Full Throttle Quotes

Gage opens the door. I’m not sure whether he gets out or Logan yanks him into the street, but a fight erupts. Full throttle kicks to the balls

You cannot run at full throttle when applying your mindset to all of the different things running through your head. Focusing is the key to manifesting your desires.

An overhead light blinked and extinguished. Armitage drew the pistol with his right hand. He swung and aimed, checking there were no innocent people obstructing the way. None. Fired a single shot. It sailed over a plant and table setting. The round hit an inch from the watcher's heart. On impact the brown-haired assailant tipped. Jake ducked. A table toppled. The watcher groaned as the force of the momentum pushed him toward the floor-to-ceiling glass wall. A second table collapsed, plates thrown asunder. Jake stepped forward, arm stretched and gun straight. A waitress hugged herself, crying. Two more male patrons hit the floor and crawled between chairs.

Even if there was such a thing as a half-price sale at the local Ming outlet shop, she would have to work ten lifetimes to make up such a sum. Always supposing that it wasn't one of a kind. Panic was no longer merely rearing. It was thundering through her at full throttle. There was only one thing to be done, she realized. The mature, responsible, adult thing to do. Hide the evidence.

I'm talking to myself in two different personas now. I'm reaching for a full-throttle meltdown and why not? Why stop halfway? Why not just go for it, jump on and ride the wave?

And you're not an envoy from the lord?" "You're not an angel?" "Nope. Just a librarian." Aw, well, she said, "That's close enough for me." ~Full Throttle by Joe Hill

Nero drove them out at full throttle, under heavy pursuit. The transport went careening down the street, sending pedestrians and other vehicles in all directions. "Nero!" Darling shouted. "Some of us aren't suicidal back here." "Then strap your ass down. Or lose it." Nero jerked to the right. This time, Darling landed on Hauk. Hauk put him back on his feet. "Nuh-uh. You have to buy me dinner before you crawl on top of me, baby. No one gets a free ride on the Hauk train.

In this game, everyone needs a break to refuel, recharge, and jump back in full throttle.

In the good dreams, he slammed her to the ground and throttled her, watching the life drain from her eyes, heart full of vengeance—finally, finally. In the bad dreams, he kissed her.

The price of being alive is that someday you aren’t.

Then, right in front of his boys, he kissed me, full-on, full tongue, full throttle. His arms wrapped around my back and mine went around his neck.

Every time I pass the concierge's window and catch the full icy impact of her glance I have an insane desire to throttle all the birds in creation. At the bottom of every frozen heart there is a drop or two of love – just enough to feed the birds.

It’s quite common to enter a library and find yourself in conversation with the dead. The best minds of generations long gone crowd every bookshelf. They wait there to be noticed, to be addressed, and to reply in turn. In the library the dead meet the living on collegial terms as a matter of course, every day.

Outside the windows the cars swept past continuously, out of town, into town, lights ablaze, radios at full throttle. “I wither slowly in thine arms,” he read. “Here at the quiet limit of the world,” and repeated to himself: “Here at the quiet limit of the world. Here at the quiet limit of the world”… as a monk will repeat a simple pregnant text, over and over again in prayer.

The child outliving the parents is the only happy story us human beings get.

Twenty-five?" Shawn squawked, horrified. "Good Lord, he's a fetus!

I'd netted a bachelor's in English from Boston University, but it had done less for me, in strictly financial terms, than the eight-week course that earned me a commercial driver's license.

But writers are of course mad, sick beings who will not rest just knowing things – sometimes deliciously, at full throttle; they must go and contaminate the experience with words, too, say it.

Some people my accuse me of doing too much. Sometimes I agree with them. But then there is a part of me that wants to follow God --- wholeheartedly, completely and full throttle, wherever He may lead. I don't want to look back fifty years from now and think, What if I had trusted God? Where would I be?

The application of this knife, the division of the world into parts and the building of this structure, is something everybody does. All the time we are aware of millions of things around us - these changing shapes, these burning hills, the sound of the engine, the feel of the throttle, each rock and weed and fence post and piece of debris beside the road - aware of these things but not really conscious of them unless there is something unusual or unless they reflect something we are predisposed to see. We could not possibly be conscious of these things and remember all of them because our mind would be so full of useless details we would be unable to think. From all this awareness we must select, and what we select and calls consciousness is never the same as the awareness because the process of selection mutates it. We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.

He doesn't so much fall in love as dive-bomb it like a kamikaze pilot, fearless and at full throttle. He used to look at this propensity as a gift, then a curse, and now understands it to be just another way in which he is broken.

