoulders and shake them and say, “Why haven’t you read about what worked or did not work every time a plague cropped up before this one? Why aren’t you paying attention? Do not do the same stupid stuff people did before! We know what works and what doesn’t! Be smarter, please, please, be smarter, be kinder, be kinder and smarter, I am begging you.” I find the forgetfulness of people, especially in true matters of life and death, so frustrating. Sometimes I look at these histories and think, People are just going to keep making the same dumb mistakes every single time. And one day those mistakes will doom us all. And I feel sad and furious and frightened for what will happen next. But then I think about how polio is almost eradicated. Or that penicillin exists. And I remember that we are progressing, always, even if that progress is sometimes slower and more uneven than we might wish. I remind myself, too, of all the ways people have persevered and survived in conditions that are surely as bad as anything that is to come. Whenever I am most disillusioned, I look to one of my favorite quotes from The World of Yesterday (1942) by Stefan Zweig. When Zweig was fleeing from the Nazis and living in exile he wrote: “Even from the abyss of horror in which we try to find our way today, half-blind, our hearts distraught and shattered, I look up again to the ancient constellations of my childhood, comforting myself that, some day, this relapse will appear only an interval in the eternal rhythm of progress onward and upward.” I have to believe that the missteps are only intermittent relapses as we grow stronger and smarter and better. We do get better. At everything. Combatting diseases fits somewhere among “everything.” I believe there will be a day when we will see diseases as what they are—an enemy of all of humanity. Not of perceived sinners, not of people who are poor or have a different sexual orientation, not of those who we somehow decided “have it coming” because they’re “not like us.” Diseases are at war with all of us. Diseases don’t care about any of the labels, so it makes no sense for us to. I believe we will become more compassionate. I believe we will fight smarter. I believe that in the deepest place of our souls, we are not cowardly or hateful or cruel to our neighbors. I believe we are kind and smart and brave. I believe that as long as we follow those instincts and do not give in to terror and blame, we can triumph over diseases and the stigmas attached to them. When we fight plagues, not each other, we will not only defeat diseases but preserve our humanity in the process. Onward and upward.

I was ready to walk away, to leave you here to rot, but now? Now I won’t. You will never hurt my family or me again. Maybe it would make me a better person, a stronger person, to walk away, but fuck knows I don’t care. I don’t care that I want to kill you, and what that means for me and my soul, because these men? They love me for it, and I’m tired of fighting myself. I am who I am. Born out of blood and pain, I’m a fucking Viper.” “You are nothing, just a cheap whore sleeping her way to the top, and when they don’t want you anymore, they will throw you away.” He chuckles. “Nah, they won’t.” I laugh. “We are a family, we are the thing people fear in the dark now. All of us are born from necessity, from people like you. They slayed their pasts, and now it’s time for me to do the same.

Her message filters through my mind. Life isn’t about what we deserve. It’s about what we choose. And sometimes life makes choices for us, choices that hurt, and that’s terrible and heart-rending, but we have the choice to let it break us or to persevere. To become stronger. Better. You can’t choose what life throws at you, but you can choose how you react to it. The truth is, we deserve nothing. We need to fight for what we want. We need to fight for the things that make us want to go skinny dipping at midnight, and dance in the rain, and wish on falling

Put simply, we fight death. Mortality comes for us all, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, but that doesn’t make it just. At our school, we teach the art of reanimation. We bring the dead back to life. Sometimes this means working with whole corpses, like Erwin, other times it means building life from disparate body parts. And we don’t just restore life – we seek to improve it, too. Make our Creations stronger, more resilient. If we can’t bring them back, we help the dead speak from beyond the grave and give them a voice. We can even create artificial life from nothing, via means magical or technological. In order to study such things, our school is removed from mainstream society, as our work can make many feel uncomfortable. They call what we do immoral. A violation, some would say. To which I say, death is a violation. And it’s our job to redress the balance. Where death seeks to destroy, we seek to Create.

