“
No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages
1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5.
3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on “Bright Eyes.”
4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank.
5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13.
6) Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14.
7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15.
8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil.
9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19.
10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961.
11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936.
12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23
13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24
14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record
15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity
16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France
17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures “David” and “Pieta” by age 28
18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world
19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter
20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean
21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind
22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest
23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech “I Have a Dream."
24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics
25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight
26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions.
27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon.
28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas
30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger
31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States
32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out.
33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games"
34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out.
35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa.
36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president.
37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels.
38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat".
40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived
41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise
42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out
43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US
44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats
45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President
”
”
Pablo
“
An eight-hour flight, and there’s no movie,” I say to myself, glaring at the screenless seat back in front of me. “Maybe they’re hoping your life flashing in front of your eyes will be distraction enough.
”
”
Christina Lauren (The Unhoneymooners (Unhoneymooners, #1))
“
That’s the point. This healthy-feeling time now just feels like a tease. Like I’m in this holding pattern, flying in smooth circles within sight of the airport, in super-comfortable first class. But I can’t enjoy the in-flight movie or free chocolate chip cookies because I know that before the airport is able to make room for us, the plane is going to run out of fuel, and we’re going to crash-land into a fiery, agonizing death.
”
”
Jessica Verdi (My Life After Now)
“
There's this primary America of freeways and jet flights and TV and movie spectaculars, and people caught up in this primary America seem to go through huge portions of their lives without much consciousness of what immediately surrounds them. The media have convinced them that what's right around them is unimportant. And that's why they're lonely.
”
”
Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values (Phaedrus, #1))
“
I noticed how utterly indifferent the passengers were to what they were doing, namely, flying through the air. A glance out of the window would have revealed furrowed fields of cloud stained smoke-blue and violet as night and morning changed shifts –- but how were they passing time in First, Business and Coach? Crosswords. In-flight movies. Computer games. E-mail. Creation sprawls like a dewed and willing maiden outside your window awaiting only the lechery of your senses –- and what do you do? Complain about the dwarf cutlery. Plug your ears. Blind you eyes. Discuss Julia Roberts’s hair. Ah, me. Sometimes I think my work is done.
”
”
Glen Duncan (I, Lucifer)
“
Above them, one of the blackened television screens brightens, and there's an announcement about the in-flight movie. It's an animated film about a family of ducks, one that Hadley's actually see, and when Oliver groans, shes about to deny the whole thing. But then she twists around in her seat and eyes him critically.
"There's nothing wrong with ducks," she tells him, and he rolls his eyes.
"Talking ducks?"
Hadley grins. "They sing, too."
"Don't tell me," he says. "You've already seen it."
She holds up two fingers. "Twice."
"You do know it's meant for five-year-olds, right?"
"Five- to eight-year-olds, thank you very much."
"And how old are you again?"
"Old enough to appreciate our web-footed friends."
"You," he says, laughing in spite of himself, "are a mad as a hatter."
"Wait a second," Hadley says in mock horror. "Is that a reference to a...cartoon?"
No, genius. It's a reference to a famous work of literature by Lewis Carroll. But once again, I can see how well that American education is working for you.
”
”
Jennifer E. Smith (The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight)
“
The loneliness of flight is not entirely overwhelmed by cabin movies, the drinks, the Gemütlichkeit of shoulder-to-shoulder life.
”
”
William F. Buckley Jr. (The Lexicon: A Cornucopia of Wonderful Words for the Inquisitive Word Lover)
“
Wasn’t it wonderful of Angus and Emma to spring for first class tickets?”
“Yes.”
“It’s an incredibly long flight, you know.”
“Yes.”
“They’ll show us a movie or two.”
“Yes.”
She leaned close to him, smiling. “I love traveling with you. You’re so agreeable.”
He gave her an annoyed look. “Are you going to talk the whole time?”
She smiled sweetly. “Yes.
”
”
Kerrelyn Sparks (Eat Prey Love (Love at Stake, #9))
“
In the National Geographic movie of my twisted mind, the lion had just leaped on the gazelle, pinned it to the ground and mounted it from behind. Apparently, the devouring could wait. I should point out that these little flights of fancy on my part often involved extremely improbable animal pairings. I blamed cartoons.
”
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Delphine Dryden (The Theory of Attraction (Science of Temptation, #1))
“
Anyone who's ever flown London to Sydney, seated next to or anywhere in the proximity of a fussy baby, you'll no doubt fall right into the swing of things in Hell. What with the strangers and crowding and seemingly endless hours of waiting for nothing to happen, for you Hell will feel like one long, nostalgic hit a deja vu. Especially if your in-flight movie was The English Patient. In Hell, whenever the demons announce they're going to treat everyone to a big-name Hollywood movie, don't get too excited because it's always The English Patient, or, unfortunately, The Piano. It's never The Breakfast Club.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Damned (Damned, #1))
“
It's like we're all going up a flight of stairs together and at a certain point I say 'this is as far as I go'. And on that step, higher up, they're all happy and I watch them from below. Had he always been like that? It wasn't shyness or reserve or adolescence, as other people thought. He wasn't going to get over it. He could dance when he was alone, he could get emotional in his room with a book, but when the party started he disconnected, the others turned into a movie that he could watch but not participate in. So he acted like he was invisible, which wasn't hard when everyone was drunk. And he withdrew into his room, where he felt the purest kind of relief.
”
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Mariana Enríquez (Nuestra parte de noche)
“
When did your flight plan become a holding pattern, always circling happiness, but never allowed to land? Distracted by in-flight movies, drinks, and snacks, until the fuel runs out. Is this really all there is? Is this what you want out of life?
”
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John Mark Green
“
They explained about the epidurals and drugs, but no one there was going to have drugs. They all wanted the natural experience. It all seemed wrapped in plastic, unreal, like stewardesses on planes demonstrating the seat belts and the patterns for orderly disembarkatation in case of a crash at sea, the people taking a glance at the cards in the seat pocket in front of them. Sure, they thought, no problem. A peek at the nearest exit and then they were ready for in-flight service, peanuts and a movie.
”
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Janet Fitch (White Oleander)
“
Some innovations just don’t attract enough economic or social demand: just as supersonic flight and manned space flight stagnated after the 1970s, today (in 2002) the potentialities of broadband (G3) technology are being taken up rather slowly because few people want to surf the Internet or watch movies from their mobile phones.
”
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Martin J. Rees (Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning)
“
So,Batman,eh?"
Effing St. Clair.
I cross my arms and slouch into one of the plastic seats. I am so not in the mood for this.He takes the chair next to me and drapes a relaxed arm over the back of the empty seat on his other side. The man across from us is engrossed in his laptop,and I pretend to be engrossed in his laptop,too. Well,the back of it.
St. Clair hums under his breath. When I don't respond,he sings quietly. "Jingle bells,Batman smells,Robin flew away..."
"Yes,great,I get it.Ha ha. Stupid me."
"What? It's just a Christmas song." He grins and continues a bit louder. "Batmobile lost a wheel,on the M1 motorway,hey!"
"Wait." I frown. "What?"
"What what?"
"You're singing it wrong."
"No,I'm not." He pauses. "How do you sing it?"
I pat my coat,double-checking for my passport. Phew. Still there. "It's 'Jingle bells, Batman smells,Robin laid an egg'-"
St. Clair snorts. "Laid an egg? Robin didn't lay an egg-"
"'Batmobile lost a wheel,and the Joker got away.'"
He stares at me for a moment,and then says with perfect conviction. "No."
"Yes.I mean,seriously,what's up with the motorway thing?"
"M1 motorway. Connects London to Leeds."
I smirk. "Batman is American. He doesn't take the M1 motorway."
"When he's on holiday he does."
"Who says Batman has time to vacation?"
"Why are we arguing about Batman?" He leans forward. "You're derailing us from the real topic.The fact that you, Anna Oliphant,slept in today."
"Thanks."
"You." He prods my leg with a finger. "Slept in."
I focus on the guy's laptop again. "Yeah.You mentioned that."
He flashes a crooked smile and shrugs, that full-bodied movement that turns him from English to French. "Hey, we made it,didn't we? No harm done."
I yank out a book from my backpack, Your Movie Sucks, a collection of Roger Ebert's favorite reviews of bad movies. A visual cue for him to leave me alone. St. Clair takes the hint. He slumps and taps his feet on the ugly blue carpeting.
I feel guilty for being so harsh. If it weren't for him,I would've missed the flight. St. Clair's fingers absentmindedly drum his stomach. His dark hair is extra messy this morning. I'm sure he didn't get up that much earlier than me,but,as usual, the bed-head is more attractive on him. With a painful twinge,I recall those other mornings together. Thanksgiving.Which we still haven't talked about.
