Frank Wild Quotes

I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection.

LADY BRACKNELL To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.

Behold, as a wild ass in the desert, go I forth to my work.

Wild Fremen said it well: "Four things cannot be hidden -- love, smoke, a pillar of fire and a man striding across the open bled.

[Referring to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde] ... Will civilization never reach humane ideals? Will men always punish most severely the sins they do not understand and which hold forth for them no temptation? Did Jesus suffer in vain?

and let me remember that my courage is a wild dog; it won’t just come when I call it, I have to chase it down and hold on as tight as I can.

And cried. I must have looked wildly pathetic because he said, “I have some French fries in there if you want them.” I thought that was such a weird thing to offer, but frankly, I’m exactly the sort of person to be comforted by French fries, so I ate them.

There was a man who sat each day looking out through a narrow vertical opening where a single board had been removed from a tall wooden fence. Each day a wild ass of the desert passed outside the fence and across the narrow opening—first the nose, then the head, the forelegs, the long brown back, the hindlegs, and lastly the tail. One day, the man leaped to his feet with the light of discovery in his eyes and he shouted for all who could hear him: “It is obvious! The nose causes the tail!

Well, you know that was the worst of it - this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity - like yours - the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was justly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you - you so remote from the night of first ages could comprehend.

Such actions are beyond praise: it is the perfume of such sweet and noble human sympathy that makes this wild beasts' cage a world habitable for men.

It was more like an abortion than music, but he got a wildly enthusiastic response from the crowd. Well, we're all pro-choice out here in Hillmont, after all.

FRANK: Do you know Yeats? RITA: The wine lodge? FRANK: No, WB Yeats, the poet. RITA: No. FRANK: Well, in his poem 'The Wild Swans At Coole',Yeats rhymes the word "swan" with the word "stone". You see? That's an example of assonance. RITA: Yeah, means getting the rhyme wrong.

To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements.  They give people the opportunity of finding out each other’s character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.

Atheists have had to resort to wild speculations to give chance more of a chance.

Winter Liar" by Liam Doyle the Incubus What come once here will never come again, no matter monument nor memory; all sunwarmed green succumbs to winter's wind. And you, my love, were also my best friend, and had your life to live. The tragedy was not just my youth's recklessness, although I trusted much to impulse, whim, freedom, a destiny excluding doom. Frankly, youth can be our insanity. But now I'm cured of that fever, although the price was high; and chilly April wind can only sigh at my regrets, yet sun will brighten wind so, one knows that soon green stirs, and wild bees hum. And summer once more will make winter liar, but I won't warm. You're all I'll ever desire.

No personality as strong as Zelda’s could go without getting criticisms and as you say she is not above reproach. I've always known that. Any girl who gets stewed in public, who frankly enjoys and tells shocking stories, who smokes constantly and makes the remark that she has “kissed thousands of men and intends to kiss thousands more,” cannot be considered beyond reproach even if above it. But Isabelle I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity and her flaming self respect and it’s these things I’d believe in even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all that she should be. But of course the real reason, Isabelle, is that I love her and that’s the beginning and end of everything. You’re still a Catholic but Zelda’s the only God I have left now.

...it seems to me the Land of Oz is a little ahead of the United States in some of its laws. For here, if one can’t talk clearly, and straight to the point, they send him to Rigmarole Town; while Uncle Sam lets him roam around wild and free, to torture innocent people.

Speaking frankly and speaking the truth are two different things entirely. Honesty is to truth as prow is to stern. Honesty appears first and truth appears last.

I scrolled through your order history at Victoria’s Secret.” “Well, that’s not at all creepy,” she deadpanned. “Did you know there are items in your shopping cart? Sweaters. Lots of thick, long, skin-covering sweaters. Frankly, it confused me.” “Maybe I already own plenty of lingerie. Considering I walk to work, sweaters are much more practical. Plus they’re awfully cute.” “I added a few things to your cart and checked out for you. I paid for it with my credit card. Expedited the shipping too, so you should have it by Monday.” “You added a few things?” “One hint: not sweaters.” “How wildly inappropriate.” “Kid in a candy store. Couldn’t help myself.

Frank Harris has no feelings. It is the secret of his success. Just as the fact that he thinks that other people have none either is the secret of the failure that lies in wait for him somewhere on the way of Life.

I am quite scandalous, you see. I come packaged with unpredictable moments, brutal honesty, calamitous outbursts, the ghastly need for love, a fiendish lack of filter, the horrific need to question everything, nauseating affection, offensive kindness, indecent spirituality, obscene beauty, monstrous creativity, barbaric embellishments, contemptuous passion, sinful childhood traumas, unscrupulous hobbies, vexatious caring, abominable sensitivity, reprehensible humor, hideous sarcasm, displeasing feelings, unpalatable confidence, offensive compassion, villainous inspiration and a devilish wit. I am quite grotesque in my imperfectness and I am not ashamed to admit it.

Writing is hard, you know. The fact that you’re just supposed to sit down and have a million thoughts flow into your head is crazy. You could have a week where nothing but sadness floods your mind and you can’t think of anything and then you can have one day where your mind decides to change and goes wild with happy thoughts of even the stupidest things. So if you ask me how I think of what to write, I mean, I have no idea. They come to me, and sometimes they suck, but that doesn’t mean I don’t write them down. You need to write everything. The good and the bad and the sad and the happy, because one day you’ll look to the past and decide to read what you had written a while back. and I guess when you do you’ll be reminded of the friends, the breakups, the love, the loss, the ups, the downs, the rain and the sun. and I guess by then you’ll realize that’s all part of life. and life can be shitty. but fuck it. just live. One morning, any morning, you need to wake up and say to yourself, what the hell have you been doing until now, and you need to go out and live, because frankly, that’s all life’s got to offer.