After seeing Dylan with the redhead, I sunk deeper into a depression. Even working at Lark’s house did nothing to distract me. I simply went through the motions. Fortunately, Lark was especially tired and slept most of the day, so she never noticed my bad mood. Harlow wasn’t as oblivious as we washed dishes after dinner. “What’s up, stinky pup?” I rolled my eyes at her nickname for me. “Nothing.” “She doesn’t want to deal with the leaves,” Jace said from behind us. Our ten year old brother crossed his arms like Dad often did when suspicious. “See, she got spooked last night and bailed on raking the leaves. They ended up blowing around the yard and now she’s trying to get out of raking them again.” “That’s not it.” “Sure, it is,” he said, his dark hair covering his narrowed eyes. “What else could it be?” Grumpy, I decided to punish him. “It’s about a sexy guy.” Jace’s face twisted into horror. “Eww!” he cried, running out of the room. Harlow and I laughed at the sound of him telling on me to Mom. “In a few years, girls will be all he thinks about,” I said, returning to the dishes. Harlow leaned her head against my shoulder. “Sexy guy, huh?” “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for your fight?” Harlow glanced at the clock. “Yeah. When I get back, I want to hear about the sexy guy making you sigh so much.” As my sister dressed to go, I finished the dishes and struggled to stop sighing. I was still grumpy when Dad got home. In this living room, he told Harlow to be careful. She said something and laughed. When Harlow started fighting at the Thunderdome, she called herself Joy and hid it from our parents. She didn’t think they’d approve and she was right. Harlow and I were naïve to assume they wouldn’t find out long before she told them the truth though. Dad might be a pastor, but he learned about the Lord in prison. As a member of the Reapers, Dad had eyes and ears all over Ellsberg. He likely knew Harlow was fighting before she threw her first punch. Entering the kitchen, Dad smiled at me. “Stop talking about cute boys around your brother. He has a sensitive gag reflex.” I laughed as he got himself a beer and joined me at the sink. “Mom said we have leftovers. Mind warming them up for me?” Shaking my head, I filled a plate and set it in the microwave. “Are you okay?” Dad asked, frowning at me. “You look worn down.” “I had a long day.” “You sure that’s it?” We watched each other and I remembered the first time he asked if I was okay. Five years earlier when I was brought to this house and met my new family. I didn’t remember a lot from that day besides thinking these people were too good to be true. I figured they’d wait until Kirk was gone then hurt me. I couldn’t remember when I knew Dad was a good man who loved me. Not like my real dad loved me. Tad felt the kind of love a person died to protect. I saw the love in his eyes as he waited for his food to finish warming. “I wish I was stronger.” “So do I,” he said softly. “Everyone does. They just don’t admit it. That’s what makes you so brave. You can admit your fears.” Even thinking he was full of shit, I smiled. “Thanks, Dad.” Taking his plate out of the microwave, he inhaled. “Mom makes the best meatloaf.” “I made it.” Grinning, Dad nudged me with his hip. “If you make this meatloaf for the boy you’re hung up on, you’ll own him.” “I’ll remember that.

Everyone has to go through bad times, Sammy,” she said. “It’s what makes us stronger. It opens our eyes, gives us the courage to fight and the heart to forgive. If we didn’t go through bad stuff, we wouldn’t be grateful for the good things we have. Like each other.

I suggest you stand slowly and walk out with my men,” Zrakovi said, tapping a napkin against his lying, two-faced mouth and putting a twenty on the table to cover the drinks. “If you make a scene, innocent humans will be injured. I have a Blue Congress cleanup team in place, however, so if you want to fight in public and damage a few humans, knock yourself out. It will only add to your list of crimes.” I stood slowly, gritting my teeth when Squirrel Chin patted me down while feeling me up and making it look like a romantic moment. He’d been so busy feeling the naughty bits that he missed both Charlie, sitting in my bag next to my foot, and the dagger attached to my inner forearm. Idiot. Alex would never have been so sloppy. If Alex had patted me down, he’d have found not only the weapons but also the portable magic kit. From the corner of my eye, I saw a tourist taking mobile phone shots of us. He’d no doubt email them to all his friends back home with stories of those crazy New Orleanians and their public displays of affection. I considered pretending to faint, but I was too badly outnumbered for it to work. Like my friend Jean Lafitte, whose help I could use about now, I didn’t want to try something unless it had a reasonable chance at succeeding. I also didn’t want to pull Charlie out and risk humans getting hurt. “Walk out the door onto Chartres and turn straight toward the cathedral.” Zrakovi pulled his jacket aside enough for me to see a shoulder holster. I hadn’t even known the man could hold a gun, although for all I knew about guns it could be a water pistol. The walk to the cathedral transport was three very long city blocks. My best escape opportunity would be near Jackson Square. When the muscular goons tried to turn me left toward the cathedral, I’d try to break and run right toward the river, where I could get lost among the wharves and docks long enough to draw and power a transport. Of course in order to run, I’d have to get away from the clinch of Dreadlocks and Squirrel Chin. Charlie could take care of that. I slipped the messenger bag over my head slowly, and not even Zrakovi noticed the stick of wood protruding from the top by a couple of inches. Not to be redundant, but . . . idiots. None of us spoke as we proceeded down Chartres Street, where, to our south, the clouds continued to build. The wind had grown stronger and drier. The hurricane was sucking all the humidity out of the air, all the better to gain intensity. I hoped Zrakovi, a Bostonian, would enjoy his first storm. I hoped a live oak landed on his head.

