Grown So Fast Quotes

When you were young, you thought time was a burden, something to be discharged as fast as possible so you could be grown-up. But it was such a bait-n-switch – when you were an adult, you came to realize that minutes and hours were the single most precious thing you had.

When we were five, they asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up. Our answers were thing like astronaut, president, or in my case… princess. When we were ten, they asked again and we answered - rock star, cowboy, or in my case, gold medalist. But now that we've grown up, they want a serious answer. Well, how 'bout this: who the hell knows?! This isn't the time to make hard and fast decisions, its time to make mistakes. Take the wrong train and get stuck somewhere chill. Fall in love - a lot. Major in philosophy 'cause there's no way to make a career out of that. Change your mind. Then change it again, because nothing is permanent. So make as many mistakes as you can. That way, someday, when they ask again what we want to be… we won't have to guess. We'll know. [from the movie]

He was so full of wrath against grown-ups, who as usual, were spoiling everything, that as soon as he got inside his tree he breathed intentionally quick short breaths at the rate of about five to a second. He did this because there is a saying in the Neverland, that everytime you breathe, a grown-up dies; and Peter was killing them of vindictively as fast as possible.

You could lose the ones you loved in the blink of an eye—and he was willing to bet, when it happened, you weren’t thinking about all the reasons that could have kept you apart. You thought of all the reasons that kept you together. And, no doubt, how you wished you’d had more time. Even if you’d had centuries… When you were young, you thought time was a burden, something to be discharged as fast as possible so you could be grown-up. But it was such a bait-n-switch—when you were an adult, you came to realize that minutes and hours were the single most precious thing you had. No one got forever. And it was a fucking crime to waste what you were given.

We should always reassure our children that they are never alone. Time flies by so fast that before we know it our children will be grown and living their own lives. With that being said, we should never miss a chance to empower our children. Our children’s individuality is unique and we should teach them to embrace their authentic selves.

Nevertheless, life is pleasant, life is tolerable. Tuesday follows Monday; then comes Wednesday. The mind grows rings; the identity becomes robust; pain is absorbed in growth. Opening and shutting, shutting and opening, with increasing hum and sturdiness, the haste and fever of youth are drawn into service until the whole being seems to expand in and out like the mainspring of a clock. How fast the stream flows from January to December! We are swept on by the torrent of things grown so familiar that they cast no shadow. We float, we float …

I've lived to see my longings die" I've lived to se my longings die: My dreams and I have grown apart; Now only sorrow haunts my eye, The wages of a bitter heart. Beneath the storms of hostile fate, My flowery wreath has faded fast; I live alone and sadly wait To see when death will come at last. Just so, when the winds in winter moan And snow descends in frigid flakes, Upon a naked branch, alone, The final leaf of summer shakes!

He stared right back at Blaylock and let everything he had in his heart show in his face. He just let that shit fly. Because there was a lesson in this Fade ceremony tonight: You could lose the ones you loved in the blink of an eye - and he was willing to bet, when it happened, you weren't thinking about all the reasons that could have kept you apart. You thought of all the reasons that kept you together. And, no doubt, how you wished you'd had more time. Even if you'd had centuries... When you were young, you thought time was a burden, something to be discharged as fast as possible so you could be grown-up. But it was such a bait-and-switch - when you were an adult, you came to realize that minutes and hours were the single most precious thing you had. No one got forever. And it was a fucking crime to waste what you were given. -Qhuinn

We return to the places we're from; we trample faded corners and pencil in new lines. 'You've grown up so fast,' Robert's mother tells him at breakfast, at dinner. 'Look at you." But she's wrong, thinks Robert. You bury your childhood here and there. It waits for you, all your life, to come back and dig it up.

You could lose the ones you loved in the blink of an eye—and he was willing to bet, when it happened, you weren’t thinking about all the reasons that could have kept you apart. You thought of all the reasons that kept you together. And, no doubt, how you wished you’d had more time. Even if you’d had centuries… When you were young, you thought time was a burden, something to be discharged as fast as possible so you could be grown-up. But it was such a bait-n-switch—when you were an adult, you came to realize that minutes and hours were the single most precious thing you had. No one got forever. And it was a fucking crime to waste what you were given.

you can do all sorts of stuff that full-grown wizards can't, Viktor always said --" Ron looked around at her so fast he appeared to crick his neck; rubbing it, he said, "Yeah? What did Vicky say?" "Ho ho," said Hermione in a bored voice. "He said Harry knew how to do stuff even he didn't, and he was in the final year at Durmstrang." Ron was looking at Hermione suspiciously. "You're not still in contact with him are you?" "So what if I am?" said Hermione coolly, though her face was a little pink. "I can have a pen pal if I --" "He didn't only want to be your pen pal," said Ron accusingly. Hermione shook her head exasperatedly and ignored Ron, who was continuing to watch her.

But of course he cared very much; and he was so full of wrath against grown-ups, who, as usual, were spoiling everything, that as soon as he got inside his tree he breathed intentionally quick short breaths at the rate of about five to a second. He did this because there is a saying in the Neverland that every time you breathe, a grown-up dies; and Peter was killing them vindictively as fast as possible.

They visited him in saris, clumping gracelessly through red mud and long grass ... and introduced themselves as Mrs. Pillai, Mrs. Eapen and Mrs. Rajagopalan. Velutha introduced himself and his paralyzed brother Kuttappen (although he was fast asleep). He greeted them with the utmost courtesy. He addressed them all as Kochamma [an honorific title for a woman] and gave them fresh coconut water to drink. He chatted to them about the weather. The river. The fact that in his opinion coconut trees were getting shorter by the year. As were the ladies in Ayemenem. He introduced them to his surly hen. He showed them his carpentry tools, and whittled them each a little wooden spoon. It is only now, these years later, that Rahel with adult hindsight recognized the sweetness of that gesture. A grown man entertaining three raccoons, treating them like real ladies. Instinctively colluding in the conspiracy of their fiction, taking care not to decimate it with adult carelessness. Or affection. [emphasis mine] It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain. To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do.

I had thoroughly been a girl so long by then that I'd grown to like it, got used to it, got used to not having to lift things, and have folks make excuses for me on account of me not being strong enough, or fast enough, or powerful enough like a boy, on account of my size. But that's the thing. You can play one part in life, but you can't be that thing. You just playing it. You're not real.

They had grown so fast that it was as if they had never been born.

Love can die. It's a mysterious thing, the death of love. Sometimes it fades slowly, like a long sunset with amazing and rare color that lasts in the memory forever. Sometimes it becomes obese and dies from its own weight, the density and slowness that come with things grown too large. It is often killed on purpose, by someone who is in love with someone or something else. But the other person, the one still in love, is a loose end, snapping and cracking in the high wind of life passing them by. Life moves so fast it creates a back draft, that leaves things scattered and blowing in its wake. Life, of all things, is alive. It is everywhere and moves beyond speed.

I've lived to see my longings die I've lived to see my longings die: My dreams and I have grown apart; Now only sorrow haunts my eye, The wages of a bitter heart. Beneath the storms of hostile fate, My flowery wreath has faded fast; I live alone and sadly wait To see when death will come at last. Just so, when the winds in winter moan And snow descends in frigid flakes, Upon a naked branch, alone, The final leaf of summer shakes!...

But of course he cared very much; and he was so full of wrath against grown-ups, who, as usual, were spoiling everything, that as soon as he got inside his tree he breathed intentionally quick short breaths at the rate of about five to a second. He did this because there is a saying in the Neverland that, every time you breathe, a grown-up dies; and Peter was killing them off vindictively as fast as possible. Then

Do you have any idea how many elders find themselves in her position? They suddenly lose their spouses, their faculties, or both. They're then often living with their grown children, even as they crave an autonomy that has slipped away. Praise God I still have my independence and my mind, but I do know how it feels to grow vulnerable. No matter the measure of fortitude you carry, a certain anxiety arises. You know you cannot control all you once could, so you hold fast to the little you can still govern.

It has to do with how two competing ideas can coexist. How two contradictory thoughts can both be true. Do I regret going? No. Do I regret leaving my babies? Yes. I speak from personal experience when I say that the following holds true, whether children are newborns or nearly grown: it is possible both to hate leaving them, and to be terribly glad that you went.