Margery," I blurted out in a passion of frustration. "I don't know what to make of you!" Nor I you, Mary. Frankly, I cannot begin to comprehend the motives of a person who dedicates a large portion of her life to the contemplation of a God in whom she only marginally believes." I felt stunned, as if she had struck me in the diaphragm. She looked down at me, trying to measure the effect of her words. Mary, you believe in the power that the idea of God has on the human mind. You believe in the way human beings talk about the unknowable, reach for the unattainable, pattern their imperfect lives and offer their paltry best up to the beingless being that created the universe and powers its continuation. What you balk as it believing the evidence of your eyes, that God can reach out and touch a single human life in a concrete way." She smiled a sad, sad smile. "You mustn't be so cold, Mary. If you are, all you will see is a cold God, cold friends, cold love. God is not cold-never cold. God sears with heat, not ice, the heat of a thousand suns, heat that inflames but does not consume. You need warmth, Mary-you, Mary, need it. You fear it, you flirt with it, you imagine that you can stand in its rays and retain your cold intellectual attitude towards it. You imagine that you can love with your brain. Mary, oh my dear Mary, you sit in the hall and listen to me like some wild beast staring at a campfire, unable to leave, fearful of losing your freedom if you come any closer. It won't consume you; I won't capture you. Love does not do either. It only brings life. Please, Mary, don't let yourself be tied up by the bonds of cold academia." Her words, the power of her conviction, broke over me like a great wave, inundating me, robbing me of breath, and, as they receded in the room, they pulled hard at me to folllow. I struggled to keep my footing against the wash of Margery's vision, and only when it began to lose its strength, dissipated against the silence in the room, was I seized by a sudden terror at the nearness of my escape.

I see that life’s uphill From here on out. My tiny art, Circling its grief, will have to grow Joyous the only way it knows how. Frank Steele 6

From time to time you'll see documentaries about low-ranked wolves who somehow rise to the top of the pack - an omega that earns a position as an alpha. Frankly, I don't buy it. I think that, in actuality, those documentary makers have misidentified the wolf in the first place. For example, an alpha personality, to the man on the street, is usually considered bold and take-charge and forceful. In the wolf world, though that describes the beta rank. Likewise, an omega wolf - a bottom-ranking, timid, nervous animal - can often be confused with a wolf who hangs behind the others, wary, protecting himself, trying to figure out the Big Picture. Or in other words: There are no fairy tales in the wild, no Cinderella stories. The lowly wolf that seems to rise to the top of the pack was really an alpha all along.

Lady Bracknell.  To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements.  They give people the opportunity of finding out each other’s character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.

It was unearthly, and the men were--No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it--this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled, and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity--like yours--the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you--you so remote from the night of first ages--could comprehend. And why not? The mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valor, rage--who can tell?--but truth--truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder--the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet that truth with his own true stuff--with his own inborn strength. Principles? Principles won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags--rags that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief. An appeal to me in this fiendish row--is there? Very well; I hear; I admit, but I have a voice too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced. Of course, a fool, what with sheer fright and fine sentiments, is always safe. Who's that grunting? You wonder I didn't go ashore for a howl and a dance? Well, no--I didn't. Fine sentiments, you say? Fine sentiments, be hanged! I had no time. I had to mess about with white-lead and strips of woolen blanket helping to put bandages on those leaky steam-pipes--I tell you.

Speaking frankly and speaking the truth are two different things entirely. Honesty is to truth as prow is to stern. Honesty appears first and truth appears last. The interval between varies in direct proportion to the size of ship. With anything of size, truth takes a long time in coming. Sometimes it only manifests itself posthumously. Therefore, should I impart you with no truth at this juncture, that is through no fault of mine. Nor yours.

Weariness of Men My grandmother said when she was young The grass was so wild and high You couldn’t see a man on horseback. In the fields she made out Three barns, Dark and blown down from the weather Like her husbands. She remembers them in the dark, Cursing the beasts, And how they would leave the bed In the morning, The dead grass of their eyes Stacked against her.

Hmm,” Tate said. “That’s it. I love how insatiable you are. You can’t help yourself from taking what you want, even when you know you shouldn’t. Like when you take me. I love how you hold me down and go fucking wild. Greedy to the very end.” “Jesus,

I would like to learn, or remember, how to live. I come to Hollins Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it. That is, I don't think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular...but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive. The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons. I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.

This is who he is. I don't like it any better than any of you do, but frankly he can't help that it's so easy for him to do these things. It's a talent--an unethical one, maybe. But it's who he is. It's why none of us will ever want for anything. You can't vilify him for that.

I know this sounds very Neanderthal but I want a man that would just take me, ravage me, and do what he pleases with me. I frankly don’t care what he does or how he does it. I just want it to be fucktastic. I want some bodies slamming, head banging, and wild animalistic beastie craze sex. You Jane, me Tarzan kind of sex.

They howled, and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you—you so remote from the night of first ages—could comprehend.

The sight of a fair young girl, as frank and wholesome as the Sierra breezes, had stirred his volcanic, untamed heart to its very depths. When she had vanished from his sight, he realized that a crisis had come in his life, and that neither silver speculations nor any other questions could ever be of such importance to him as this new and all-absorbing one. The love which had sprung up in his heart was not the sudden, changeable fancy of a boy, but rather the wild, fierce passion of a man of strong will and imperious temper.

He was dreadfully punished by men utterly his inferiors: ruined, outlawed, persecuted till Death itself came as a deliverance. His sentence impeaches his judges.

frank debonair manner,

When you are part of the caravan of crazy clouds you start to become a little less domesticated and a little more like wild mountain weather.

Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his finely-curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair.

To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other’s character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.

But frankly, it may not be possible to completely avoid the clash of feelings that accompanies powerful transitions. Sometimes the exchange may be calm and fruitful, but often it’s a wild taxi ride.