She let go of the vine and settled her carry-sack on her shoulder. She stared out through the leaves at the distant shore. After a time, in a quieter voice she said, “It’s all very well for Greft to talk about new rules. It infuriates me when he says that I ‘must make my choice soon’ as I’d my only choice is choosing which male. To him, it probably seems so simple. There’s no authority out here to tell him that he can’t do a thing, so he does it. And never thinks about the reason that rule came to be. To him, it’s just a bar that keeps him from doing what he wants.” She turned her head to look at him. “Can’t you see that for me, it’s just another rule that he’s talking about putting on me? His rule is that I have to choose a mate. ‘For the good of the keepers,’ to keep the boys from fighting over me. How is that better than the old rule?” When he didn’t answer, she glanced back out over the river. “You know, I just now realized something. Jerd and Greft, they think that breaking the rules is the same as proving themselves. To me, breaking an old rule doesn’t mean anything except that they broke a rule. I don’t think Jerd is braver or stronger or more capable because she did it. In fact, with a baby growing in her belly, she’s more vulnerable. More dependent on the rest of us, regardless of how hard that makes it. So. What does that prove about Jerd? Or the boys who slept with her?” In unfolding her thought, she’d forgotten to whom she was speaking. The stunned look on Tat’s face stopped her words. She wanted to apologize, to say she hadn’t meant it. But her tongue couldn’t find the lie. After a few moments of his silence, she said quietly, “My bag is full. Let’s take what we have back to the barge.” He bobbed just head in a brusque nod of agreement, not looking at her. Had she shamed him? Made him angry? Suddenly it all just made her tired, and she didn’t want to understand him or have him understand her. It was all too much trouble. It was so much easier being alone.

Enthusiasm is agape directed at a particular idea or a specific thing. We have all experienced it. When we love and believe from the bottom of our heart, we feel ourselves to be stronger than anyone in the world, and we feel a serenity that is based on the certainty that nothing can shake our faith. This unusual strength allows us always to make the right decision at the right time, and when we achieve our goal, we are amazed at our own capabilities. Because when we are involved in the good fight, nothing else is important; enthusiasm carries us toward our goal.

The big black face of the clock is all-important - the figures sitting roundly, the heavy hands laboriously moving every minute. Every minute is an hour waiting for the big black thing to say a new minute. One can’t push it or hurry it. Picking it up to smash it is futile – it will still be there, but by hell, when one is happy enjoying oneself, there it is, going faster than hell, menacing you – threatening the end. Always pushing, hurrying, never going slowly or giving you enough time. Time itself, the word I mean, is an ugly, unprepossessing little word with boundless, inconceivable meaning, for time curtails all but extends all into eternity. Man continually races against time, of time, be it seconds or eternity; there is always a quantity of time. Man may well run a mile in three minutes, but he will never run a mile in a minus quantity of time. He can never beat the clock. It ticks relentlessly on, second by second, bringing births and deaths. We are bound by time, shackled forever, yet time is relentless, apathetic and remorseless. It makes no distinction for the individual; for prince or pauper, time will bring each his death, time will make his tea grow cold. Time is night and day, black and white, day after day. Time is God striding hungrily around the world, killing and creating. Time is breaths per minute or sex per hour – time is the oak tree or the tortoise, time is the hawk beady watching fat pigeons – time is what I hate but no longer fight, for no man can destroy it or push it further on or hold it back. It is the strongest thing I know. It is stronger than love or hate, for time can heal them. It is stronger than God, for he cannot change it. Rise. Let us unite against time and be destroyed, for we beat our own brains out.

Women are always seen as weak, helpless creatures. Like ants being burned under a magnifying glass, because some piece of shit decided it was their turn to suffer. Yet men could never endure the things we have to. In fact, they get angry at us for trying to do anything but submit to them, and somehow we are considered the emotional ones. They think doing that makes them stronger, smarter, but all it does is create a drive in us. A fire that starts to fester from deep within until we are the ones holding the magnifying glass, and unlike us, they scream when they burn. They don’t suffer in silence, or run away, they thrash and fight because it is their right as a powerful man to do so. That is, until they create a powerful woman. A tip in the scale they never wanted yet can’t erase because it was their actions that did it. It makes for a strange world, don’t you think?