If this were a musical, this would signal the start of a dance number. Angry girls sexy danse in unison around the bull pen. Men stride up and grab a partner to a choreographed tango." Nolan held his hand out. "Give me your man card. You have never sounded more like a girl than right now.

The ultimate in being healthy is to operate at full throttle—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It’s being alert, feeling alive and connected. And if you look at your life as a circle and all its aspects (family, finance, relationships, work, among others) as sections of it, you’ll see that if one part is malfunctioning, it will affect the whole.

Please tell me you’ve seen a penis before.” “Y-yes,” she rasped. “But I’ve never see one so…pretty.

A full-throttled deployment of the practices of strategic communication would kill candor and leave truth bereft to fend for herself in the backstabbing night of political bogeys.

They led me into things that I regretted in the moment but were later a pleasure to remember. Real sin, I think, produces the same emotions, in the exact opposite order.

For me, a lifelong bookworm, there was nothing quite so awful as the thought of dying fifty pages from the end of a good novel.

If you Google “How do I write a book?” you’ll get a million hits, but here’s the dirty secret: It’s just math. It’s not even hard math—it’s first-grade addition. Write three pages a day, every day. In a hundred days, you’ll have three hundred pages. Type “The End.” Done.

so much testosterone floating around, it’s like I’m standing inside of a testicle. And I’m afraid of what getting any closer to the source will do to my eggs. They might spontaneously fertilize or something.

Moment to moment, we act freely, we make decisions and form opinions and there is very little to throttle us. We think each of us has a map marked with private routings and preferred habitual destinations, and go by a legend of our own. Yet it turns out you can overlay them and see a most amazing correspondence; what you believed were very personal contours aligning not exactly but enough that while our via points may diverge, our endings do not.

I remember Aslan dead on the stone and the mice nibbling at the ropes that bound his corpse. I think that provided me with my foundational sense of decency. To live a decent life is to be no more than a mouse nibbling at a rope. One mouse isn’t much, but if enough of us keep chewing, we may set something free that can save us from the worst. Maybe it will even save us from ourselves.

Sugar, remember—” “One of your best ideas, cher.” Secret rules, she thought, her eyes on his profile as he watched the sky rain color, secret play. When he met her eyes, his own reflecting the sky, she said, “Full throttle.” The smile faded from his lips, raw emotion in his voice as he repeated the vow. “Full throttle.

The Big Nurse is able to set the wall clock at whatever speed she wants by just turning one of those dials in the steel door; she takes a notion to hurry things up, she turns the speed up, and those hands whip around that disk like spokes in a wheel. The scene in the picture-screen windows goes through rapid changes of light to show morning, noon, and night - throb off and on furiously with day and dark, and everybody is driven like mad to keep up with that passing of fake time; awful scramble of shaves and breakfasts and appointments and lunches and medications and ten minutes of night so you barely get your eyes closed before the dorm light's screaming at you to get up and start the scramble again, go like a sonofabitch this way, going through the full schedule of a day maybe twenty times an hour, till the Big Nurse sees everybody is right up to the breaking point, and she slacks off on the throttle, eases off the pace on that clock-dial, like some kid been fooling with the moving-picture projection machine and finally got tired watching the film run at ten times its natural speed, got bored with all that silly scampering and insect squeak of talk and turned it back to normal.

The path of true love never ran smooth. More likely you ran out of gas, blew a tire, and hit the wall before you crossed the finish line.

Blech! Smells like Chewbacca’s burned butt hair. Where the hell am I?

The male sex organ was an amazing thing in that it actually lived every day in a perpetual state of hope.

The past is always close, so close you can sing along with it, anytime you like.

I'll take the sound of a full throttle purr over the thump of a wagging tail any day.

I think I'm the only man who can handle you full throttle. And God knows, I want to. Give me your worst, and I'll show you my best.

When you are recovering from something, don't be in such a hurry to jump back into it full-throttle. Ease up. Hold yourself back a little. Pace yourself. It's OK to do what you can, but there is no need to go crazy with it. Don't let your enthusiasm be the very thing that hurts you! Grace and Ease.

Because she knew from experience that what came next was something straight out of a Pitbull featuring Ke$ha song. She was going down. Although, as far as she could figure, no one was yelling, “Timber!

Some work is about lying down for others, I suppose,” he says, and she realizes he is leaping up the last flight of stairs to a wide black glass landing and another set of bronze doors. “And some work is about lifting people up.

While the rest of the world roars on, a large and growing minority is choosing not to do everything at full-throttle. In every human endeavour you can think of, from sex, work and exercise to food, medicine and urban design, these rebels are doing the unthinkable - they are making room for slowness. And the good news is that decelerating works.