Do you think, little flower, that there will ever come a day when you regret meeting me?” he asked quietly. “Yes,” she said simply. “I see,” he said tightly. “Would you like a specific date?” “You are teasing me,” he realized suddenly. “No, I’m dead serious. I have an exact date in mind.” Jacob pulled back to see her eyes, looking utterly perplexed as her pupils sparkled with mischief. “What date is that? And why are you thinking of pink elephants?” “The date is September 8, because, according to Gideon, that’s possibly the day I will go into labor. I say ‘possibly,’ because combining all this human/Druid and Demon DNA ‘may make for a longer period of gestation than usual for a human,’ as the Ancient medic recently quoted. Now, as I understand it, women always regret ever letting a man touch them on that day.” Jacob lurched to his feet, dropping her onto her toes, grabbing her by the arms, and holding her still as he raked a wild, inspecting gaze over her body. “You are pregnant?” he demanded, shaking her a little. “How long have you known? You went into battle with that monster while you are carrying my child?” “Our child,” she corrected indignantly, her fists landing firmly on her hips, “and Gideon only just told me, like, five seconds ago, so I didn’t know I was pregnant when I was fighting that thing!” “But . . . he healed you just a few days ago! Why not tell you then?” “Because I wasn’t pregnant then, Jacob. If you recall, we did make love between then and now.” “Oh . . . oh Bella . . .” he said, his breath rushing from him all of a sudden. He looked as if he needed to sit down and put a paper bag over his head. She reached to steady him as he sat back awkwardly on the altar. He leaned his forearms on his thighs, bending over them as he tried to catch his breath. Bella had the strangest urge to giggle, but she bit her lower lip to repress to impulse. So much for the calm, cool, collected Enforcer who struck terror into the hearts of Demons everywhere. “That is not funny,” he grumbled indignantly. “Yeah? You should see what you look like from over here,” she teased. “If you laugh at me I swear I am going to take you over my knee.” “Promises, promises,” she laughed, hugging him with delight. Finally, Jacob laughed as well, his arm snaking out to circle her waist and draw her back into his lap. “Did you ask . . . I mean, does he know what it is?” “It’s a baby. I told him I didn’t want to know what it is. And don’t you dare find out, because you know the minute you do I’ll know, and if you spoil the surprise I’ll murder you.” “Damn . . . she kills a couple of Demons and suddenly thinks she can order all of us around,” he taunted, pulling her close until he was nuzzling her neck, wondering if it was possible for such an underused heart as his to contain so much happiness.

Being a pioneer can be damn lonely, too early, no money, tough, endless, stupid,” Samwer said. “And that healed us. Since then, we basically say, Fuck you. We don’t care whether you think we are not smart enough to invent something.

Frankly, I am quite tired of those who tout Christianity as a way to stop smoking or drinking or break wild habits of the world. Is that all Christianity is, to keep us from some bad habit? Of course, regeneration will clean us up, and the new birth will make a man right. If that is what Christianity is all about, what about the person whose life is not that bad? The purpose of God in redemption is to restore us again to the divine imperative of worship. We were created to worship, but sin destroyed that ability. Jesus Christ, on the cross, redeemed us and brought us back to the place where we now can worship and have fellowship with God Almighty. My clean life is a by-product of my conversion. My life may have pointed out to me that I needed a drastic change, but that is not the purpose for which I was converted. The essence of conversion is to bring me into a right relationship with God and have fellowship with Him.

Quite naturally, holders of power wish to suppress wild research. Unrestricted questing after knowledge has a long history of producing unwanted competition. The powerful want a “safe line of investigations,” which will develop only those products and ideas that can be controlled and, most important, that will allow the larger part of the benefits to be captured by inside investors. Unfortunately, a random universe full of relative variables does not insure such a “safe line of investigations.

JACK: Well . . . may I propose to you now? GWENDOLEN: I think it would be an admirable opportunity. And to spare you any possible disappointment, Mr. Worthing, I think it only fair to tell you quite frankly before-hand that I am fully determined to accept you.

it seems to me the Land of Oz is a little ahead of the United States in some of its laws. For here, if one can't talk clearly, and straight to the point, they send him to Rigmarole Town; while Uncle Sam lets him roam around wild and free, to torture innocent people.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the little dark girl and the way, like a queen, she walked around and was even reduced by the sullen bartender to menial tasks such as bringing us drinks and sweeping the back. Of all the girls in there she needed the money most; maybe her mother had come to get money from her for her little infant/ sisters and brothers. It never, never occurred to me just to approach her and give her some money. I have a feeling she would have taken it with a degree of scorn, and scorn from the likes of her made me flinch. In my madness I was actually in love with her for the few hours it all lasted; it was the same unmistakable ache and stab across the mind, the same sighs, the same pain, and above all the same reluctance and fear to approach. Strange that Neal and Frank also failed to approach her; her unimpeachable dignity was the thing that made her poor in a wild old whorehouse, and think of that. At one point I saw Neal leaning like a statue toward her, ready to fly, and befuddlement cross his face as she glanced coolly and imperiously his way and he stopped rubbing his belly and gaped and finally bowed his head. For she was the queen.

I just stood there, holding his dinner (McDonald’s) and watched. And cried. I must have looked wildly pathetic because he said, “I have some French fries in there if you want them.” I thought that was such a weird thing to offer, but frankly, I’m exactly the sort of person to be comforted by French fries, so I ate them. And

There are special reasons, too, why I should handle this story. Oscar Wilde was a friend of mine for many years: I could not help prizing him to the very end: he was always to me a charming, soul-animating influence. He was dreadfully punished by men utterly his inferiors: ruined, outlawed, persecuted till Death itself came as a deliverance.

XII. If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk Above its mates, the head was chopped, the bents Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk All hope of greenness? Tis a brute must walk Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents. XIII. As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood. One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, Stood stupified, however he came there: Thrust out past service from the devil's stud! XIV. Alive? he might be dead for aught I knew, With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain. And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane; Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to deserve such pain. XV. I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart, As a man calls for wine before he fights, I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights, Ere fitly I could hope to play my part. Think first, fight afterwards, the soldier's art: One taste of the old time sets all to rights. XVI. Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face Beneath its garniture of curly gold, Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold An arm to mine to fix me to the place, The way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace! Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold. XVII. Giles then, the soul of honour - there he stands Frank as ten years ago when knighted first, What honest man should dare (he said) he durst. Good - but the scene shifts - faugh! what hangman hands Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst! XVIII. Better this present than a past like that: Back therefore to my darkening path again! No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain. Will the night send a howlet or a bat? I asked: when something on the dismal flat Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train. XIX. A sudden little river crossed my path As unexpected as a serpent comes. No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms; This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath For the fiend's glowing hoof - to see the wrath Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes. XX. So petty yet so spiteful! All along, Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it; Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit Of mute despair, a suicidal throng: The river which had done them all the wrong, Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit. XXI. Which, while I forded - good saints, how I feared To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek, Each step, of feel the spear I thrust to seek For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard! - It may have been a water-rat I speared, But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek. XXII. Glad was I when I reached the other bank. Now for a better country. Vain presage! Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage, Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage - XXIII. The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque, What penned them there, with all the plain to choose? No footprint leading to that horrid mews, None out of it. Mad brewage set to work Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.