Within the pages of a book, you'll find a sanctuary from anxiety. Each word is a stepping stone, leading you away from worry and into worlds of wonder. Reading is not just an escape, it's a journey towards inner peace. So, pick up a book and let it be your shield against anxiety, your beacon in the storm. Remember, every chapter you conquer makes you stronger. In the quiet rustle of pages turning, you'll find solace. Each story is a new perspective, a fresh lens to view the world. They teach us resilience, courage, and the power of imagination. They remind us that we are not alone in our struggles, and that our fears are but shadows in the grand tapestry of life. So, let the words wash over you, let them anchor you in the present, and guide you towards tranquility. Let the characters' journeys inspire your own, and know that just as they overcome their trials, so too can you overcome yours. Reading is not just a pastime, it's a lifeline. It's a testament to the human spirit's ability to rise above, to fight, to heal. In the end, remember this: A book is a friend that never lets you down. It's a light in the darkness, a solace in times of anxiety. So, keep reading, keep exploring, and let the power of words guide you towards a calmer, stronger, and more resilient you.

The country towered above me, a blank empty space containing nothing for us. Only one thing was real, more real to me now than the past that we’d lost or the future we didn’t have: if I put one foot in front of the other, the path would move me forward and a strip of dirt, often no more than a foot wide, had become home. It wasn’t just the chill in the air, the lowering of the sun’s horizon, the heaviness of the dew or the lack of urgency in the birds’ calls, but something in me was changing season too. I was no longer striving, fighting to change the unchangeable, not clenching in anxiety at the life we’d been unable to hold on to, or angry at an authoritarian system too bureaucratic to see the truth. A new season had crept into me, a softer season of acceptance. Burned in by the sun, driven in by the storm. I could feel the sky, the earth, the water and revel in being part of the elements without a chasm of pain opening at the thought of the loss of our place within it all. I was a part of the whole. I didn’t need to own a patch of land to make that so. I could stand in the wind and I was the wind, the rain, the sea; it was all me, and I was nothing within it. The core of me wasn’t lost. Translucent, elusive, but there and grown stronger with every headland.

When we’re thrown into this world we all start out as prey. If you’re lucky someone protects you, if you’re not then your parents or family become your first experience with predators. If you survive all this, as you grow you become stronger. Some stay prey their whole lives, scared of every leering face, every raised voice, every clenched fist. Some fight back, find they can hurt as well as get hurt. They discover they like it. They become predators. They think they are the strong ones. But they aren’t. The real strong ones are a different breed than the other two altogether. They also fight back, but they get no thrill from the victory. From an early age, they feel a pull to escape not only the predator prey cycle, but the entire society that spawned it, they would rather forge through the wilderness and hack out a place of their own without wasting one moment regretting their rejection of a dying, cannibalistic culture. These wild ones, they’re the ones to watch. If they ever find each other, they could change everything. Not through politics, which is the illusion of change while making sure nothing does, and not through revolution. They could change things by creating something so much better, so much more appealing that people will abandon the old world cycle of abuser and abused in droves till there is nothing left but a handful of elites screaming, “Come back, come back, we have tv, we have cool cars and fidget spinners, don’t miss out on your fidget spinners.” So, if you’re one of those wild ones and you cut yourself out a little piece in the wilderness, burn a big, bright fire at night so the rest of us can find you.