I’ve reached that point in my journey, where there is more scenery in the rear view mirror than there is roadway ahead, I now have the time to write. I would rather hit the end of the road at full throttle than coast to a stop in the sunset.

The best works of art have a tendency to fall through time differently than human beings. They remember, but they also anticipate. A good piece can mean different things to different people at different times, and all of those meanings are true, even if they contradict one another.

Our cause is for the truth, for righteousness, For anyone who e’er oppression knew. ’Tis not rebellion for the sake of one, ’Tis not a cause to serve a priv’leg’d few— This moment shall resound in history For ev’ry person who would freedom know! So Biggs, stand with me now, and be my aide, And Wedge, fly at my side to lead the charge— We three, we happy three, we band of brothers, Shall fly unto the trench with throttles full!

But it was Carlos who’d come for her. Carlos…who she was pretty sure was the real-life equivalent of Superman, Batman, and Captain America all rolled into one. Nuclear fallout could be raining from the sky, and if she was by his side…er…on his back?…she was pretty sure she’d feel invincible.

There’s probably no better example of the throttling of creativity than the difference between what we observe in a kindergarten classroom and what we observe in a high school classroom,” she writes in Teach Your Children Well. “Take a room full of five-year-olds and you will see creativity in all its forms positively flowing around the room. A decade later you will see these same children passively sitting at their desks, half asleep or trying to decipher what will be on the next test.

she picked him up by the neck and throttled him, actually lifting his body off the floor.

Ryanna Raines: And why did you choose "Desire Under the Elms?" Jordan De Carlo: It's ferocious. A full-throttle rage machine. Rage over land, over family, over sexual lust.

It's quite common to enter a library and find yourself in conversation with the dead. The best minds of generations long gone crowd every bookshelf.

Sí, mi vida,” he growled against her lips. “Ride me.” Dear. God! She’d never heard anything so sexy. It was almost enough. Almost enough…

Penni DePaul simply needed to be held. And, by God, he could certainly do that…

Steady had always suspected Ethan “Ozzie” Sykes, despite his constant joking and bad taste in eighties music, was one tough motherfucker.

She never knew it about herself, but she liked it when he went all bossy and demanding. She

His first wife said it made him look like Jack Nicholson with the ax in that movie.

And you're not an envoy from the Lord? You're not an angel?' 'Nope. Just a librarian.' 'Ah, well,' she said. 'That's close enough for me.

Your mother had peculiar ideas, and she tried to drown them with drink. In the end she only drowned herself.

Like a fighter pilot that goes full throttle, Like a bullet train that wants to lead, Like an inspiring game of spin the bottle, I desired creativity and its unique speed. Like a lady who walks with dignity and pride, Like a gentleman who stands by justice and truth, Like a loose cannon with a constructive attitude, I treasured the power of gratitude.

(Ahem, this is your cue to visit the Web sites for PS Publishing, Cemetery Dance Publications, and Subterranean Press

In the library the dead meet the living on collegial terms as a matter of course, every day.

Miriam sang, “Gail, Gail, she bosses everyone around. Gail, Gail, she is really stupid.” The melody was just as good as the lyrics.

The cat was a gift from Manx, who runs Christmasland in Colorado.

But whenever I’m feeling “over it,” that maybe I’ve been at this for too long and it’s all a little bloodless, I know what to do. I go to YouTube and type in “Alec Baldwin, always be closing speech.” And I’m fifteen again, in love with movies, with acting and feeling the full throttle of my abilities and passion to use them. I’m ready to walk through walls again.

Christian had settled in one of the camp chairs with his drawing pad but leaped up to study a cobweb in a high shadowed corner. The spider had spun a few words into the web: FREE BED FOR FLYS

Did he finish reading The Hunger Games before his heart gave out? I hoped so. For me, a lifelong bookworm, there was nothing quite so awful as the thought of dying fifty pages from the end of a good novel.

You may not say much, Carlos Soto.” She reached forward to place her hand over his heart, and he wondered if she could feel that it beat only for her. “But when you do say something, it tends to be the right thing.

Ground zero is where the normal people live their lives, but not us. We live in the negatives so often that we begin to understand that life when the sun shines should be lived full throttle, soaring. The invisible tether that binds the normal people on their steady course doesn’t hold us in the same way. Sometimes we walk in sunlight with everyone else. Sometimes we live underwater and fight and grow. And sometimes …  … sometimes we fly.

He had spent his first day in Hue as scared as he had ever been. The fear had started when they were shot at on the chopper coming in, and had then just stayed at full throttle. He realized he had adapted to it. It surprised him. Fear, because it was everywhere and everyone felt it, receded in importance. It was still there, but when you realized there was nothing you could do about it, it ceased to matter. It just became your new reality.