”
”
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
“
Sure, some movies don’t work. Some fail in their intent. But anyone who says they hated a movie is treating a voluntarily shared human experience like a bad Red-Eye out of LAX. The departure is delayed for hours, there’s turbulence that scares even the flight attendants, the guy across from you vomits, they can’t serve any food and the booze runs out, you’re seated next to twin babies with the colic, and you land too late for your meeting in the city. You can hate that. But hating a movie misses the damn point. Would you say you hated the seventh birthday party of your girlfriend’s niece or a ball game that went eleven innings and ended 1–0? You hate cake and extra baseball for your money? Hate should be saved for fascism and steamed broccoli that’s gone cold.
”
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Tom Hanks (The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece)
“
Incidentally, I spent some time on the Purell website, where you can find a list of ninety-nine places germs lurk (in-flight magazines, movie tickets, gas-pump keypads, hotel room a/c controls, and on and on). It's hilarious and terrifying. The only place they don't mention is the Purell dispensers themselves. You know they're coated with germs. It's one of health's cruelest catch-22s.
”
”
A.J. Jacobs (Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection)
“
As far as I could tell, this movie was about parents who had two cute children they were determined to spend as little time with as possible. And so they hire a woman who constantly gaslights the kids and makes them doubt their own sanity; she takes them on fantastical trips, then says they never happened. She gives them the powers of flight and time travel, encourages them to surrender to the magic and enjoy themselves, then acts all affronted and accuses them of lying when they mention how fun the adventure was. The whole movie seemed to be introducing the concept of what a nanny was and, at the same time, arguing against ever employing one.
”
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Jennifer Longo (What I Carry)
“
I found it strange how people could sit in an airplane flying miles high at hundreds of speeds and not think about it. We got used to magnificent things. I wanted to think it’s cool every time I fly. I wouldn’t want to act overdramatic but just sit there and look out the window for a moment and process what I’m doing. Really process it. Maybe before turning on a movie or going back to normal life, I would begin the flight with a moment like that.
”
”
J. Aleong (A Most Important Year)
“
For now, the Simple Daily Practice means doing ONE thing every day. Try any one of these things each day: A) Sleep eight hours. B) Eat two meals instead of three. C) No TV. D) No junk food. E) No complaining for one whole day. F) No gossip. G) Return an e-mail from five years ago. H) Express thanks to a friend. I) Watch a funny movie or a stand-up comic. J) Write down a list of ideas. The ideas can be about anything. K) Read a spiritual text. Any one that is inspirational to you. The Bible, The Tao te Ching, anything you want. L) Say to yourself when you wake up, “I’m going to save a life today.” Keep an eye out for that life you can save. M) Take up a hobby. Don’t say you don’t have time. Learn the piano. Take chess lessons. Do stand-up comedy. Write a novel. Do something that takes you out of your current rhythm. N) Write down your entire schedule. The schedule you do every day. Cross out one item and don’t do that anymore. O) Surprise someone. P) Think of ten people you are grateful for. Q) Forgive someone. You don’t have to tell them. Just write it down on a piece of paper and burn the paper. It turns out this has the same effect in terms of releasing oxytocin in the brain as actually forgiving them in person. R) Take the stairs instead of the elevator. S) I’m going to steal this next one from the 1970s pop psychology book Don’t Say Yes When You Want to Say No: when you find yourself thinking of that special someone who is causing you grief, think very quietly, “No.” If you think of him and (or?) her again, think loudly, “No!” Again? Whisper, “No!” Again, say it. Louder. Yell it. Louder. And so on. T) Tell someone every day that you love them. U) Don’t have sex with someone you don’t love. V) Shower. Scrub. Clean the toxins off your body. W) Read a chapter in a biography about someone who is an inspiration to you. X) Make plans to spend time with a friend. Y) If you think, “Everything would be better off if I were dead,” then think, “That’s really cool. Now I can do anything I want and I can postpone this thought for a while, maybe even a few months.” Because what does it matter now? The planet might not even be around in a few months. Who knows what could happen with all these solar flares. You know the ones I’m talking about. Z) Deep breathing. When the vagus nerve is inflamed, your breathing becomes shallower. Your breath becomes quick. It’s fight-or-flight time! You are panicking. Stop it! Breathe deep. Let me tell you something: most people think “yoga” is all those exercises where people are standing upside down and doing weird things. In the Yoga Sutras, written in 300 B.C., there are 196 lines divided into four chapters. In all those lines, ONLY THREE OF THEM refer to physical exercise. It basically reads, “Be able to sit up straight.” That’s it. That’s the only reference in the Yoga Sutras to physical exercise. Claudia always tells me that yogis measure their lives in breaths, not years. Deep breathing is what keeps those breaths going.
”
”
James Altucher (Choose Yourself)
“
I have a great idea, Gregori," she told him wickedly. "Let's take a commercial flight."
"What?" He was staring at her mouth. She had a great mouth.A perfect mouth. A sexy mouth. Mon Dieu, he wanted her mouth.
"Doesn't a commercial flight sound fun? We could take a night flight, mingle with people.It might even throw off the reporter."
"Nothing is going to throw off the reporter.He is tenacious.And there will be no commercial flight.There will be no discussion on this,either. None. If we go to New Orleans,and I am not saying we will, commercial flights are out."
"Oh,Gregori,I was only kidding. Naturally we'll do things your way," she added demurely.
He shook his head,exasperated at himself. Of course she had been teasing. He wasn't used to anyone treating him as Savannah did. Outrageous woman. "I need to go out and talk with Wade Carter."
She stood up instantly, expectantly, her blue eyes wide in anticipation. "Tell me what you want me to do. I can probably manage mist.I'm stronger now,using your blood.I can back you up."
Amusement warmed the cool silver of his eyes. "Mon Dieu, Savannah, you sound like a cop movie.
”
”
Christine Feehan (Dark Magic (Dark, #4))
“
Many of us spend our early years in unconscious flight from our true purpose, only to run smack into it at last, like a fleeing movie heroine who backs around a corner — we know what comes next — and turns abruptly to find herself face to face with her nemesis, or, more often, her deliverance.
”
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Carey Harrison (Gildo (Who Was That Lady? #1))
“
Nevertheless, there was something extraordinary about it when a man so young, with so little experience in flight test, was selected to go to Muroc Field in California for the XS–1 project. Muroc was up in the high elevations of the Mojave Desert. It looked like some fossil landscape that had long since been left behind by the rest of terrestrial evolution. It was full of huge dry lake beds, the biggest being Rogers Lake. Other than sagebrush the only vegetation was Joshua trees, twisted freaks of the plant world that looked like a cross between cactus and Japanese bonsai. They had a dark petrified green color and horribly crippled branches. At dusk the Joshua trees stood out in silhouette on the fossil wasteland like some arthritic nightmare. In the summer the temperature went up to 110 degrees as a matter of course, and the dry lake beds were covered in sand, and there would be windstorms and sandstorms right out of a Foreign Legion movie. At night it would drop to near freezing, and in December it would start raining, and the dry lakes would fill up with a few inches of water, and some sort of putrid prehistoric shrimps would work their way up from out of the ooze, and sea gulls would come flying in a hundred miles or more from the ocean, over the mountains, to gobble up these squirming little throwbacks. A person had to see it to believe it: flocks of sea gulls wheeling around in the air out in the middle of the high desert in the dead of winter and grazing on antediluvian crustaceans in the primordial ooze. When
”
”
Tom Wolfe (The Right Stuff)
“
Son of a bitch!” “What is it?” asked Coleman. “Our flight’s delayed!” “But only fifteen minutes,” said Coleman. “I’ve seen this movie before. ‘Fifteen minutes’ is code for ‘at least three to five hours.’ They know the plane’s stuck in Pittsburgh, where they wrestled another drunk pilot to the runway, but they don’t want an open passenger revolt, so they incrementally string us along fifteen minutes at a time, until you’re across the international date line.” Serge paced in front of the departure screen. Fifteen minutes later, Serge grabbed Coleman and pointed. “Sweet Jesus! They just added another fifteen minutes!
”
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Tim Dorsey (Pineapple Grenade (Serge Storms #15))
“
I wanted to board the plane with you, to show our boarding passes to the flight attendant together, sit side by side and talk until I put my head on your shoulder as you read and slept, and then wake up to together and listen to music, watch a movie, go to the bathroom… Maybe we’d fall asleep again then wake up to another meal only slightly more appetising than the first and watch the shifting cloud formations outside the window together, and hear the captain announcing that we were about to land in Hong Kong, about to land in Malaysia, about to land in Paris…
Do I think too much? All I really want is to fly with you.
”
”
Qiu Miaojin (Last Words from Montmartre)
“
I rode to the fourth floor, poked around until I found the stairway, and walked down a flight. I almost always do this and I sometimes wonder why. I think someone must have done it in a movie once and I was evidently impressed, but it’s really a waste of time, especially when the elevator in question is self-service.