I’ve read the theory that our bodies don’t recognize these artificially grown and developed items as “food.”  (Doritos, though delicious, are not picked from a Dorito bush.)  Because of that, our bodies are always in search of nutrients, which makes us hungrier.  We eat and eat, yet never feel satisfied.  So:  our portions are bigger, we eat out more, we reach for convenience foods, and our food supply has changed.  Our hunger hormones are on overdrive because we have tried (unsuccessfully) to restrict what we are eating and we are eating processed junk.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep … tired … or it malingers, Stretched on on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grown in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

The Jumblies I They went to sea in a Sieve, they did, In a Sieve they went to sea: In spite of all their friends could say, On a winter's morn, on a stormy day, In a Sieve they went to sea! And when the Sieve turned round and round, And every one cried, 'You'll all be drowned!' They called aloud, 'Our Sieve ain't big, But we don't care a button! we don't care a fig! In a Sieve we'll go to sea!' Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve. II They sailed away in a Sieve, they did, In a Sieve they sailed so fast, With only a beautiful pea-green veil Tied with a riband by way of a sail, To a small tobacco-pipe mast; And every one said, who saw them go, 'O won't they be soon upset, you know! For the sky is dark, and the voyage is long, And happen what may, it's extremely wrong In a Sieve to sail so fast!' Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve. III The water it soon came in, it did, The water it soon came in; So to keep them dry, they wrapped their feet In a pinky paper all folded neat, And they fastened it down with a pin. And they passed the night in a crockery-jar, And each of them said, 'How wise we are! Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long, Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong, While round in our Sieve we spin!' Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve. IV And all night long they sailed away; And when the sun went down, They whistled and warbled a moony song To the echoing sound of a coppery gong, In the shade of the mountains brown. 'O Timballo! How happy we are, When we live in a Sieve and a crockery-jar, And all night long in the moonlight pale, We sail away with a pea-green sail, In the shade of the mountains brown!' Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve. V They sailed to the Western Sea, they did, To a land all covered with trees, And they bought an Owl, and a useful Cart, And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry Tart, And a hive of silvery Bees. And they bought a Pig, and some green Jack-daws, And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws, And forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree, And no end of Stilton Cheese. Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve. VI And in twenty years they all came back, In twenty years or more, And every one said, 'How tall they've grown! For they've been to the Lakes, and the Torrible Zone, And the hills of the Chankly Bore!' And they drank their health, and gave them a feast Of dumplings made of beautiful yeast; And every one said, 'If we only live, We too will go to sea in a Sieve,--- To the hills of the Chankly Bore!' Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve.

think you look far too grown-up.” Amanda’s shoulders slumped. “And completely beautiful.” He pulled her into a hug. “You found your dress, peanut.” He lowered his voice and spoke into her ear as they continued to hug. “You’re growing up so fast; you have to forgive me for wanting to keep you mine for longer than I should.” Tears welled in my eyes. He sounded so genuine. So completely besotted with his daughter. “I’ll always be yours, Dad,” she said as she smiled. He kissed her on the cheek and released her.

Wasn't it strange--when she was little and so far away from being grown-up that she couldn't even imagine she'd ever get there, she had tried to act grown-up; yet now, when the time seemed just around the corner of her life, she wanted to hold fast to the dear, familiar, childish things.

Hoagland," Kingston said in a voice like expensive liquor on ice, "it's good to see you. Your son is better, I trust?" "You're very kind to ask, Your Grace. Yes, he's recovered fully from his tumble. The poor lad's grown so fast, he hasn't yet learned to manage those long arms and legs. A rackabones, my wife calls him." "My boy Ivo is the same. He's shot up like a weed of late." "Will he grow as tall as your other two sons, do you expect?" "By force of will, if necessary," the duke replied dryly. "Ivo has informed me he has no intention of being the youngest and the shortest.

But of course he cared very much; and he was so full of wrath against grown-ups, who, as usual, were spoiling everything, that as soon as he got inside his tree he breathed intentionally quick short breaths at the rate of about five to a second. He did this because there is a saying in the Neverland that, every time you breathe, a grown-up dies; and Peter was killing them off vindictively as fast as possible.

Years ago, when I was a new mother, Mr. Sloane was away on business and a horrible man broke into the house and said if I didn’t give him all our money, he’d take the baby. I hadn’t slept or showered in four days, hadn’t combed my hair for at least a week, hadn’t sat down in I don’t know how long. So I said, ‘You want the baby? Here.’ ” She shifted Madeline to the other arm. “Never seen a grown man run so fast.

When the Black Death swept through 14th century Europe, killing upwards of 200 million people and forever altering the course of human history, one of the original culprits of the epidemic was said to be the black rat, carrying plague-infested fleas into population centers to wreak their destruction. This is, in fact, not true. The true perpetrator was actually the Asian great gerbil, who took advantage of the warmer climate to travel the silk road and bring the disease into Europe. This is only important to know because Ralph, champion pit fighter of the kobold training grounds, lives his life in a perpetual state of rage. Why? Because he feels that human death toll of 200 million is much too low, and he will do everything in his power to triple that number. Starting with you. The only survivor of a family of gerbils left to starve by a child who’d grown bored with the pets, Ralph had to commit unspeakable acts of cannibalism in order to endure. Part earth rodent, part the embodiment of death, Frenzied Gerbils are regular mobs one might encounter on the fifth or seventh floors. But Ralph here is special. He has dedicated his existence to fighting and training in hopes that one day he might exact his revenge against the humans he so despises. He is fast, he is angry,

I beg your pardon, Mrs. Graham - but you get on too fast. I have not yet said that a boy should be taught to rush into the snares of life, - or even wilfully to seek temptation for the sake of exercising his virtue by overcoming it; - I only say that it is better to arm and strengthen your hero, than to disarm and enfeeble the foe; - and if you were to rear an oak sapling in a hothouse, tending it carefully night and day, and shielding it from every breath of wind, you could not expect it to become a hardy tree, like that which has grown up on the mountain-side, exposed to all the action of the elements, and not even sheltered from the shock of the tempest.' 'Granted; - but would you use the same argument with regard to a girl?' 'Certainly not.' 'No; you would have her to be tenderly and delicately nurtured, like a hot-house plant - taught to cling to others for direction and support, and guarded, as much as possible, from the very knowledge of evil. But will you be so good as to inform me why you make this distinction? Is it that you think she has no virtue?' 'Assuredly not.' 'Well, but you affirm that virtue is only elicited by temptation; - and you think that a woman cannot be too little exposed to temptation, or too little acquainted with vice, or anything connected therewith. It must be either that you think she is essentially so vicious, or so feeble-minded, that she cannot withstand temptation, - and though she may be pure and innocent as long as she is kept in ignorance and restraint, yet, being destitute of real virtue, to teach her how to sin is at once to make her a sinner, and the greater her knowledge, the wider her liberty, the deeper will be her depravity, - whereas, in the nobler sex, there is a natural tendency to goodness, guarded by a superior fortitude, which, the more it is exercised by trials and dangers, is only the further developed - ' 'Heaven forbid that I should think so!' I interrupted her at last." 'Well, then, it must be that you think they are both weak and prone to err, and the slightest error, the merest shadow of pollution, will ruin the one, while the character of the other will be strengthened and embellished - his education properly finished by a little practical acquaintance with forbidden things. Such experience, to him (to use a trite simile), will be like the storm to the oak, which, though it may scatter the leaves, and snap the smaller branches, serves but to rivet the roots, and to harden and condense the fibres of the tree. You would have us encourage our sons to prove all things by their own experience, while our daughters must not even profit by the experience of others. Now I would have both so to benefit by the experience of others, and the precepts of a higher authority, that they should know beforehand to refuse the evil and choose the good, and require no experimental proofs to teach them the evil of transgression. I would not send a poor girl into the world, unarmed against her foes, and ignorant of the snares that beset her path; nor would I watch and guard her, till, deprived of self-respect and self-reliance, she lost the power or the will to watch and guard herself; - and as for my son - if I thought he would grow up to be what you call a man of the world - one that has "seen life," and glories in his experience, even though he should so far profit by it as to sober down, at length, into a useful and respected member of society - I would rather that he died to-morrow! - rather a thousand times!' she earnestly repeated, pressing her darling to her side and kissing his forehead with intense affection. He had already left his new companion, and been standing for some time beside his mother's knee, looking up into her face, and listening in silent wonder to her incomprehensible discourse. Anne Bronte, "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" (24,25)

He was worried about his country. Something was rotting from the inside—a slow decay of what was right and wrong. It was as if hundreds of cynical little rats were chewing at its very fiber, gnawing away year by year, until it was collapsing into a vat of gray slime and self-loathing. It had oozed under the doors of the classrooms, the newscasts, and in the movies and television shows and had slowly changed the national dialogue until it was now a travesty to be proud of your country, foolish to be patriotic, and insensitive to even suggest that people take care of themselves. History was being rewritten by the hour, heroes pulled down to please the political correctors. We were living in a country where there was freedom of speech for some, but not all. What was it going to take to get America back on track? Would everything they had fought for be forgotten? He was so glad he and Norma had grown up when they had. They had come of age in such an innocent time, when people wanted to work and better themselves. Now the land of the free meant an entirely different thing. Each generation had become a weaker version of the last, until we were fast becoming a nation of whiners and people looking for a free ride—even expecting it. Hell, kids wouldn’t even leave home anymore. He felt like everything was going downhill.