There was a great pirate ship that swung back and forth like a pendulum, sailing high out over the sides of the pier and the ocean beyond, while shrill screams carried into the night. I thought of that ride as the SS Fuck No.

A book of stories isn’t a novel and can’t have the simple narrative drive of a novel. I think it should still try to have a feeling of progression, of connectedness. It’s like a road trip. You’re staying in a different inn every night:

I also still believe that books operate along the same principles as enchanted wardrobes. You climb into that little space and come out on the other side in a vast and secret world, a place both more frightening and more wonderful than your own.

Right,” said the wolf. He said it “Ro-ight,” had a bit of a Liverpoolian accent. Liverpudlian, Saunders corrected himself mentally, randomly. No, Scouse. They called it Scouse, which sounded like a disease, something you might die from after being bitten by a wild animal.

Hominy got out of the car to untangle the snarl. Waving his arms like the crazy man he was, he separated the cars by color, not that of the respective paint jobs, but by the hue of the motorists. "If you black, get back! White, to the right. Brown, go around. Yellow, follow the sites and let it mellow. Red, full speed ahead! Mulattos, full throttle!" If he couldn't categorize by sight, he asked the drivers what color they were. "Chicano? What color is that? You just can't make up a race, motherfucker. Puto? I got your puto right here pendejo!

You always look up at the sky,” she noted then, voice thick with emotion. “Is there something beyond the stars you’re looking for?” “I’m looking at the moon.” A beat passed. A breath escaped. A soft caress of the clement breeze over the bridge of his nose when he felt her gaze upon his face, akin to a shower of starlight penetrating their cosmos of solace. “Why?” she asked so quietly, so curiously without a hint of malice in her tone. Silver met green, and a grin spread across his lips at the sight of her moonlit face. “It makes me think of you.

Ancient religions used to tell people that letting go of yearning is the highest form of spirituality. But Buddha had it wrong. Yearning is the difference between being human and being a Clockwork. Not to want is not to live. Even DNA is an engine of desire—driven to copy itself over and over.

Ancient religions used to tell people that letting go of yearning is the highest form of spirituality. But Buddha had it wrong. Yearning is the difference between being human and being a Clockwork. Not to want is not to live. Even DNA is an engine of desire--driven to copy itself over and over.

Whatever, hermano. The point is, I’ll duck in, grab her, duck out, and make for the Thai border before they even know she’s gone. It’s only fifty miles away. I…uh…liberated a Ducati Monster 1200 off the street in KL, and this bad boy”—he patted the seat of the Italian-made motorcycle affectionately—“will make the trip in no time.

Come on now, Mr. Gallagher. We turned the sound off for you. The bad woman can’t hurt you. We’ll keep you safe from all her reason and science and compassion.” “Just keep your back turned,” Loren Hayes added. “If you look at her, there’s the very real possibility you might catch a glimpse of empathy and it’ll give you a sour tummy.

To be a human being is to be a tourist in a cold, unfriendly, and ancient country. Like all tourists we hope for a lark... a few laughs, a bit of adventure, a roll in the hay. But it's so easy to get lost. The day ends so quickly, and the roads are so confusing, and there are things out there in the dark with teeth. To survive we might have to show some teeth of our own.

I’m surprised you could get in,” says the big man. “They’ve got to draft a certain number of unqualified inner-city kids to meet their quota. That means a lot less space for people like you.” “People like what?” Fidelman asks, enunciating slowly and deliberately. People. Like. What? Nearly fifty years of being gay has taught Fidelman that it is a mistake to let certain statements pass unchallenged.

stared at the herd, and they stared back. One of them stood in profile to the house, half a ton of horse. The scars scrawled across his side looked like they might be a decade old, not a few hours, but for all that, they were quite distinct, in silver relief against his fine white hair. Hacked there in the horse’s flesh were the words FUCK YOU. They whinnied together, the pack of them. It sounded like laughter.

Imagine yourself having a fight with your romantic partner. The tension of the situation makes your limbic system run at full throttle and you become flooded with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenalin. The high levels of these chemicals suddenly make you so damn angry, that you burst out in front of your partner saying, “I wish you die, so that I can have some peace in my life”. Given the stress of the situation through highly active limbic system, your PFC loses its freedom to take the right decision and you burst out with foul language in front of your partner, that may ruin your relationship. In simple terms due to your mental instability, you lost your free will to make the right decision. But when the conversation is over, and you relax for a while, your stress hormone levels come down to normal, and you regain your usual cheerful state of mind. Immediately, your PFC starts analyzing the explosive conversation you had with your partner. Healthy activity of the entire frontal lobes, especially the PFC suddenly overwhelms you with a feeling of guilt. Your brain makes you realize, that you have done something devilish. As a result, now you find yourself making the willful decision of apologizing to your partner and making up to him or her, no matter how much effort it takes, because your PFC comes up the solution that it is the healthiest thing to do for your personal life. From this you can see, that what you call free will is something that is not consistent. It changes based on your mental health. Mental instability or illness, truly cripples your free will. And the healthier your frontal lobes are, the better you can take good decisions. And the most effective way to keep your frontal lobes healthy is to practice some kind of meditation.

