“
You can be a pawn, be someone’s reward, and spend the rest of your immortal life bowing and scraping and pretending you’re less than him, than Ianthe, than any of us. If you want to pick that road, then fine. A shame, but it’s your choice.” The shadow of wings rippled again. “But I know you—more than you realize, I think—and I don’t believe for one damn minute that you’re remotely fine with being a pretty trophy for someone who sat on his ass for nearly fifty years, then sat on his ass while you were shredded apart—”
“Stop it—”
“Or,” he plowed ahead, “you’ve got another choice. You can master whatever powers we gave to you, and make it count. You can play a role in this war. Because war is coming one way or another, and do not try to delude yourself that any of the Fae will give a shit about your family across the wall when our whole territory is likely to become a charnel house.” I stared
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
Anger gets you into trouble, ego keeps you in trouble.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
...my father, [was] a mid-level phonecompany manager who treated my mother at best like an incompetent employee. At worst? He never beat her, but his pure, inarticulate fury would fill the house for days, weeks, at a time, making the air humid, hard to breathe, my father stalking around with his lower jaw jutting out, giving him the look of a wounded, vengeful boxer, grinding his teeth so loud you could hear it across the room ... I'm sure he told himself: 'I never hit her'. I'm sure because of this technicality he never saw himself as an abuser. But he turned our family life into an endless road trip with bad directions and a rage-clenched driver, a vacation that never got a chance to be fun.
”
”
Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl)
“
Tamlin isn’t your keeper, and you know it.”
“I’m his subject, and he is my High Lord—“
“You are no one’s subject.”
“I will say this once—and only once. You can be a pawn, be someone’s reward, and spend the rest of your immortal life bowing and scraping and pretending you’re less than him, than Ianthe, than any of us. If you want to pick that road, then fine. A shame, but it’s your choice. But I know you – more than you realize, I think – and I don’t believe for one damn minute that you’re remotely fine with being a pretty trophy for someone who sat on his ass for nearly fifty years then sat on his ass while you were shredded apart.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
I'd like to leave you with a bit of wisdom I picked up from a documentary I saw this weekend: Mad Max: Fury Road. All you young people really need to succeed in the future is a reliable source of fuel and a fanatical cadre of psychopathic motorcycle killers.
”
”
Stephen Colbert
“
Don't you ever touch my car again," Santangelo says with the same fury he had on his face when Jonah Griggs made
comments about his mother.
Raffy touches the car with her finger in a very dramatic way.
"You've just made our hit list," he says, getting a hanky out of his pocket and cleaning off some imaginary mark.
”
”
Melina Marchetta (On the Jellicoe Road)
“
I reach the bottom and smash into him with my fists as hard as I can. He falls and I can't believe he goes down that easy, caught off balance.
"You care about nothing, you piece of shit!"
I'm on the verge of tears, like I always seem to be these days, and I hear the catch in my voice and I hate myself for it. He throws me off him and I can tell there is a fury in him.
"Never," he tells me in a tone full of ice, "under-estimate who or what I care for.
”
”
Melina Marchetta (On the Jellicoe Road)
“
Jin crowed. "The Kira special. A remark guaranteed to send the recipient to Angerville, by way of Fury Road. I like your style, Kira Forrest. It gets me right in my tingly bits.
”
”
T.A. White (Age of Deception (The Firebird Chronicles, #2))
“
Decoding (a child's difficult) behavior is like looking at a rain wrapped tornado crossing the road in front of you. You see the fury of rain, hail, wind and debris, but you have to look real hard to see the driving force behind it.
”
”
Deborah A. Beasley (Successful Foster Care Adoption)
“
He had no idea of the impression he was making and cared less...He was finally an Angel, as I always knew he would become; but like any Angel he still had rages and furies...
”
”
Jack Kerouac (On the Road)
“
Dear Charls. Whatever will you do with your own Kemptian silk? It will spoil on the road.’ ‘We aren’t carrying any Kemptian silk,’ said the Prince. It took a moment for those words to be understood, and then Makon’s expression changed. ‘Oh, did you think we were? I’m afraid you undercut yourself for no reason.’ A look of fury had appeared on Makon’s face. The Prince said, ‘A little healthy competition.’ Dinner
”
”
C.S. Pacat (The Adventures of Charls, the Veretian Cloth Merchant (Captive Prince Short Stories, #3))
“
As they walked through the bright noon, up the sandy road with the dispersing congregation talking easily again group to group, she continued to weep, unmindful of the talk.
"He sho a preacher, mon!! He didn't look like much at first, but hush!"
"He seed de power en de glory."
"Yes, suh. He seed hit. Face to face he seed hit."
Dilsey made no sound, her face did not quiver as the tears took their sunken and devious courses, walking with her head up, making no effort to dry them away even.
"Whyn't you quit dat, mammy?" Frony said. "Wid all dese people lookin. We be passin white folks soon."
"I've seed de first en de last," Dilsey said. "Never you mind me."
"First en last whut?" Frony said.
"Never you mind," Dilsey said. "I seed de beginnin, en now I sees de endin.
”
”
William Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury)
“
A street turned off at right angles, descending, and became a dirt road. On either hand the land dropped more sharply; a broad flat dotted with small cabins whose weathered roofs were on a level with the crown of the road. They were set in small grassless plots littered with broken things, bricks, planks, crockery, things of a once utilitarian value. What growth there was consisted of rank weeds and the trees were mulberries and locusts and sycamores--trees that partook also of the foul desiccation which surrounded the houses; trees whose very burgeoning seemed to be the sad and stubborn remnant of September, as if even spring had passed them by, leaving them to feed upon the rich and unmistakable smell of negroes in which they grew.
”
”
William Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury)
“
Excerpt from "The Long Road from Perdition" for the day:
"...I've always been drawn to the ocean. It is here that I now feel peaceful and can lose my thoughts while immersed in the deafening sounds of waves crashing around me. The spray and mist of the ocean's past seem to be a living, breathing yet wounded animal. The fury of the waves never settled and the spew of the foam touched all that dared to sit near it.
There is no reason to flinch as the waves spray and crash against the shore. It is a natural progression I have learned to endure. However, it is the rescinding of the waves and fluid release of fury that I struggle to understand and coexist with peacefully. I hope one day to master it.
”
”
J.R. Stone
“
Out of Bull Run would come an effort so prodigious that simply to make it would change America forever. In the dust and smoke along the Warrenton Road an era had come to an end.
”
”
Bruce Catton (The Coming Fury)
“
Hope is a mistake. If you cant fix what's broken, you will go insane.
”
”
Mad Max Fury Road
“
Fury spat out of his eyes when he told of things he hated; great glows of joy replaced this when he suddenly got happy; every muscle twitched to live and go.
”
”
Jack Kerouac (On the Road)
“
I am the one that runs from both the living and the dead. Hunted by scavengers, haunted by those I could not protect. So I exist in this wasteland, reduced to one instinct: survive.
”
”
Mad Max Fury Road
“
There was a caged fury to him. A feralness that seeped out of every pore.
“Do you know when the next train to Yass is coming?” I had asked.
“Go to hell,” he said, but there was a desolate fear in his eyes and I couldn’t look away.