Lord Henry looked at him. Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There was something in his face that made one trust him at once. All the candour of youth was there, as well as all youth's passionate purity. One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world. No wonder Basil Hallward worshipped him.

Somewhere beneath him, the pre-spice mass had accumulated enough water and organic matter from the little makers, had reached the critical stage of wild growth. A gigantic bubble of carbon dioxide was forming deep in the sand, heaving upward in an enormous “blow” with a dust whirlpool at its center. It would exchange what had been formed deep in the sand for whatever lay on the surface. The

As I sat there with him, I felt the way I always do when alone in certain circumstances with certain men—that anything could happen. That he could go about his business, mannerly and kind, or he could grab me and change the course of things entirely in an instant. With Frank in his truck, I watched his hands, his every move, each cell in my body on high alert, though I appeared as relaxed as if I’d just woken from a nap.

Dear Boy, Why don’t you write to me? I don’t know what has become of you. As for me I am ruined. The law suit is going against me and I am afraid I will have to pay costs, which means leaving Oxford and doing some horrid work to earn bread. The world is too much for me. However, I have seen Greece and had some golden days of youth. I go back to Oxford immediately for viva voce and then think of rowing up the river to town with Frank Miles. Will you come? Yours Oscar

There are those among my young men who have reached the age of wild spirits,’ he said. ‘They must be eased through this period. I must leave no great reasons around for them to challenge me. Because I would have to maim and kill among them. This is not the proper course for a leader if it can be avoided with honor. A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people. He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals, and a people reverts to a mob.

But no one will understand Oscar Wilde who for a moment loses sight of the fact that he was a pagan born: as Gautier says, "One for whom the visible world alone exists," endowed with all the Greek sensuousness and love of plastic beauty; a pagan, like Nietzsche and Gautier, wholly out of sympathy with Christianity, one of "the Confraternity of the faithless who "cannot" believe," (His own words in "De Profundis.") to whom a sense of sin and repentance are symptoms of weakness and disease.

I never met a librarian worth his or her salt who didn't perceive my passion for books. And without exception, each one would lend me a book on a subject we had been discussing. No paperwork, no formalities of any kind, no rules or regulations. My unspoken side of the bargain was to protect them, in two ways; first by keeping the book unharmed - not that easy, especially in bad weather, but when it rained, I carried the book next to my skin. I can tell you now that carrying Gulliver's Travels or Lays of Ancient Rome or Mr. Oscar Wilde's stories or Mr. William Yeat's poems next to my heart gave me a kind of sweet pleasure. The second half of the bargain often nearly broke my heart, but I always kept it - and that was to return the book safe and sound to the library that had lent it. To part company with Mr. Charles Dickens or Mr. William Makepeace Thackeray and his lovely name! - that was harder than saying good-bye to a dear flesh-and-blood companion. But I always did it - and I sent the book by registered post, no small consideration of cost given the peculiar economics of an itinerant storyteller.

They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity — like yours — the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you — you so remote from the night of first ages — could comprehend. And why not? The mind of man is capable of anything — because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage — who can tell? — but truth — truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder—the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet that truth with his own true stuff — with his own inborn strength. Principles won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags — rags that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief.

Overcooked, flabby pasta or a blob of tomato ketchup was enough to incense Frank; a plate of soggy pasta in Matteo’s Italian restaurant in Los Angeles, owned by his childhood buddy, Matty Jordan, had Frank storming into the kitchens. He looked around wildly, “Where are all the Italians?” he roared at the startled Filipino kitchen staff. Not content, he shot back upstairs and threw his plate of pasta against the wall. As he walked out, he dipped his finger in the tomato sauce and signed the smear: Picasso (Matty very good-naturedly put a frame around this later).

JACK. We must get married at once. There is no time to be lost. GWENDOLEN. Married, Mr. Worthing? JACK. Well... surely. You know that I love you, and you let me to believe, Miss Fairfax, that you were not absolutely indifferent to me. GWENDOLEN. I adore you. But you haven't proposed to me yet. Nothing has been said at all about marriage. The subject has not even been touched on. JACK. Well... may I propose to you now? GWENDOLEN. I think it would be an admirable opportunity. And to spare you any possible disappointment, Mr. Worthing, I think it only fair to tell you quite frankly beforehand that I am fully determined to accept you.

decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour possible; while the Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if they chose.

Other animals are exceptionally good at identifying and reacting to predators, rivals and friends. They never act as if they believe that rivers or trees are inhabited by spirits who are watching. In all these ways, other animals continually demonstrate their working knowledge that they live in a world brimming with other minds as well as their knowledge of those minds' boundaries. their understanding seems more acute, pragmatic, and frankly, better than ours at distinguishing real from fake. So, I wonder, do humans really have a better developed Theory of Mind than other animals? ...Children talk to dolls for years, half believing or firmly believing that the doll hears and feels and is a worthy confidante. Many adults pray to statues, fervently believing that they're listening. ...All of this indicates a common human inability to distinguish conscious minds from inanimate objects, and evidence from nonsense. Children often talk to a fully imaginary friends whom they believe listens and has thoughts. Monotheism might be the adult version. ...In the world's most technologically advanced, most informed societies, a majority people take it for granted that disembodied spirits are watching, judging, and acting on them. Most leaders of modern nations trust that a Sky-God can be asked to protect their nation during disasters and conflicts with other nations. All of this is theory of mind gone wild, like an unguided fire hose spraying the whole universe with presumed consciousness. Humans' "superior" Theory of Mind is in part pathology. The oft repeated line "humans are rational beings" is probably our most half-true assertion about ourselves. There is in nature an overriding sanity and often in humankind an undermining insanity. We, among all animals, are most frequently irrational, distortional, delusional, and worried. Yet, I also wonder, is our pathological ability to generate false beliefs...also the very root of human creativity?