In the Man Mall there’s a shop that sells fireworks, another that sells guns, a liquor store, a tattoo parlor, and an adult-toy shop with a peep show in the back. With forty dollars in your pocket, you can hit the Man Mall on a Friday night, get shitfaced, get blown by a stripper, get her name tattooed on your arm, celebrate by launching a bottle rocket over the interstate, and pick up a .38 so you’ll have an easy way to kill yourself in the morning.

The trailer rocked as the bulldozer slammed into it. The trailer lurched, windows shattering. The lights went out. The trailer backed up, took another run, full-throttle this time. The blade of the bulldozer punched through a wall of the office, the engine revving as it slowly pushed the trailer toward the ravine. One wall buckled as the trailer tore free of its foundation, digging furrows in the earth as it was pushed closer and closer to the edge of the ravine.

[Booker T. Washington's] doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro problem to the Negro’s shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs. The South ought to be led, by candid and honest criticism, to assert her better self and do her full duty to the race she has cruelly wronged and is still wronging. The North—her co-partner in guilt—cannot salve her conscience by plastering it with gold. We cannot settle this problem by diplomacy and suaveness, by “policy” alone. If worse come to worst, can the moral fibre of this country survive the slow throttling and murder of nine millions of men?

The first time he’d cut off ears because he was there and it was being done, but that was it. He wasn’t one of those who once they were in all that lawlessness couldn’t wait to get going, the ones who weren’t too well put together or were pretty aggressive to start off with and only needed the slightest opportunity to go ape-shit. One guy in his unit, guy they called Big Man, he wasn’t there one or two days when he’d slashed some pregnant woman’s belly open. Farley was himself only beginning to get good at it at the end of his first tour. But the second time, in this unit where there are a lot of other guys who’d also come back and who hadn’t come back just to kill time or to make a couple extra bucks, this second time, in with these guys who are always looking to be put out in front, ape-shit guys who recognize the horror but know it is the very best moment of their lives, he is ape-shit too. In a firefight, running from danger, blasting with guns, you can’t not be frightened, but you can go berserk and get the rush, and so the second time he goes berserk. The second time he fucking wreaks havoc. Living right out there on the edge, full throttle, the excitement and the fear, and there’s nothing in civilian life that can match it. Door gunning. They’re losing helicopters and they need door gunners. They ask at some point for door gunners and he jumps at it, he volunteers. Up there above the action, and everything looks small from above, and he just guns down huge. Whatever moves. Death and destruction, that is what door gunning is all about. With the added attraction that you don’t have to be down in the jungle the whole time. But then he comes home and it’s not better than the first time, it’s worse. Not like the guys in World War II: they had the ship, they got to relax, someone took care of them, asked them how they were. There’s no transition. One day he’s door gunning in Vietnam, seeing choppers explode, in midair seeing his buddies explode, down so low he smells skin cooking, hears the cries, sees whole villages going up in flames, and the next day he’s back in the Berkshires. And now he really doesn’t belong, and, besides, he’s got fears now about things going over his head. He doesn’t want to be around other people, he can’t laugh or joke, he feels that he is no longer a part of their world, that he has seen and done things so outside what these people know about that he cannot connect to them and they cannot connect to him. They told him he could go home? How could he go home?

Summer spirit, now she closes book’s end, Days of youth spent, carefree with friends. Kari plays now to that what she does not wish, Lost summers days and angelic youth a’ missed. Seasons do change and children grow up, Passing through lives, life never stops. Endless years, bleak they the mind, Adventures of youth, throttle in time. Desires entwine, one grows old, Love loses her grasp, love slips from her hold. Bygone dreams, sleep they soundly by, Hopes for another child, not her soul-self I. Grasped for never, dreams never learn to fly (Within one’s dungeon, the darkest place to die). And Winter’s chill, lays she to rest, Dreams unobtained, fallen in the quest. Kari knew she was but a dream, solo in its flight, Ne’er taking wing again to caress innocence’s light. And to live and live as she once is and now, Stands she forever, stranded on time’s fallowed ground. The love she lost she can never now have, Graspless eternity plucked burning from her hands. Love forsaken, the summer, silent and high, Tears shed for what was once and not now, I. Dreamless hopes far long spent, Lie shallow within, deep strength relents. A hollow traverse of endless life, Lives she the knowing of eternalness light. Aye, silent dreams slip they the day’s long night, To tell of loves once beholden now lost in her sight. In love’s abandonment, Kari, spills she away, To dream upon those clouds again on some somber, summer day. Thus, before evening rusts corrode the golden days, Before innocence is raped and youth spirited away, Before night blossoms forth, and day forgets day, Summer’s love requests of us that we all do stay– To hear a tale one has long since heard before, To tell our souls twice over now and forevermore– Graves are full of those who never lived but could, Heaven and Hell are packed with those who knew they should, And eternity, relentless eternity, brims with those that would.