A common factor in the history of the demise of Italian communes and the overthrow of the Weimar and Chilean democracies is the power and opposition of landed interests, which made the corridor narrower and led to an increasingly polarized society. The Red Queen effect, in turn, became much more of a zero-sum, existential fight rather than a race between state and society that advanced the capacities of both. This is visible in the Italian case from the fact that the elites started fighting not just to increase their standing against the communes but to destroy them, and the communes came to view coexistence with the elites as impossible, preferring autocracy to the elites' creeping influence. Machiavelli summed this up well in The Prince when he observed that 'the people do not wish to be commanded or oppressed by the nobles, while the nobles do desire to command and to oppress the people. From these two opposed appetites, there arises in cities one of three effects: a principality, liberty, or licence. A principality is brought about either by the common people or by the nobility, depending on which of the two parties has the opportunity. When the nobles see that they cannot resist the populace, they begin to support someone from among themselves, and make him prince in order to be able to satisfy their appetites under his protection. The common people as well, seeing that they cannot resist the nobility, give their support to one man so as to be defended by his authority.' Macchiavelli is in fact identifying a force propelling many modern-day movements sometimes labeled 'populist.' Though the term originates with the late nineteenth-century U.S. Populist movement, exemplified by the People's Party, its recent specimens, even if diverse, disparate, and lacking a generally agreed definition, do have some common hallmarks. They include a rhetoric that pits the 'people' against a scheming elite, an emphasis on the need to overhaul the system and its institutions (because they are not working for the people), a trust in a leader who (supposedly) represents the people's true wishes and interests, and a repudiation of all sorts of constraints and attempts to compromise because they will stand in the way of the movement and its leader. Contemporary populist movements, including the National Front in France, the Freedom Party in the Netherlands, the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) started by Hugo Chávez, and the Republican Party refashioned by Donald J. Trump in the United States, all have these features, as did the earlier fascist movements (though they augmented them with a stronger militarism and fanatical anticommunism). As in the case of the Italian communes, the elite may in fact be scheming and against the common people, but the idea that a populist movement and its all-powerful leader will protect the people's interests is just wishful thinking.

My people, the pigmen, have lived in the Nether for generations,” Porkins said. “It’s a hard place, but we had a good life there. Until three years ago when a strange man came to visit us. Do you know the hero Steve?” “All too well,” said Dave. “Well this man looked just like him,” said Porkins. “Apart from his eyes were white. He called himself Herobrine.” As Porkins said the word Herobrine a shiver went down Dave’s spine, and at the same moment the wind pushed open the door to their cabin, whistling eerily. He went over and closed it. He’d never heard that name before, but something about it chilled him to the bone. “My people were always being attacked by ghasts,” Porkins went on, “and the man promised he could make us stronger, so we’d be able to fight back. Our leaders agreed, and Herobrine gave us all a potion to drink. “I was the only one who didn’t trust this chap Herobrine, so I never drank mine. But everyone else did. By morning, Herobrine had gone, and my people had been transformed into mindless zombies. “Even my own father didn’t recognize me anymore, he just looked at me blankly with his dead, zombie eyes. I ran as fast as I could, until I found a nether portal inside an old fortress and used it to come to your world. I’ve been here ever since.

I know you’re scared.” Everyone turns back to me. “I’m scared, too. But I know your reason for fighting is stronger than your fear, because it’s led you here. Each of us had been wronged by the guards, by this monarchy that’s sworn to protect us. Today we strike back for us all. Today we make them pay!” The shouts of agreement ring through the air; even the mercenaries join in. Their cries bolster my spirits, unlocking the words trapped within. “They may have a thousand men in their army, but not one of them has the support of the gods. We have magic on our side, so stay strong, stay confident.” “And if everything goes to hell?” Roën asks when the cheers die down. “Strike,” I answer. “Fight with everything you’ve got.

Ever since I was a child, ever since I became wrongly convinced I had to be bigger and smarter than I really was, I’ve been trying to perform, trying to convince people I was more capable than I really was. I’d been sending that same nine-year-old kid who took the tape recorder apart out into the world to speak and perform and interact with people. She asked me to come back and sit in the adult chair and tell the nine-year-old what I thought about him. I didn’t know what to say. She asked me to imagine what he looked like, and I immediately pictured the chubby kid from the movie The Goonies. I smiled. I liked the kid. He was funny and disarming and yet still only nine years old. He seemed alone and afraid, and the only way he could get attention was to convince everybody around him he was smarter and stronger than he actually was. My therapist asked me, again, to say something to him. I looked at him for a while and he looked back, wide eyed and curious. I finally spoke up and said I liked him. I told him I thought he was funny and charming and smart. “Anything else?” my therapist said. “Yeah,” I said. “I also want to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry for pushing you out there in the world so you could impress people for us and fight for us and make money for us while I sat in here and read books.” The moment was powerful for me. I’d completely disassociated from the kid who had taken apart his tape recorder. I hardly knew him. I’d not raised him to maturity and he’d spent the last thirty years lonely and desperate for attention. It’s no wonder I hid from the world. It’s no wonder parties made me tired or I got exhausted after I spoke. It’s no wonder criticism made me angry or I overreacted to failure. I think the part of me I sent out to interact with the world was, in some ways, underdeveloped, still trying to be bigger and smarter as a measure of survival.