“Been there. Trust me. It’s so overrated.”
And for reasons I will never understand, I received a smile from Jonah Griggs, and there was a yearning in it, touching a nerve inside me that still freaks me out to this day.
”
”
Melina Marchetta (On the Jellicoe Road)
“
Multi-colored lights flashed and glared on the wet road and cast eerie reflections, reminiscent of artistic surrealism. Fillion imagined that his distress and anger swirled and moved with the refracted lights, creating an urban masterpiece of demented fury.
”
”
Jesikah Sundin (Legacy (The Biodome Chronicles, #1))
“
You will be hated and hunted. You will become a nightmare tale told to scare small children when they refuse to sleep at night, a monster to haunt the by-roads, a living legend of terror for travellers, a scourge on your country, on your people! They shall hate you, Raziel!
”
”
Steven Raaymakers (The Aria of Steel Trilogy)
“
Here my sister, after a fit of clappings and screamings, beat her hands upon her bosom and upon her knees, and threw her cap off, and pulled her hair down - which were the last stages on her road to frenzy. Being by this time a perfect fury and a complete success, she made a dash to the door
”
”
Charles Dickens
“
While I was brushing my hair the half hour went. But there was until the three quarters anyway, except suppose seeing on the rushing darkness only his own face no broken feather unless two of them but not two like that going to Boston the same night then my face his face for an instant across the crashing when out of darkness two lighted windows in rigid fleeing crash gone his face and mine just I see saw did I see not goodbye the marquee empty of eating the road empty in darkness in silence the bridge arching into silence darkness sleep the water peaceful and swift not goodbye I
”
”
William Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury (Vintage International))
“
Rituals slow time; the names we give acts and the beliefs that undergird those acts contribute to a sense of order. Accepting an order produced by a power holder— internalizing its assumptions about duty, honor, and justice— delivers a stable form of obedience. Power is thus most effective when it is invisible.
”
”
Matthew Meyer (Mad Max and Philosophy: Thinking Through the Wasteland (The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series))
“
As they started across the road, a boy biked by,shooting Grant a quick look before he ducked his chin on his chest and pedaled away.
"One of your admirers?" Gennie asked dryly.
"I chased him and three of his friends off the cliffs a few weeks back."
"You're a real sport."
Grant only grinned, remembering his first reaction had been fury at having his peace interrupted, then fear that the four careless boys would break their necks on the rocks. "Ayah," he said, recalling with pleasure the acid tongue-lashing he'd doled out.
"Do you really kick sick dogs?" she asked as she caught the gleam in his eye.
"Only on my own land.
”
”
Nora Roberts (The MacGregors: Alan & Grant (The MacGregors, #3-4))
“
Her mother had smelled of cold and scales, her father of stone dust and dog. She imagined her husband's mother, whom she had never met, had a whiff of rotting apples, though her stationary had stunk of baby powder and rose perfume. Sally was starch, cedar, her dead grandmother sandalwood, her uncle, swiss cheese. People told her she smelled like garlic, like chalk, like nothing at all. Lotto, clean as camphor at his neck and belly, like electrified pennies at the armpit, like chlorine at the groin. She swallowed. Such things, details noticed only on the edges of thought would not return.
'Land,' Mathilde said, 'odd name for a guy like you.'
'Short for Roland,' the boy said.
Where the August sun had been steaming over the river, a green cloud was forming. It was still terrifically hot, but the birds had stopped singing. A feral cat scooted up the road on swift paws. It would rain soon.
'Alright Roland,' Mathilde said, suppressing as sigh, 'sing your song.
”
”
Lauren Groff (Fates and Furies)
“
But now, under the pitying eyes of these Americans, we perceive how much in vain it has all been. The sight of their interminable, well-equipped columns reveals to us against what hopeless odds in man power and material we made our stand. We bite our lips and look at each other. Bethke withdraws his shoulder from under the American’s hand; Kosole stares ahead into vacancy; Ludwig Breyer draws himself up—we grip our rifles more firmly; we brace our knees, our eyes become harder and our gaze does not falter. We look back once more over the country whence we have come; our faces become tight with suppressed emotion and once again the searing memory passes through us: all we have done, all we have suffered, and all that we have left behind. We do not know what is the matter with us; but if a bitter word were now loosed against us, it would sting us to fury, and whether we wanted to or not we would burst forward, wild and breathless, mad and lost, to fight—in spite of everything, to fight again.
”
”
Erich Maria Remarque (The Road Back)
“
In the fury of their assault, Ilyin’s ideas clarify individualism as a political virtue, the one that enables all the others. Are we individuals who see that there are many good things, and that politics involves responsible consideration and choice rather than a vision of totality? Do we see that there are other individuals in the world who might be at work on the same project? Do we understand that being an individual requires a constant consideration of endless factuality, a constant selection among many irreducible passions? The virtue of individualism becomes visible in the throes of our moment, but it will abide only if we see history and ourselves within it, and accept our share of responsibility.
”
”
Timothy Snyder (The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America)
“
As a country, we take out loans and go to school. We take out loans and buy a car. We take out loans and buy a home. It's not always that we simply "want" these things. Rather, it's often the case that we use our obligations as confirmations that "We're doing something." If we have things to pay for, we need a job. If we have a job, we need a car. If we have such things, we have a life, albeit an ordinary and monotonous life, but a life no less. If we have debt, we have a goal-- we have a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Debt narrows our options. It gives us a good reason to stick it out at a job, sink into sofas, and savor the comforts of the status quo. Debt is sought so we have a game to play, a battle to fight, a mythology to live out. It gives us a script to read, rules to abide by, instructions to follow. And when we see someone who doesn't play by our rules-- someone who's spurned the comforts of hearth and home-- we shift in our chairs and call him or her crazy. We feel a fury for the hobo and the hitchhiker, the hippie and gypsy, the vagrant and nomad-- not because we have any reason to believe these people will do us any harm, but because they make us feel uncomfortable.They remind us of the inner longings we've squelched, the hero or heroine we've buried beneath a houseful of junk, the spirit we've exorcised out of ourselves so we could remain with our feet on the ground, stable and secure.
”
”
Ken Ilgunas (Walden on Wheels: On The Open Road from Debt to Freedom)
“
He never beat her, but his pure, inarticulate fury would fill the house for days, weeks, at a time, making the air humid, hard to breathe, my father stalking around with his lower jaw jutting out, giving him the look of a wounded, vengeful boxer, grinding his teeth so loud you could hear it across the room. Throwing things near her but not exactly at her. I’m sure he told himself: I never hit her. I’m sure because of this technicality he never saw himself as an abuser. But he turned our family life into an endless road trip with bad directions and a rage-clenched driver, a vacation that never got a chance to be fun.
”
”
Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl)
“
Those who live their lives quietly, unmoved by either great sorrows or great joy, are often, in their final years, granted the dispensation of Discovery. Now, for the first time, they find out the secondary roads of the imagination, the side-streets, the alley-ways, the low doors each with a key in the lock.
...But those who have lived richly, exhaustively, staring into every face, attentive to every voice, are only too often pursued by the spinster Furies, and are driven at the end down avenues of stone where the walls reach to the sky, and the doors are sealed, and the pavements are rubbered against all sound but the beat of the hurrying heart.