”
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Lawrence Block (Burglars Can't Be Choosers (Bernie Rhodenbarr, #1))
“
Taking a trip with the Air Force Special Operations Wing folks is not like a flight on a normal airliner. For one thing, passengers and crew are all armed to the teeth. The seating is awful, the noise is incredible, and there is no movie. Your stewardess is likely to be a guy wearing a shoulder holster, and he will not bring you a pillow.
”
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Frank Antenori (Roughneck Nine-One: The Extraordinary Story of a Special Forces A-team at War)
“
Considering they were on the passenger manifest for a Lufthansa flight into Hamburg—not to mention the fact that Soldano is a priest and God really doesn’t like it when priests lie—Holy shit!” Jules stared out the car window as a bus roared past with both Adam and Robin’s face on the side—part of a giant advertisement for the movie American Hero. Der Amerikanische Held. Ab Donnerstag. Manche Kriege fuhrst Du in Dir-- which had to be a translation of the movie’s tag line, The War is Within. “Jesus!”
“What?”
“Nothing,” Jules said. “Sorry.” He’d thought he’d be safe here, that Hollywood movies about World War II wouldn’t be particularly well received in Germany.
Color him on very deep shade of wrong.
”
”
Suzanne Brockmann (Breaking Point (Troubleshooters, #9))
“
When they called boarding for my flight, I got that going-back-to-the-USA feeling. I always went back, no matter how fucked up it was, because America, fuck yeah: milkshakes and giant movie theaters and highways and barbecue and simple politics with only two parties that mostly agreed on mostly everything that mattered, like bombing the shit out of everywhere else.
”
”
Cory Doctorow (Attack Surface (Little Brother, #3))
“
This wasn’t glamorous, or movie-worthy. There was no waving the handkerchief or kissing through the bus window one last time as I stoically sent him off. This was unedited pain and gut-wrenching fear in its rawest form. It wasn’t even the thought of knowing it would be nine months until I could hold him again. Hell, that was the best-case scenario. It was the true, paralyzing fear that I’d never get that chance again. Had I said everything right? Kissed him long enough? Showed him how much I loved him?
”
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Rebecca Yarros (Hallowed Ground (Flight & Glory #4))
“
His consolation prize was a hat. A battered fedora that looked as if it had blown off of Humphrey Bogart during the filming of Key Largo. Sucked up into the atmosphere during the movie’s hurricane, it had ended up here, on the other side of the world, sixty years later.
On his head.
Even though it had been enshrined in a closet inside the house, it kind of smelled as if it had spent about three of those decades at the bottom of a birdcage.
Yesiree. It was almost as fun to wear as the brown leather flight jacket.
Which really wasn’t fair to the flight jacket. It was a gorgeously cared-for antique that didn’t smell at all. And it definitely worked for him, in terms of some of his flyboy fantasies. But the day had turned into a scorcher. It was just shy of a bazillion degrees in the shade.
He needed mittens or perhaps a wool scarf to properly accessorize his impending heat stroke.
“Today, playing the role of Indiana Jones, aka Grady Morant, is Jules Cassidy,” he said, as he slipped his arms into the sleeves.
Was anyone really going to be fooled by this? Jones was so much taller than he was.
”
”
Suzanne Brockmann (Breaking Point (Troubleshooters, #9))
“
The trees soon revealed startling secrets. I discovered that they are in a web of interdependence, linked by a system of underground channels, where they perceive and connect and relate with an ancient intricacy and wisdom that can no longer be denied. I conducted hundreds of experiments, with one discovery leading to the next, and through this quest I uncovered the lessons of tree-to-tree communication, of the relationships that create a forest society. The evidence was at first highly controversial, but the science is now known to be rigorous, peer-reviewed, and widely published. It is no fairy tale, no flight of fancy, no magical unicorn, and no fiction in a Hollywood movie.
”
”
Suzanne Simard (Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest)
“
Dissociation, while useful in surviving the actual traumatic experience, exacts a high psychological price when it becomes a chronic, automatic response to even minor stressors reminiscent of past trauma, to painful or forbidden emotions like anger, even to intimacy itself. While these "out of body" flights were once comforting and adaptive, chronically dissociative people grow to feel inhuman, like robots. Reality cannot be trusted. At any moment the afflicted might go totally blank and not remember what was said or done. They may observe their actions without any sense of control over what they are doing as if watching a movie. Or they may face the sanity-threatening experience of feeling their mind slip into freefall, shattering into bits and pieces.
”
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Marilee Strong (A Bright Red Scream: Self-Mutilation and the Language of Pain)
“
nine-hour flight to California aboard a TWA Super Constellation, with room for no fewer than sixty-four passengers. Next we see the simple funfair of the original Disneyland. At the hotel, the Barstows are jubilant that the chic swimming pool is open to them. Yes, the days when such luxury was reserved for the stylish elite are over. The family deals with its budgetary constraints by not eating in restaurants but picnicking outdoors. There is no hint of any doubt or cynicism. Every minute of the movie is filled with sun, innocence and boundless enthusiasm. It’s true, Barstow says at the end, Walt Disney is right: Disneyland is ‘the happiest place on earth’. The entire family is ‘forever grateful to Scotch brand cellophane tape’ for the experience. The closing chorus of this charming cantata
”
”
Geert Mak (In America: Travels with John Steinbeck)
“
You began receiving the texts in late September, after the first date. You wore the
translucent dress with the high collar and open-shoulder sleeves that made you feel like you were a fashion writer for a New York magazine, or a high-powered exec of a Fortune 500 company: a shimmering butterfly, someone who mattered, not a
barely-eighteen college freshman who spent most evenings in her dorm room slurping Top Ramen.
The first guy was forty-five. His wife was the
same old song on the radio. He took you out for lobster and fried oysters. Afterwards, he grabbed your neck like you owed him something, and you closed your eyes and imagined pretty things: white-gold
ribbons of sunlight skimming the belly of oceans, the sequins falling from your prom dress the first time you slept with a guy, movies where everyone sings soprano and defies the laws of flight.
”
”
Rona Wang (Cranesong)
“
My favorite scene was my dying scene, when I had to stand up and suddenly in that moment recall my wife and everything I stood for, and I say "My queen, my wife, my love" and I think of all my movies, that is the most powerful moment I ever had. In preparation for each take, I would scream at the ground, clench my fists, and scrape the ground, and cut all my knuckles and rip my nails... I would scream, and scrape, and scratch, and then I would stand and go "GO."
And they would film.
And it felt so visceral, and so powerful, and the next day, that was my last day of filming, the next day I was leaving Montreal and I went through US IMMIGRATION and the officer asked "what happened to your hands" and I said "I was just scratching the ground" and she took me for secondary questioning, and I missed my flight, and had to stay another day.
So the next day I wore gloves.
”
”
Gerard Butler
“
Many of us drink in order to take that flight, in order to pour ourselves, literally, into new personalities: uncap the bottle, pop the cork, slide into someone else’s skin. A liquid makeover, from the inside out. Everywhere we look, we are told that this is possible; the knowledge creeps inside us and settles in dark corners, places where fantasies lie. We see it on billboards, in glossy magazine ads, in movies and on TV: we see couples huddled together by fires, sipping brandy, flames reflecting in the gleam of glass snifters; we see elegant groups raising celebratory glasses of wine in restaurants; we see friendships cemented over barstools and dark bottles of beer. We see secrets shared, problems solved, romances bloom. We watch, we know, and together the wine, beer, and liquor industries spend more than $1 billion each year*2 reinforcing this knowledge: drinking will transform us.
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Caroline Knapp (Drinking: A Love Story)
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A splash of light snuck beneath the a dressing room door. He heard a groan. A shuffle. A bump. A heavy sigh.
"Uh, too tight."
He walked toward the back, stopping outside the dressing room. The door was cracked a fraction. He rested a shoulder against the wall, and glanced inside. Grace as Catwoman blew his mind. A feline fantasy.
The three-way mirror tripled his pleasure. He viewed her from every angle. Hot, sleek, fierce. The lady could fight Batman in her skintight black leather catsuit and come out the winner.
After a moment she scrunched her nose, slapped her palms against her thighs. Stuck out her tongue at her reflection in the mirrors. He saw what had her so frustrated. Sympathized with her disappointment. Her costume didn't fit. The front zipper hadn't fully cleared her cleavage, which was deep and visible. She wore no bra. She gave a little hop, and her breasts bounced. Full and plump. He felt a tug at his groin. Superhero lust.
He cleared his throat and made his presence known. She caught his image in the corner of the glass, and reached for the fitting room chair, positioning it between them.
Like that would keep him from her. He should've looked away, but couldn't. He sensed her embarrassment. Her panic. Flight? She had nowhere to go. He blocked the door. He wasn't leaving until they'd talked.
"Archibald's going to love your costume," he initiated.