Another innovation on Franks Wild Years is the prevalence of the bullhorn, which Waits sings through on at least four cuts. “Well, I tried to obtain that same sound in other ways,” he explains, “by using broken microphones, singing into tin cans, cupping my hands around the microphone, putting the vocal through an Auratone speaker, which is like a car radio speaker, and then miking that. Practically even considered at one point making a record and then broadcasting the record through like a radio station and then having it come out of the car and then mike the car … and then it just became too complicated, you know? So a bullhorn seemed to be the answer to it all.

Well, guys”—he spread his arms—“I could thank Reyna all day long. She has given so much to the legion. She’s been the best mentor and friend. She can never be replaced. On the other hand, I’m up here all alone now, and we have an empty praetor’s chair. So I’d like to take nominations for—” Lavinia started the chant: “HA-ZEL! HA-ZEL!” The crowd quickly joined in. Hazel’s eyes widened. She tried to resist when those sitting around her pulled her to her feet, but her Fifth Cohort fan club had evidently been preparing for this possibility. One of them produced a shield, which they hoisted Hazel onto like a saddle. They raised her overhead and marched her to the middle of the senate floor, turning her around and chanting, “HAZEL! HAZEL!” Reyna clapped and yelled right along with them. Only Frank tried to remain neutral, though he had to hide his smile behind his fist. “Okay, settle down!” he called at last. “We have one nomination. Are there any other—?” “HAZEL! HAZEL!” “Any objections?” “HAZEL! HAZEL!” “Then I recognize the will of the Twelfth Legion. Hazel Levesque, you are hereby promoted to praetor!” More wild cheering. Hazel looked dazed as she was dressed in Reyna’s old cloak and badge of office, then led to her chair. Seeing Frank and Hazel side by side, I had to smile. They looked so right together—wise and strong and brave. The perfect praetors. Rome’s future was in good hands. “Thank you,” Hazel managed at last. “I—I’ll do everything I can to be worthy of your trust. Here’s the thing, though. This leaves the Fifth Cohort without a centurion, so—” The entire Fifth Cohort started chanting in unison: “LAVINIA! LAVINIA!” “What?” Lavinia’s face turned pinker than her hair. “Oh, no. I don’t do leadership!” “LAVINIA! LAVINIA!” “Is this a joke? Guys, I—” “Lavinia Asimov!” Hazel said with a smile. “The Fifth Cohort read my mind. As my first act as praetor, for your unparalleled heroism in the Battle of San Francisco Bay, I hereby promote you to centurion—unless my fellow praetor has any objections?” “None,” Frank said. “Then come forward, Lavinia!

I walked over to her. She took my hand. “You’re a fine kid, Frank. There’s something wild and hard inside you that needs gentling, but there’s also something fine and bright inside you. Whatever you do, don’t change. Don’t lose that something that keeps you from being hard and rotten.” She laughed. “I must be getting old,” she said, “to be talking like that.” She took another drink from the table. I was silent. The old dame kind of liked me. “Well?” she asked. “Good-bye,” I said. On an impulse I bent and kissed her cheek. It was old and dry to the touch, like a piece of old paper. She put her hand to her cheek half wonderingly. She thought aloud: “It has been a long time since—” Her words trailed off.

CYRIL. Lying! I should have thought that our politicians kept up that habit. VIVIAN. I assure you that they do not. They never rise beyond the level of misrepresentation, and actually condescend to prove, to discuss, to argue. How different from the temper of the true liar, with his frank, fearless statements, his superb responsibility, his healthy, natural disdain of proof of any kind! After all, what is a fine lie? Simply that which is its own evidence. If a man is sufficiently unimaginative to produce evidence in support of a lie, he might just as well speak the truth at once. No, the politicians won't do. Something may, perhaps, be urged on behalf of the Bar. The mantle of the Sophist has fallen on its members.

the audience, unaccustomed to any of this, went wild: America! The high point of this whirring, pale-blue era was 1960. The average American earned more than 5,000 dollars a year; a newly built house cost 12,500 dollars, a car 2,600, a pair of shoes 13, a litre of gasoline 6.7 cents. The tail fins on the new Cadillac Eldorado were the largest and sharpest ever seen. In April, the world’s first weather satellite was launched. In the Philippines, the Japanese government tried in vain to coax the last two Japanese soldiers out of the jungle – they refused to believe the war was over. Xerox put the first commercial photocopier on the market. Chubby Checker started a new dance craze, the twist. Frank Sinatra, cigarette in hand, stood and sang in a short film called Music for

She flung her arms round Troy's neck, exclaiming wildly from the deepest deep of her heart— "Don't—don't kiss them! O, Frank, I can't bear it—I can't! I love you better than she did: kiss me too, Frank—kiss me! You will, Frank, kiss me too!" There was something so abnormal and startling in the childlike pain and simplicity of this appeal from a woman of Bathsheba's calibre and independence, that Troy, loosening her tightly clasped arms from his neck, looked at her in bewilderment. It was such an unexpected revelation of all women being alike at heart, even those so different in their accessories as Fanny and this one beside him, that Troy could hardly seem to believe her to be his proud wife Bathsheba. Fanny's own spirit seemed to be animating her frame. But this was the mood of a few instants only. When the momentary surprise had passed, his expression changed to a silencing imperious gaze. "I will not kiss you!" he said pushing her away.

She was like a fox, or an olive tree; like the waves of the sea when you look down upon them from a height; like an emerald; like the sun on a green hill which is yet clouded--like nothing he had seen or known in England. Ransack the language as he might, words failed him. He wanted another landscape, and another tongue. English was too frank, too candid, too honeyed a speech for Sasha. For in all she said, however open she seemed and voluptuous, there was something hidden; in all she did, however daring, there was something concealed. So the green flame seems hidden in the emerald, or the sun prisoned in a hill. The clearness was only outward; within was a wandering flame. It came; it went; she never shone with the steady beam of an Englishwoman--here, however, remembering the Lady Margaret and her petticoats, Orlando ran wild in his transports and swept her over the ice, faster, faster, vowing that he would chase the flame, dive for the gem, and so on and so on, the words coming on the pants of his breath with the passion of a poet whose poetry is half pressed out of him by pain.