”
”
Pamela Hansford Johnson (An Avenue Of Stone)
“
He never beat her, but his pure, inarticulate fury would fill the house for days, weeks, at a time, making the air humid, hard to breathe, my father stalking around with his lower jaw out, giving him the look of a wounded , vengeful boxer, grinding his teeth so loud you could hear it across the room. Throwing things near her but not exactly at her. I'm sure he told himself he never actually hit her. I'm sure because of his technicality he never saw himself as an abuser. But he turned our family life into an endless road trip with bad directions and a rage-clenched driver, a vacation that never got a chance to be fun. Don't make me turn this car around. Please, really, turn it around.
”
”
Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl)
“
It has been said that the man who loves God needs seven incarnations in order to enter Nirvana and liberate himself, and that the man who hates him needs only three. It is without God but his own 'fury' that Parsifal achieved the Grail and his individuation, his Self, his totality. This is the difference between the Liquid Road and the Dry Road. We do not know whether, as well as his 'fury', his Phobos, his fear of the Mother, Parsifal carried with him a 'memory of a beloved', as he was supposed to have advised his friend Gawaine to do. Parsifal, with his 'fury', or his hatred, was resisting a participation mystique. Samadhi, fusion with Adhi, the Primordial Being, doesn't await him at the end of his road. Because this would be the way of sainthood. What awaits him is Kaivalya, total separation, supreme Individuation, Absolute Personality, the ultimate solitude of the Superman. This is the way of the magician, the Siddha, the tantric hero of the Grail. The cosmic isolation of the risen Purusha.
”
”
Miguel Serrano (Nos, Book of the Resurrection)
“
I’m happy here, Tate. I’ll let you know when the baby comes,” she added quietly. “Certainly, you’ll have access to him any time you like.”
Doors were closing. Walls were going up around her. He clenched his teeth together in impotent fury.
“I want you,” he said forcefully, which was not at all what he wanted to say.
“I don’t want you,” she replied, lying through her teeth. She wasn’t about to become an obligation again. She even smiled. “Thanks for coming to see about me. I’ll phone Leta when she and Matt come home from Nassau.”
“They’re already home,” he said flatly. “I’ve been to make peace with them.”
“Have you?” She smiled gently. “I’m glad. I’m so glad. It broke Leta’s heart that you wouldn’t speak to her.”
“What do you think it’s going to do to her when she hears that you won’t marry the father of your child?”
She gaped at him. “She…knows?”
“They both know, Cecily,” he returned. “They were looking forward to making a fuss over you.” He turned toward the door, bristling with hurt pride and rejection. “You can call my mother and tell her yourself that you aren’t coming back. Then you can live here alone in the middle of ‘blizzard country,; and I wish you well.” He turned at the door with his black eyes flashing. “As for me, hell will freeze over before I come near you again!”
He went out and slammed the door. Cecily stared after him with her heart in her throat. Why was he so angry that she’d relieved him of any obligations about the baby? He couldn’t want her for herself. If he had, if he’d had any real feeling for her, he’d have married her years ago. It was only the baby.
She let the tears rush down her face again with pure misery as she heard the four-wheel drive roar out of the driveway and accelerate down the road. She hoped he didn’t run over anybody. Her hand went to her stomach and she remembered with anguish the look on his face when he’d put his big, strong hand over his child. She’d sent him away for the sake of his own happiness, didn’t he know that? She supposed it was just hurt pride that had caused his outburst. But she wished he hadn’t come. It would be so much harder to live here now that she could see him in this house, in these rooms, and be haunted by the memory of him all over again. He wouldn’t come back. She’d burned her bridges. There was no way to rebuild them.
”
”
Diana Palmer (Paper Rose (Hutton & Co. #2))
“
Almost Out Of The Sky"
Almost out of the sky, half of the moon
anchors between two mountains.
Turning, wandering night, the digger of eyes.
Let’s see how many stars are smashed in the pool.
It makes a cross of mourning between my eyes, and runs away.
Forge of blue metals, nights of stilled combats,
my heart revolves like a crazy wheel.
Girl who have come from so far, been brought from so far,
sometimes your glance flashes out under the sky.
Rumbling, storm, cyclone of fury,
you cross above my heart without stopping.
Wind from the tombs carries off, wrecks, scatters your sleepy root.
The big trees on the other side of her, unprooted.
But you, cloudless girl, question of smoke, corn tassel.
You were what the wind was making with illuminated leaves.
Behind the nocturnal mountains, white lily of conflagration,
ah, I can say nothing! You were made of everything.
Longing that sliced my breast into pieces,
it is time to take another road, on which she does not smile.
Storm that buries the bells, muddy swirl of torments,
why touch her now, why make her sad.
Oh to follow the road that leads away from everything,
without anguish, death, winter waiting along it
with their eyes open through the dew
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Matthew, we need your help. What do we do?”
“Look at my new kicks.” He raised one boot. “Finn said I’m ballin’ like a pimp now.” Then he frowned. “Good thing?”
“Yes, yes, but—”
“He took care of me when you abandoned me.”
God, the guilt. In a rush, I said, “I thought you’d be safer at Finn’s than going back out on the road with me! You know how dangerous it’ll be to reach the coast.” But then, I’d believed that before I’d understood how lethal I could be.
“Dangerous Empress!”
“This isn’t working!” “Tapped out.” My glyphs were dark, the fuel gauge blinking E. Selena’s hand shot out and smacked my face.
“What the hell?” When I raised my palm to my cheek, she slapped the other one harder.
I felt my glyphs stirring.
“If you don’t want these cards to die, then get to work, Evie! You need to look like the Empress of Old, slithery and creepy and sexy all at the same time.”
“Touch me again, and you’ll see slithery and creepy—”
With her enhanced speed, she shoved me back before I could even react. I tripped over my pack, landing on my ass. “You bitch!” I bounded up, thorn claws bared.
“That’s it! Sell it, sister, or we are dead!”
I gazed down at my body, at my skin glowing through the fabric of my clothes. Sharp emotions like fury and utter terror always sparked my powers; Selena had pissed me off enough to give me a jump-start. I narrowed my eyes at Matthew. “This is why you want me angry, terrified, and sad for the rainy season?”
Blank smile.
”
”
Kresley Cole (Endless Knight (The Arcana Chronicles, #2))
“
We end up at an outdoor paintball course in Jersey. A woodsy, rural kind of place that’s probably brimming with mosquitos and Lyme disease. When I find out Logan has never played paintball before, I sign us both up.
There’s really no other option.
And our timing is perfect—they’re just about to start a new battle. The worker gathers all the players in a field and divides us into two teams, handing out thin blue and yellow vests to distinguish friend from foe.
Since Logan and I are the oldest players, we both become the team captains. The wide-eyed little faces of Logan’s squad follow him as he marches back and forth in front of them, lecturing like a hot, modern-day Winston Churchill.
“We’ll fight them from the hills, we’ll fight them in the trees. We’ll hunker down in the river and take them out, sniper-style. Save your ammo—fire only when you see the whites of their eyes. Use your heads.”
I turn to my own ragtag crew.