She didn't find him funny. Her gaze narrowed behind the molded cat-eye mask with attached ears. Her fingers clenched in her elbow-length gloves. Inspired by the movie The Dark Knight, she'd added a whip and a gun holster. Her thigh-high stiletto boots were killer, adding five inches to her height. Her image would stick with him forever.
She backed against the center mirror, and nervously fingered the open flaps over her breasts. A yank on the zipper broke the tab. The metal teeth parted, and the gap widened, revealing the round inner curves of her breasts. A hint of her nipples. Dusky pink. All the way down to the dent of her navel.
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Kate Angell (The Cottage on Pumpkin and Vine)
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Why can't we sit together? What's the point of seat reservations,anyway? The bored woman calls my section next,and I think terrible thoughts about her as she slides my ticket through her machine. At least I have a window seat. The middle and aisle are occupied with more businessmen. I'm reaching for my book again-it's going to be a long flight-when a polite English accent speaks to the man beside me.
"Pardon me,but I wonder if you wouldn't mind switching seats.You see,that's my girlfriend there,and she's pregnant. And since she gets a bit ill on airplanes,I thought she might need someone to hold back her hair when...well..." St. Clair holds up the courtesy barf bag and shakes it around. The paper crinkles dramatically.
The man sprints off the seat as my face flames. His pregnant girlfriend?
"Thank you.I was in forty-five G." He slides into the vacated chair and waits for the man to disappear before speaking again. The guy onhis other side stares at us in horror,but St. Clair doesn't care. "They had me next to some horrible couple in matching Hawaiian shirts. There's no reason to suffer this flight alone when we can suffer it together."
"That's flattering,thanks." But I laugh,and he looks pleased-until takeoff, when he claws the armrest and turns a color disturbingy similar to key lime pie. I distract him with a story about the time I broke my arm playing Peter Pan. It turned out there was more to flying than thinking happy thoughts and jumping out a window. St. Clair relaxes once we're above the clouds.
Time passes quickly for an eight-hour flight.
We don't talk about what waits on the other side of the ocean. Not his mother. Not Toph.Instead,we browse Skymall. We play the if-you-had-to-buy-one-thing-off-each-page game. He laughs when I choose the hot-dog toaster, and I tease him about the fogless shower mirror and the world's largest crossword puzzle.
"At least they're practical," he says.
"What are you gonna do with a giant crossword poster? 'Oh,I'm sorry Anna. I can't go to the movies tonight. I'm working on two thousand across, Norwegian Birdcall."
"At least I'm not buying a Large Plastic Rock for hiding "unsightly utility posts.' You realize you have no lawn?"
"I could hide other stuff.Like...failed French tests.Or illegal moonshining equipment." He doubles over with that wonderful boyish laughter, and I grin. "But what will you do with a motorized swimming-pool snack float?"
"Use it in the bathtub." He wipes a tear from his cheek. "Ooo,look! A Mount Rushmore garden statue. Just what you need,Anna.And only forty dollars! A bargain!"
We get stumped on the page of golfing accessories, so we switch to drawing rude pictures of the other people on the plane,followed by rude pictures of Euro Disney Guy. St. Clair's eyes glint as he sketches the man falling down the Pantheon's spiral staircase.
There's a lot of blood. And Mickey Mouse ears.
After a few hours,he grows sleepy.His head sinks against my shoulder. I don't dare move.The sun is coming up,and the sky is pink and orange and makes me think of sherbet.I siff his hair. Not out of weirdness.It's just...there.
He must have woken earlier than I thought,because it smells shower-fresh. Clean. Healthy.Mmm.I doze in and out of a peaceful dream,and the next thing I know,the captain's voice is crackling over the airplane.We're here.
I'm home.
”
”
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
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It is a painful irony that silent movies were driven out of existence just as they were reaching a kind of glorious summit of creativity and imagination, so that some of the best silent movies were also some of the last ones. Of no film was that more true than Wings, which opened on August 12 at the Criterion Theatre in New York, with a dedication to Charles Lindbergh. The film was the conception of John Monk Saunders, a bright young man from Minnesota who was also a Rhodes scholar, a gifted writer, a handsome philanderer, and a drinker, not necessarily in that order. In the early 1920s, Saunders met and became friends with the film producer Jesse Lasky and Lasky’s wife, Bessie. Saunders was an uncommonly charming fellow, and he persuaded Lasky to buy a half-finished novel he had written about aerial combat in the First World War. Fired with excitement, Lasky gave Saunders a record $39,000 for the idea and put him to work on a script. Had Lasky known that Saunders was sleeping with his wife, he might not have been quite so generous. Lasky’s choice for director was unexpected but inspired. William Wellman was thirty years old and had no experience of making big movies—and at $2 million Wings was the biggest movie Paramount had ever undertaken. At a time when top-rank directors like Ernst Lubitsch were paid $175,000 a picture, Wellman was given a salary of $250 a week. But he had one advantage over every other director in Hollywood: he was a World War I flying ace and intimately understood the beauty and enchantment of flight as well as the fearful mayhem of aerial combat. No other filmmaker has ever used technical proficiency to better advantage. Wellman had had a busy life already. Born into a well-to-do family in Brookline, Massachusetts, he had been a high school dropout, a professional ice hockey player, a volunteer in the French Foreign Legion, and a member of the celebrated Lafayette Escadrille flying squad. Both France and the United States had decorated him for gallantry. After the war he became friends with Douglas Fairbanks, who got him a job at the Goldwyn studios as an actor. Wellman hated acting and switched to directing. He became what was known as a contract director, churning out low-budget westerns and other B movies. Always temperamental, he was frequently fired from jobs, once for slapping an actress. He was a startling choice to be put in charge of such a challenging epic. To the astonishment of everyone, he now made one of the most intelligent, moving, and thrilling pictures ever made. Nothing was faked. Whatever the pilot saw in real life the audiences saw on the screen. When clouds or exploding dirigibles were seen outside airplane windows they were real objects filmed in real time. Wellman mounted cameras inside the cockpits looking out, so that the audiences had the sensation of sitting at the pilots’ shoulders, and outside the cockpit looking in, allowing close-up views of the pilots’ reactions. Richard Arlen and Buddy Rogers, the two male stars of the picture, had to be their own cameramen, activating cameras with a remote-control button.
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Bill Bryson (One Summer: America, 1927)
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Filming was done outside San Antonio, Texas. The scale of the production was vast and complex. Whole battlefields were scrupulously re-created on the plains of Texas. Wellman deployed as many as five thousand extras and sixty airplanes in some scenes—an enormous logistical exercise. The army sent its best aviators from Selfridge Field in Michigan—the very men with whom Lindbergh had just flown to Ottawa—and stunt fliers were used for the more dangerous scenes. Wellman asked a lot of his airmen. One pilot was killed, another broke his neck, and several more sustained other serious injuries. Wellman did some of the more dangerous stunt flying himself. All this gave the movie’s aerial scenes a realism and immediacy that many found almost literally breathtaking. Wellman captured features of flight that had never been caught on film before—the shadows of planes moving across the earth, the sensation of flying through drifting smoke, the stately fall of bombs, and the destructive puffs of impact that follow. Even the land-bound scenes were filmed with a thoughtfulness and originality that set Wings apart. To bring the viewer into a Parisian nightclub, Wellman used a boom shot in which the camera traveled through the room just above table height, skimming over drinks and between revelers, before arriving at the table of Arlen and Rogers. It is an entrancing shot even now, but it was rivetingly novel in 1927. “Wings,” wrote Penelope Gilliatt simply in The New Yorker in 1971, “is truly beautiful.” Wings was selected as best picture at the very first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929. Wellman, however, wasn’t even invited to the ceremony.