When a middle school teacher in San Antonio, Texas, named Rick Riordan began thinking about the troublesome kids in his class, he was struck by a topsy-turvy idea. Maybe the wild ones weren’t hyperactive; maybe they were misplaced heroes. After all, in another era the same behavior that is now throttled with Ritalin and disciplinary rap sheets would have been the mark of greatness, the early blooming of a true champion. Riordan played with the idea, imagining the what-ifs. What if strong, assertive children were redirected rather than discouraged? What if there were a place for them, an outdoor training camp that felt like a playground, where they could cut loose with all those natural instincts to run, wrestle, climb, swim, and explore? You’d call it Camp Half-Blood, Riordan decided, because that’s what we really are—half animal and half higher-being, halfway between each and unsure how to keep them in balance. Riordan began writing, creating a troubled kid from a broken home named Percy Jackson who arrives at a camp in the woods and is transformed when the Olympian he has inside is revealed, honed, and guided. Riordan’s fantasy of a hero school actually does exist—in bits and pieces, scattered across the globe. The skills have been fragmented, but with a little hunting, you can find them all. In a public park in Brooklyn, a former ballerina darts into the bushes and returns with a shopping bag full of the same superfoods the ancient Greeks once relied on. In Brazil, a onetime beach huckster is reviving the lost art of natural movement. And in a lonely Arizona dust bowl called Oracle, a quiet genius disappeared into the desert after teaching a few great athletes—and, oddly, Johnny Cash and the Red Hot Chili Peppers—the ancient secret of using body fat as fuel. But the best learning lab of all was a cave on a mountain behind enemy lines—where, during World War II, a band of Greek shepherds and young British amateurs plotted to take on 100,000 German soldiers. They weren’t naturally strong, or professionally trained, or known for their courage. They were wanted men, marked for immediate execution. But on a starvation diet, they thrived. Hunted and hounded, they got stronger. They became such natural born heroes, they decided to follow the lead of the greatest hero of all, Odysseus, and

Reaching the door of his mother’s apartments, Marcus found it locked. He rattled the handle violently. “Open it,” he bellowed. “Open it now!” Silence, and then a maid’s frightened reply from within. “Milord… the countess bade me to tell you that she is resting.” “I’ll send her to her eternal fucking rest,” Marcus roared, “if this door isn’t opened now.” “Milord, please—” He drew back three or four paces and hurled himself against the door, which shook on its hinges and partially gave with a splintering sound. There were fearful cries in the hallway from a pair of female guests who happened to witness the astonishing display of raging frenzy. “Dear God,” one exclaimed to the other, “he’s gone berserk!” Marcus drew back again and lunged at the door, this time sending chunks of paneling flying. He felt Simon Hunt’s hands grasp him from behind, and he whirled with his fist drawn back, ready to launch an attack on all fronts. “Jesus,” Hunt muttered, retreating a step or two with his hands raised in a defensive gesture. His face was taut and his eyes were wide, and he stared at Marcus as if he were a stranger. “Westcliff—” “Stay the hell out of my way!” “Gladly. But let me point out that if our positions were reversed, you would be the first to tell me to keep a cool—” Ignoring him, Marcus swerved back to the door and targeted the disjointed lock with a powerful, accurately aimed blow of his boot heel. The housemaid’s scream shot through the doorway as the ruined portal swung open. Bursting into the receiving room, Marcus charged toward the bedchamber, where the countess sat in a chair by a small hearth fire. Fully dressed and swathed in ropes of pearls, she stared at him with amused disdain. Breathing heavily, Marcus advanced on her with bloodlust racing through his veins. It was certain that the countess had no idea that she was in mortal danger, or she would not have received him so calmly. “Full of animal spirits today, are we?” she asked. “Your descent from gentleman to savage brute has been accomplished so very quickly. I must offer Miss Bowman my compliments on her efficacy.” “What have you done with her?” “Done with her?” Her expression taunted him with its innocent perplexity. “What the devil do you mean, Westcliff?” “You met with her at Butterfly Court this morning.” “I never walk that far from the manor,” the countess said haughtily. “What a ridiculous asser—” She let out a strident cry as Marcus seized her, his fingers wrapping around the pearl ropes and tightening them around her throat. “Tell me where she is, or I’ll snap your neck like a wishbone!” Simon Hunt seized him from behind once more, determined to prevent a murder from occurring. “Westcliff!” Marcus closed his hand in a harder grip around the pearls. He glared without blinking into his mother’s face, not missing the flicker of vindictive triumph that lurked in her eyes. He did not take his gaze from hers even as he heard his sister Livia’s voice. “Marcus,” she said urgently. “Marcus, listen to me! You have my permission to throttle her later. I’ll even help. But at least wait until we’ve found out what she’s done.” Marcus tightened the tension of the pearls until the elderly woman’s eyes seemed to protrude from their shallow sockets. “Your only value to me,” he said in a low tone, “is your knowledge of Lillian Bowman’s whereabouts. If I can’t obtain that from you, I’ll send you to the devil. Tell me, or I’ll choke it from you. And believe that I have enough of my father in me to do it without a second thought.