“Use your hearts. We’ll give them everything we’ve got—leave it all on the field. You know what wins battles? Desire! Guts! Today, we’ll all be frigging Rudy!”
A blond boy whispers to his friend, “Who’s Rudy?”
The kid shrugs.
And another raises his hand. “Can we start now? It’s my birthday and I really want to have cake.”
“It’s my birthday too.” I give him a high-five. “Twinning!”
I raise my gun. “And yes, birthday cake will be our spoils of war! Here’s how it’s gonna go.” I point to the giant on the other side of the field. “You see him, the big guy? We converge on him first. Work together to take him down. Cut off the head,” I slice my finger across my neck like I’m beheading myself, “and the old dog dies.”
A skinny kid in glasses makes a grossed-out face. “Why would you kill a dog? Why would you cut its head off?”
And a little girl in braids squeaks, “Mommy! Mommy, I don’t want to play anymore.”
“No,” I try, “that’s not what I—”
But she’s already running into her mom’s arms. The woman picks her up—glaring at me like I’m a demon—and carries her away.
“Darn.”
Then a soft voice whispers right against my ear.
“They’re already going AWOL on you, lass? You’re fucked.”
I turn to face the bold, tough Wessconian . . . and he’s so close, I can feel the heat from his hard body, see the small sprigs of stubble on that perfect, gorgeous jaw. My brain stutters, but I find the resolve to tease him.
“Dear God, Logan, are you smiling? Careful—you might pull a muscle in your face.”
And then Logan does something that melts my insides and turns my knees to quivery goo.
He laughs.
And it’s beautiful.
It’s a crime he doesn’t do it more often. Or maybe a blessing. Because Logan St. James is a sexy, stunning man on any given day. But when he laughs?
He’s heart-stopping.
He swaggers confidently back to his side and I sneer at his retreating form. The uniformed paintball worker blows a whistle and explains the rules. We get seven minutes to hide first. I cock my paintball shotgun with one hand—like Charlize Theron in Fury fucking Road—and lead my team into the wilderness.
“Come on, children. Let’s go be heroes.”
It was a massacre.
We never stood a chance.
In the end, we tried to rush them—overpower them—but we just ended up running into a hail of balls, getting our hearts and guts splattered with blue paint.
But we tried—I think Rudy and Charlize would be proud
”
”
Emma Chase (Royally Endowed (Royally, #3))
“
The war against ISIS in Iraq was a long, hard slog, and for a time the administration was as guilty of hyping progress as the most imaginative briefers at the old “Five O’Clock Follies” in Saigon had been. In May 2015, an ISIS assault on Ramadi and a sandstorm that grounded U.S. planes sent Iraqi forces and U.S. Special Forces embedded with them fleeing the city. Thanks to growing hostility between the Iraqi government and Iranian-supported militias in the battle, the city wouldn’t be taken until the end of the year. Before it was over we had sent well over five thousand military personnel back to Iraq, including Special Forces operators embedded as advisors with Iraqi and Kurdish units. A Navy SEAL, a native Arizonan whom I had known when he was a boy, was killed in northern Iraq. His name was Charles Keating IV, the grandson of my old benefactor, with whom I had been implicated all those years ago in the scandal his name had branded. He was by all accounts a brave and fine man, and I mourned his loss. Special Forces operators were on the front lines when the liberation of Mosul began in October 2016. At immense cost, Mosul was mostly cleared of ISIS fighters by the end of July 2017, though sporadic fighting continued for months. The city was in ruins, and the traumatized civilian population was desolate. By December ISIS had been defeated everywhere in Iraq. I believe that had U.S. forces retained a modest but effective presence in Iraq after 2011 many of these tragic events might have been avoided or mitigated. Would ISIS nihilists unleashed in the fury and slaughter of the Syrian civil war have extended their dystopian caliphate to Iraq had ten thousand or more Americans been in country? Probably, but with American advisors and airpower already on the scene and embedded with Iraqi security forces, I think their advance would have been blunted before they had seized so much territory and subjected millions to the nightmare of ISIS rule. Would Maliki have concentrated so much power and alienated Sunnis so badly that the insurgency would catch fire again? Would Iran’s influence have been as detrimental as it was? Would Iraqis have collaborated to prevent a full-scale civil war from erupting? No one can answer for certain. But I believe that our presence there would have had positive effects. All we can say for certain is that Iraq still has a difficult road to walk, but another opportunity to progress toward that hopeful vision of a democratic, independent nation that’s learned to accommodate its sectarian differences, which generations of Iraqis have suffered without and hundreds of thousands of Americans risked everything for.
”
”
John McCain (The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations)
“
My own observations had by now convinced me that the mind of the average Westerner held an utterly distorted image of Islam. What I saw in the pages of the Koran was not a ‘crudely materialistic’ world-view but, on the contrary, an intense God-consciousness that expressed itself in a rational acceptance of all God-created nature: a harmonious side-by-side of intellect and sensual urge, spiritual need and social demand. It was obvious to me that the decline of the Muslims was not due to any shortcomings in Islam but rather to their own failure to live up to it.
For, indeed, it was Islam that had carried the early Muslims to tremendous cultural heights by directing all their energies toward conscious thought as the only means to understanding the nature of God’s creation and, thus, of His will. No demand had been made of them to believe in dogmas difficult or even impossible of intellectual comprehension; in fact, no dogma whatsoever was to be found in the Prophet’s message: and, thus, the thirst after knowledge which distinguished early Muslim history had not been forced, as elsewhere in the world, to assert itself in a painful struggle against the traditional faith. On the contrary, it had stemmed exclusively from that faith. The Arabian Prophet had declared that ‘Striving after knowledge is a most sacred duty for every Muslim man and woman’: and his followers were led to understand that only by acquiring knowledge could they fully worship the Lord. When they pondered the Prophet’s saying, ‘God creates no disease without creating a cure for it as well’, they realised that by searching for unknown cures they would contribute to a fulfilment of God’s will on earth: and so medical research became invested with the holiness of a religious duty. They read the Koran verse, ‘We create every living thing out of water’ - and in their endeavour to penetrate to the meaning of these words, they began to study living organisms and the laws of their development: and thus they established the science of biology. The Koran pointed to the harmony of the stars and their movements as witnesses of their Creator’s glory: and thereupon the sciences of astronomy and mathematics were taken up by the Muslims with a fervour which in other religions was reserved for prayer alone. The Copernican system, which established the earth’s rotation around its axis and the revolution of the planet’s around the sun, was evolved in Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century (only to be met by the fury of the ecclesiastics, who read in it a contradiction of the literal teachings of the Bible): but the foundations of this system had actually been laid six hundred years earlier, in Muslim countries - for already in the ninth and tenth centuries Muslim astronomers had reached the conclusion that the earth was globular and that it rotated around its axis, and had made accurate calculations of latitudes and longitudes; and many of them maintained - without ever being accused of hearsay - that the earth rotated around the sun. And in the same way they took to chemistry and physics and physiology, and to all the other sciences in which the Muslim genius was to find its most lasting monument. In building that monument they did no more than follow the admonition of their Prophet that ‘If anybody proceeds on his way in search of knowledge, God will make easy for him the way to Paradise’; that ‘The scientist walks in the path of God’; that ‘The superiority of the learned man over the mere pious is like the superiority of the moon when it is full over all other stars’; and that ‘The ink of the scholars is more precious that the blood of martyrs’.