You were born with your head in the clouds, your future wide open, feeling almost weightless. Almost. Kudoclasm. You had dreams even before you had memories: a cloud of fantasies and ambitions of secret plans and hidden potential, visions of who you are, and what your life will be. They keep your spirits high, floating somewhere above your life, where the world looks faintly hypothetical, almost translucent. But every time you reach for the sky and come away with nothing, you start to wonder what’s holding them up. “Surely it would have happened by now?!” You feel time starting to slip, pulling you back down to earth. even as you tell yourself, don’t look down. You don’t have the luxury of floating through life, because you may not have the time. The future is already rushing toward you, and it’s not as far away as you think. It feels like your life is flashing before your eyes, but it’s actually just the opposite: you’re thinking forward, to everything you still haven’t done, the places you had intended to visit, the life goals you’d eventually get around to, some day in the future. You start dropping your delusions one by one, like tossing ballast overboard. And soon the fog lifts, and everything becomes clear— right until the moment your feet touch the ground. And there it is, “the real world.” As if you’ve finally grown up, steeped in reality, your eyes adjusting to the darkness, seeing the world for what it is. But in truth, you don’t belong there. We dream to survive— no more optional than breathing. Maybe “the real world” is just another fantasy, something heavy to push back against, and launch ourselves still higher. We’re all afraid to let go, of falling into a bottomless future. But maybe we belong in the air, tumbling in the wind. Maybe it’s only when you dive in that you pick up enough speed to shape the flow of reality, and choose your own course, flying not too high, and not too low, but gliding from one to the other in long playful loops. To dream big, and bounce ideas against the world and rise again. Moving so fast, you can’t tell where the dream ends and where the world begins.

Oh Jesus Mary mother of god!” Mrs. Sloane swore as she leapt up, Madeline still in her arms. “That is truly hideous, child!” She looked into the small red face and bounced the bundle around the laboratory, her voice raised above the noise. “Years ago, when I was a new mother, Mr. Sloane was away on business and a horrible man broke into the house and said if I didn’t give him all our money, he’d take the baby. I hadn’t slept or showered in four days, hadn’t combed my hair for at least a week, hadn’t sat down in I don’t know how long. So I said, ‘You want the baby? Here.’ ” She shifted Madeline to the other arm. “Never seen a grown man run so fast.

I caught a tremendous fish and held him beside the boat half out of water, with my hook fast in a corner of his mouth. He didn't fight. He hadn't fought at all. He hung a grunting weight, battered and venerable and homely. Here and there his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper, and its pattern of darker brown was like wallpaper: shapes like full-blown roses stained and lost through age. He was speckled with barnacles, fine rosettes of lime, and infested with tiny white sea-lice, and underneath two or three rags of green weed hung down. While his gills were breathing in the terrible oxygen —the frightening gills, fresh and crisp with blood, that can cut so badly— I thought of the coarse white flesh packed in like feathers, the big bones and the little bones, the dramatic reds and blacks of his shiny entrails, and the pink swim-bladder like a big peony. I looked into his eyes which were far larger than mine but shallower, and yellowed, the irises backed and packed with tarnished tinfoil seen through the lenses of old scratched isinglass. They shifted a little, but not to return my stare. —It was more like the tipping of an object toward the light. I admired his sullen face, the mechanism of his jaw, and then I saw that from his lower lip —if you could call it a lip— grim, wet, and weaponlike, hung five old pieces of fish-line, or four and a wire leader with the swivel still attached, with all their five big hooks grown firmly in his mouth. A green line, frayed at the end where he broke it, two heavier lines, and a fine black thread still crimped from the strain and snap when it broke and he got away. Like medals with their ribbons frayed and wavering, a five-haired beard of wisdom trailing from his aching jaw. I stared and stared and victory filled up the little rented boat, from the pool of bilge where oil had spread a rainbow around the rusted engine to the bailer rusted orange, the sun-cracked thwarts, the oarlocks on their strings, the gunnels—until everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow! And I let the fish go.

In an age when news travels so fast around the world, our sense of community and our concern for those far away from us have grown enormously. In the early twentieth century, feelings of nationalism were very strong, while awareness of our entire humanity was quite weak. In those days people were less aware of what was happening in other regions or other continents. But now, with global media transmitting news at such speed, we have a deeper awareness of the interconnectedness of people everywhere. Together with this, people’s concern for humanity as a whole, and their recognition of the value of basic human rights, seem to be deepening as well. To me, this trend is a source of great optimism about the future.

Rose,' he said. 'I suddenly feel old. I did not realize how the years had gone by. Do not try to look sympathetic because you cannot possibly understand.' Yes, I can. I have just spent a week with Class 1 and they are like people from another plane, but really they are just me, five years ago. Indigo and Saffy and Sarah and Caddy have changed too. They are turning into the sort of people I used to call Grown Up and I cannot stop them, although I would if I could. I would slow them down, anyway. Sometimes I want to shout, 'Wait for me! Wait for me!' Like I did when I was little and they walked too fast. They always slowed down back then, however much of a hurry they were in, but I do not think they can turn back now. So I do understand.

When Hansel and Gretel stood in the forest and saw the house in the clearing before them , the little hairs at the nape of their necks must have shivered. Their knees must have felt so weak that blinding hunger alone could have propelled them forward. No one was there warn or hold them; their parents, chastened and grieving, were far away. So they ran as fast they could to the house where a woman older than death lived, and they ignore the shivering nape hair and the softness in their knees. A grown man can also be energized by hunger, and any weakness in his knees or irregularity in his heartbeat will disappear if he thinks his hunger is about to be assuaged. Especially if the object of his craving is not gingerbread or chewy gumdrops, but gold.

One day, me and him was sitting on my mama and daddy front porch and we heard Stag a ways off, coming up the road, singing, and River said: There's things that move a man. Like currents of water inside. Things he can't help. Older I got, the more I found it true. What's in Stag is like water so black and deep you can't see the bottom. Stag was laughing now. But then Pop said: Parchman taught me the same in me, Philomène. Some days later, I understood what he was trying to say, that getting grown means learning how to work that current: learning when to hold fast, when to drop anchor, when to let it sweep you up. And it could be something simple as sex or it could be something as complicated as falling in love, or it could be like going to jail with your brother, thinking you going to protect him.

Regardless, his crankiness had hit a level not previously documented in the history of the universe. That was saying something, considering I’d grown up with three older sisters who all had periods at the same time. Because of them, most things—most people—didn’t bother me. I knew what it was like to be bullied, and Aiden never crossed the line into being unnecessarily mean. He was just a jackass sometimes. He was lucky I had a tiny, itty, bitty crush on him; otherwise, he would have gotten the shank years ago. Then again, just about everyone with eyes who happened to also like men, had some kind of a thing for Aiden Graves. When he raised his eyebrows and looked at me from beneath those curly black eyelashes, flashing me rich-brown eyes set deep into a face that I’d only seen smile in the presence of dogs, I swallowed and shook my head slowly as I gritted my teeth and took him in. The size of a small building, he should have had these big, uneven features that made him look like a caveman, but of course he didn’t. Apparently, he liked to defy every stereotype he’d ever been assigned in his life. He was smart, fast, coordinated, and—as far as I knew—had never seen a game of hockey. He had only said ‘eh’ in front of me twice, and he didn’t consume animal protein. The man didn’t eat bacon. He was the last person I would ever consider polite, and he never apologized. Ever. Basically, he was an anomaly; a Canadian football-playing, plant-based lifestyle—he didn’t like calling himself a vegan—anomaly that was strangely proportional all over and so handsome I might have thanked God for giving me eyes on a couple of occasions.

We tried a number of single-threaded efforts to meet the challenge. We rolled out features one after another, such as a recommendation engine for people that our users should meet and a professional Q&A service. None of them worked well enough to solve the problem. We concluded that the problem might require a Swiss Army knife approach with multiple use cases for multiple groups of users. After all, some people might want a news feed, some might want to track their career progress, and some might be keen on continuing education. Fortunately, LinkedIn had grown to the point where the organization could support multiple threads. We reorganized the product team so that each director of product could focus on a different approach to address engagement. Even though none of those efforts alone proved a silver bullet, the overall combination of them significantly improved user engagement.