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Bill Bryson (One Summer: America, 1927)
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Try any one of these things each day: A) Sleep eight hours. B) Eat two meals instead of three. C) No TV. D) No junk food. E) No complaining for one whole day. F) No gossip. G) Return an e-mail from five years ago. H) Express thanks to a friend. I) Watch a funny movie or a stand-up comic. J) Write down a list of ideas. The ideas can be about anything. K) Read a spiritual text. Any one that is inspirational to you. The Bible, The Tao te Ching, anything you want. L) Say to yourself when you wake up, “I’m going to save a life today.” Keep an eye out for that life you can save. M) Take up a hobby. Don’t say you don’t have time. Learn the piano. Take chess lessons. Do stand-up comedy. Write a novel. Do something that takes you out of your current rhythm. N) Write down your entire schedule. The schedule you do every day. Cross out one item and don’t do that anymore. O) Surprise someone. P) Think of ten people you are grateful for. Q) Forgive someone. You don’t have to tell them. Just write it down on a piece of paper and burn the paper. It turns out this has the same effect in terms of releasing oxytocin in the brain as actually forgiving them in person. R) Take the stairs instead of the elevator. S) I’m going to steal this next one from the 1970s pop psychology book Don’t Say Yes When You Want to Say No: when you find yourself thinking of that special someone who is causing you grief, think very quietly, “No.” If you think of him and (or?) her again, think loudly, “No!” Again? Whisper, “No!” Again, say it. Louder. Yell it. Louder. And so on. T) Tell someone every day that you love them. U) Don’t have sex with someone you don’t love. V) Shower. Scrub. Clean the toxins off your body. W) Read a chapter in a biography about someone who is an inspiration to you. X) Make plans to spend time with a friend. Y) If you think, “Everything would be better off if I were dead,” then think, “That’s really cool. Now I can do anything I want and I can postpone this thought for a while, maybe even a few months.” Because what does it matter now? The planet might not even be around in a few months. Who knows what could happen with all these solar flares. You know the ones I’m talking about. Z) Deep breathing. When the vagus nerve is inflamed, your breathing becomes shallower. Your breath becomes quick. It’s fight-or-flight time! You are panicking. Stop it! Breathe deep. Let me tell you something: most people think “yoga” is all those exercises where people are standing upside down and doing weird things. In the Yoga Sutras, written in 300 B.C., there are 196 lines divided into four chapters. In all those lines, ONLY THREE OF THEM refer to physical exercise. It basically reads, “Be able to sit up straight.” That’s it. That’s the only reference in the Yoga Sutras to physical exercise. Claudia always tells me that yogis measure their lives in breaths, not years. Deep breathing is what keeps those breaths going.
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James Altucher (Choose Yourself)
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It is not surprising that music can incite a broad range of motions, including passion, serenity, and fear. Most of us can recall instances when music caused changes in our own emotional levels, perhaps when we listened to Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus or the background music in a movie thriller. The reason for the emotional arousal appears to be that music affects levels of several brain chemicals, including epinephrine, endorphins, and cortisol, the hormone involved in the “fight-or-flight” response. In Chapter 9, we saw that one of the links between emotion and memory involves these same neurotransmitters and hormones. Perhaps this is why a mere snippet of a song from our past can trigger highly vivid memories.
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Patricia Wolfe (Brain Matters: Translating Research into Classroom Practice)
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It is not surprising that music can incite a broad range of emotions, including passion, serenity, and fear. Most of us can recall instances when music caused changes in our own emotional levels, perhaps when we listened to Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus or the background music in a movie thriller. The reason for the emotional arousal appears to be that music affects levels of several brain chemicals, including epinephrine, endorphins, and cortisol, the hormone involved in the “fight-or-flight” response. In Chapter 9, we saw that one of the links between emotion and memory involves these same neurotransmitters and hormones. Perhaps this is why a mere snippet of a song from our past can trigger highly vivid memories.
”
”
Patricia Wolfe (Brain Matters: Translating Research into Classroom Practice)
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I guess sometimes I think it'd be nice to love someone. To be able to tell them anything and everything and... I don't know, learn all of their pet peeves and favorite books and movies and where their ticklish spots are. But as nice as it'd be, I figure it's equally scary. If you leave your heart in someone else's hands it's so much easier to get it broken. And sometimes I think could be worth it, but then I tell myself off emotionally because it's easier.
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Siera Maley (Taking Flight)
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It is easy to blame television or the movies or rap music for desensitizing our children to human suffering, to violence, and even to death. Yet the fundamental invulnerability does not come from commercialized culture, reprehensible as it is for pandering to and exploiting children's emotional hardening and immaturity. The invulnerability of peer-oriented kids is fueled from the inside.
Even if there were no movies or television programs to shape its expression, it still would spring forth spontaneously as the modus operandi of peer-oriented youth. Though peer-oriented children can come from all over the world and belong to an infinite number of subcultures, the theme of invulnerability is universal in youth culture. Fashions may come and go, music can change form, the language may vary, but cool detachment and emotional shutdown seem to permeate it all. The pervasiveness of this culture is a powerful testimony to the desperate flight from vulnerability of its
members.
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Gabor Maté (Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers)
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XODEV S
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Kids Riding Tornados The Wizard of Oz is a famous movie that was made in 1939. Dorothy is the girl who is the main character and in the story, she is picked up by a tornado and carried off to the fictional land of Oz. A few years later, in 1955, a 9-year-old really did go for a ride in a tornado! But first she rode a horse. There’s not a whole lot around Bowdle, South Dakota. It’s a very rural part of the state. Sharon Weron was 9 years old and riding a horse home from a neighbor’s house. Her mom was following in her car and saw everything. Just as Sharon and her horse reached their house, the tornado was on them. They had very little warning. Sharon’s mom saw the tornado pick up her daughter (and horse), spin them around wildly, and carry them away. Sharon was wearing a blue shirt so her mom was looking for that in the tornado and could see her spinning. The tornado carried them around 1,000 feet, over several fences, and dumped Sharon in a ditch. She was wearing a leather jacket and pulled that up around her head during her flight. There was hail and all kinds of debris flying around inside the tornado with her. Sharon’s hands were badly bruised from being hit by the hail and who knows what else. She remembered hitting the ground and grabbing the grass so that she wouldn’t get sucked up again. As she looked around, she found her horse. He was just standing there not far from her. Both were a little beaten up but okay. That’s crazy, right? Their story got picked up by newspapers and spread all over the world. Reporters had no reason to doubt the story. As unbelievable as it seems, it still holds up as credible. Sharon’s ride was also witnessed by neighbors. The Guinness book of world records listed Sharon’s ride as the furthest anyone had ever ridden in a tornado until 2006. It’s remarkable that both Sharon and her horse lived through such a terrifying experience. That has to be the craziest horse story in the history of the world!
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Jesse Sullivan (Spectacular Stories for Curious Kids Survival Edition: Epic Tales to Inspire & Amaze Young Readers)
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It was a slice of life Eva thought only existed in movies, this idea that everything could be so perfect—the grass, the sun, the players in their crisp white uniforms, hitting home runs over the fence and into San Francisco Bay, where a cluster of people with baseball gloves in kayaks waited to catch one of them.
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Julie Clark (The Last Flight)
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Here’s the thing about close combat in real life: It’s almost always over in a matter of seconds. Not like in the movies, where your hero has the luxury to strategize and maneuver and grapple for minutes on end. Fortunately, when your life is in danger, your brain kicks in. Deep inside your brain this little almond-shaped gland called the amygdala sends out the signal to make your body start pumping out dopamine and adrenaline and cortisol. Time seems to slow, your focus sharpens, you suddenly start perceiving way more stimuli than normal. Neurologists call this tachypsychia. Everyone else calls it the fight-or-flight response. Cavemen who didn’t have it got eaten by saber-toothed tigers. So I made a quick decision. I could either be incapacitated by a Taser, or I could put myself within the reach of Bondarchuk’s fists. No choice.
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Joseph Finder (Vanished (Nick Heller, #1))
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Free,' Wing protested, shaking himself as if to throw off his own shock in order to protect Darsey. She sensed his anger at any blame being attached to her and it made her cringe with guilt. She had done this to him and she deserved to be blamed. Horror rose in her, pushing its way past shock and carrying her voice with it. 'I crippled you. I stole your frond,' she choked, still struggling to absorb what had happened. 'I'm so sorry. It's all my fault-' Her mind was almost screaming, much louder than her words, but she didn't understand why Free staggered back and Wing's remaining frond furled tight, to tuck hard against his throat. It was only when he hurled the row of seats between them and gripped her by the arms that she became aware of his distress 'Darse, calm,' he ordered, releasing her, but mentally underlining his demand until the thoughts roaring through all their minds grew quieter. However, despite being muted, they were still there, running frantically fast from Darsey's head to her frond. 'Calm,' Wing instructed more soothingly and then frowned at the words he could still sense. 'None such,' he denied vehemently. 'I don't hate you. Not ever and you're not the...the alien in some monster movie. And you don't eat your mates.' He paused and raised an eyebrow at her. 'Do you?