Do you think I’m so silly that I can’t understand your sometimes getting fed up with playing the Good Samaritan here day after day, can’t realize that a grown man would rather go for a ride or take his sound legs for a walk than sit about by an invalid’s chair? There’s only one thing that disgusts me, one thing I can’t stand, and that is excuses, humbug, lies — I’m fed to the teeth with them. I’m not so stupid as you all think, and I can stand quite a lot of frankness. A few days ago we engaged a new charwoman in place of the old one who had died, and the very first day she was here, before she had talked to anyone — she saw me being helped across to an arm-chair on my crutches. She dropped her scrubbing brush in horror and screamed out: “Lord Jesus, such a rich, distinguished young lady … being a cripple!” Ilona went for the poor, honest creature like a wild thing; she was going to dismiss her and throw her out on the spot. But I, I liked it, the woman’s horror did me good, because, after all, it is honest, it is human, to be horrified at seeing such a sight all of a sudden. I promptly gave her ten crowns and she went off to the church to pray for me. The whole day I felt glad, yes, positively glad, at knowing at last what others really feel when they see me for the first time

The words of Nils Hellstrom. There is another respect in which we must guard against becoming too much like the insects upon whom we pattern our design for human survival. The insect has been called a walking digestive tract. This is not without reason. To support his own life, an insect will consume as much as a hundred times his own weight each day—which to each of us would be like eating an entire cow, a herd of thirty each month. And as the insect population grows, each individual naturally needs more. To those who have witnessed the insect’s profligate display of appetite, the outcome is clear. If allowed to continue on his reproductive rampage, the insect would defoliate the earth. Thus, with our lesson from the insect, comes a clear warning. If the race for food is to be the deciding conflict, let no one say it came without this warning. From the beginning of time, wild humans have stood helpless, watching the very soil they nurtured give birth to a competitor that could outeat them. Just as we must not let our teacher the insect consume what we require for survival, we must not launch a similar rampage of our own. The pace of our planet’s growing cycle cannot be denied. It is possible for insects or for man to destroy in a single week what could have fed millions for an entire year.

Standing at the prow of the pitching deck of the trawler, unscrewing the top of his flask, Frank Fontaine asked himself: Am I after fish—or a wild goose? Sure, he always dreamed about a big-paying long con, but this one was threatening to go on indefinitely—and though it was afternoon and supposedly summer, it was cold as a son of a bitch out here. Made a witch’s tit seem like a hot toddy. Was it worth giving up Gorland—becoming Fontaine? A city under the sea. It was becoming an obsession. Fontaine looked up at the streaming charcoal-colored clouds, wondered if it was going to storm again. Just being on this damn tub was too much like work. Talking to the men who picked up the fish for Rapture’s food supply, Fontaine had confirmed that Ryan had indeed built some gigantic underwater habitat, a kind of free-market utopia—and Fontaine knew what happened with utopias. Look at the Soviets—all those fine words about the proletariat had turned into gulags and breadlines. But a “utopia” was pure opportunity for a man like him. When this undersea utopia fell apart, he’d be there, with a whole society to feast on. Long as he didn’t step too hard on Ryan’s toes, he could build up an organization, get away with a pile of loot. But he had to get down to Rapture first … The trawler lurched, and so did Fontaine’s stomach. A small craft was being lowered over the side of the platform ship—a thirty-foot gig. Men descended

The Grocers'! oh the Grocers'! nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses! It was not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds of like mistakes, in the best humor possible; while the Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if they chose.

Beyond those somewhat anchored fantasy settings are the wild-eyed and the wahoo worlds. This is by no means pejorative, as these include some of my personal favorites, but it is meant to show that there are high-concept, love-’em-or-hate-’em sorts of settings. Call them worlds of pure chaos, places where anything goes and where the usual rules do not apply. They are not meant to be realistic, and indeed that is their appeal. They are settings unmoored from reality and operating by rules of your design—but these settings do have rules. To provide some examples, think of places like China Mieville’s Bas Lag, Pratchett’s Disc World, Frank Baum’s Oz, David “Zeb” Cook’s Dark Sun and Planescape, Keith Baker’s Eberron, Jim Ward’s Gamma World, NCSoft’s Guild Wars, Andrew Leker’s Jorune, Michael Moorcock’s Melnibone, Jeff Grubb’s Spelljammer, and Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. These are places where truly Weird Shit happens, with different rules of physics, alien landscapes, magical wastelands, alien gods, mutants, and cosmologies. It’s fun to go out on the edge, and fantasy is always exploring strange places like this. These are the high-wire acts of worldbuilding. They take creative risks, not always successfully, and they endure a higher degree of mockery than the real fantasies or anchored fantasies do because of those creative risks. They also attract a loyal following who love that particular flavor of weird. Just ask any Planescape fan.

When I had the third breakdown, the mini-breakdown, I was in the late stages of writing this book. Since I could not cope with communication of any kind during that period, I put an auto-response message on my E-mail that said I was temporarily unreachable, and a similar message on my answering machine. Acquaintances who had suffered depression knew what to make of these outgoing messages. They wasted no time. I had dozens and dozens of calls from people offering whatever they could offer and doing it glowingly. “I will come to stay the minute you call,” wrote Laura Anderson, who also sent a wild profusion of orchids, “and I’ll stay as long as it takes you to get better. If you’d prefer, you are of course always welcome here; if you need to move in for a year, I’ll be here for you. I hope you know that I will always be here for you.” Claudia Weaver wrote with questions: “Is it better for you to have someone check in with you every day or are the messages too much of a burden? If they are a burden, you needn’t answer this one, but whatever you need—just call me, anytime, day or night.” Angel Starkey called often from the pay phone at her hospital to see if I was okay. “I don’t know what you need,” she said, “but I’m worrying about you all the time. Please take care of yourself. Come and see me if you’re feeling really bad, anytime. I’d really like to see you. If you need anything, I’ll try to get it for you. Promise me you won’t hurt yourself.” Frank Rusakoff wrote me a remarkable letter and reminded me about the precious quality of hope. “I long for news that you are well and off on another adventure,” he wrote, and signed the letter, “Your friend, Frank.” I had felt committed in many ways to all these people, but the spontaneous outpouring astounded me. Tina Sonego said she’d call in sick for work if I needed her—or that she’d buy me a ticket and take me to someplace relaxing. “I’m a good cook too,” she told me. Janet Benshoof dropped by the house with daffodils and optimistic lines from favorite poems written in her clear hand and a bag so she could come sleep on my sofa, just so I wouldn’t be alone. It was an astonishing responsiveness.