Separated from everyone, in the fifteenth dungeon, was a small man with fiery brown eyes and wet towels wrapped around his head. For several days his legs had been black, and his gums were bleeding. Fifty-nine years old and exhausted beyond measure, he paced silently up and down, always the same five steps, back and forth. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . an interminable shuffle between the wall and door of his cell. He had no work, no books, nothing to write on. And so he walked. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . His dungeon was next door to La Fortaleza, the governor’s mansion in Old San Juan, less than two hundred feet away. The governor had been his friend and had even voted for him for the Puerto Rican legislature in 1932. This didn’t help much now. The governor had ordered his arrest. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . Life had turned him into a pendulum; it had all been mathematically worked out. This shuttle back and forth in his cell comprised his entire universe. He had no other choice. His transformation into a living corpse suited his captors perfectly. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . Fourteen hours of walking: to master this art of endless movement, he’d learned to keep his head down, hands behind his back, stepping neither too fast nor too slow, every stride the same length. He’d also learned to chew tobacco and smear the nicotined saliva on his face and neck to keep the mosquitoes away. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . The heat was so stifling, he needed to take off his clothes, but he couldn’t. He wrapped even more towels around his head and looked up as the guard’s shadow hit the wall. He felt like an animal in a pit, watched by the hunter who had just ensnared him. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . Far away, he could hear the ocean breaking on the rocks of San Juan’s harbor and the screams of demented inmates as they cried and howled in the quarantine gallery. A tropical rain splashed the iron roof nearly every day. The dungeons dripped with a stifling humidity that saturated everything, and mosquitoes invaded during every rainfall. Green mold crept along the cracks of his cell, and scarab beetles marched single file, along the mold lines, and into his bathroom bucket. The murderer started screaming. The lunatic in dungeon seven had flung his own feces over the ceiling rail. It landed in dungeon five and frightened the Puerto Rico Upland gecko. The murderer, of course, was threatening to kill the lunatic. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . The man started walking again. It was his only world. The grass had grown thick over the grave of his youth. He was no longer a human being, no longer a man. Prison had entered him, and he had become the prison. He fought this feeling every day. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . He was a lawyer, journalist, chemical engineer, and president of the Nationalist Party. He was the first Puerto Rican to graduate from Harvard College and Harvard Law School and spoke six languages. He had served as a first lieutenant in World War I and led a company of two hundred men. He had served as president of the Cosmopolitan Club at Harvard and helped Éamon de Valera draft the constitution of the Free State of Ireland.5 One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . He would spend twenty-five years in prison—many of them in this dungeon, in the belly of La Princesa. He walked back and forth for decades, with wet towels wrapped around his head. The guards all laughed, declared him insane, and called him El Rey de las Toallas. The King of the Towels. His name was Pedro Albizu Campos.

She stared at him. Her head tipped to the side and she narrowed her eyes. “That’s the best you can come up with? What kind of platitude is that?” “Give me a second. I can do better.” He lifted her hand, then reached for her other one. He pulled her close so they stood toe to toe. She shivered a little. He didn’t think it had much to do with the cold. Her arms were bare, but the evening was warm. “Everything happens for a reason. God works in mysterious ways. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.” “You suck at this.” But she was smiling. She was so achingly beautiful. He slid his hands up her arms to her elbows so they were closer still. And then she leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder, and he forgot how to breathe. He stood in the shadows, holding her in his arms, wanting to do the right thing and afraid he’d screw it all up. Her hands nestled the small of his back, thumbs hooked through his belt. Her lips brushed against the sensitive base of his throat. Awareness burned through every single spot her body came in contact with his. This was Danni, all grown up. He wanted one little taste. Just a bit. So he kissed her. And, without a second’s hesitation, she kissed him back. The world around them rocked back on its heels. Then some small noise interrupted—the sound of footsteps, passing too close. He lifted his head, not wanting any intrusion, and the moment ended as fast as it had begun.

Well, Mr Markham, you that maintain that a boy should not be shielded from evil, but sent out to battle against it, alone and unassisted - not taught to avoid the snares of life, but boldly to rush into them, or over them, as he may - to seek danger rather than shun it, and feed his virtue by temptation - would you-' 'I beg your pardon, Mrs Graham - but you get on too fast. I have not yet said that a boy should be taught to rush into the snares of life - or even wilfully to seek temptation for the sake of exercising his virtue by overcoming it - I only say that it is better to arm and strengthen your hero, than to disarm and enfeeble the foe; and if you were to rear an oak sapling in a hot-house, tending it carefully night and day, and shielding it from every breath of wind, you could not expect it to become a hardy tree, like that which has grown up on the mountain-side, exposed to all the action of the elements, and not even sheltered form the shock of the tempest.' 'Granted; but would you use the same arguments with regard to a girl?' 'Certainly not.' 'No; you would have her to be tenderly and delicately nurtured, like a hot-house plant - taught to cling to others for direction and support, and guarded, as much as possible, from the very knowledge of evil. But will you be so good as to inform me why you make this distinction? Is it that you think she has no virtue?' 'Assuredly not.' 'Well, but you affirm that virtue is only elicited by temptation; and you think that a woman cannot be too little exposed to temptation, or too little acquainted with vice, or anything connected therewith. It must be, either, that you think she is essentially so vicious, or so feeble-minded that she cannot withstand temptation - and though she may be pure and innocent as long as she is kept in ignorance and restraint, yet, being destitute of real virtue, to teach her how to sin, is at once to make her a sinner, and the greater her knowledge, the wider her liberty, the deeper will be her depravity - whereas, in the nobler sex, there is a natural tendency to goodness, guarded by a superior fortitude, which, the more it is exercised by trials and dangers, it is only further developed-' 'Heaven forbid that I should think so!' I interrupted her at last. 'Well then, it must be that you think they are both weak and prone to err, and the slightest error, the nearest shadow of pollution, will ruin the one, while the character of the other will be strengthened and embellished - his education properly finished by a little practical acquaintance with forbidden things. Such experience, to him (to use a trite simile), will be like the storm to the oak, which, though it may scatter the leaves, and snap the smaller branches, serves but to rivet the roots, and to harden and condense the fibres of the tree. You would have us encourage our sons to prove all things by their own experience, while our daughters must not even profit by the experience of others.

Space is cold and stiff, but Time is alive. Space divides, but Time brings everything to everything else. It does not course outside of you and you do not swim upon it like a drifting log. Time flows through you: you yourself are in flow. You are the river. Are you grieving? Trust Time: soon you will be laughing. Are you laughing? You cannot hold fast your laughing, for soon you will be weeping. You are blown from mood to mood, from one state to another, from waking to sleeping and from sleeping again to waking. You cannot go on wandering for long. You come to a halt, you are tired, you are hungry, you must sit down, you eat, you stand again, you begin anew to wander. You suffer: from the distance unattainable, you glimpse the Deed which you long. But the stream is constantly moving you and one morning the hour of action has arrived. You are a child, and never (so you think) will you escape the helplessness of childhood, which locks you into four windowless walls. But look: your wall itself movable and yielding, and your whole being becomes re-fashioned into a youth. From within yourself there rise hidden springs that leap up to yourself. Posibilities open up before you like flowers, and one day the world has grown all around you. Softly, Time transports you from one curve to another. New vistas and horizons unfold at your side as you pass by. You begin to love the change: you've discovered an extraordinary adventure is afoot. You sense a direction, you feel a new impulse, you can smell the sea. And you see that what changes in you changes also in everything around you. Every point you hurriedly pass by is itself in movement. Every point is being whirled in some direction: its own long history is following its course: but each point knows the ending of its history no more than you know that of yours. You glance up to heaven, Sublime is the rotation of its suns, but these are each heavily laden with their planetary systems as with grapes, and they dash away from one another into already-prepared distances and unfathomable spaces. You smash atoms and they swarm about in more confusion that if you had stamped your foot on an anthill. You seek a mainstay and a temperament law in the temperate mid-region of our earth, but here, too, there is nothing but constant event changing history, and no one can forecast for you even next week's clouds.

And these two very old people are the father and mother of Mrs Bucket. Their names are Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina. This is Mr Bucket. This is Mrs Bucket. Mr and Mrs Bucket have a small boy whose name is Charlie Bucket. This is Charlie. How d’you do? And how d’you do? And how d’you do again? He is pleased to meet you. The whole of this family – the six grown-ups (count them) and little Charlie Bucket – live together in a small wooden house on the edge of a great town. The house wasn’t nearly large enough for so many people, and life was extremely uncomfortable for them all. There were only two rooms in the place altogether, and there was only one bed. The bed was given to the four old grandparents because they were so old and tired. They were so tired, they never got out of it. Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine on this side, Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina on this side. Mr and Mrs Bucket and little Charlie Bucket slept in the other room, upon mattresses on the floor. In the summertime, this wasn’t too bad, but in the winter, freezing cold draughts blew across the floor all night long, and it was awful. There wasn’t any question of them being able to buy a better house – or even one more bed to sleep in. They were far too poor for that. Mr Bucket was the only person in the family with a job. He worked in a toothpaste factory, where he sat all day long at a bench and screwed the little caps on to the tops of the tubes of toothpaste after the tubes had been filled. But a toothpaste cap-screwer is never paid very much money, and poor Mr Bucket, however hard he worked, and however fast he screwed on the caps, was never able to make enough to buy one half of the things that so large a family needed. There wasn’t even enough money to buy proper food for them all. The only meals they could afford were bread and margarine for breakfast, boiled potatoes and cabbage for lunch, and cabbage soup for supper. Sundays were a bit better. They all looked forward to Sundays because then, although they had exactly the same, everyone was allowed a second helping. The Buckets, of course, didn’t starve, but every one of them – the two old grandfathers, the two old grandmothers, Charlie’s father, Charlie’s mother, and especially little Charlie himself – went about from morning till night with a horrible empty feeling in their tummies. Charlie felt it worst of all. And although his father and mother often went without their own share of lunch or supper so that they could give it to him, it still wasn’t nearly enough for a growing boy. He desperately wanted something more filling and satisfying than cabbage and cabbage soup. The one thing he longed for