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Casey Lea (IceFlight (Iron Alter Trilogy, #1))
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book The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction as a jumping off point, he takes care to unpack the various cultural mandates that have infected the way we think and feel about distraction. I found his ruminations not only enlightening but surprisingly emancipating: There are two big theories about why [distraction is] on the rise. The first is material: it holds that our urbanized, high-tech society is designed to distract us… The second big theory is spiritual—it’s that we’re distracted because our souls are troubled. The comedian Louis C.K. may be the most famous contemporary exponent of this way of thinking. A few years ago, on “Late Night” with Conan O’Brien, he argued that people are addicted to their phones because “they don’t want to be alone for a second because it’s so hard.” (David Foster Wallace also saw distraction this way.) The spiritual theory is even older than the material one: in 1887, Nietzsche wrote that “haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself”; in the seventeenth century, Pascal said that “all men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.”… Crawford argues that our increased distractibility is the result of technological changes that, in turn, have their roots in our civilization’s spiritual commitments. Ever since the Enlightenment, he writes, Western societies have been obsessed with autonomy, and in the past few hundred years we have put autonomy at the center of our lives, economically, politically, and technologically; often, when we think about what it means to be happy, we think of freedom from our circumstances. Unfortunately, we’ve taken things too far: we’re now addicted to liberation, and we regard any situation—a movie, a conversation, a one-block walk down a city street—as a kind of prison. Distraction is a way of asserting control; it’s autonomy run amok. Technologies of escape, like the smartphone, tap into our habits of secession. The way we talk about distraction has always been a little self-serving—we say, in the passive voice, that we’re “distracted by” the Internet or our cats, and this makes us seem like the victims of our own decisions. But Crawford shows that this way of talking mischaracterizes the whole phenomenon. It’s not just that we choose our own distractions; it’s that the pleasure we get from being distracted is the pleasure of taking action and being free. There’s a glee that comes from making choices, a contentment that settles after we’ve asserted our autonomy. When
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Anonymous
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And you shouldn’t have called me your boyfriend.” He looks down at me as he opens the door of the restaurant for me. “I’m sorry,” I start. “I shouldn’t have said that. I just wanted her to go away.” And I wanted to stake my claim, even though I had no right to one. He looks down at me beneath the street light. “You shouldn’t have said it because you gave me hope,” he says. I can’t speak. I can’t utter out a sound. “Come home with me,” he says. I shake my head. He sighs heavily. “You know how this is going to end.” “I shouldn’t.” I really, really shouldn’t. “Fine,” he says, and then he bends at the waist and tosses me over his shoulder, just like the night before. Only this time, his hand is on my ass, under my skirt, instead of holding the backs of my legs. It’s hot pressed against my panties. I can’t say a word to him because he wouldn’t hear me. So, I just hang there, all the way to his building and up the four flights of stairs. He opens the door and walks inside. His brothers are there, and they look up. Sam and Pete snicker, and Paul shoots them a look. Matthew is on the sofa, and he shakes his head. Logan puts me down. Apparently, I’m not a sideshow attraction tonight. “Hi,” I say tentatively to them all. “Hi,” they call back. They don’t get up and rush over to me, not even when he sets me on my feet. “You’re back,” Matthew says as he walks to the fridge. He looks better tonight. Not quite as green. Sam walks to the kitchen, and Paul snaps at him when he reaches for a beer. He takes a soda, instead, grumbling to himself. Logan signs something to them. Pete tells him the name of the movie they’re watching, and it’s one I haven’t heard of. Logan points to the TV and then to me asking me if I’ve seen it. I shake my head. He sets my bag and my guitar on the floor and laces his fingers with mine. He tugs me gently toward the couch. Logan bumps Sam’s and Pete’s knees until they scoot over. There’s barely enough space for him, much less for me. “I’m going to go take a shower,” I say. But he sits down and pulls me into his side, his arm around my shoulders. Matt gives me a look I don’t understand. He doesn’t seem completely pleased by my being there. Did I do something to offend him? But Logan looks down at me and smiles, and then he places his lips against my forehead. Matt gets up and goes to his room but not before shooting me a glance that I couldn’t help but take as a warning.
”
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Tammy Falkner (Tall, Tatted and Tempting (The Reed Brothers, #1))
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both hands against the door. “Feet wider apart. That’s right. Like in the American movies.” Satisfied, Qazi patted the man down. “What, no gun? A GRU man without a gun …” Qazi carefully felt the man’s crotch and the arms above the wrists. “First humor and now this! The GRU will become a laughingstock. But of course there is a microphone.” Qazi lifted all the pens from the Russian’s shirt pocket and examined them, one by one. “It had better be here, Chekhov, or you will have to part with your buttons and your shoes.” It was in the third pen. “Now turn around and sit against the door.” The Russian’s face was covered with perspiration, his fleshy lips twisted in a sneer. “The shoes.” Qazi examined them carefully and tossed them back. “Now the coat.” This he scrutinized minutely. From the uppermost of the large three buttons on the front of the coat a very fine wire was just visible buried amid the thread that held the button on. Qazi sawed the button free with a small pocketknife, then dropped the pen and button down a commode. He tossed the coat back to Chekhov. “And the belt.” After a quick glance, Qazi handed it back. “Hurry, we have much to say to each other.” He unscrewed the silencer and replaced the pistol in his ankle holster. He opened the door as the Russian scrambled awkwardly to his feet. An hour later the two men were seated in the Sistine Chapel against the back wall, facing the altar and Michelangelo’s masterpiece The Last Judgment behind it. On the right the high windows admitted a subdued light. Qazi kept his eyes on the tourists examining the paintings on the ceiling and walls. “Is it in Rome, as General Simonov promised?” “Yes. But you must tell us why you want it.” “Is it genuine, or is it a masterpiece from an Aquarium print shop?” The Aquarium was the nickname for GRU headquarters in Moscow. The Russian’s lips curled, revealing yellow, impacted teeth. This was his smile. “We obtained it from Warrant Officer Walker.” “Ah, those Americans! One wonders just how long they knew about Walker’s activities.” The Russian raised his shoulders and lowered them. “Why do you want the document?” “El Hakim has not authorized me to reveal his reasons. Not that we don’t trust you. We value the goodwill of the Soviet Union most highly. And we intend to continue to cultivate that goodwill. But to reveal what you do not need to know is to take the risk that the Americans will learn of our plans through their activities against you.” “If you are implying they have penetrated—” “Chekhov, I am not implying anything. I am merely weighing risks. And I am being very forthright with you. No subterfuge. No evasion. Just the plain truth. Surely a professional like you can appreciate that?” “This document is very valuable.
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Stephen Coonts (Final Flight (Jake Grafton #3))
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I could feel the spring in my step as I walked up one flight of stairs from the parking garage into the company’s lobby. Although I wore my old blue suit, a remnant of all my previous job interviews, I felt the day had new possibilities. After all, I was interviewing at a company that made something I loved – movies!
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J.C. Patrick (A Hollywood Classic)
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Bryce Almus, 32, is the VP of Acquisitions at Almus Capital and founded Almus Private Aviation. He’s a skilled commercial pilot, flight instructor, and member of MENSA, YPO, and AOPA. Bryce’s interests include classic car racing, photography, movies, and pickleball. He enjoys his Lake Michigan beach house and continually seeks new investment prospects.
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Bryce Almus
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Despite what we learn daily about healthy exercise practices, healthy diets, and good medical care, the bottom line is that the most significant way of contributing to our own good health is through the quality of our thought processes. This power is a valuable gift, in light of the absolute lack of control we have over other aspects of life. Think about being on a turbulent flight in bad weather. You have no control over the winds, or the skills or the mental state of the pilot flying the plane. But you do have the power to minimize your discomfort. You can decide to read a book, strike up a conversation with the person next to you, take your antioxidants, wrap up in a warm blanket, sleep, listen to music, or watch the movie. Alternatively, you can listen to every engine noise and allow yourself to be debilitated by worry the entire flight. It’s your choice. Ultimately, you are the only one who can make significant deposits into your health bank account. This is not the job of your doctor, your nutritionist, your lover, or your parents. There is no supplement, no healthcare provider, and no exotic herb that can possibly do for you what you can do for yourself. The key is compassion for yourself. Dr. Hendricks has noted that any area of pain, blame, or shame in our lives is there because we have not loved that part of ourselves enough. No matter what you’re feeling, the only way to get a difficult feeling to go away is simply to love yourself for it. If you think you’re stupid, then love yourself for feeling that way. It’s a paradox, but it works. To heal, you must be the first one to shine the light of compassion on any areas within you that you feel are unacceptable (and we’ve all got them).
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Christiane Northrup (The Wisdom of Menopause: Creating Physical and Emotional Health During the Change)
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You said something I have always thought,” Bill said to me when I arrived on the set of Pocket Rockets, somewhere in the endless suburb that is greater Atlanta. “Sure, some movies don’t work. Some fail in their intent. But anyone who says they hated a movie is treating a voluntarily shared human experience like a bad Red-Eye out of LAX. The departure is delayed for hours, there’s turbulence that scares even the flight attendants, the guy across from you vomits, they can’t serve any food and the booze runs out, you’re seated next to twin babies with the colic, and you land too late for your meeting in the city. You can hate that. But hating a movie misses the damn point. Would you say you hated the seventh birthday party of your girlfriend’s niece or a ball game that went eleven innings and ended 1–0? You hate cake and extra baseball for your money? Hate should be saved for fascism and steamed broccoli that’s gone cold. The worst anyone—especially we who take Fountainfn1—should ever say about someone else’s movie is Well, it was not for me, but, actually, I found it quite good. Damn a film with faint praise, but never, ever say you hate a movie. Anyone who uses the h-word around me is done. Gone. Of course, I wrote and directed Albatross. I may be a bit sensitive.