Throughout the whole creative period of Muslim history - that is to say, during the first five centuries after the Prophet’s time - science and learning had no greater champion than Muslim civilisation and no home more secure than the lands in which Islam was supreme.
”
”
Muhammad Asad (The Road to Mecca)
“
What is it? Do you want me to stop?” he asked, breathless.
“No, please, be close to me,” Stitch whispered, feeling the wetness under his eyelids. He lived in a culture where being tough was the only currency. He didn’t even cry when he was alone. Being able to let it out made him just as relieved as having the amazing hot body on top of him. Made him remember he was still human, not a man whose muscles were made out of violence and bones out of fury
”
”
K.A. Merikan (Road of No Return: Hounds of Valhalla MC (Sex & Mayhem, #1))
“
Women and children died in childbirth, but the fury to impregnate had dimmed somewhat. Death slowed down. People had migrated and coalesced into settlements and villages, pooling knowledge and resources. They lit candles against the dark and waited. Without birth, life is only that wait.
”
”
Meg Elison (The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (The Road to Nowhere, #1))
“
It is not known why motorists, who sing the joys of the open road, spend so much petrol every weekend grinding their way to Southend and Brighton and Margate, in the stench of each other’s exhausts, one hand on the horn and one foot on the brake, their eyes starting from their orbits in the nerve-racking search for cops, corners, blind turnings, and cross-road suicides. They ride in a baffled fury, hating each other. They arrive with shattered nerves and fight for parking places. They return, blinded by the headlights of fresh arrivals, whom they hate even worse than they hate each other.
”
”
Dorothy L. Sayers (Lord Peter Views the Body)
“
Tamlin won't allow it.'
'Tamlin isn't your keeper, and you know it.'
'I'm his subject, and he is my High Lord...'
'You are no one's subject.'
I went rigid at the flash of teeth, the smoke-like wings that flared out.
'I will say this once- and only once,' Rhysand purred, stalking to the map on the wall. 'You can be a pawn, be someone's reward, and spend the rest of your immortal life bowing and scraping and pretending you're less than him, than Ianthe, than any of us. If you want to pick that road, then fine. A shame, but it's your choice.' The shadow of wings rippled again. 'But I know you- more than you realise, I think- and I don't believe for one damn minute that you're remotely fine with being a pretty trophy for someone who sat on his ass for nearly fifty years, then set on his ass while you were shredded apart-'
'Stop it-'
'Or,' he plowed ahead, 'you've got another choice. You can master whatever powers we gave you, and make it count. You can play a role in this war. Because war is coming one way or another.'
...
'Think it over. Take the week. Ask Tamlin, if it'll make you sleep better. See what charming Ianthe says about it. But it's your choice to make- no one else's.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
we are servants of the zeitgeist.
”
”
Kyle Buchanan (Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road)
“
Her emotions boiled up like one of the Yellowstone geysers just down the road. First shock and right on its heels came fury. When Hud had left town five years ago, she'd convinced herself she'd never have to lay eyes on that sorry son of a bitch again. And here he was. Damn, just when she thought things couldn't get any worse.
”
”
B.J. Daniels (Crime Scene at Cardwell Ranch (Cardwell Ranch, #1))
“
God never promised us a feather bed and a fluffy pillow in this life. The Bible never teaches that obeying God’s Word is going to be a comfortable endeavor. God has called us to submission, first to Him, and second to the authority structures He has put in place. To usurp the authority of God is a dangerous road to travel. That road leads to death.
”
”
Jeremy J. Lundmark (The Fury of God: We Cannot Truly Understand God's Love Until We Fully Understand His Fury)
“
New life is a wonderful, precious thing, Jiin-Wei,” Marbu smiled. “Very precious as it is so fragile. I will be thinking of your family a lot in the coming days, Haung.”
“Your concern is appreciated, Secretary Marbu.” Haung struggled to keep the fury from his voice as he tried to match the ice of the other man's stare with a cool voice. “I will know where to look if something untoward or unlucky should happen. For help, I mean, of course. Rest assured, Secretary Marbu, that I would always call on you first.
”
”
G.R. Matthews (The Stone Road (The Forbidden List, #1))
“
Dubnus. Brother. I wouldn’t have amounted to anything better than a rotting corpse in a ditch on the road south from Yew Grove without your help over the last few months. Nor can I pretend that I was responsible for turning the Ninth from a waste of rations to a fighting century, that was mostly you too. But trust me when I tell you this, these men will not respond to your style of leadership. They are lonely, frightened, but worst of all they feel worthless. They’ve sat here for the last month watching Gaulish farm boys in armour get snapped up like the last cake in the bakery while they, with all their abilities, are demeaned as incapable of fighting our war.
”
”
Anthony Riches (Arrows of Fury (Empire, #2))
“
New psychological research suggests that air rage, road rage and other seemingly irrational outbursts of wild-eyed, foaming- at-the-mouth fury could be extreme reactions to the violation of a set of rules that choreographs our every waking moment: the unwritten, unconscious system of personal body space. Mounting evidence shows that we all need this space to stay sane.
"We walk around in a sort of invisible bubble," says Phil Leather, head of Nottingham University's social and environmental research group. "It's egg-shaped, because we allow people to come closer from in front than behind - an entire language is expressed via the amount of distance we choose to keep between each other.
”
”
David B. Givens (The NONVERBAL DICTIONARY of gestures, signs and body language cues)
“
Syn unlocked his door and let Furi into his place for the second time that night.
“Shouldn’t I be in witness protection or something, in a secure location?” Furi fired off indignantly.
Syn flicked on the lamp in the living room and turned to look at Furious, shooting him a look that said ‘really?’
“Would you rather I take you down to the station, where a detective can question you for five hours before they take you to the shittiest hotel in the next city? While some cop that’s ridden a desk for the last ten years sits on his ass the entire time he's so-called guarding you?”
Furi dropped his duffle bag to the floor and shook his head. “I guess not.”
“Yeah. That’s what I thought.” Syn grinned. He removed his coat and draped it over the back of his new sofa. It was nice, but he hadn’t had the chance to enjoy it yet. Furi walked backwards until the back of his legs hit the couch. He flopped down like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Syn rubbed the back of his neck, wincing at the tension there. He needed to say something to Furi ... anything ... but what? Bad people, crime, guns blazing, cars running you off the road, all this was normal for Syn, but Furi was just trying to live his life. Syn sat down next to the beautiful man, his hand hovering over his knee before he moved it and placed it on his shoulder. The gesture was meant to be comforting but didn’t look like it was helping. “Are you okay?”
“No, no, Syn. I’m not okay. That crazy bitch just tried to kill me, and for what? Because I wouldn’t fuck her.” Furi’s voice was rising with each word.