Never treat your launch team like a core group. It’s not. Your launch team is a time-limited, purpose-driven team. It ends with the debriefing session following your launch. At that meeting, release the launch team members to join a ministry team of their choice. Your launch team will not stay with you over the long haul. Many church planters make the mistake of thinking that the people from their launch team (whom they have grown to love) will be the same people who will grow the church with them in the long term. That is seldom, if ever, the case. While it’s sad to see people go, it’s part of God’s process in growing your church. So, expect it, be prepared for it, and be thankful that you have the opportunity to serve with so many different people at different points along the journey. Preparing a launch team to maximize your first service is first and foremost a spiritual enterprise. Pray and fast—a lot. Don’t be fooled into thinking that being a solid leader undermines the spirit of teamwork. You can lead a team, hold people accountable and ensure that things get done in a way that fosters teamwork and gives glory to God. So get ready. show people your heart before you ask for their hand. People want to know that you care, and they want to be part of something bigger than themselves. If you can articulate your vision in a way that excites people, they’ll want to be on your team. The launch team is not a democracy. Don’t vote. You are the leader. Lead. While it’s true that you want to share the gospel with as many people as possible, you will need to develop a clear picture of the specific demographic your new church is targeting in order to effectively reach the greatest number of people. Diffused light has little impact, but focused light has the ability to cut through steel. Take time to focus so that you are able to reach the specific people God has called you to. 1. Who Are the Key Population Groups Living in My Area? 2. What Population Group Is Not Being Reached Effectively? 3. What Population Group Do I Best Relate To? Healthy organisms grow, and that includes your church. If you feel stagnation setting in, your job is not to push growth any way you can but to identify the barriers that are hindering you and remove them. The only people who like full rooms are preachers and worship leaders. If you ignore this barrier, your church will stop growing. Early on, it’s best to remain flexible. The last thing you want to do is get in a position in which God can’t grow you because you aren’t logistically prepared. What if twice as many people showed up this Sunday? Would you be ready? When a lead pastor isn’t growing: The church stops growing, the sermons are stale, The staff and volunteers stop growing, The passion for ministry wanes. Keeping your church outwardly focused is just as important now as it was during your prelaunch stage. Make sure that you are continually working to expand God’s kingdom, not building your own. A healthy launch is the single greatest indicator of future church health.

Light on the Discworld isn’t like light elsewhere. It’s grown up a bit, it’s been around, it doesn’t feel the need to rush everywhere. It knows that however fast it goes darkness always gets there first, so it takes it easy.

Probably the most important development in materials during the last few years has been that made by the plant geneticists who have been breeding fast-growing varieties of commercial timbers. Thus varieties of Pinus radiata (Weymouth pine) are now being planted which, in favourable conditions, will increase in diameter by up to 12 centimetres per year and may be fit for felling, as mature timber, in six years. So there is a good prospect of timber becoming a crop which can be grown on a short time-cycle. Nearly all the energy which is needed to make it grow is provided, free, by the sun. Presumably, when one has finished with a timber structure, it could be burnt to yield up most of the energy which it has collected while it was growing. This is, of course, in no way true of steel or concrete. Again, timber used to need lengthy and expensive seasoning in heated kilns, which used up a good deal of energy. As a result of recent research it is now possible to season sizeable soft-wood scantlings in twenty-four hours, at a very low cost. These are very important developments in relation to structures and to the world energy situation,

You see,” continued the minister, bowing thankfully to the duke, “Dictionopolis is the place where all the words in the world come from. They’re grown right here in our orchards.” “I didn’t know that words grew on trees,” said Milo timidly. “Where did you think they grew?” shouted the earl irritably. A small crowd began to gather to see the little boy who didn’t know that letters grew on trees. “I didn’t know they grew at all,” admitted Milo even more timidly. Several people shook their heads sadly. “Well, money doesn’t grow on trees, does it?” demanded the count. “I’ve heard not,” said Milo. “Then something must. Why not words?” exclaimed the undersecretary triumphantly. The crowd cheered his display of logic and continued about its business. “To continue,” continued the minister impatiently. “Once a week by royal proclamation the word market is held here in the great square and people come from everywhere to buy the words they need or trade in the words they haven’t used.” “Our job,” said the count, “is to see that all the words sold are proper ones, for it wouldn’t do to sell someone a word that had no meaning or didn’t exist at all. For instance, if you bought a word like ghlbtsk, where would you use it?” “It would be difficult,” thought Milo—but there were so many words that were difficult, and he knew hardly any of them. “But we never choose which ones to use,” explained the earl as they walked toward the market stalls, “for as long as they mean what they mean to mean we don’t care if they make sense or nonsense.” “Innocence or magnificence,” added the count. “Reticence or common sense,” said the undersecretary. “That seems simple enough,” said Milo, trying to be polite. “Easy as falling off a log,” cried the earl, falling off a log with a loud thump. “Must you be so clumsy?” shouted the duke. “All I said was——” began the earl, rubbing his head. “We heard you,” said the minister angrily, “and you’ll have to find an expression that’s less dangerous.” The earl dusted himself off as the others snickered audibly. “You see,” cautioned the count, “you must pick your words very carefully and be sure to say just what you intend to say. And now we must leave to make preparations for the Royal Banquet.” “You’ll be there, of course,” said the minister. But before Milo had a chance to say anything, they were rushing off across the square as fast as they had come. “Enjoy yourself in the market,” shouted back the undersecretary. “Market,” recited the duke: “an open space or covered building in which——” And that was the last Milo heard as they disappeared into the crowd. “I never knew words could be so confusing,” Milo said to Tock as he bent down to scratch the dog’s ear. “Only when you use a lot to say a little,” answered Tock. Milo thought this was quite the wisest thing he’d heard all day. “Come,” he shouted, “let’s see the market. It looks very exciting.

When you were young, you thought time was a burden, something to be discharged as fast as possible so you could be grown-up. But it was such a bait-n-switch--- when you were an adult, you came to realize that minutes and hours were the single most precious thing you had. No one got forever. And it was a fucking crime to waste what you were given.

My coffee had grown cold. I looked down and saw a half cut of cold coffee staring back at me. That meant, in my haste, I had not sucked it down so fast that I hadn't truly tasted it. Working with Marshall, I learned how to find and brew great coffee, but living with Hack, I learned how to taste it. Big difference.

But,’ the chairman continued, ‘in this kind of store, it is normal and healthy for fashion to produce seventy per cent of sales. Appliance sales have grown so fast that they now account for three-fifths. And that’s abnormal. We’ve tried everything we know to make fashion grow to restore the normal ratio, but nothing works. The only thing left now is to push appliance sales down to where they should be.

I was a busy child and never grew out of it, so I was moving fast as usual when I passed Jep that day on my way out of Connie Sue’s salon. But not too fast to notice his thick dark hair, cut just above his ears and brushed back, with sexy Elvis chops on the sides. He had deep green eyes, a strong jaw, and a small, dark soul patch under his bottom lip that stood out against his tanned skin. Our eyes locked, and I was mesmerized. His steps slowed, and he tilted his head down a little, smiled a sweet smile, and said, “Hey.” Did I mention the dimples? He had the cutest dimples I’d ever seen. My heart seriously skipped a beat, although I tried not to let it show. (I always tell him he had me at “hey,” and that’s no joke.) “Hey,” I said back. I wish I could tell you I said something original and witty, but that’s all I could come up with. A nod and a “hey.” Then he was gone. Who is he? Jep was twenty-two, I was twenty, and somehow we’d grown up in the same town and never met each other. And even though we were young, we both already had complicated lives. We had experienced pain, guilt, betrayal, and brokenness. But in that moment, none of it mattered. Not one bit.