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”
Tom Hanks (The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece)
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The night before flying to New York, I watched Bowie's brief performance as a serene, pragmatic Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ. 'That's a strange movie to watch before going on a plane flight,' Bowie laughs. 'It's like, shall we find out—is there a God?' Then, as if moving on to the next logical topic, Bowie says, 'I can't wait to see the other 10 percent of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They're in fragments, of course, kind of a Bill Burroughs effect...' and he recounts for me a certain conspiracy theory ('a '70s thing') about a secret section of the Dead Sea Scrolls supposedly written by a Jesus who'd escaped from the cross and ended up dying a revolutionary at Masada. This secret stuff is, according to the theory, held in the Vatican and shown only to each new Pope on the day of election. But what on earth, I ask, could the big secret be anyway? 'Oh,' laughs Bowie, 'that there really was a Brian.
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David Bowie (David Bowie: The Last Interview and Other Conversations)
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The irony I’ve always found most haunting about Grizzly Man was how close it came to avoiding its ending, thus never being made at all. How close Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard came to going home. They’d called it a season, packed up their gear, and got as far as the airport ticket counter before deciding to return to the Alaskan bush awhile longer. As if they’d heard a call to go back. Had Lydia seen this, and never told me? She would know I had. And trusted I would understand exactly what it meant when, after a trip to the bathroom at Vancouver International, I found her seat in our gate’s waiting area empty. Or if not right away, I’d get the message eventually. When I missed our flight, too, I couldn’t say if it was because I was still waiting for her to come back. Or because I wasn’t aware of when everyone else started to board. Or because I was trying to work up the courage to go after her, but couldn’t get past my fear of the mess that might be waiting. Mostly I wished I’d paid more attention to how much of herself Lydia must have seen in Stefan—alive in the wrong time, unable to see anything more ahead for her. All I’d ever wanted was someone to watch movies with, and talk about what they meant before we went to bed. Profound ones. Silly ones. All the ones in between. It seemed so simple, so little to ask for. So why couldn’t I have reached out a hand’s length farther, and accepted it? But as I sat transfixed by the sky, by the clouds and all they concealed, the maker of teeth made it clear. That’s not how this universe works. That’s not how any of this works.
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Ellen Datlow (Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles)
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Do you know people cry on airplanes more than anywhere else?” “I didn’t know it was a fact,” she answered, “but I might have suspected as much from my years up here.” “Yeah, you’d probably know better than me. But on a plane, you’re often alone. Or you’re stressed. Or you’ve just had some meaningful experience. Movies and books will really get to you at thirty-five thousand feet.
”
”
Chris Bohjalian (The Flight Attendant)
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Continue to look for the best deal on the airline’s official website to obtain the best price on time. However, you may contact aviation experts to get the best pricing for your journey. Call American Airlines booking phone number and speak with the airline’s executives directly. On most of American Airlines flights, you are allowed to stream TV shows, music, movies, and more to your phone, tablet, and laptop. You are not even required to purchase the on-board Wi-Fi, just download the American Airlines mobile app on your device. Go for American Airlines flight reservations and leave all your boredom away. American keeps updating its entertainment content in different languages and genres.
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Finn
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Cortisol we’ve covered a bit earlier, but adrenaline is something you probably already know about. When we talk about adrenaline, we’re talking about fight-or-flight, get-up-and-go, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson movie, built-in excitement! Guns blazing, tanks, walking away from the explosion in slow motion, the whole 9 yards. Adrenaline is an incredible part of our physiology that allows us to tap into our greatest strengths. Throughout evolution, adrenaline enabled us to either fight off a threat or run for the hills
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Shawn Stevenson (Sleep Smarter: 21 Essential Strategies to Sleep Your Way to a Better Body, Better Health, and Bigger Success)
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He was disgracefully handsome, the flight attendant decided, with the kind of face you saw in old black-and-white Hollywood movies. And, oh, that British accent! Even better. Nadia loved British accents. He was so courteous, such a gentleman, that she wondered if he might somehow be connected to the royal family. Just thinking about it made her pizda tingle. "Then perhaps I can fetch you a blanket."
"A glass of wine, if you have it."
"Of course, sir. Red or white?"
"Always red."
Rafe watched the shapely bottom swing pertly away toward the galley. With blue baby-doll eyes and wide pouty lips, she was an adolescent wet dream of a sexy stewardess, long-legged and busty, extravagantly curvy in all the right places under the snug red Aeroflot uniform.
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Helen Maryles Shankman (The Color of Light)
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Naskar is made by Naskar alone, not an industry or benefactor - or more importantly, by family wealth. I had a roof over my head, food on the table, and clothes on my back - that was more than enough.
I started writing with literally zero dollar in my pocket. Let me tell you how it began, because for some reason, I completely forgot a crucial event of my life when I wrote my memoir Love, God & Neurons.
I once met an American tourist at a local train in Calcutta. The first thing he asked me was, had I lived in the States? I said, no. Then how come you have an American accent - he asked. Watching movies - I said. We got chatting and he told me about a book he had recently published, a memoir. I believe, this was the cosmic event that planted the thought of writing my own books in my head - I had already started my self-education in Neurology and Psychology, and I was all determined to publish research papers on my ideas, but not books. Meeting the person somehow subconsciously shifted my focus from research papers to books.
So the journey began. And for the first few years, I made no real money from my books. Occasionally some of my books would climb the bestsellers list on amazon, like my very first book did, and that would keep the bills paid for several months. Then the invitations for talks started coming, but they too were not paid in the beginning. The organizers made all the travel arrangements, and I gave the talks for free. It's ironic and super confusing really - I remember flying business class, but I didn't have enough money to even afford a one way flight ticket, because I had already used up my royalties on other expenses.
Today I can pick and choose which speaking invitations to accept, but back then I didn't have that luxury - I was grateful for any speaking gig and interview request I received, paid or not. One time, I gave an interview to this moderately popular journalist for her personal youtube channel, only to find out, she never released the video publicly - she posted an interview with a dog owner instead - whose dog videos had gained quite a following on social media. You could say, this was the first time I realized first hand, what white privilege was.
Anyway, the point is this.
Did I doubt myself? Often. Did I consider quitting? Occasionally. But did I actually quit? Never. And because I didn't quit, the world received a vast never-before seen multicultural humanitarian legacy, that you know me for today.
There is no such thing as overnight success. If you have a dream, you gotta work at it day in, day out - night after night - spoiling sleep, ruining rest, forgetting fun. Persist, persist, and persist, that's the only secret - there is no other. Remember this - the size of your pocket does not determine your destiny, the size of your dedication does.
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Abhijit Naskar (Bulletproof Backbone: Injustice Not Allowed on My Watch)
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He was disgracefully handsome, the flight attendant decided, with the kind of face you saw in old black-and-white Hollywood movies. And, oh, that British accent! Even better. Nadia loved British accents. He was so courteous, such a gentleman, that she wondered if he might somehow be connected to the royal family. Just thinking about it made her pizda tingle. "Then perhaps I can fetch you a blanket."
"A glass of wine, if you have it."
"Of course, sir. Red or white?"
"Always red."
Safe watched the shapely bottom swing pertly away toward the galley. With blue baby-doll eyes and wide pouty lips, she was an adolescent wet dream of a sexy stewardess, long-legged and busty, extravagantly curvy in all the right places under the snug red Aeroflot uniform.
”
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Helen Maryles Shankman (The Color of Light)
“
The best thing for being sad,’ said T. H. White’s Merlin, ‘is to learn something.’ All of us have to live our lives most of the time inside the protective structures that we have built; none of us can bear too much reality. We need our books, our craft projects, our dogs and knitting, our movies, gardens and gigs. It’s who we are. We’re held together by our lives, our interests, and all our chosen comforts. But we can’t have only those things, because then we can’t work out where we should be headed.
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Helen Macdonald (Vesper Flights)
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I think NYC comes off way better on TV and in the movies, when a taxi is just a whistle away and superheroes save the day. In the real world (ours) every day in Gotham is a little like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and a lot like Baggage Claim after a long, crowded flight.
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Tom Hanks (Uncommon Type: Some Stories)
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In this movie I saw one day, a man was mounting some long flights of stairs to reach an altar where he was supposed to have his throat cut by way of soothing some god or other. The man was climbing with his head down, moving slowly, heavily, as if exhausted, undone, subdued, but most of all as if already dispossessed of his own body. I was struck by his fatalism, by his incredible passivity. I’m sure some people thought he was defeated, but I knew he was quite simply elsewhere. I could tell from his way of carrying his own body on his own back, like a porter with a burden. Well then, I was like that man, I felt the porter’s weariness more than the victim’s fear.
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Kamel Daoud (The Meursault Investigation)
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...we really do live on an unbearably beautiful planet. We don't think of it often as a planet - - we live our daily lives on flat and often prosaic ground, and when we're in the air, the flight attendant usually makes us lower the window shade so as not to interfere iwth the movie.
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Bill McKibben (Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?)