Elvis was pretty slick. Nonetheless, I knew that he was cheating. His four-of-a-kind would beat my full house. I had two choices. I could fold my hand and lose all the money I’d contributed to the pot, or I could match Elvis’s bet and continue to play. If a gambler thought he was in an honest game, he would probably match the bet thinking his full house was a sure winner. The con artist would bet large amounts of money on the remaining cards, knowing he had a winning hand. I narrowed my eyes and pursed my lips, as if struggling to decide whether to wager five hundred pesos or fold my hand and call it quits. I knew there were five men between me and the door and watched them from the corner of my eye. Even if I folded and accepted my losses, I knew they would not let me leave without taking all my cash. They had strength in numbers and would strong arm me if they could. The men stared, intently watching my next move. I set down my beer and took five one hundred peso notes from my wallet. The men at the bar relaxed. My adrenaline surged, pumping through my brain, sharpening my focus as I prepared for action. I moved as if to place my bet on the table, but instead my hand bumped my beer bottle, spilling it onto Elvis’ lap. Elvis reacted instinctively to the cold beer, pushing back from the table and rising to his feet. I jumped up from my chair making a loud show of apologizing, and in the ensuing pandemonium I snatched all the money off the table and bolted for the door! My tactics took everyone by complete surprise. I had a small head start, but the Filipinos recovered quickly and scrambled to cut off my escape. I dashed to the door and barely made it to the exit ahead of the Filipinos. The thugs were nearly upon me when I suddenly wheeled round and kicked the nearest man square in the chest. My kick cracked ribs and launched the shocked Filipino through the air into the other men, tumbling them to the ground. For the moment, my assailants were a jumble of tangled bodies on the floor. I darted out the door and raced down the busy sidewalk, dodging pedestrians. I looked back and saw the furious Filipinos swarming out of the bar. Running full tilt, I grabbed onto the rail of a passing Jeepney and swung myself into the vehicle. The wide-eyed passengers shrunk back, trying to keep their distance from the crazy American. I yelled to the driver, “Step on the gas!” and thrust a hundred peso note into his hand. I looked back and saw all six of Johnny’s henchmen piling onto one tricycle. The jeepney driver realized we were being pursued and stomped the gas pedal to the floor. The jeepney surged into traffic and accelerated away from the tricycle. The tricycle was only designed for one driver and two passengers. With six bodies hanging on, the overloaded motorcycle was slow and unstable. The motorcycle driver held the throttle wide open and the tricycle rocked side to side, almost tipping over, as the frustrated riders yelled curses and flailed their arms futilely. My jeepney continued to speed through the city, pulling away from our pursuers. Finally, I could no longer see the tricycle behind us. When I was sure I had escaped, I thanked the driver and got off at the next stop. I hired a tricycle of my own and carefully made my way back to my neighborhood, keeping careful watch for Johnny and his friends. I knew that Johnny was in a frustrated rage. Not only had I foiled his plans, I had also made off with a thousand pesos of his cash. Even though I had great fun and came out of my escapade in good shape, my escape was risky and could’ve had a very different outcome. I feel a disclaimer is appropriate for those people who think it is fun to con street hustlers, “Kids. Don’t try this at home.

Now you bitches can stand here quaking in your boots about what your women might do to you. I’m going to get my woman.

How does he get that caveman shit to work for him? I would get my balls ripped off and stuffed in my mouth if I pulled what he does.