Besides, how can somebody love you if you don’t know who you is? I had thoroughly been a girl so long by then that I’d grown to like it, got used to it, got used to not having to lift things, and have folks make excuses for me on account of me not being strong enough, or fast enough, or powerful enough like a boy, on account of my size. But that’s the thing. You can play one part in life, but you can’t be that thing. You just playing it. You’re not real. I was a Negro above all else, and Negroes plays their part, too: Hiding. Smiling. Pretending bondage is okay till they’re free, and then what? Free to do what? To be like the white man? Is he so right? Not according to the Old Man. It occurred to me then that you is everything you are in this life at every moment. And that includes loving somebody. If you can’t be your own self, how can you love somebody? How can you be free?

about you.” It was an almost girlish statement as she walked forward, graceful in a white sari embroidered in blush pink and powder blue. “So human you look, though you wear wings,” she murmured. “Your skin must show every bruise, every wound.” Such a casual comment. Such a quiet threat. Elena answered with the truth. “Your skin is flawless.” A blink, as if she’d surprised the other angel. Then Anoushka inclined her head by the merest fraction. “I don’t think I’ve heard a compliment from another female angel for at least a hundred years.” A smile that should have been charming, and yet . . . “Will you walk with me?” “I’m afraid I’m headed to training.” She glimpsed Galen out of the corner of her eye, hoped he’d keep his distance. Right now, Anoushka did appear merely inquisitive. Any sign of aggression and things might get ugly. “Of course.” Anoushka waved her hand. “It must worry Raphael to have a mate who is so very weak.” Having the other angel at her back felt like beetles crawling over her skin. She was almost glad to fall into step beside Galen—right now, trying to protect herself from a weapons expert sounded like a far better bet than fencing with an angel who might be a true cobra. According to the rumors she’d heard, Anoushka had grown up drinking poison with her mother’s milk. A shiver skated across her body, and she was more than ready to throw herself into the gruelingly physical training. However, another one of Neha’s creations—Venom—interrupted the hand-to-hand combat session midway. The vampire had on his ubiquitous shades, his body clothed in a black on black suit. But, for once, his expression held no hint of mockery. “Come. Sara is waiting for you on the phone.” She was already walking at a fast clip beside him. “Has something happened to Zoe?” Fear for her goddaughter caught her by the throat. “You should speak to her directly.” Her wings brushed the steps as she walked up to Raphael’s office. She pulled them up instinctively, the action second nature now—thanks to having been put on her ass by Galen more than

Certainly,' said Trymon. He picked up the knife, weighing it for balance and accuracy. 'I must congratulate you, master. I can see that we must all get up very early in the morning to get the better of you.' Galder laughed. And the knife left Trymon's hand at such speed that (because of the somewhat sluggish nature of Disc light) it actually grew a bit shorter and a little more massive as it plunged, with unerring aim, towards Galder's neck. It didn't reach it. Instead, it swerved to one side and began a fast orbit — so fast that Galder appeared suddenly to be wearing a metal collar. He turned around, and to Trymon it seemed that he had suddenly grown several feet taller and much more powerful. The knife broke away and shuddered into the door a mere shadow's depth from Trymon's ear. 'Early in the morning?' said Galder pleasantly. 'My dear lad, you will need to stay up all night.

Research and development conducted by private companies in the United States has grown enormously over the past four decades. We have substantially replaced the publicly funded science that drove our growth after World War II with private research efforts. Such private R&D has shown some impressive results, including high average returns for the corporate sector. However, despite their enormous impact, these private R&D investments are much too small from a broader perspective. This is not a criticism of any individuals; rather, it is simply a feature of the system. Private companies do not capture the spillovers that their R&D efforts create for other corporations, so private sector executives in established firms underinvest in invention. The venture capital industry, which provides admirable support to some start-ups, is focused on fast-impact industries, such as information technology, and not generally on longer-run and capital-intensive investments like clean energy or new cell and gene therapies. Leading entrepreneur-philanthropists get this. In recent years, there have been impressive investments in science funded by publicly minded individuals, including Eric Schmidt, Elon Musk, Paul Allen, Bill and Melinda Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Bloomberg, Jon Meade Huntsman Sr., Eli and Edythe Broad, David H. Koch, Laurene Powell Jobs, and others (including numerous private foundations). The good news is that these people, with a wide variety of political views on other matters, share the assessment that science—including basic research—is of fundamental importance for the future of the United States. The less good news is that even the wealthiest people on the planet can barely move the needle relative to what the United States previously invested in science. America is, roughly speaking, a $20 trillion economy; 2 percent of our GDP is nearly $400 billion per year. Even the richest person in the world has a total stock of wealth of only around $100 billion—a mark broken in early 2018 by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in close pursuit. If the richest Americans put much of their wealth immediately into science, it would have some impact for a few years, but over the longer run, this would hardly move the needle. Publicly funded investment in research and development is the only “approach that could potentially return us to the days when technology-led growth lifted all boats. However, we should be careful. Private failure is not enough to justify government intervention. Just because the private sector is underinvesting does not necessarily imply that the government will make the right investments.

Mom had planted both wheat seeds and sugar cane, taking care to put them in nice, even rows, and stood back to admire her work, dusting off her hands. “It looks pretty good to me!” With that task finished, Mom went into one of the empty houses, to see if she could find anything else to plant. She was disappointed, though. The house was barren- hardly anything in it at all.  She went through each house and discovered that every single one was pretty much stripped bare. No belongings, no decorations, no furniture. Ethan had been wrong about how much stuff there was in the town. Elijah was going to have to stop burning things for warmth!  Mom had been searching through houses for a while with no luck, so she decided to check on the garden. A smile spread across her face when saw the wheat had already grown in! She could get used to ultra-fast-growing plants. With a skip in her step, she went to find the villagers. The double-E’s were outside their house examining their broken front door. It hung off its hinges, and an entire piece the size of a dog was just missing. Elijah threw his arms in the air. “I don't know how to fix a door!” “Me either,” Ethan said while he scratched his head, “but we have to figure it out. If we don't have doors, the zombies will just come right in and eat us.”  “I can help,” Mom said. The mayors jumped, startled.  “Don’t sneak up on us like that!” Elijah said.

You do seem to get on well with her, but I have an advantage, my lord. One you will never be able to compete with.” “An advantage?” “Yes.” Emmie said, feeling a little sorry for him, because he really would not be able to argue the point much further. “I am a female, you see. A girl. Well, a grown woman, but I was a girl, as Bronwyn is.” “You are a female?” The earl looked her up and down, and Emmie felt herself blushing. It was a thorough and thoroughly dispassionate perusal. “Why so you are, but how does this make yours the better guidance?” “There are certain things, my lord…” Emmie felt her blush deepening but refused to capitulate to embarrassment. “Things a lady knows a gentleman will not, things somebody must pass along to a little girl in due course if she’s to manage in this life.” “Things.” The earl’s brow knit. “Things like childbirth, perhaps?” Emmie swallowed, resenting his bluntness even while she admired him for it. “Well, yes. I doubt you’ve given birth, my lord.” “Have you?” he countered, peering down at her. “That is not the point.” “So no advantage to you there, particularly as I have attended a birth or two in my time, and I doubt you’ve managed that either.” “Why on earth would…?” Emmie’s mouth snapped shut before she could ask the obvious, rude, burning question. “I was a soldier,” he said gently. “And war is very hard on soldiers, but even harder on women and children, Miss Farnum. A woman giving birth in a war zone is generally willing to accept the assistance of whomever is to hand, regardless of standing, gender, or even what uniform he wears.” “So you’ve a little experience, but you aren’t going to tell me you’re familiar with the details of a lady’s bodily… well, that is to say. Well.” “Her menses?” The earl looked amused again. “You might have some greater degree of familiarity than I. I will grant that much, but as a man with five sisters, I am far more knowledgeable and sympathetic regarding female lunation than I had ever aspired to be. And surely, these matters you raise—childbirth and courses—they are a ways off for Miss Winnie?” “Bronwyn,” Emmie muttered. Standing so close to him, she could catch the earl’s scent, and it managed to combine both elegance and barbarism. It was spicy rather than floral, but also fresh, like meadows and breezes and cold, fast-running streams. “She answers to Winnie,” he said, “and she got away from you.” “She did.

Willow leaves swayed before Hunter’s eyes, but his gaze held fast, riveted on the slender girl as she tried to break his lance. With each swing of her arms, he clenched his teeth, growing angrier. Then the absurdity of it hit him, and a reluctant smile tugged at his lips. She knew he was out here. Grown men quivered in fear at the sound of his name, but a frail girl dared to defy him? He recalled how she had looked when she walked out to face him, golden head held high, big blue eyes meeting his in defiance. How dare she spit at him, not once but twice? He wavered somewhere between outrage, disbelief, and admiration. She might not look like much, but she had courage, he’d give her that. His brother, Warrior, hunkered beside him and snorted with laughter, clearly pleased with the situation. Above the roar of the river, he said, “If she knew who you were, she wouldn’t defy you like this.” Hunter never shifted his gaze from the girl. “Once she knows who she’s up against, this nonsense will stop. If there’s anything I’m an expert on, Hunter, it’s women. They push only when they think they can get away with it. You shouldn’t have let her spit at you. Next time, slap her.” Hunter arched an eyebrow. Given the fact that his brother’s wife was the most spoiled female in the village, he found this bit of advice amazing. He studied Warrior’s solemn expression. “Is that so?” “Trust me. She’ll never try it again.” “How many times have you slapped Maiden of the Tall Grass?” “I haven’t. She knows who has the stronger arm.” Hunter bit back a grin. “Yes, she certainly does.” Returning his attention to the girl, he scowled. He would teach her some respect or kill her trying. At last the girl’s strength gave out, and she fell to her knees in defeat. A spray of feathers flew up around her. As the white plumes floated downward, her shoulders sank with them. Suvate, it was finished. She had to face her fate and learn to accept it, just as he must. Destiny knew no foe.