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But they {journalists} are still viewed as a rather privileged category. True, they no longer can ride buses free or go to the movies for free as was the case in Mussolini’s day. But they can still get into most museums or exhibitions without paying. If you’re a smooth operator you can get complimentary tickets for shows or the opera. Until recently, you could get a 30% discount on all domestic flights (now it’s 15%). And if you have trouble with any of your utilities,the utility company’s press office will be glad to give you a have in working things out. In addition, since many Italian journalists have a different sense of what constitutes a conflict of interest from what we do in the United States, they often accept any manner of gifts or paid vacations from companies they regularly cover.
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Sari Gilbert (My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City)
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About half of the Private Suite’s members are based in L.A., but de Becker is seeing more travelers from the Middle East, Russia, and Europe sign up. In many cases, Hollywood stars expect studios to cover the cost of the Private Suite in their movie deals. “It’s becoming a standard contract term, like first class travel or luxury hotels,” de Becker said. For paying customers, the price might seem ridiculously high, but it’s a bargain compared with the cost of a charter, de Becker pointed out. Instead of spending $200,000 to charter a flight to London, a studio can use the Private Suite and spend a fraction of that getting stars and their assistants to London on a commercial flight. Members of the Private Suite pay $4,500 to join—service for each flight costs $2,700. It’s possible to use the service à la carte if you’re not a member for $4,000 per trip.
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Nelson D. Schwartz (The Velvet Rope Economy: How Inequality Became Big Business)
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Their tumultuous love story was adapted into the 1974 Broadway musical Mack & Mabel. * Peeping Pete was released on June 23, 1913, with A Bandit; they are the oldest surviving Arbuckle movies. * Custard tended to break up in flight, and it faded into the background when shot in monochrome, so later pies consisted of blackberries and whipped cream—a concoction local bakeries readily learned to devise.
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Greg Merritt (Room 1219: The Life of Fatty Arbuckle, the Mysterious Death of Virginia Rappe, and the Scandal That Changed Hollywood)
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My Seclusion
Just like, I remember the- Fireflies at night, they all carry their- own light in flight. They fly higher and higher until they are out of sight. They are never in fear of the darkness because they carry their light. They constantly have hope, and it shines brightly. The firefly flies by, unlike me there are never shy. I am lying outside on the grounds a few feet from my home, yet I am still feeling all alone, listening to all the sounds of the night as they moan. I look at the full moon, knowing that I will be back in hell soon, seeing all the faces at lunch at noon. Wondering what is going to happen on my vacation in the upcoming summer in the months like in June. I lie on the cold hard ground outside looking up with the stars in the sky, remembering all the days flashing that have gone by, seeing all the faces that never even say hi, remembering the terror from the wandering eyes.
(Right now)
My head is pounding just like the thunder and lightning, the evil faces streaks crossed my face, with every bolt of lightning. This takes me back to when I was a little girl; I hope that the pink suspended feathers sweep them away in the white webs.
So, I can have a sunny day on all these rainy days that seem to never end, I just do not have much to say. I am not safe anywhere… the voices haunt me as they do. However, I just have an overwhelming urge to cry, all night and watch movies by myself. Like, I have done, these last two years of my high school life. Is anything going to change? Why must I live like this? Why do I keep living? Why can I not just pass on? I look out my window, and sometimes it takes me back to when I was young.
Some days I look out the window and the skies are scarlet, and that reminds me that I should be out doing things with people of my age. The summer has come and gone, and the school days have started with no one to see me, or even ask if I was alive. No one cares!
Is the plan going to work? I have no idea at this point, yet I keep trying!
”
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Marcel Ray Duriez (Nevaeh The Lusting Sapphire Blue Eyes)
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Sony paid both stars handsomely for their consistent success: $20 million against 20 percent of the gross receipts, whichever was higher, was their standard compensation. They also received as much as $5 million against 5 percent for their production companies, where they employed family and friends. Sony also provided Happy Madison and Overbrook with a generous overhead to cover expenses—worth about $4 million per year. To top it off, Sandler and Smith enjoyed the perks of the luxe studio life. Flights on a corporate jet were common, with family members and friends often invited along. On occasion, Smith’s entourage and its belongings necessitated the use of two jets for travel to premieres. Knowing that Sandler was a huge sports fan, Sony regularly sent him and his pals to the Super Bowl to do publicity. In addition to enjoying the best tickets and accommodations, they had a private basketball court to play on, which the studio rented for them. Back at the Sony lot, the basketball court was renamed Happy Madison Square Garden in the star’s honor. When anybody questioned the wide latitude and endless indulgence given to Sandler and Smith, Sony executives had a standard answer: “Will and Adam bought our houses.
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Ben Fritz (The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies)
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Campaigners for God, Country and the American Way of Life did not stop when they had crushed radical trade unions and jailed socialist, syndicalist and communist spokespeople. They also bought out and took over the communication apparatus: the press, the schools and colleges, the libraries, the churches, civic organizations, the movies, radio and television. The professions, notably education were purged of subversive teachers, textbooks and ideas. The same men who operated mines, factories and department stores became owners, directors and trustees of the entire communication apparatus. Communication, like merchandising and farming became parts of the big business octopus that was reaching its tentacles into every profit-yielding corner of American life.
….Papers that spoke for the Oligarchs and their interests got the advertising. Others died of financial malnutrition….
….Book publishers and magazine editors were members of the American Oligarchy. They were not top-flight members; they held their jobs so long as they built readership, got advertising and showed profits on the investment…
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Scott Nearing (The Making of a Radical: A Political Autobiography (Good Life Series))
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HELPING KIDS MANAGE EMOTIONAL FLASHBACKS This list is for social workers, teachers, relatives, neighbors and friends to help children from traumatizing families. It is adapted from the steps at the beginning of this chapter. Depending on the age of the child, some steps will be more appropriate than others. Even if you are not in a position to help other kids, please read this list at least once for the benefit of your own inner child. Help the child develop an awareness of flashbacks [inside “owies”]: “When have you felt like this before? Is this how it feels when someone is being mean to you?” Demonstrate that “Feeling in danger does not always mean you are in danger.” Teach that some places are safer than others. Use a soft, easy tone of voice: “Maybe you can relax a little with me.” “You’re safe here with me.” “No one can hurt you here.” Model that there are adults interested in his care and protection. Aim to become the child’s first safe relationship. Connect the child with other safe nurturing adults, groups, or clubs. Speak soothingly and reassuringly to the child. Balance “Love & Limits:” 5 positives for each negative. Set limits kindly. Guide the child’s mind back into her body to reduce hyper-vigilance and hyperarousal. a. Teach systemic relaxation of all major muscle groups b. Teach deep, slow diaphragmatic breathing c. Encourage slowing down to reduce fear-increasing rushing d. Teach calming centering practices like drawing, Aikido, Tai Chi, yoga, stretching e. Identify and encourage retreat to safe places Teach “use-your-words.” In some families it’s dangerous to talk. Verbal ventilation releases pain and fear, and restores coping skills. Facilitate grieving the death of feeling safe. Abuse and neglect beget sadness and anger. Crying releases fear. Venting anger in a way that doesn’t hurt the person or others creates a sense of safety. Shrink the Inner Critic. Make the brain more user-friendly. Heighten awareness of negative self-talk and fear-based fantasizing. Teach thought-stopping and thought substitution: Help the child build a memorized list of his qualities, assets, successes, resources. Help the child identify her 4F type & its positive side. Use metaphors, songs, cartoons or movie characters. Fight: Power Rangers; Flight: Roadrunner, Bob the Builder; Freeze: Avatar; Fawn: Grover. Educate about the right/need to have boundaries, to say no, to protest unfairness, to seek the protection of responsible adults. Identify and avoid dangerous people, places and activities. [Superman avoids Kryptonite. Shaq and Derek Jeter don’t do drugs.] Deconstruct eternity thinking. Create vivid pictures of attainable futures that are safer, friendlier, and more prosperous. Cite examples of comparable success stories.
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Pete Walker (Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving)
“
The book reader has always tended to be passive, because that is the best way to read. Today, the traveler has become passive. Given travelers checks, a passport, and a toothbrush, the world is your oyster. The macadam road, the railroad, and the steamship have taken the travail out of travel. People moved by the silliest whims now clutter the foreign places, because travel differs very little from going to a movie or turning the pages of a magazine. The “Go Now, Pay Later” formula of the travel agencies might as well read: “Go now, arrive later,” for it could be argued that such people never really leave their beaten paths of impercipience, nor do they ever arrive at any new place. They can have Shanghai or Berlin or Venice in a package tour that they need never open. In 1961, TWA began to provide new movies for its trans-Atlantic flights so that you could visit Portugal, California, or anywhere else, while en-route to Holland, for example. Thus the world itself becomes a sort of museum of objects that have been encountered before in some other medium.
”
”
Marshall McLuhan (Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man)
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