”
”
A.E. Via
“
True also that Luther, in particular, turned to the Jews for support in his new construing of the Bible and his rejection of papal claims. In his 1523 pamphlet, Das Jesus Christus ein geborener Jude sei, he argued that there was now no reason at all why they should not embrace Christ, and foolishly looked forward to a voluntary mass conversion. When the Jews retorted that the Talmud conveyed an even better understanding of the Bible than his own, and reciprocated the invitation to convert, Luther first attacked them for their obstinacy (1526), then in 1543 turned on them in fury. His pamphlet Von den Juden und ihren Lügen (‘On the Jews and their Lies’), published in Wittenberg, may be termed the first work of modern anti-Semitism, and a giant step forward on the road to the Holocaust.
”
”
Paul Johnson (History of the Jews)
“
Ellie hated driving, particularly in cities. She had a habit of taking every other driver's unsignaled lane change or blown red light personally, which meant she herself wound up driving in a perpetual state of amazed fury, incredulous that these people would so casually put her life at risk. It was maliciously negligent in a way that made her feel as if it wouldn't be so unreasonable to force them off the road, march them to the guardrail, and shoot them in the head.
”
”
Anonymous
“
He left the building, fury propelling his steps, and got into his car. Feeling the way he did just then, Ian realized he shouldn’t be driving, but he wasn’t about to sit outside this apartment. Not when Cecilia might think he sat there pining for her. He revved the engine and threw the transmission into drive. The tires squealed as he sped off, burning rubber. He hadn’t gone more than a quarter mile when he saw the red-and-blue lights of a sheriff’s car flashing behind him.
”
”
Debbie Macomber (16 Lighthouse Road (Cedar Cove #1))
“
I’m his subject, and he is my High Lord—” “You are no one’s subject.” I went rigid at the flash of teeth, the smoke-like wings that flared out. “I will say this once—and only once,” Rhysand purred, stalking to the map on the wall. “You can be a pawn, be someone’s reward, and spend the rest of your immortal life bowing and scraping and pretending you’re less than him, than Ianthe, than any of us. If you want to pick that road, then fine. A shame, but it’s your choice.” The shadow of wings rippled again. “But I know you—more than you realize, I think—and I don’t believe for one damn minute that you’re remotely fine with being a pretty trophy for someone who sat on his ass for nearly fifty years, then sat on his ass while you were shredded apart
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs described the ballet that takes place on crowded pavements as people make eye contact and find their way around one another. I felt a similar, if supercharged dynamic coming to life in Paris’s traffic lanes. With cars and bikes and buses mixed together, none of us could be sure what we would find on the road ahead of us. We all had to be awake to the rhythm of asymmetrical flow. In the contained fury of the narrow streets we were forced to choreograph our movements, but with so many other bicycles flooding the streets, cycling in Paris was actually becoming safer. As more people took to bicycles in Vélib”s first year, the number of bike accidents rose, but the number of accidents per capita fell. This phenomenon seems to occur wherever cities see a spike in cycling: the more people bike, the safer the streets get for cyclists, partly because drivers adopt more cautious habits when they expect cyclists on the road. There is safety in numbers.fn7, 15, 16
”
”
Charles Montgomery (Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design)
“
You can be a pawn, be someone’s reward, and spend the rest of your immortal life bowing and scraping and pretending you’re less than him, than Ianthe, than any of us. If you want to pick that road, then fine. A shame, but it’s your choice.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
I’ll say this once— and only once. You can be a pawn, be someone’s reward, and spend the rest of your immortal life bowing and scraping and pretending you’re less than him, than Ianthe, than any of us. If you want to pick that road, then fine. A shame, but it’s your choice. But I know you— more than you realize, I think— and I don’t believe for one damn minute that you’re remotely fine with being a pretty trophy for someone who sat on his ass for nearly fifty years then sat on his ass while you were shredded apart.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
You will ride eternal, shiny and chrome'.
'Witness me
”
”
Mad Max Fury Road
“
The Wayfarer.
Let me be an innocent wayfarer traversing the roads of life without preconceived notions.
Without an ounce of anger toward the men I meet along the way
Without judging them for who they are
Embracing everyone as equals
Lending a helping hand to needy
Cherishing whatever little love bestowed upon me.
Carrying with me only the fragrance of the best moments
Let me walk unhindered by emotions.
My joy shall come from the walk itself rather than from the expectations in my mind.
My joy shall soar from every step taken.
Let me be the humble wanderer in nature’s abode.
Loving all, living every moment
I shall not differentiate pleasure and pain, for they are brothers entwined.
I shall not worry while I’m teary-eyed.
I shall not hurry while I’m fury-eyed.
Patience and silence—the two essentials of eternal wisdom
I shall master them or die trying while I walk the promenade of life!
”
”
Udayakumar D.S. (FT Legacy 1: Who is Frank Twine?)
“
I did a variety of things. I’m still ashamed of some of them. I finally became a mercenary. My life after that unfolded, as you might imagine, predictably. Victorious soldier, defeated soldier, marauder, robber, rapist, murderer, and finally a fugitive fleeing the noose. I fled to the ends of the world. And there, at the end of the world, I met a woman. A sorceress.” “Be careful,” whispered the Witcher, and his eyes narrowed. “Be careful, Vilgefortz, that the similarities you’re desperately searching for don’t lead you too far.” “The similarities are over,” said the sorcerer without lowering his gaze, “since I couldn’t cope with the feelings I felt for that woman. I couldn’t understand her feelings, and she didn’t try to help me with them. I left her. Because she was promiscuous, arrogant, spiteful, unfeeling and cold. Because it was impossible to dominate her, and her domination of me was humiliating. I left her because I knew she was only interested in me because my intelligence, personality and fascinating mystery obscured the fact that I wasn’t a sorcerer, and it was usually only sorcerers she would honour with more than one night. I left her because… because she was like my mother. I suddenly understood that what I felt for her was not love at all, but a feeling which was considerably more complicated, more powerful but more difficult to classify: a mixture of fear, regret, fury, pangs of conscience and the need for expiation, a sense of guilt, loss, and hurt. A perverse need for suffering and atonement. What I felt for that woman was hate.” Geralt remained silent. Vilgefortz was looking to one side. “I left her,” he said after a while. “And then I couldn’t live with the emptiness which engulfed me. And I suddenly understood it wasn’t the absence of a woman that causes that emptiness, but the lack of everything I had been feeling. It’s a paradox, isn’t it? I imagine I don’t need to finish; you can guess what happened next. I became a sorcerer. Out of hatred. And only then did I understand how stupid I was. I mistook stars reflected in a pond at night for those in the sky.” “As you rightly observed, the parallels between us aren’t completely parallel,” murmured Geralt. “In spite of appearances, we have little in common, Vilgefortz. What did you want to prove by telling me your story? That the road to wizardly excellence, although winding and difficult, is available to anyone? Even—excuse my parallel—to bastards or foundlings, wanderers or witchers—” “No,” the sorcerer interrupted. “I didn’t mean to prove this road is open to all, because that’s obvious and was proved long ago. Neither was there a need to prove that certain people simply have no other path.