Many died who drank of it; and in those who lived, the drinking wrought change, subtle, gradual and grisly. In adapting themselves to the changing conditions, they had sunk far below their original level. But the lethal waters altered them even more horribly, from generation to more bestial generation. They who had been winged gods became pinioned demons, with all that remained of their ancestors' vast knowledge distorted and perverted and twisted into ghastly paths. As they had risen higher than mankind might dream, so they sank lower than man's maddest nightmares reach. They died fast, by cannibalism, and horrible feuds fought out in the murk of the midnight jungle. And at last among the lichen-grown ruins of their city only a single shape lurked, a stunted abhorrent perversion of nature.

When the fugitives arrived in Lawrence, most had only the clothes on their backs, and in many cases those were rags. “They were strong and industrious,” Rev. Cordley wrote, “and by a little effort, work was found for them and very few, if any of them, became objects of charity.” But while they were eager to make their new lives in freedom, they needed help translating their industriousness into livelihoods. Nearly all were illiterate because most slaveholding states had strict laws making it illegal to teach slaves to read or write. Fugitives arriving in Lawrence equated learning with liberty, so their thirst for education was overwhelming. But the town’s fine educational system was not able to accommodate the number of eager new students. Mr. S. N. Simpson, one of the town’s 1855 pioneers, had started the first Sunday schools in town when he arrived, and he conceived a system of education for the fugitives based on his Sunday school model. Classes would be taught by volunteers in the evenings, and the curriculum would include basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, along with lectures designed to help them establish themselves in the community. The people of Lawrence were as excited to teach as their students were excited to learn, and enough volunteers were available to split the first class of about one hundred men and women into groups of six or eight.214 Josiah C. Trask, the editor of the Lawrence State Journal, spent an evening in January 1862 visiting the school and devoted an article to his observations. Eighty-three students, taught by twenty-seven teachers, met in the courthouse. “One young man who had been to the school only five nights,” Trask wrote, “began with the alphabet, [and] now spells in words of two syllables.” He observed that there was a class of little girls, “eager and restless,” a class of grown men, “solemn and earnest,” a class of “maidens in their teens,” and “another of elderly women.” Trask observed that the students were “straining forward with all their might, as if they could not learn fast enough.” He concluded, observing that all eighty-three students came to class each evening “after working hard all day to earn their bread,” while the twenty-seven teachers, “some of them our most cultivated and refined ladies and gentlemen,” labored night after night, “voluntarily and without compensation.” It was “a sight not often seen.”215

The extraordinary success of a few internet companies has masked the embarrassing lack of major breakthroughs in other domains. There has been little improvement in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, which affect nearly a third of all Americans over the age of eighty-five. There is still no cure for cancer. Life expectancy is declining in many parts of the world. So is quality of life. The Concorde made its last flight in 2003. Trains, planes, and automobiles move about as fast today as they did fifty years ago. Inflation-adjusted wages have stagnated for most Americans since the early 1960s—while the absolute size of paychecks has grown, purchasing power has not.5

I’ve gotten it wrong," he said. He always tried to grasp life by zooming out. That was his generation. They were fast with science and believed in the cosmos, and conceptualized reality in academic comfort which made them superior to it. They argued life had no meaning and said things like, “We’re just smart animals on an uncaring rock.” But at some point, a person trying to organize their life with reason would be stuck in infinity. There was nothing to reason with. And so they had to return— return to the monotony that meant something a second time. “My mom,” he dreamed, “once cried to me when she saw a bird chirping on her fence... real, bucket tears. She used to tell me her dreams which always meant something... A grown woman who used to pick up sticks she found pretty and keep them in her bag...She was always sweating...” There was a dumbness to her he could never understand. Andrei’s mother, so pathetically an earthling, lived in touch with humanity, and was involved in it so deeply that no intelligent, zoomed- out mind could ever comprehend. “I don’t want concepts. There is nowhere else to go in life except toward each other.

You could lose the ones you loved in the blink of an eye—and—- when it happened, you weren’t thinking about all the reasons that could have kept you apart. You thought of all the reasons that kept you together. And, no doubt, how you wished you’d had more time. Even if you’d had centuries… When you were young, you thought time was a burden, something to be discharged as fast as possible so you could be grown-up. But it was such a bait-n-switch—when you were an adult, you came to realize that minutes and hours were the single most precious thing you had. No one got forever. And it was a fucking crime to waste what you were given.

you can do all sorts of stuff that full-grown wizards can’t, Viktor always said —” Ron looked around at her so fast he appeared to crick his neck; rubbing it, he said, “Yeah? What did Vicky say?

It goes by so fast. But when your kids are little and the days seem like they are forty-eight hours long, you just can't see that. And everyone with grown kids tells you they grow up in the blink of an eye and will be out of college and on with their lives before you know it. And young parents listen but never really believe it.' She paused. 'Until it happens to them.

How did Rafe make it back so fast? Same way we did. He stole a ride. A motorcycle. In his case, though, he skipped all the steps between. No tortuous trek through the woods--he’d landed relatively close to a town. No attempts to get help, because Rafe wasn’t like us. His life experience was closer to Sam’s. His mom had sheltered him as best she could from the ugliness of life on the run, but he hadn’t grown up in a world where you could stroll into town, ask strangers for help, and expect to get it. Annie used to have a motorcycle, he said, and she’d taught him to ride it. He also knew how to hot-wire one. I wasn’t asking how. Like I said, his life experience wasn’t ours.

I remember it. I remember when it hadn’t happened. I remember when you hadn’t happened. None of you had. It was me, just me, just me and then all of you and all of your light and your trees and your sky and your rain. Your rain. Soaking you through, weighing you down as you dance in it, shouting and singing and thanking the clouds as they chill your bones and flood your homes. The water rises, and you still seem as if you cannot stop dancing. Are you singing now? Whom do you thank when everything has been destroyed, and the clouds have grown so dark that you are blinded in the newborn sea of their creation? In the beginning, it was only me. In the end, it will be only me. Me and… you. How are you here? How is this fair? Don’t you wish it had been someone else? I wish it had been nobody at all, but now… now I feel you. I feel your presence here. I feel your pain, your fear. I felt your breathing stop when you arrived. I heard the splintering crack of something important. It’s starting again now. You’re starting again. In slow, coughing, hitching breaths. I can taste the dirt in your mouth. I feel the bruises forming around your ribs. Your heart is going too fast. Perhaps in the end, your own terror will kill you, instead of me-- instead of whatever we were doomed to become. Or perhaps you will not die. At the end, they will all be gone but us; and in that nothingness, we will forget any of it ever existed at all. I will forget that I was ever alone.

Infidelity, cheating is what my wife accused me of and wants divorce. she filled for divorce after 22 years of marriage. she is angry I once had a relationship with her sister when I was in Vegas. I hadn´t even met my wife then, she found out and told me because she can´t bear the pain that I didn´t tell her all this years of our marriage. I do not think it´s important because It happened 4 years before I met my wife at the airport and we started being friends and we dated for about a month or two and we got married. It was when we were getting married I found out they were sisters. She was the elder sister to my wife. We have 4 grown up teenagers together, I do not understand why all these matters. Her sister is also married to someone else and they are happy, I do not know why my wife can´t let go even after so much apology. But to my greatest surprise, I came across a psychic I found that helped my marriage, (sangopriesteslovesolution(At)gmail. com) whom so many people where talking good reviews about on Yelp. He helped me out to cast a love reuniting forgiving spell that made my wife come to me just last week to reconcile back to me and cancel the on going divorce. we have immediately renew our marriage vows and promise to love each other more than ever till death do us part. What would I have done if not for this love solution temple priestess sango?? lovesolutiontemple.com send messages to get quick reply on 561 412 1776. I have never been this happen with my wife in years ever since she found out.