LXXII In sooth, it was no vulgar sight to see Their barbarous, yet their not indecent, glee, And as the flames along their faces gleam’d, Their gestures nimble, dark eyes flashing free, The long wild locks that to their girdles stream’d, While thus in concert they this lay half sang, half scream’d: Tambourgi! Tambourgi! thy ’larum afar Gives hope to the valiant, and promise of war; All the sons of the mountains arise at the note, Chimariot, Illyrian, and dark Suliote! Oh! who is more brave than a dark Suliote, To his snowy camese and his shaggy capote? To the wolf and the vulture he leaves his wild flock, And descends to the plain like the stream from the rock. Shall the sons of Chimari, who never forgive The fault of a friend, bid an enemy live? Let those guns so unerring such vengeance forego? What mark is so fair as the breast of a foe? Macedonia sends forth her invincible race; For a time they abandon the cave and the chase: But those scarves of blood-red shall be redder, before The sabre is sheathed and the battle is o’er. Then the pirates of Parga that dwell by the waves, And teach the pale Franks what it is to be slaves, Shall leave on the beach the long galley and oar, And track to his covert the captive on shore. I ask not the pleasure that riches supply, My sabre shall win what the feeble must buy; Shall win the young bride with her long flowing hair, And many a maid from her mother shall tear. I love the fair face of the maid in her youth, Her caresses shall lull me, her music shall soothe; Let her bring from her chamber the many-toned lyre, And sing us a song on the fall of her sire. Remember the moment when Previsa fell, The shrieks of the conquer’d, the conquerors’ yell; The roofs that we fired, and the plunder we shared, The wealthy we slaughter’d, the lovely we spared. I talk not of mercy, I talk not of fear; He neither must know who would serve the Vizier: Since the days of our prophet, the Crescent ne’er saw A chief ever glorious like Ali Pasha. Dark Muchtar his son to the Danube is sped, Let the yellow-haired Giaours view his horsetail with dread; When his Delhis come dashing in blood o’er the banks, How few shall escape from the Muscovite ranks! Selictar, unsheath then our chief’s scimitar: Tambourgi! thy ’larum gives promise of war; Ye mountains, that see us descend to the shore, Shall view us as victors, or view us no more!

Kiki had to be carried whenever they left the house, or she’d be eaten by wild animals. At least, that’s what Frank seemed to think. The dog, spoiled as she was, wholeheartedly agreed.

There, in the “Early Days” section, is a photo the company sent to customers who purchased the flower deal. All fifteen Groupon employees, with Mason front and center, are standing behind a white poster board sporting a message inked in black marker: “We’re sorry!! —your friends [at] Groupon.” “The response we got back was, ‘Holy shit, there’s actually real people at that company,

Stallions," Frank said, "they're fightin' over a girl. - DANIEL'S ESPERANZA

After they get burned a few times by inept advisers, their bullshit detectors get better.

The only thing more frightening than two adults fighting is the silence that follows. Your imagination goes wild. In my mind, I saw Momma stabbing Frank with a butcher knife.

Eat grass-fed meat, wild-caught fish, greens, nuts, a bit of fruit—and no other carbs—for a month and see how you feel.

use plants indigenous to Tibet, Tibet, and Bhutan.  A few of them are very rare, and frankly, I’m not even sure if they can be found in the wild any longer.  There is one particularly hard-to-find species that only reproduces every twelve years.  I have a large garden where I continually grow the plants needed.  They must be harvested, dried, and stored.”               “Would it be okay if I took a look at your page?  That way I’ll recognize the book  if I ever find it.”               “I memorized the formula and no longer need to refer to the page, though I do look at it from time to time to admire its beauty. 

The pleasure men take in denigration of the gifted is one of the puzzles of life

After a moment, the governor laughed and said, “You are a piece of work, Lucas. You and that fuckin’ Flowers, both of you. I really get my entertainment dollar’s worth.” “The last person who said I was a piece of work, offered to take me to bed,” Lucas said. “Well, I’ll pass on that,” Henderson said. Then, after a moment of silence, the governor said, “I’ll have to mediate this. I’ll have to confer with other Important People. Porter, of course, is going to lay an ostrich-sized egg. I don’t see how Grant can stay on as a senator, and frankly, that’s about the best possible outcome I could have imagined.” “How’s that?” Lucas asked. “Guess who would appoint her replacement?” Henderson said. “I’d have Porter Smalls out of my hair and a new senator who would be wildly happy about supporting me for a better job . . . if somebody goes looking for, say, a vice president.

New York has the gay marriage now,” Camilla said. “You should propose. Make things legal.” “I don’t think Garrett is interested in settling down, Aunt Camilla.” “He’s had his fun,” Nonna said. “Now it’s time to put a leash on him. That will settle him right down. I was just as wild before your Grandpa Frank proposed. Had some idea I was going to run off to Argentina and write poetry or maybe marry Tommy Dellacroce and be a mafia princess, but Frank proposed first.

While George fell asleep in the back of the bus, I examined his outfit, noting that my strange American friend had now got his ‘world traveller’ apparel down to a fine art. His compact munchkin figure wore a short-cropped jeans jacket from Nepal over a ratty pink T-shirt he’d picked up in Bangkok which was decorated with the simple message, ‘Fuck You.’ Beneath a pair of worn out, fashionably torn Levis from Dharamsala poked a brace of dusty hiking boots obtained second-hand from a hill porter in Manali. All this was topped by an expandable Afghani hat, into which he tucked his long, matted dreadlocks. As for his bespectacled features, these were rendered quite dwarfish by a wispy little beard, cut short at the cheeks and running wild below the chin. A glittering array of chunky ethnic rings adorned each finger. He actually had an extra one—fortunately out of sight—which had been inserted into his penis during his last foray into Paharganj. Around his neck hung a final touch: a valuable Zzi-bead necklace purchased from a Tibetan family in Ladakh for the considerable sum of 1600 dollars. Nobody looking at him would have guessed that this was the foremost wholesaler of hippy goods into America.

I have to say I’m truly shocked at what men deem appropriate behavior in the modern dating world.” “You,” she said, pointing a finger at him. “YOU are shocked.” “I am. I’m not sure how you women put up with it.” “The struggle is real. Go on.” “Your emails all include emoticons, usually hearts and smiley faces, and your Netflix queue consists mostly of romantic comedies. Oh, and you’re a 34C. That’s just the stuff I can remember off hang. I’m sure there’s more.” She was horrified. “How do you know my bra size?” “I scrolled through your order history at Victoria’s Secret.” “Well, that’s not at all creepy,” she deadpanned. “Did you know there are items in your shopping cart? Sweaters. Lots of thick, long, skin-covering sweaters. Frankly, it confused me.” “”Maybe I already own plenty of lingerie. Considering I walk to work, sweaters are more practical. Plus, they’re awfully cute.” “I added a few things to your cart and checked out for you. I paid for it with my credit card. Expedited the shipping too, so you should have it by Monday.” “You ADDED a few thing?” “One hint: not sweaters.” “How wildly inappropriate.” “Kid in a candy store. Couldn’t help myself.” “How?” “Excuse me?” “You obviously hacked into my computer. How did you do it?” “I came in your backdoor.” “I’m certain you did not.” “I assure you that I did.” “Without even discussing it with me first? No preparation? No warning? Don’t you think that’s incredibly bad form?” He grinned. “Are we still talking about your computer? Because I find you utterly delightful right now?” ….. “Get out of my computer immediately, I’m willing to move past the fact that you hacked me, but it ends now.” “No more backdoor?” “No more backdoor.” He appeared crestfallen. “Ever?” “Never,” she said firmly. “Not even on my birthday or like a special occasion?” “Are we still talking about my computer?” she asked. “You probably are." ~ Heart-Shaped Hack: Kate and Ian #1

He was an intense admirer of Swinburne and constantly reading his poems; John Addington Symond's works too, on the Greek authors, were perpetually in his hands. He never entertained any pronounced views on social, religious or political questions while in College; he seemed to be altogether devoted to literary matters.

Modern art he felt should be an interpretation and not a representment of reality, and he taught the golden rule of the artist that the half is usually more expressive than the whole.

Adapting’ is what constitutes selling out,” he explained to me in a largely unprinted interview for Terrorizer magazine in 2007. “Adapting to the preferences of the masses, ridding yourself of unwanted contents, washing your hands until they are clean and shiny, ready for mass production. The genius of black metal lies within its unbound chaotic essence, untamed artistry, and wild and evil creative thinking. This is why selling out is considered not so sexy within a black metal context. Both Gorgoroth and Dissection refused to adapt themselves to the will of others. Satyricon stands for rock ‘n’ roll entertainment, Dissection for Satanism. The former means showbiz, the latter means black metal. I see nothing wrong with being involved in showbiz—I like Frank Sinatra and stuff like that. But what I just don’t understand is who these bands are trying to fool when they claim to still be bonded to the black metal legacy. They blindly follow rule number one in the book: ‘How to lose one’s credibility,’ namely, ‘Don’t be credible.

SDS’s wildly optimistic first principle: that all humans were “infinitely precious and possessed of unfulfilled capacities for reason, freedom, and love.

That damned dissertation, stuck in the same place for over a week while he struggled to elucidate the connections between Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde, only to find the whole thing, even what he thought were his most original points, laid out, item for item, in a monograph over twenty years old. What was the point, he thought, of sitting in that stuffy library all day, every day, grinding out dozens of pages of useless “scholarly” prose, to be read by dyspeptic Frank Dunlop, and three other people in the department, and then buried forever in the stacks of the university library. Why was he wasting his time, his mind, his life itself. When he’d tried to explain what he was doing to Leah, one day when she brought him his lunch on a tray, she’d regarded him with a look of such utter incomprehension—not confused, not respectful, not derogatory, just uncomprehending—that he’d been paralyzed in his chair for hours after. Maybe hers was the legitimate, the reasonable, reaction to what he was doing, the reaction of anyone who knew what life was all about—that it wasn’t dropping into a chair each day, banished from the sun and the sky and the trees, to pound a tinny machine and clutter up sheets of paper. More and more, he had been feeling the urge to spend his time outdoors, to breathe the air off the water, to bask in the sun, even to run, barefoot, across the lawns and through the groves of trees.

Blackfeet! No tribal name appears oftener in the history of the Northwestern plains; no other is so indelibly written into the meager records of the early fur-trade of the upper Missouri river, and none ever inspired more dread in white plainsmen. Hell-gate was not so named because the water there was fiercely wild, or the mountain trail difficult, but because the way led from tranquility to trouble, to the lands of the hostile Blackfeet.

Burial of the dead was usually on platforms lashed to the limbs of trees beyond the reach of wolves. Securely wrapped in buffalo robes, firmly bound with rawhide thongs, the bodies were safe from ravens, crows, and magpies. Weapons and pipes were buried with warriors, root-diggers and cooking utensils with the women. Often a number of horses were killed at the burial of a warrior, so that his spirit might ride in The Sand Hills, the Heaven of the Blackfeet. In mourning for a son, or other male relative, both men and women scarified themselves, and cut off their hair, the women wailing piteously, sometimes for long periods. The mourning for women was of shorter duration, and not so wild.

[I talked this matter over with Douglas more than once. He did not know French well; but he could understand it and he was a rarely good translator as his version of a Baudelaire sonnet shows. In any dispute as to the value of a word or phrase I should prefer his opinion to Oscar's. But Ross is doubtless right on this point. F.H.]

Since Luther we have been living in a centrifugal movement, in a wild individualism where all ties of love and affection have been loosened, and now that the centripetal movement

Speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other’s character before marriage, which I think is never advisable

Ultimately, we are here right now. We’re living, breathing people who have incredible opportunities at our fingertips. If that doesn’t scream at you, ‘SPEAK UP, SHOW UP, BE AMAZING,’ then I don’t know what will. In this crazy and amazing universe, that quite frankly we humans don’t understand, we exist here on Earth for such a limited time, so make it count, and don’t listen to the people who think it’s not possible.