”
”
Andrzej Sapkowski (The Time of Contempt (The Witcher #2))
“
Tamlin isn’t your keeper, and you know it.” “I’m his subject, and he is my High Lord—” “You are no one’s subject.” I went rigid at the flash of teeth, the smoke-like wings that flared out. “I will say this once—and only once,” Rhysand purred, stalking to the map on the wall. “You can be a pawn, be someone’s reward, and spend the rest of your immortal life bowing and scraping and pretending you’re less than him, than Ianthe, than any of us. If you want to pick that road, then fine. A shame, but it’s your choice.” The shadow of wings rippled again. “But I know you—more than you realize, I think—and I don’t believe for one damn minute that you’re remotely fine with being a pretty trophy for someone who sat on his ass for nearly fifty years, then sat on his ass while you were shredded apart—” “Stop it—” “Or,” he plowed ahead, “you’ve got another choice. You can master whatever powers we gave to you, and make it count. You can play a role in this war. Because war is coming one way or another, and do not try to delude yourself that any of the Fae will give a shit about your family across the wall when our whole territory is likely to become a charnel house.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
I couldn’t. Those claws were everywhere—digging into every thought, every piece of self. He pushed a little harder. Shove. Me. Out. I didn’t know where to begin. I blindly pushed and slammed myself into him, into those claws that were everywhere, as if I were a top loosed in a circle of mirrors. His laughter, low and soft, filled my mind, my ears. That way, Feyre. In answer, a little open path gleamed inside my mind. The road out. It’d take me forever to unhook each claw and shove the mass of his presence out that narrow opening. If I could wash it away— A wave. A wave of self, of me, to sweep all of him out— I didn’t let him see the plan take form as I rallied myself into a cresting wave and struck. The claws loosened—reluctantly. As if letting me win this round. He merely said, “Good.” My bones, my breath and blood, they were mine again. I slumped in my seat. “Not yet,” he said. “Shield. Block me out so I can’t get back in.” I already wanted to go somewhere quiet and sleep for a while— Claws at that outer layer of my mind, stroking— I imagined a wall of adamant snapping down, black as night and a foot thick. The claws retracted a breath before the wall sliced them in two. Rhys was grinning. “Very nice. Blunt, but nice.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
I am afraid my fury and your insult are too shocking to be wiped out even with an apology,” said Gregory very calmly. “No duel could wipe it out. If I struck you dead I could not wipe it out. There is only one way by which that insult can be erased, and that way I choose. I am going, at the possible sacrifice of my life and honour, to prove to you that you were wrong in what you said.” “In what I said?” “You said I was not serious about being an anarchist.” “There are degrees of seriousness,” replied Syme. “I have never doubted that you were perfectly sincere in this sense, that you thought what you said well worth saying, that you thought a paradox might wake men up to a neglected truth.” Gregory stared at him steadily and painfully. “And in no other sense,” he asked, “you think me serious? You think me a flâneur who lets fall occasional truths. You do not think that in a deeper, a more deadly sense, I am serious.” Syme struck his stick violently on the stones of the road. “Serious!” he cried. “Good Lord! is this street serious? Are these damned Chinese lanterns serious? Is the whole caboodle serious? One comes here and talks a pack of bosh, and perhaps some sense as well, but I should think very little of a man who didn’t keep something in the background of his life that was more serious than all this talking—something more serious, whether it was religion or only drink.
”
”
G.K. Chesterton (The Man Who Was Thursday)
“
Same species, same earth, different stories. Like Creation stories everywhere, cosmologies are a source of identity and orientation to the world. They tell us who we are... One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment. One woman is our ancestral gardener, a cocreator of the good green world that would be the home of her descendants. The other was an exile, just passing through an alien world on a rough road to her real home in heaven.
And then they met - the offspring of Skywoman and the children of Eve - and the land around us bears the scars of that meeting, the echoes of our stories. They say that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and I can only imagine the conversation between Eve and Skywoman: 'Sister, you got the short end of the stick...
”
”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants)
“
I will say this once—and only once,” Rhysand purred, stalking to the map on the wall. “You can be a pawn, be someone’s reward, and spend the rest of your immortal life bowing and scraping and pretending you’re less than him, than Ianthe, than any of us. If you want to pick that road, then fine. A shame, but it’s your choice.” The shadow of wings rippled again. “But I know you—more than you realize, I think—and I don’t believe for one damn minute that you’re remotely fine with being a pretty trophy for someone who sat on his ass for nearly fifty years, then sat on his ass while you were shredded apart—
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
Señorita Ana came to me on nights I slept without waking. In my dreams, below the sign she was found under and over earth made electric by the acrid light that exuded off bones turning to dust, Señorita Ana rotted like flesh off a dead dog on the road. Her bones weren’t meek like domesticated animals. They stalked me and their fury contained the devastating force of those who seek justice.
”
”
Dolores Reyes (Eartheater)
“
[from 'Mad Max: Fury Road' review in 'We're Not Ugly People'] Miller has also remembered to make the film directly about things, not all subtext begging for explication. The scarcity of water, oil wars, the arms trade, and female emancipation jostle for space with the customized vehicles, coming in and out of focus with the blitz. But when it comes to political subtext, it must be acknowledged that Immortan Joe's demise was predictable from his water-distribution method. Pouring thousands of gallons of water on people's heads from a great height is not the best way to keep them pacified. Better to sell it to them in plastic bottles for ninety-nine cents each.
”
”
A.S. Hamrah (The Earth Dies Streaming)
“
Being an inevitable result of the original curse upon the House of Atreus, the Furies also symbolize the fact that mental illness is a family affair, created in one by one’s parents and grandparents as the sins of the father are visited upon the children. But Orestes did not blame his family—his parents or his grandfather—as he well might have. Nor did he blame the gods or “fate.” Instead he accepted his condition as one of his own making and undertook the effort to heal it.
”
”
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
“
As a country, we take out loans and go to school. We take out loans and buy a car. We take out loans and buy a home. It’s not always that we simply “want” these things. Rather, it’s often the case that we use our obligations as confirmations that “we’re doing something.” If we have things to pay for, we need a job. If we have a job, we need a car. If we have such things, we have a life, albeit an ordinary and monotonous life, but a life no less. If we have debt, we have a goal—we have a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Debt narrows our options. It gives us a good reason to stick it out at a job, sink into sofas, and savor the comforts of the status quo. Debt is sought so we have a game to play, a battle to fight, a mythology to live out. It gives us a script to read, rules to abide by, instructions to follow. And when we see someone who doesn’t play by our rules—someone who’s spurned the comforts of hearth and home—we shift in our chairs and call him or her crazy. We feel a fury for the hobo and the hitchhiker, the hippie and gypsy, the vagrant and nomad—not because we have any reason to believe these people will do us any harm, but because they make us feel uncomfortable. They remind us of the inner longings we’ve squelched, the hero or heroine we’ve buried beneath a houseful of junk, the spirit we’ve exorcised out of ourselves so we could remain with our feet on the ground, stable and secure.
”
”
Ken Ilgunas (Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom)
“
Of the many Trump gashes in modern major-power governing, you could certainly drive a Trojan horse through his lack of foreign policy particulars and relationships. This presented a do-over opportunity for the world in its relationship with the United States—or it did if you were willing to speak the new Trump language, whatever that was. There wasn’t much of a road map here, just pure opportunism, a new transactional openness. Or, even more, a chance to use the powers of charm and seduction to which Trump responded as enthusiastically as he did to offers of advantageous new deals.
”
”
Michael Wolff (Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House)
“
Portrait of the Author"
The birches are mad with green points
the wood's edge is burning with their green,
burning, seething—No, no, no.