How we can appropriately enjoy good food, fine clothes and cheerful company as these come our way in the natural course of things. You should not worry yourself about food or clothing, feeling that these things are too good for you, but train your mind and the ground of your being to be above them. Nothing should rouse your mind to love and delight but God alone. It should be above all other things. Why? It would be a sickly form of inwardness which needed to be put right by external clothing; rather, as long as it is under your control, what is inside should correct what is outside. And if the latter comes to you in a different form, then you should accept it as being good from the ground of your being, but in such a way that you would accept it just as willingly if it were different again. It is just the same with the food, the friends and relatives and with everything that God may give you or take from you. And so in my view the most important thing of all is that we should give ourselves up entirely to God whenever he allows anything to befall us, whether insult, tribulation or any other kind of suffering, accepting it with joy and gratitude and allowing God to guide us all the more rather than seeking these things out ourselves. Willingly learn all things from God therefore and follow him, and all will be well with you. Then we will be able to accept honour and comfort, and if dishonour and discomfort were to be our lot, we could and would be just as willing to endure these too. So they can justifiably feast who would just as willingly fast.15 And that must also be the reason why God relieves his friends of both major and minor suffering, which otherwise his infinite faithfulness could not allow him to do, for there is so much and such great benefit in suffering and he neither wishes nor ought to deny his own anything which is good. But he is content with a good and upright will, or else he would spare them no suffering on account of the inexpressible benefit which it contains. As long as God is content, you too should be content, and when it is something else in you which pleases him, then you should still be content. For we should be so totally God’s possession inwardly with the whole of our will that we should not be unduly concerned about either devotional practices or works. And in particular you should avoid all particularity, whether in the form of clothes, food or words – as in making grand speeches, or particularity of gesture, since these things serve no useful purpose at all. But you should also know that not every form of particularity is forbidden to you. There is much that is particular which we must sometimes do and with many people, for whoever is a particular person must also express particularity on many occasions and in many ways. We should have grown into our Lord Jesus Christ inwardly and in all things so that all his works are reflected in us together with his divine image. We should bear in ourselves all his works in a perfect likeness as far as we can. Though we are the agents of our actions, it is he who should take form in them. So act out of the whole of your devotion and your intent, training your mind in this at all times and teaching yourself to grow into him in all that you do.

You look beautiful, Alex. All grown up.” Blackmoor’s grey eyes darkened, narrowing on the garment in question, then rising to meet her gaze. The look in his eyes was one she’d never seen before, and it sent a tremor of excitement through her as she felt heat rising in her cheeks again. He looked away, then back again, and the emotion she had seen there was gone, so quickly that she couldn’t be certain it was ever there to begin with. She forced a smile, attempting to bring the conversation back to the realm of the comfortable. “Thank you, my lord.” “If I may speak frankly?” “Certainly.” “I know you want to try out all your lessons, but take care with whom you test your skills. I noticed how Stanhope was looking at you earlier.” “Lord Stanhope was a charming partner.” Alex met Blackmoor’s eyes, daring him to disagree. “I’m certain I don’t know to what you are referring.” “I think you know all too well to what I’m referring. Any man would have to be blind not to notice you. This dress is designed to lure a lion. I assure you that particular lion will bite.” “What are you saying?” “Simply that I would prefer not to have to play protector tonight. I merely caution you to think twice before getting wrapped up with Stanhope, or any like him.” Alex’s spine stiffened in response. Her tone turned frosty. “As usual, my lord, your caution—or shall I say interference?—is unnecessary. Need I remind you that I’ve been managing Freddie Stanhope since he was in short pants?” His chuckle held no humor. “Take my advice, Alex. Your ‘Freddie’ is no longer in the schoolroom. And you’re out of your league if you think you can, as you say, ‘manage’ him. Just because you wear a gown that marks you as all grown up doesn’t mean you are prepared to take him on.” Alex’s temper flared. “I require neither your advice, nor your opinion, my lord. I would thank you to remember that, besides the fact that you’re not that much older than I am, I already have a father—and three brothers. I hardly need another overbearing male telling me what to do and with whom to do it.” “More like what not to do. And with whom not to do it.” She inhaled in a sharp intake of air, eyes narrowing, and made a move to leave him mid-waltz. To an outside observer, nothing changed about their movements—but Alex felt Blackmoor’s arms turn to stone around her. He held her fast, and tight, and his voice lowered. “You will finish this waltz with me, Alexandra. I will not allow you the pleasure of giving me a set-down at your first ball.” Recognizing

The modern era is the briefest but most turbulent of the three main eras of human history. Whereas the era of foragers lasted more than 200,000 years and the agrarian era about 10,000 years, the modern era has lasted just 250 years. Yet during this brief era change has been more rapid and more fundamental than ever before; indeed, populations have grown so fast that 20 percent of all humans may have lived during just these two and a half centuries.

A train horn blew, but it seemed a little distant, like it was coming from somewhere up ahead. It blew again, louder this time. “There’s another train coming!” shouted Ruby. “We’re going to crash!” “Don’t worry,” said the captain cheerfully. “Vermillion knows what to do.” Matt closed his eyes and waited for impact, but it never came. The train picked up speed, faster and faster. It roared so loud Matt couldn’t even hear his own voice. He covered his ears. The whole train was vibrating violently, and then it lurched forward with such a jolt that the three Hudsons toppled over each other and landed hard on the floor. Ruby gasped. “The floor!” she said. “What the . . . what?” said Corey. Matt looked down. He could hardly believe his eyes. The floor appeared to be melting, morphing from the smooth worn floors of the subway car to cracked and rough wooden planks. A nail head poked at his hand. Matt looked up. All around him the train car was altering, growing, transforming. The walls expanded, and the windows shrank. Lacy curtains unfurled and crawled down the sides of the windows like fast-growing vines. The hard plastic benches of the subway swelled into plush chairs and tables with white tablecloths. The fluorescent lights on the ceiling contracted and then dropped, forming crystal chandeliers. A plush rug sprouted beneath him. It grew through the floor as though it were a carpet of grass pushing through dirt. Matt picked himself up, then helped Corey and Ruby, who had somehow gotten tangled in the rug. It seemed to have grown up and around Ruby’s wrists and ankles, as though it were trying to weave her into itself. Matt and Corey helped free her, and then Ruby yelped as the white rat leaped across their faces and landed on a little table. It pulled a match out of the table drawer with its tail, struck it against the wall, and began lighting lanterns and sconces, then the crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, until the space was well lit once again. It was not at all like the train they had been in before. The subway car no longer looked like a subway at all. Rather, it looked like a very old-fashioned train, but one for rich passengers.

Tencent had partnered with leading mobile carriers like China Mobile to receive 40 percent of the SMS charges that QQ users racked up when they sent messages to mobile phones. A new service could hurt Tencent’s financial bottom line and at the same time risk its relationships with some of China’s most powerful companies. It was the sort of decision that publicly traded, ten-thousand-person companies typically refer to a committee for further study. But Ma wasn’t a typical corporate executive. That very night, he gave Zhang the go-ahead to pursue the idea. Zhang put together a ten-person team, including seven engineers, to build and launch the new product. In just two months, Zhang’s small team had built a mobile-first social messaging network with a clean, minimalistic design that was the polar opposite of QQ. Ma named the service Weixin, which means “micromessage” in Mandarin. Outside of China, the service became known as WeChat. What came next was staggering. Just sixteen months after Zhang’s fateful late-night message to Ma, WeChat celebrated its one hundred millionth user. Six months after that, it had grown to two hundred million users. Four months after that, it had grown to three hundred million users. Pony Ma’s late-night bet paid off handsomely. Tencent reported 2016 revenues of $ 22 billion, up 48 percent from the previous year, and up nearly 700 percent since 2010, the year before WeChat’s launch. By early 2018, Tencent reached a market capitalization of over $ 500 billion, making it one of the world’s most valuable companies, and WeChat was one of the most widely and intensively used services in the world. Fast Company called WeChat “China’s app for everything,” and the Financial Times reported that more than half of its users spend over ninety minutes a day using the app. To put WeChat in an American context, it’s as if one single service combined the functions of Facebook, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Venmo, Grubhub, Amazon, Uber, Apple Pay, Gmail, and even Slack into a single megaservice. You can use WeChat to do run-of-the-mill things like texting and calling people, participating in social media, and reading articles, but you can also book a taxi, buy movie tickets, make doctors’ appointments, send money to friends, play games, pay your rent, order dinner for the night, plus so much more. All from a single app on your smartphone.

Why did she run off like this?” he asks. “She seemed like she was having a good time! Did you girls have a fight?” Evan’s not an idiot. He hasn’t grown up with Paige without knowing how girls can pull and tear and rip at each other till they can make their victim feel like they’re going insane. And suddenly, there’s nothing more important to me than Evan knowing I’m not like that. I’m not one of those girls. “She didn’t fight with me!” I say as fast as my pattering feet. “I even ate all her mussel pasta at lunch so she wouldn’t have to!” Evan laughs. “That was nice of you.

Clothes Washer Hoses and Filters A couple of years ago, I came home from running an errand and heard the sound of rushing water (like a waterfall!) coming from my basement. I tore down the stairs and saw what looked like the Old Faithful geyser spewing water from behind my washing machine. I immediately cut off the water at the supply stop behind the washer, but there was quite a pool on the floor. I cut the power to the washing machine (at the electrical panel), then unplugged it and moved the appliance back from the wall. The washer was about 15 years old, and so were the hoses that ran from the supply valve to the machine. Made of rubber, they had grown brittle and corroded with minerals from our well water over the years. One of them finally split; that’s what caused the gusher. I’d never given them a thought before the split. If you’ve had your washing machine for eight years or more, it might be wise to replace the supply hoses now, before they do to you what mine did to me! Insurance companies—who often wind up paying out for the damage done by burst hoses—advise homeowners to replace supply hoses every 3 to 5 years.