The world didn’t run on rainbows and glitter and unicorn farts. And in every corner of the globe, there were bad men ready and willing to do bad things.

With so much testosterone floating around, it’s like I’m standing inside of a testicle. And I’m afraid of what getting any closer to the source will do to my eggs. They might spontaneously fertilize or something.

There are no brakes in loving you. No life preservers. It is full throttle or nothing at all. I cannot stop, I won’t stop. I will drown in love and return dripping with madness and poetry. It is an art, a gift, this kind of lunacy.

Intuitively we all know that nothing operates most efficiently at full throttle. Is it any wonder that a food system predicated on faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper would create an ignorant, duplicitous, harried, obese citizenry? A culture's people carry in their heads and physiques the manifestation of the food system's objectives.

Ike learned the truth of the war. Visiting the First Marine Division at Panmunjom, just outside the Panmunjom Circle—the ten-mile area where lackluster and ineffectual talks were going on—he was outraged to find that as the North Koreans, now supported by the Chinese, shelled the troops regularly each day, American soldiers were under orders not to fire back. Eisenhower was president-elect, but in Korea everyone saw him as General Eisenhower. They were transported back in time to when he had last defeated a monstrous enemy. Ike’s warnings were not bluster, and he had the reputation to pull it off. He warned that unless there was an agreement to sit down at Panmunjom and work out an immediate truce, the war would resume full throttle. “They knew he wasn’t kidding,” said Hagerty. “The word was sent . . . you either sit down and settle this, or there’s going to be no imaginary line at the Yalu River, there’s going to be hot pursuit of your planes regardless of where they come from, and we’re going to end it.” The commanders on the ground favored a full-throttle approach, but Ike, the old general, wanted to see the fight come to an end. And he succeeded, within six months of taking office. After the Korean War, only one known military death (in Vietnam) occurred during his administration.

My coworkers thought I was odd because I always showed up thrilled to be at work. My body ached for movement after so long in prison, and my pride ached to bring home a paycheck again. This was my second chance, and I worked full-throttle, which pleased the manager but made the crew a little ticked off, like I was making them look bad. But I didn’t need friends. I needed a second chance.

Two-One Alpha, ready for you. Move it. We’re in kind of a hurry to find a quieter place!” Two wounded men were hauled to the helicopter first by four of their buddies, with the rest strafing the hill to keep the Taliban heads down. The fright and panic in the eyes and faces of the soldiers were clearly visible. Their screams rose above the thundering noise of the engines as they pushed the wounded in and then took up position outside the chopper to provide covering fire for the remaining men to get in. “All in. Let’s get out of here!” Leo shouted. “Grab tight. It’s going to be a rough ride boys!” John pulled the chopper into a steep climb while banking away from the hill. With no fire coming from the doorgun to keep them down, the full force and frustration of the enemy was now directed at the chopper and its occupants. They saw their prey escaping out of their hands right in front of their eyes. A burning pain shot through John’s back and legs as the body of the helicopter shuddered under the power of the two Rolls-Royce Gem turboshaft engines at full throttle. Smoke started to billow from the starboard engine. I have to get over that hill three miles away. Why am I dizzy? I have to get these boys out of trouble. I have to level the chopper and save power. I must get over that hill. I must get out of the reach of the bullets. “Doug! Doug! Can you hear me? What’s wrong man?” Leo screamed in a high-pitched, panicked voice. “Oh my God, you’ve been hit! Are you ok? Shit man, put the chopper down now. You’ll crash and kill us all!” “That hill … I have to get over it … out of range … I must get us there ...” Doug stuttered. “What was that? I can’t hear you. For God’s sake put the chopper down!” Leo shouted at the top of his voice. “Going down, going down … radio for help!” John whispered, a few seconds before everything went dark. The nightmare and the math Doug paid little heed to his passengers as he banked away from the canyon rim. Max was back there to help them. Doug had plenty on his mind, between the flashback to his crash in Afghanistan and wondering when whoever had shot two of his passengers would show up and try to shoot the chopper down here and now, over the Grand Canyon. Not to mention nursing the aging machine to do his bidding. Within minutes after takeoff from the canyon site, lying in the back of the chopper, JR and Roy were oblivious to their surroundings due to the morphine injection administered to them by Max Ellis – an ex-Marine medic and the third member of the Rossler boys’ rescue expedition. Others on the chopper had more on their minds. Raj was in his own world, eyes closed, wondering about his wife Sushma, their child, and the future. He and Sushma were not the outdoors adventure and camping types – living in a cave with other people was going to take some getting used to for them. They both grew up and had lived in the city all their lives. How was this going to work out