For the longest time, women have been erased, little by little, or in the case of the Furies themselves, in one fell swoop. We have lived in the shadow of the rights and laws of men. But when the world is reborn, it will be of our own making. You’re fighting for that world, and you have the same right to armour as the rest of us. You are surrounded by women who want to see you empowered, and that is stronger than any fucking army in these realms. Don’t let the world – don’t let anyone convince you that you’re not enough. Only you define your story. You and you alone. When they tell you what you’re not, when they tell you what you can’t do, remember: you are the storm, Elwren. You split the skies and flood the plains. You make the ground tremble beneath their boots. No one can fucking stop you.

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Are you ever not manipulating people?” “We all manipulate the people around us,” Jason said. “We all show different faces to friends, family, colleagues. Enemies.” “You think that’s the same thing?” “You think it’s different? You think my friends don’t see past the bombast and the bluster? Do you think Jory doesn’t know how I feel, healing people in his clinic? That Humphrey doesn’t know my pride, helping protect a village from monsters? That Rufus doesn’t feel my triumph when I push my abilities a little bit further and grow that little bit stronger?” “Aren’t you just making it harder for them?” “We all make it hard. Rufus can be rigid when he needs to be flexible. Humphrey can be short-sighted when he needs to look deeper. Jory needs to be more ambitious before he can truly accomplish the things he wants to. As for me, well, I’m the worst of the lot. I’m constantly causing trouble a little politeness would avoid. I pick fights I have no business being in, make enemies that would overlook me if I just learned to keep my mouth shut. I’m prickly, manipulative. Completely lacking in deference.” “If you’re so self-aware, then why not fix all that?” “Because they aren’t problems,” Jason said. “They’re part of who I am, and I’m happier with that now than I ever have been.

Shin was on the front lines, and in the middle of fighting a Dinosauria. He d likely left the fighting to Raiden, Theo, and his other squad members so he could focus on providing reconnaissance for Shiden... But still, he was right in front of the enemy. One wrong step, and he'd have been killed. And yet she could sense Shin tightening his lips. He seemed oddly displeased, in an uncharacteristic show of emotion compared with his usual, indifferent self. He then parted his lips to speak, making no effort to hide that emotion. "No." It was the same voice she'd heard in the Revich Citadel Base, but this time, it felt firmer than before. Lena furrowed her brows. "That's an order, Captain." "I refuse." "Shin."" "I refuse that order. Are you even one to talk like that, Lena?" Lena realized that, at some point, she'd been set as the sole target o Shin's Resonance. And that he didn't call her by her rank, as was necessary in the middle of an operation...but by her nickname. "You were the one who ordered me to return safely. So wait for me. We can't complete that objective if we don't have anywhere to return to. So let us return...Lena." And at that moment, Shin was filled with something like indecision. Like hesitation. Like doubt... No. Pressed by an even stronger emotion, he fell silent. And with that emotion constricting his throat, he finally said those words, as if painfully coughing them out. "Please don't leave me." He sounded like he was imploring her. Like a child squatting on a mountain of corpses in the center of the battlefield, reaching out for a hand of light he could just barely make out. As if trying to grasp this hand that could disappear at any given moment. "I'll come back, for sure. So don't leave me behind. Don't tell me not to protect you when you're in danger... I don't want you-you, of all people-to order me to abandon you." "Shin...

When it comes to exercise we are fighting fire with fire. Inflammation in our body, runs amok, makes us ill. Exercise causes inflammation in the muscles that produce a particular type of protein in response which reduces our sensitivity to interferon which then reduces the body’s inflammatory response. Think of exercise as creating a natural firebreak with a fire we can control and direct in order to stop an uncontrolled fire from spreading and taking over and becoming uncontrollable.

She strode forward and gripped her younger sister by the shoulders. ‘For the longest time, women have been erased, little by little, or in the case of the Furies themselves, in one fell swoop. We have lived in the shadow of the rights and laws of men. But when the world is reborn, it will be of our own making. You’re fighting for that world, and you have the same right to armour as the rest of us. You are surrounded by women who want to see you empowered, and that is stronger than any fucking army in these realms. Don’t let the world – don’t let anyone convince you that you’re not enough. Only you define your story. You and you alone. When they tell you what you’re not, when they tell you what you can’t do, remember: you are the storm, Elwren. You split the skies and flood the plains. You make the ground tremble beneath their boots. No one can fucking stop you.’ Adrienne let out a low, appreciative whistle, but Thea kept her gaze trained on the celadon eyes that matched her own. Wren’s lower lip trembled, but she lifted her chin. ‘I’ll wear the armour.’ ‘Damn straight you will.