The birches are opening their leaves one
by one. Their delicate leaves unfold cold
and separate, one by one. Slender tassels
hang swaying from the delicate branch tips—
Oh, I cannot say it. There is no word.
Black is split at once into flowers. In
every bog and ditch, flares of
small fire, white flowers!—Agh,
the birches are mad, mad with their green.
The world is gone, torn into shreds
with this blessing. What have I left undone
that I should have undertaken?
O my brother, you redfaced, living man
ignorant, stupid whose feet are upon
this same dirt that I touch—and eat.
We are alone in this terror, alone,
face to face on this road, you and I,
wrapped by this flame!
Let the polished plows stay idle,
their gloss already on the black soil.
But that face of yours—!
Answer me. I will clutch you. I
will hug you, grip you. I will poke my face
into your face and force you to see me.
Take me in your arms, tell me the commonest
thing that is in your mind to say,
say anything. I will understand you—!
It is the madness of the birch leaves opening
cold, one by one.
My rooms will receive me. But my rooms
are no longer sweet spaces where comfort
is ready to wait on me with its crumbs.
A darkness has brushed them. The mass
of yellow tulips in the bowl is shrunken.
Every familiar object is changed and dwarfed.
I am shaken, broken against a might
that splits comfort, blows apart
my careful partitions, crushes my house
and leaves me—with shrinking heart
and startled, empty eyes—peering out
into a cold world.
In the spring I would be drunk! In the spring
I would be drunk and lie forgetting all things.
Your face! Give me your face, Yang Kue Fei!
your hands, your lips to drink!
Give me your wrists to drink—
I drag you, I am drowned in you, you
overwhelm me! Drink!
Save me! The shad bush is in the edge
of the clearing. The yards in a fury
of lilac blossoms are driving me mad with terror.
Drink and lie forgetting the world.
And coldly the birch leaves are opening one by one.
Coldly I observe them and wait for the end.
And it ends.
”
”
William Carlos Williams (Sour Grapes)
“
You’d best pray it’s the Darkness that has driven you mad, boy, because if it’s not, you’ll pay for these bruises with some of your own!” He pinned the boy to the ground with one hand braced on a shoulder and continued, “I’m not going to hurt you. Just calm down and let’s see if we can relieve you.”
The boy relaxed, calming except for his heaving chest as he fought for air.
Robin’s mind raced through his options, coming up blank.
“Cat-mint…” the boy muttered. “Tincture of angelica. Blue chalcedony, jet, bronzite, amber—do you have any on you?”
“No,” Robin said, confused.
The boy moaned. “Trifolium, then. There’s bound to be trifolium…” The boy’s head fell back into the dirt.
“Trifolium? I don’t know…”
“Clover,” the boy ordered, scorn dripping from his voice. “I’m speaking of clover.”
Robin paced along the road looking for a clump of clover, unsure whether to laugh or snarl.
“Do you at least know your Greek sigils?” the boy muttered weakly. “The banishing sigil performed with clover…”
Greek, he thought resentfully rubbing his jaw. “I know sigils,” he said, amending silently, if I can remember the Greek ones from the schoolroom.
If he got the scamp past this spell of poisoning, he was going to thrash him. And where had he got into such Darkness in the first place?
Burroughs, Patricia. This Crumbling Pageant (The Fury Triad Book 1) (pp. 23-24). Story Spring Publishing, LLC. Kindle Edition.
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Patricia Burroughs (This Crumbling Pageant (The Fury Triad #1))
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XI.
Almost Out Of The Sky"
Almost out of the sky, half of the moon
anchors between two mountains.
Turning, wandering night, the digger of eyes.
Let's see how many stars are smashed in the pool.
It makes a cross of mourning between my eyes, and runs away.
Forge of blue metals, nights of stilled combats, my heart revolves like a crazy wheel.
Girl who have come from so far, been brought from so far,
sometimes your glance flashes out under the sky.
Rumbling, storm, syclone of fury,
you cross above my heart without stopping.
Wind from the tombs carries off, wrecks, scatters your sleepy root.
The big trees on the other side of her, uprooted.
But you, cloudless girl, question of smoke, corn tassel.
You were what the wind was making with illuminated leaves.
Behind the nocturnal mountains, white lily of conflagration,
ah, I can say nothing! You were made of everything.
Longing that sliced my breast into pieces,
it is time to take another road, on which she does not smile.
Storm that buried the bells, muddy swirl of torments,
why touch her now, why make her sad.
Oh to follow the road that leads away from everything,
without anguish, death, winter waiting along it
with their eyes open through the dew.
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Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
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The air echoed with the sounds of fury: Drums beat, bugles sounded the charge, mobs shrieked, and guerrilla patroles crisscrossed the roads, bayonets glinting at the tips of their rifles. The guerrillas kept their weapons cocked, threatening, ready to do battle. Their bayonets reflected in the gleam of their eyes as they glared suspiciously at every passerby. NO LANDLORAD WILL SLIP THROUGH OUR NET. That was the new slogan, scrawed in lurid colors across the roads. Whomever they stopped shuddred under the violence of their gaze, this blind hatred that needed no basis, no justification.
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Dương Thu Hương (Paradise of the Blind)
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RECOMMENDED READING Brooks, David. The Road to Character. New York: Random House, 2015. Brown, Peter C., Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel. Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014. Damon, William. The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life. New York: Free Press, 2009. Deci, Edward L. with Richard Flaste. Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation. New York: Penguin Group, 1995. Duhigg, Charles. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. New York: Random House, 2012. Dweck, Carol. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House, 2006. Emmons, Robert A. Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007. Ericsson, Anders and Robert Pool. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. Heckman, James J., John Eric Humphries, and Tim Kautz (eds.). The Myth of Achievement Tests: The GED and the Role of Character in American Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Kaufman, Scott Barry and Carolyn Gregoire. Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind. New York: Perigee, 2015. Lewis, Sarah. The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014. Matthews, Michael D. Head Strong: How Psychology is Revolutionizing War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. McMahon, Darrin M. Divine Fury: A History of Genius. New York: Basic Books, 2013. Mischel, Walter. The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control. New York: Little, Brown, 2014. Oettingen, Gabriele. Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation. New York: Penguin Group, 2014. Pink, Daniel H. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. New York: Riverhead Books, 2009. Renninger, K. Ann and Suzanne E. Hidi. The Power of Interest for Motivation and Engagement. New York: Routledge, 2015. Seligman, Martin E. P. Learned Optimism: How To Change Your Mind and Your Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Steinberg, Laurence. Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. Tetlock, Philip E. and Dan Gardner. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. New York: Crown, 2015. Tough, Paul. How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Willingham, Daniel T. Why Don’t Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009.
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Angela Duckworth (Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance)
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A true leader does not need others to make him strong. A true leader gives others the strength to stand alone.
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George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road)
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Martha gets angry because as usual she is doing all the heavy lifting and says to Jesus, “Are you just going to let her sit here while I do all the work? Tell her to help me.” I’m not sure, but I think this is the only place in the Bible where someone actually orders God to do something. Like I said, hell hath no fury like an overworked Two who is feeling unappreciated.
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Ian Morgan Cron (The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery)