Hilarious Work Quotes

When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them.

It's better to keep grief inside. Grief inside works like bees or ants, building curious and perfect structures, complicating you. Grief outside means you want something from someone, and chances are good you won't get it.

You! You tricked me! I never want to see you or that bottle of liquid arsenic again!” I chucked the empty moonshine jug at him. Or tried to. It missed him by a dozen feet. He picked it up in astonishment. “You drank the whole bloody thing? You were only supposed to have a few sips!” “Did you say that? Did you?” He reached me just as I felt the ground tip. “Didn’t say anything. I’ve got those names, so that’s all that matters, but you men…you’re all alike. Alive, dead, undead—all perverts! I had a drunken pervert in my pants! Do you know how unsanitary that is?” Bones held me upright. I would have protested, but I couldn’t remember how to. “What are you saying?” “Winston poltergeisted my panties, that’s what!” I announced with a loud hiccup. “Why, you scurvy, lecherous spook!” Bones yelled in the direction of the cemetery. “If my pipes still worked, I’d go right back there and piss on your grave!

A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding veil and some in headgear or cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.

Things are rarely just crazy enough to work, but they're frequently just crazy enough to fail hilariously.

Love is like farm work. It requires consistency, and imagination. Your body will ache and you will be fatigued, but there is no greater reward than seeing the fruits of your labor.

In his opinion, working was vastly overrated. Particularly as a way to build character, for everyone who engaged in it was far too snappish and fussy, and seemed to have no manners at all.

I wanted to make every moment intentional. Wake up intentionally. Work intentionally. Eat intentionally. And rest intentionally.

I am also very proud to be a liberal. Why is that so terrible these days? The liberals were liberatorsthey fought slavery, fought for women to have the right to vote, fought against Hitler, Stalin, fought to end segregation, fought to end apartheid. Liberals put an end to child labor and they gave us the five day work week! What's to be ashamed of?

Erasmus says that you should praise a ruler even for qualities he does not have. For the flattery gives him to think. And the qualities he presently lacks, he might go to work on them.

You’re so hilarious. You know, if this whole Daimon-slaying gig doesn’t work out for you, you should really consider being a comedian. The bright Barney hair color would just add to the overall entertainment factor.

You come to this place, mid-life. You don’t know how you got here, but suddenly you’re staring fifty in the face. When you turn and look back down the years, you glimpse the ghosts of other lives you might have led; all houses are haunted. The wraiths and phantoms creep under your carpets and between the warp and weft of fabric, they lurk in wardrobes and lie flat under drawer-liners. You think of the children you might have had but didn’t. When the midwife says, ‘It’s a boy,’ where does the girl go? When you think you’re pregnant, and you’re not, what happens to the child that has already formed in your mind? You keep it filed in a drawer of your consciousness, like a short story that never worked after the opening lines.

some of my happiest funniest times have been spent in offices. Perhaps because the work was mudane, even the tiniest of distractions become wildly hilarious and wonderful. Actually, I'd say that 90 per cent of my doubled-over-gasping-with-laughther-laughing-so-much-that-you-can't-breathe-and-you-think-you-might-die laughing has occurred during slow days in offices.

Most women sell sex; most of them just don’t take cash (nor do they each sell to more than one ‘client’ at a time).

Once he had watched Liz making a silk braid. One end was pinned to the wall and on each finger of her raised hands she was spinning loops of thread, her fingers flying so fast he couldn’t see how it worked. ‘Slow down,’ he said, ‘so I can see how you do it,’ but she’d laughed and said, ‘I can’t slow down, if I stopped to think how I was doing it I couldn’t do it at all.

Cogswhallop glanced skeptically at the complex runes. "Are you sure this'll work, gen'ral?" "Of course I'm sure-" Ping. The silvery note echoed in the cramped room. Makenna felt her face turn scarlet.

He thinks, the cardinal would have known how best to manage this. Wolsey always said, work out what people want, and you might be able to offer it; it is not always what you think, and may be cheap to supply.

He things we think he's a double agent, working for them but secretly working for us. He doesn't know we know he's a triple agent, working for them but secretly working for us but really he's secretly working for them. Dexter, how's your brain?" "Hurting.

When your efforts run in the face of conventional wisdom and accepted mastery, persistence can look like madness. If you succeed in the end, this extreme originality reformulates into a new level of mastery, sometimes even genius; if you fail in the end, you remain a madman in the eyes of others, and maybe even yourself. When you are in the midst of the journey…there’s really no way of knowing which one you are.” (p.129)

But more than anything, as a little girl, I wanted to be exactly like Miss Piggy. She was ma heroine. I was a plucky little girl, but I never related to the rough-and-tumble icons of children's lit, like Pippi Longstocking or Harriet the Spy. Even Ramona Quimby, who seemed cool, wasn't somebody I could super-relate to. She was scrawny and scrappy and I was soft and sarcastic. I connected instead to Miss - never 'Ms.' - Piggy; the comedienne extraordinaire who'd alternate eye bats with karate chops, swoon over girly stuff like chocolate, perfume, feather boas or random words pronounced in French, then, on a dmie, lower her voice to 'Don't fuck with me, fellas' decibel when slighted. She was hugely feminine, boldly ambitious, and hilariously violent when she didn't get way, whether it was in work, love, or life. And even though she was a pig puppet voiced by a man with a hand up her ass, she was the fiercest feminist I'd ever seen.

His speech is low and rapid, his manner assured; he is at home in courtroom or waterfront, bishop’s palace or inn yard. He can draft a contract, train a falcon, draw a map, stop a street fight, furnish a house and fix a jury. He will quote you a nice point in the old authors, from Plato to Plautus and back again. He knows new poetry, and can say it in Italian. He works all hours, first up and last to bed. He makes money and he spends it. He will take a bet on anything.

I believe it’s fine to give up books even after a page; there’s so much to read in the world that will delight you, so why should you work against the grain?

Ear demons are totally real," Cody said. "They're what make microphones like these ones work. They're also what tell you to eat the last slice of pie when you know Tia wanted it.

Concentrate on sharpening your memory and peeling your sensibility. Cut every page you write by at least one third. Stop constructing those piffling little similes of yours. Work out what it is you want to say. Then say it in the most direct and vigorous way you can. Eat meat. Drink blook. Give up your social life and don't think you can have friends. Rise in the quiet hours of the night and prick your fingertips and use the blood for ink; that will cure you of persiflage!

He wants to say, because Anne is not a carnal being, she is a calculating being, with a cold slick brain at work behind her hungry black eyes. "I believe any woman who can say no to the King of England and keep on saying it, has the wit to say no to any number of men, including you, including Harry Percy, including anyone else she may choose to torment for her own sport while she is arranging her career in the way it suits her. So I think, yes, you've been made into a fool, but not quite in the way you thought.

Whedon: Studios will tell you: A woman cannot headline an action movie. After The Hunger Games they might stop telling you that a little bit. Whatever you think of the movie, it’s done a great service. And after The Avengers, I think it’s changing. Johansson: A lot of the female superhero movies just suck really badly. Whedon: The suck factor is not small. Johansson: They are really not well made, and already you’re fighting against the tide. There are a couple [female-driven action movies] that have worked-ish, don’t you think? Hemsworth: Angelina Jolie tends to do it pretty well, as the dominant female. Jackson: They got to get The Pro to the screen! Whedon: [Groaning] See, that is the problem. Sam is the problem! Jackson: I love that book! Whedon: [Reluctantly] The Pro is hilarious. Jackson: The Pro’s hilarious. [To the group] You ever see or hear of it? Johansson: No, what’s The Pro? Jackson: It’s [a comic book] about a hooker who gets super powers! Johansson: [Pauses] That is exactly the problem right there. Whedon: That’s why I wasn’t going to bring up The Pro! (From an Entertainment Weekly interview)

Mr. O'Donnell was at the library counter, performing the sort of grim rituals librarians perform with index cards and stumpy pencils and those rubber stamps with columns of rotating numbers. "Ms. Auerbach! What will it be today? Camus? Cervantes?" "Actually I'm looking for a book of poetry by Emily Dickinson" He paused somberly, toying with the twirled tip of his mustache. No matter how seriously librarians are engaged in their work, they are always glad to be interrupted when the theme is books. It makes no difference to them how simple the search is or how behind on time either of you might be running - they consider all queries scrupulously. They love to have their knowledge tested. They lie in wait, they will not be rushed.

I have to go. Boss has this weird idea that I should actually work while he’s paying me.

When you're writing historical fiction, you are always looking for the untold story. You're looking for what has been repressed politically, or repressed psychologically. You are working in the crypt.

He had a charm about him sometimes, a warmth that was irresistible, like sunshine. He planted Saffy triumphantly on the pavement, opened the taxi door, slung in his bag, gave a huge film-star wave, called, "All right, Peter? Good weekend?" to the taxi driver, who knew him well and considered him a lovely man, and was free. "Back to the hard life," he said to Peter, and stretched out his legs. Back to the real life, he meant. The real world where there were no children lurking under tables, no wives wiping their noses on the ironing, no guinea pigs on the lawn, nor hamsters in the bedrooms, and no paper bags full of leaking tomato sandwiches.

Nat is already laughing. We go through this every morning. She tells Nik I own a clown car. I glower at her while I put my foot up onto Nik’s lap and kick the passenger door while turning the ignition. She starts. Works every time. Nik looks like he’s not sure whether to laugh or get the hell out of the car. We’re on our way to work and Nat says, “Nik, turn on the radio.” He shakes his head and replies cynically, “I would but I’m scared the roof might fly off.” Nat and I burst into laughter. We laugh so much we both sob and laugh at the same time.

A monkey could do my job better and with more hilarious results.

Working for Master Mischief? This would be an act of sheer rebellion. Her parents would be livid if they ever found out. And it would be hilarious.

When we judge others for what and how much they feel, it says more about our capacity to handle the emotions of others.

No, you don’t get to touch yourself in my car.” “Why not?” It wasn’t a whine, it wasn’t. My voice was too deep to whine. It was more of a… whoan. Or something. I couldn’t think. “Three reasons. One, I don’t want to get into an accident trying to keep my eyes on you. Two, if I got into an accident, or if we were pulled over for indecent exposure, the mood killing would be the least of our problems. Three,” and here it was, the tone I loved, that I could barely wait for even though I knew I wasn’t going to like what he had to say, “for the rest of the night, that’s mine. Don’t touch it.

Sometimes,’ he says, ‘I think it would save time and work if all the interested parties came to the council, including foreign ambassadors. The proceedings leak out anyway, and to save them mishearing and misconstruing they might as well hear everything at first hand.

Philosophy needs vision and argument… there is something disappointing about a philosophical work that contains arguments, however good, which are not inspired by some genuine vision, and something disappointing about a philosophical work that contains a vision, however inspiring, which is unsupported by arguments…Speculation about how things hang together requires… the ability to draw out conceptual distinctions and connections, and the ability to argue… But speculative views, however interesting or well supported by arguments or insightful, are not all we need. We also need what [the philosopher Myles] Burnyeat called ‘vision’ – and I take that to mean vision as to how to live our lives, and how to order our societies.

Over Christmas break, I took on additional hours and was working late one Saturday night when Wild Bill came sauntering into my department tipsy to pick me up so I wouldn’t have to hitchhike home. I had scarcely seen him since he enrolled me in school, except slumped over the bar at Dave’s or when he would occasionally drop by the Tampico unannounced on the way home to his new family. He’d beach himself on the sofa while I did my homework, and when he sobered up enough to drive home, he would down a can of beer before saying goodbye. To say it made me happy to see him, drunk and all, is an understatement. Seeing my father anywhere besides Dave’s Tavern was akin to spotting a unicorn in the wild. I asked him to meet me out in front of the store, but he insisted on following me through the employees’ exit. On the way out, he stole two poinsettias. He thought it was hilarious to be running out of the JCPenney’s with a poinsettia in each hand.

I... I don't, I don't think I can do this." "Do what?" It didn't answer. "Do the tests?" "I can't work with you when you're like this!" it blurted. "To every one of my specimens, I am the last thing they see! Terrror is what I am used to-- terror is what I like! I prefer my subjects to scream and beg, not ask to see results!" "I'll scream my questions, if that helps." "It won't," it said sadly. "I'll know you're only trying to make me feel better.

Since George was at work, Dad ended up driving both women to the hospital. They clutched each other in the backseat-two huge-bellied, panting, moaning women, both of them freaking out about the work they were missing. Dad sped all the way to the hospital, sure he'd get pulled over and arrested for being a suspected polygamist with a taste for overachievers.

Be reasonable, my lord. Once you.ve done it, you'll want to do it all the time. For about three years. That's the way it goes. And your father has other work in mind for you.

Wolsey always said, work out what people want, and you might be able to offer it; it is not always what you think, and may be cheap to supply.

When we are not aware of what we care about and why, we lose the ability to create the life we want and to feel our best no matter the circumstances life presents.

Surfing is kind of a good metaphor for the rest of life. The extremely good stuff - chocolate and great sex and weddings and hilarious jokes - fills a minute portion of an adult lifespan. The rest of life is the paddling: work, paying bills, flossing, getting sick, dying.

Once, in Thessaly, there was a poet called Simonides. He was commissioned to appear at a banquet, given by a man called Scopas, and recite a lyric in praise of his host. Poets have strange vagaries, and in his lyric Simonides incorporated verses in praise of Castor and Pollux, the Heavenly Twins. Scopas was sulky, and said he would pay only half the fee: ‘As for the rest, get it from the Twins.’ A little later, a servant came into the hall. He whispered to Simonides; there were two young men outside, asking for him by name. He rose and left the banqueting hall. He looked around for the two young men, but he could see no one. As he turned back, to go and finish his dinner, he heard a terrible noise, of stone splitting and crumbling. He heard the cries of the dying, as the roof of the hall collapsed. Of all the diners, he was the only one left alive. The bodies were so broken and disfigured that the relatives of the dead could not identify them. But Simonides was a remarkable man. Whatever he saw was imprinted on his mind. He led each of the relatives through the ruins; and pointing to the crushed remains, he said, there is your man. In linking the dead to their names, he worked from the seating plan in his head. It is Cicero who tells us this story. He tells us how, on that day, Simonides invented the art of memory. He remembered the names, the faces, some sour and bloated, some blithe, some bored. He remembered exactly where everyone was sitting, at the moment the roof fell in.

This is where I falter. This is where I lose myself. This is where years invert and minutes reverse and ideas of what was good and right upend. This is where time is dispersed, thrown down like leaves or stones to be read. It's difficult to say what really happened. I know that my heartache was indescribable, the depth of my loneliness astonishing. I know that I worked very hard, and I never intended to hurt anyone. I cannot describe a life dispossessed of happiness.

Rose's work of art took her all day, including two playtimes, story time, and most of lunch. At the end of school it was stolen from her by the wicked teacher who had pretended to be so interested. "Beautiful- what-is-it?" she asked as she pinned it high on the wall, where Rose could not reach. "They take your pictures," said Indigo,... when he finally made out what all the roaring and stamping was about. "They do take them.... Why do you want that picture so much?" he asked Rose. "It was my best ever," said Rose furiously. "I hate school. I hate everyone in it. I will kill them all when I'm big enough." "You can't just go round killing people," Indigo told her...

Inside his copy of The Social Contract he keeps a letter from a young Picard, an enthusiast called Antoine Saint-Just: “I know you, Robespierre, as I know God, by your works.” When he suffers, as he does increasingly, from a distressing tightness of the chest and shortness of breath, and when his eyes seem too tired to focus on the printed page, the thought of the letter urges the weak flesh to more Works.

Collot is back from Lyon, did you know? He had finished his work, as he describes it. His path of righteousness is very clear and straight and broad. It’s so easy to be a good Jacobin. Collot hasn’t a doubt or scruple in his head— indeed, I doubt if he has much in it at all. Stop the Terror? He thinks we haven’t even begun.

It is not written that great men shall be happy men. It is nowhere recorded that the rewards of public office include a quiet mind. He sits in Whitehall, the year folding around him, aware of the shadow of his hand as it moves across the paper, his own inconcealable fist; and in the quiet of the house, he can hear the soft whispering of his quill, as if his writing is talking back to him. Can you make a new England? You can write a new story. You can write new texts and destroy the old ones, set the torn leaves of Duns Scotus sailing about the quadrangles, and place the gospels in every church. You can write on England, but what was written before keeps showing through, inscribed on the rocks and carried on floodwater, surfacing from deep cold wells. It’s not just the saints and martyrs who claim the country, it’s those who came before them: the dwarves dug into ditches, the sprites who sing in the breeze, the demons bricked into culverts and buried under bridges; the bones under your floor. You cannot tax them or count them. They have lasted ten thousand years and ten thousand before that. They are not easily dispossessed by farmers with fresh leases and law clerks who adduce proof of title. They bubble out of the ground, wear away the shoreline, sow weeds among the crops and erode the workings of mines.

Have you ever wondered What happens to all the poems people write? The poems they never let anyone else read? Perhaps they are Too private and personal Perhaps they are just not good enough. Perhaps the prospect of such a heartfelt expression being seen as clumsy shallow silly pretentious saccharine unoriginal sentimental trite boring overwrought obscure stupid pointless or simply embarrassing is enough to give any aspiring poet good reason to hide their work from public view. forever. Naturally many poems are IMMEDIATELY DESTROYED. Burnt shredded flushed away Occasionally they are folded Into little squares And wedged under the corner of An unstable piece of furniture (So actually quite useful) Others are hidden behind a loose brick or drainpipe or sealed into the back of an old alarm clock or put between the pages of AN OBSCURE BOOK that is unlikely to ever be opened. someone might find them one day, BUT PROBABLY NOT The truth is that unread poetry Will almost always be just that. DOOMED to join a vast invisible river of waste that flows out of suburbia. well Almost always. On rare occasions, Some especially insistent pieces of writing will escape into a backyard or a laneway be blown along a roadside embankment and finally come to rest in a shopping center parking lot as so many things do It is here that something quite Remarkable takes place two or more pieces of poetry drift toward each other through a strange force of attraction unknown to science and ever so slowly cling together to form a tiny, shapeless ball. Left undisturbed, this ball gradually becomes larger and rounder as other free verses confessions secrets stray musings wishes and unsent love letters attach themselves one by one. Such a ball creeps through the streets Like a tumbleweed for months even years If it comes out only at night it has a good Chance of surviving traffic and children and through a slow rolling motion AVOIDS SNAILS (its number one predator) At a certain size, it instinctively shelters from bad weather, unnoticed but otherwise roams the streets searching for scraps of forgotten thought and feeling. Given time and luck the poetry ball becomes large HUGE ENORMOUS: A vast accumulation of papery bits That ultimately takes to the air, levitating by The sheer force of so much unspoken emotion. It floats gently above suburban rooftops when everybody is asleep inspiring lonely dogs to bark in the middle of the night. Sadly a big ball of paper no matter how large and buoyant, is still a fragile thing. Sooner or LATER it will be surprised by a sudden gust of wind Beaten by driving rain and REDUCED in a matter of minutes to a billion soggy shreds. One morning everyone will wake up to find a pulpy mess covering front lawns clogging up gutters and plastering car windscreens. Traffic will be delayed children delighted adults baffled unable to figure out where it all came from Stranger still Will be the Discovery that Every lump of Wet paper Contains various faded words pressed into accidental verse. Barely visible but undeniably present To each reader they will whisper something different something joyful something sad truthful absurd hilarious profound and perfect No one will be able to explain the Strange feeling of weightlessness or the private smile that remains Long after the street sweepers have come and gone.

Darling Daddy, This is Rose. Very good news. Caddy is going to marry Micheal. In case you have forgotten because you have not been home for so long he is the one with the ponytail and the earring that you do not like. And Caddy says she will have a white lace dress and three bridesmaids, Saffron and Sarah and me, and a big party for everyone, all her old boyfriends too. Fireworks. A band. A big tent called a marquee. But where will we put it? Carriages with white horses for us all to go to the church. Afterward Caddy and Micheal will go for a holiday to Australia to visit the Great Barrier Reef. Caddy has it all worked out and Mummy says Yes She Can Of Course You Can Darling Of Course You Must Do That. Saffron said That Will Cost a Few Weeks Housekeeping and Mummy said Yes But We Do Not Need to Worry About That. DADDY WILL PAY. Love, Rose.

Whatever it is, it can’t possibly be as important as the Italian Concerto. Now let’s get to work.” We work for three and a half hell-bent hours, until the keys are literally smeared with blood and my mind has been bleached to a glorious blankness, a lunar eclipse of the soul. The music is a castle I conjure around myself, a fortress of notes no feeling can storm.

How funny would it be if we left a trail of Faerie dust in our wake?” “That would be hilarious.” I laughed. “It’s a shame we don’t produce any.” Do we? I idiotically shook my hand as I tried to brandish Faerie dust like Tinkerbell. It didn’t work.

It was a happy day for me when that astronaut left the office, but in retrospect, I learned a lot from him. For example, that if you need to make a strong criticism, it’s a bad idea to lash out wildly; be surgical, pinpoint the problem rather than attack the person. Never ridicule a colleague, even with an offhand remark, no matter how tempting it is or how hilarious the laugh line. The more senior you are, the greater the impact your flippant comment will have. Don’t snap at the people who work with you. When you see red, count to 10.

Naturally torturers giggle while they work: The body’s dumb obedience to physics (pull hard enough and this comes off, squeeze tight enough and that pops out) against which the nuances of the victim’s personality count for nothing has in it one of the roots of comedy—the spirit’s subservience to the flesh. You can cut a head off and shove it in a bag, stick it on a pole, play volleyball or footie with it. Hilarious, among other things.

He felt the full warmth of that pleasure from which the proud shut themselves out; the pleasure which not only goes with humiliation, but which almost is humiliation. Men who have escaped death by a hair have it, and men whose love is returned by a woman unexpectedly, and men whose sins are forgiven them. Everything his eye fell on it feasted on, not aesthetically, but with a plain, jolly appetite as of a boy eating buns. He relished the squareness of the houses; he liked their clean angles as if he had just cut them with a knife. The lit squares of the shop windows excited him as the young are excited by the lit stage of some promising pantomime. He happened to see in one shop which projected with a bulging bravery on to the pavement some square tins of potted meat, and it seemed like a hint of a hundred hilarious high teas in a hundred streets of the world. He was, perhaps, the happiest of all the children of men. For in that unendurable instant when he hung, half slipping, to the ball of St. Paul's, the whole universe had been destroyed and re-created.

Plain words on plain paper. Remember what Orwell says, that good prose is like a windowpane. Cut every page you write by at least a third. Stop constructing those piffling little similes of yours. Work out what you want to say. Then say it in the most direct and vigorous way you can. Eat meat. Drink blood. Give up your social life and don't think you can have friends. Rise in the quiet hours of the night and prick your fingertips and use the blood for ink; that will cure you of persiflage! But do I take my own advice? Not a bit. Persiflage is my nom de guerre. (Don't use foreign expressions. It's elitist.)

The old marchioness had him tracing down bed hangings and carpets for her. Send that. Be here. To her, all the world was a menial. If she wanted a lobster or a sturgeon, she ordered it up, and if she wanted good taste she ordered it in the same way. The marchioness would run her hand over Florentine silks, making little squeaks of pleasure. "You bought it, Master Cromwell," she would say. "And very beautiful it is. Your next task is to work out how we pay for it.

I know that, if I took your oath, I should be damned.” “There are those who would envy your insight,” he says, “into the workings of grace. But then, you and God have always been on familiar terms, not so? I wonder how you dare. You talk about your maker as if he were some neighbor you went fishing with on a Sunday afternoon.

People tend to accept information that confirms their existing beliefs and feelings, and reject information that contradicts them. This is called “motivated reasoning,” and it means that providing people with corrective information often does not work and may even strengthen their original beliefs. This also means that when people receive new information, their existing beliefs and feelings may have more influence over whether they believe or reject this information than rational reasoning.

Valkyrie stood there and waited for her to start making sense. "There is a vegetable-plant hybrid we've been working on, modifying the genes and receptors, mutating the proteins and acids so that they are, in effect, neurotransmitters. Our work on the synapses alone has been quite illuminating." Valkyrie stood there and waited for her to start making sense.

The more power you give your child in any discipline process, the more likely he will be to be able to make it work positively for himself.

Try to work on the scale of eternity. Do you see? Otherwise you will be fettered by trivia. The daily frustrations will cripple you.

Never rest on your laurels. Never quit. Never stop working to make the world a better place. That's our unfinished business.

Imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you.

As we now learn, his marriage to Anne was never valid.’ Rafe rubs the crown of his head so that his red hair stands up in a tuft. ‘So as his union with Katherine was not valid either, he has never been married in his life. Twice a bridegroom yet never a husband – has it ever happened to a king before? Even in the Old Testament? Please God Mistress Seymour will go to work and give him a son. We cannot seem to keep an heir. The king’s daughter by Katherine, she is a bastard. His daughter by Anne, she is a bastard. Which leaves his son Richmond, who of course has always been a bastard.

It is often said that great works of art are “inexhaustible”—capable, as Stanley Olson put it, of “endless interpretation. But Lubin, the Charlotte C. Weber Professor of Art at Wake Forest University, demonstrates in painful if inadvertently hilarious detail that this does not mean that works of art are immune from - that they are not in fact often subject to—wild and perverse misinterpretation.

I was one of only two native English speakers in the company, so other departments would send me English texts for correction. That lasted two weeks, until they noticed I had no idea how the English language worked. I sent their creations back with more mistakes than they’d had when I received them. They began sending the texts to the Scandinavian team instead. They spoke such lovely English, after all.

We all looked at Shelton, who rolled his eyes. “Like my vote matters now.” Hi patted his back. “If it makes you feel better, your vote’s never mattered.” “Hilarious.” Shelton rubbed his face. “I hope my parole officer finds you as funny.” I sprang up and hurried for the exit, stopping Chance with a hand on his shoulder. “Give me a second alone with Ben. He’s still worked up, probably needs a few minutes to decompress.” Chance’s expression soured, but he held back. Hi fired a shooter my way. “Good idea. We need him mission focused. Rodger dodger.” Shelton covered his face with his hands. “Enough already.

But Parliament cannot see how it is the state's job to create work. Are not these matters in God's hands, and is not poverty and dereliction part of his eternal order? To everything there is a season: a time to starve and a time to thieve. If rain falls for six months solid and rots the grain in the fields, there must be providence in it; for God knows his trade. It is an outrage to the rich and enterprising, to suggest that they should pay an income tax, only to put bread in the mouths of the workshy. And if Secretary Cromwell argues that famine provokes criminality: well, are there not hangmen enough?

When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them. If your law exacts a penalty, you must be able to enforce it – on the rich as well as the poor, the people on the Scottish borders and the Welsh marches, the men of Cornwall as well as the men of Sussex and Kent.

I hear you will bring in a law,’ Kingston says. ‘It seems harsh, to make them commit a crime in retrospect.’ They try to explain it to the constable. A prince cannot be impeded by temporal distinctions: past, present, future. Nor can he excuse the past, just for being over and done. He can’t say, ‘all water under the bridges’; the past is always trickling under the soil, a slow leak you can’t trace. Often, meaning is only revealed retrospectively. The will of God, for instance, is brought to light these days by more skilful translators. As for the future, the king’s desires move swiftly and the law must run to keep up. ‘Bear in mind his Majesty’s remarkable foresight, at the trial of the late queen. He knew the sentence before the verdict was in.’ ‘True,’ Kingston says. ‘The executioner was already on the sea.’ Kingston has been a councillor long enough. He should know how the king’s mind works. Once Henry says, ‘This is my wish,’ it becomes so dear and familiar a wish that he thinks he has always had it. He names his need, and he wants it supplied.

I make up as little as possible. I spend a great deal of time on research, on finding all the available accounts of a scene or incident, finding out all the background details and the biographies of the people involved there, and I try to run up all the accounts side by side to see where the contradictions are and to look where things have gone missing. And it's really in the gap - it's in the erasures - that I think the novelist can best go to work because inevitably in history in any period, we know a lot about what happened, but we may be far hazier on why it happened. And there's always the question, why did it happen the way it did? Where was the turning point?

Fine, lad, I’ll help you,” Gibsie replied with a sigh. “Even though it’ll never work, you’re doomed to fail, and I’ll more than likely end up giving the best man speech at your wedding at some ridiculously young age because you’ll have bulldozed the shit out of things, for now, I will absolutely help you bury your head in the sand.” “That’s not funny, Gibs,” I snapped, bristling. “I know,” he replied—while he laughed his arse off. “It’s hilarious.

But you see, Crumb, it is hard to give up what you have worked at since you were a boy. There were some Italian visitors once, they were cheering us on, Brandon and myself, and they thought that Achilles and Hector had come back to life. So they said.' But which is which? One dragged through the dust by the other ... The king says, 'You turn your boy out beautifully. No nobleman could do more.' 'I don't want him to be Achilles,' he says, 'I only want him not to be flattened.

Sixty is heaven," she [bohemian Aunt Norma] told Jeanie as they sat having tea. "The world is done with you, you become to all intents and purposes invisible, particularly if you are a woman. I like to think of it as your third life. There's childhood, then adult conformity - work, family, responsibility - then just when everyone assumes it's all over and you're on the scrap heap of old age, freedom! You can finally be who you are, not what society wants you to be, not who 'you' think you ought to be.

Fill with mingled cream and amber I will drain that glass again. Such hilarious visions clamber Through the chamber of my brain - Quaintest thoughts - queerest fancies Come to life and fade away; What care I how time advances? I am drinking ale today.

During my first few months of Facebooking, I discovered that my page had fostered a collective nostalgia for specific cultural icons. These started, unsurprisingly, within the realm of science fiction and fantasy. They commonly included a pointy-eared Vulcan from a certain groundbreaking 1960s television show. Just as often, though, I found myself sharing images of a diminutive, ancient, green and disarmingly wise Jedi Master who speaks in flip-side down English. Or, if feeling more sinister, I’d post pictures of his black-cloaked, dark-sided, heavy-breathing nemesis. As an aside, I initially received from Star Trek fans considerable “push-back,” or at least many raised Spock brows, when I began sharing images of Yoda and Darth Vader. To the purists, this bordered on sacrilege.. But as I like to remind fans, I was the only actor to work within both franchises, having also voiced the part of Lok Durd from the animated show Star Wars: The Clone Wars. It was the virality of these early posts, shared by thousands of fans without any prodding from me, that got me thinking. Why do we love Spock, Yoda and Darth Vader so much? And what is it about characters like these that causes fans to click “like” and “share” so readily? One thing was clear: Cultural icons help people define who they are today because they shaped who they were as children. We all “like” Yoda because we all loved The Empire Strikes Back, probably watched it many times, and can recite our favorite lines. Indeed, we all can quote Yoda, and we all have tried out our best impression of him. When someone posts a meme of Yoda, many immediately share it, not just because they think it is funny (though it usually is — it’s hard to go wrong with the Master), but because it says something about the sharer. It’s shorthand for saying, “This little guy made a huge impact on me, not sure what it is, but for certain a huge impact. Did it make one on you, too? I’m clicking ‘share’ to affirm something you may not know about me. I ‘like’ Yoda.” And isn’t that what sharing on Facebook is all about? It’s not simply that the sharer wants you to snortle or “LOL” as it were. That’s part of it, but not the core. At its core is a statement about one’s belief system, one that includes the wisdom of Yoda. Other eminently shareable icons included beloved Tolkien characters, particularly Gandalf (as played by the inimitable Sir Ian McKellan). Gandalf, like Yoda, is somehow always above reproach and unfailingly epic. Like Yoda, Gandalf has his darker counterpart. Gollum is a fan favorite because he is a fallen figure who could reform with the right guidance. It doesn’t hurt that his every meme is invariably read in his distinctive, blood-curdling rasp. Then there’s also Batman, who seems to have survived both Adam West and Christian Bale, but whose questionable relationship to the Boy Wonder left plenty of room for hilarious homoerotic undertones. But seriously, there is something about the brooding, misunderstood and “chaotic-good” nature of this superhero that touches all of our hearts.

CHRIS PRATT (ANDY DWYER): Chris had the best audition I had ever seen. No one knew his work and he came in and crushed. He is a comedy savant and a natural actor in a way I have never really seen. Each take is different and hilarious and completely unexpected. His character was only supposed to be on the show for six episodes, which seems ridiculous now.

Q: What do you feed a 600 pound gorilla? A: Anything it wants!   Q: Why did the gorilla fail English? A: He had little ape-titude!   Q: Why are gorillas underpaid? A: They’re willing to work for peanuts!   Q: How come the giant ape climbed up the side of the skyscraper? A: The elevator was broken!   Q: How do you make a gorilla float? A: Two scoops of ice cream, some soda and a gorilla!

Cromwell. I am not such a hard man that I don’t see how you are left. Do you know what I say? I say I don’t know one man in England who would have done what you have done, for a man disgraced and fallen. The king says so. Even him, Chapuys, the Emperor’s man, he says, you cannot fault what’s-he-called. I say, it’s a pity you ever saw Wolsey. It’s a pity you don’t work for me.” “Well,” he says, “we all want

He told me that you had a loathing of those in the religious life. That was why he found you diligent in his work.” “That was not the reason.” He looks up. “May I speak?” “Oh, for God’s sake,” Henry cries. “I wish someone would.” He is startled. Then he understands. Henry wants a conversation, on any topic. One that’s nothing to do with love, or hunting, or war. Now that Wolsey’s gone, there’s not much scope for it; unless you want to talk to a priest of some stripe. And if you send for a priest, what does it come back to? To love; to Anne; to what you want and can’t have. “If you ask me about the monks, I speak from experience, not prejudice, and though I have no doubt that some foundations are well governed, my experience has been of waste and corruption. May I suggest to Your Majesty that, if you wish to see a parade of the seven deadly sins, you do not organize a masque at court but call without notice at a monastery? I have seen monks who live like great lords, on the offerings of poor people who would rather buy a blessing than buy bread, and that is not Christian conduct. Nor do I take the monasteries to be the repositories of learning some believe they are. Was Grocyn a monk, or Colet, or Linacre, or any of our

England was always, the cardinal says, a miserable country, home to an outcast and abandoned people, who are working slowly toward their deliverance, and who are visited by God with special tribulations. If England lies under God’s curse, or some evil spell, it has seemed for a time that the spell has been broken, by the golden king and his golden cardinal. But those golden years are over, and this winter the sea will freeze; the people who see it will remember it all their lives.

He was beautiful. Whatever else he was, Sage was by far the most magnetic man I had ever seen. I had felt it in my dreams, and it was even more true in real life. I welcomed the chance to study him without his knowledge. He glanced up, and I quickly closed my eyes, feigning sleep. Had he seen me? The scratching stopped. He was looking at me, I knew it. I held my breath and willed my eyes not to pop open and see if he was staring. Finally the scratching started up again. I forced myself to slowly count to ten before I opened my eyelids the tiniest bit and peeked through my lashes. Good-he wasn’t looking at me. I opened my eyes a little wider. What was he doing? Moving only my eyes, I glanced down at the dirt floor in front of him… …and saw a picture of me, fast asleep. It was incredible. I could see his tools laid out beside the picture: rocks in several sizes and shapes, a couple of twigs…the most rudimentary materials, and yet what he was etching into the floor wouldn’t look out of place on an art gallery wall. It was beautiful…far more beautiful than I thought I actually looked in my sleep. Is that how he saw me? Sage lifted his head again, and I shut my eyes. I imagined him studying me, taking careful note of my features and filtering them through his own senses. My heartbeat quickened, and it took all my willpower to remain still. “You can keep pretending to be asleep if you’d like, but I don’t see a career for you as an actress,” he teased. My eyes sprang open. Sage’s head was again bent over his etching, but a grin played on his face as he worked. “You knew?” I asked, mortified. Sage put a finger to his lips, glancing toward Ben. “About two minutes before you woke up, I knew,” he whispered. “Your breathing hanged.” He bent back over the drawing, then impishly asked, “Pleasant dreams?” My heart stopped, and I felt myself blush bright crimson as I remembered our encounter in the bottom of the rowboat. I sent a quick prayer to whoever or whatever might be listening that I hadn’t re-enacted any of it in my sleep, then said as nonchalantly as possible, “I don’t know, I can’t remember what I dreamed about. Why?” He swapped out the rock in his hand for one with a thinner edge and worked for another moment. “No reason…just heard my name.” I hoped the dim moonlight shadowed the worst of my blush. “Your name,” I reiterated. “That’s…interesting. They say dreams sort out things that happen when we’re awake.” “Hmm. Did you sort anything out?” he asked. “Like I said, I can’t remember.” I knew he didn’t believe me. Time to change the subject. I nodded to the etching. “Can I come look?

One tradesman the same as the next? Not in the real world. Any man with a steady hand and a cleaver can call himself a butcher: but without the smith, where does he get that cleaver? Without the man who works in metal, where are your hammers, your scythes, your sickles, scissors and planes? Your arms and armour, your arrowheads, your pikes and your guns? Where are your ships at sea and their anchors? Where are your grappling hooks, your nails, latches, hinges, pokers and tongs? Where are your spits, kettles, trivets, your harness rings, buckles and bits? Where are your knives?

There was a man in Florence, a friar, Fra Savonarola, he induced all the people to think beauty was a sin. Some people think he was a magician and they fell under his spell for a season, they made fires in the streets and they threw in everything they liked, everything they had made or worked to buy, bolts of silk, and linen their mothers had embroidered for their marriage beds, books of poems written in the poet's hand, bonds and wills, rent-rolls, title deeds, dogs and cats, the shirts from their backs, the rings from their fingers, women their veils, and do you know what was worst, Johane – they threw in their mirrors. So then they couldn't see their faces and know how they were different from the beasts in the field and the creatures screaming on the pyre. And when they had melted their mirrors they went home to their empty houses, and lay on the floor because they had burned their beds, and when they got up next day they were aching from the hard floor and there was no table for their breakfast because they'd used the table to feed the bonfire, and no stool to sit on because they'd chopped it into splinters, and there was no bread to eat because the bakers had thrown into the flames the basins and the yeast and the flour and the scales. And you know the worst of it? They were sober. Last night they took their wine-skins …’ He turns his arm, in a mime of a man lobbing something into a fire. ‘So they were sober and their heads were clear, but they looked around and they had nothing to eat, nothing to drink and nothing to sit on.’ ‘But that wasn't the worst. You said the mirrors were the worst. Not to be able to look at yourself.’ ‘Yes. Well, so I think. I hope I can always look myself in the face. And you, Johane, you should always have a fine glass to see yourself. As you're a woman worth looking at.’ You

The Elixir of Life!” “The what?!” “Exactly.” “What does it do?” “Let’s see…it’s an elixir…and it grants eternal life…” “You’re making fun of me.” “Only a little.” “Tell me more,” I said. “Does it work?” “What do you think?” “Has anyone in the Society ever died?” I asked. “That would be the proof in the pudding, wouldn’t it? Or in the Elixir.” “It would. And the answer is yes. They drop off as easily as anyone.” “Doesn’t that put an end to the argument?” “To me, yes,” Sage said. “To the believers, no. They’d say using the Elixir to save lives is outside the natural order. It should only be used in the tiniest amounts to relieve pain and suffering as someone is on their way out.” “So they have the power to grant eternal life and they never use it? Seems like a waste.” “A waste of time! Each meeting is three hours long! Do you have any idea what I could do with three hours, Olivia?” He had set me up for it that time, and I took the bait. “I can think of a few things you could do,” I said, giving him another wicked smile. This time he returned the grin and leaned in close to kiss me, first on my lips, then my cheek, my neck… “Sage,” I murmured as we slid down to the floor of the boat. “I really can’t swim.” “Hmmm,” he breathed into my ear, “then we’ll just have to be very careful, won’t we?

She was especially taken with Matt. Until he said, “It’s time to fess up, hon. Tell Trace how much you care. You’ll feel better when you do.” Climbing up the ladder, Chris said, “Better sooner than later.” He nodded at the hillside behind them. “Because here comes Trace, and he doesn’t look happy.” Both Priss and Matt turned, Priss with anticipation, Matt with tempered dread. Dressed in jeans and a snowy-white T-shirt, Trace stalked down the hill. Priss shielded her eyes to better see him. When he’d left, being so guarded about his mission, she’d half wondered if he’d return before dinner. Trace wore reflective sunglasses, so she couldn’t see his eyes, but his entire demeanor—heavy stride, rigid shoulders, tight jaw—bespoke annoyance. As soon as he was close enough, Priss called out, “What’s wrong?” Without answering her, Trace continued onto the dock. He didn’t stop until he stood right in front of . . . Matt. Backing up to the edge of the dock, Matt said, “Uh . . . Hello?” Trace didn’t say a thing; he just pushed Matt into the water. Arms and legs flailing out, Matt hit the surface with a cannonball effect. Stunned, Priss shoved his shoulder. “What the hell, Trace! Why did you do that?” Trace took off his sunglasses and looked at her, all of her, from her hair to her body and down to her bare toes. After working his jaw a second, he said, “If you need sunscreen, ask me.” Her mouth fell open. Of all the nerve! He left her at Dare’s, took off without telling her a damn thing and then had the audacity to complain when a friend tried to keep her from getting sunburned. “Maybe I would have, if you’d been here!” “I’m here now.” Emotions bubbled over. “So you are.” With a slow smile, Priss put both hands on his chest. The shirt was damp with sweat, the cotton so soft that she could feel every muscle beneath. “And you look a little . . . heated.” Trace’s beautiful eyes darkened, and he reached for her. “A dip will cool you down.” Priss shoved him as hard as she could. Taken by surprise, fully dressed, Trace went floundering backward off the end of the dock. Priss caught a glimpse of the priceless expression of disbelief on Trace’s face before he went under the water. Excited by the activity, the dogs leaped in after him. Liger roused himself enough to move out of the line of splashing. Chris climbed up the ladder. “So that’s the new game, huh?” He laughed as he scooped Priss up into his arms. “Chris!” She made a grab for his shoulders. “Put me down!” “Afraid not, doll.” Just as Trace resurfaced, Chris jumped in with her. They landed between the swimming dogs. Sputtering, her hair in her face and her skin chilled from the shock of the cold water, Priss cursed. Trace had already waded toward the shallower water off the side of the dock. His fair hair was flattened to his head and his T-shirt stuck to his body. “Wait!” Priss shouted at him. He was still waist-deep as he turned to glare at her. Kicking and splashing, Priss doggy-paddled over to him, grabbed his shoulders and wrapped her legs around his waist. “Oh, no, you don’t!” Startled, Trace scooped her bottom in his hands and struggled for balance on the squishy mud bottom of the lake. “What the hell?” And then lower, “You look naked in this damn suit.” Matt and Chris found that hilarious. Priss looked at Trace’s handsome face, a face she loved, and kissed him. Hard. For only a second, he allowed the sensual assault. He even kissed her back. Then he levered away from her. “You ruined my clothes, damn it.” “Only because you were being a jealous jerk.” His expression dark, he glared toward Matt. Christ started humming, but poor Matt said, “Yeah,” and shrugged. “If you think about it, you’ll agree that you sort of were—and we both know there’s no reason.

Whether it be because the Fall has really brought men nearer to less desirable neighbours in the spiritual world, or whether it is merely that the mood of men eager or greedy finds it easier to imagine evil, I believe that the black magic of witchcraft has been much more practical and much less poetical than the white magic of mythology. I fancy the garden of the witch has been kept much more carefully than the woodland of the nymph. I fancy the evil field has even been more fruitful than the good. To start with, some impulse, perhaps a sort of desperate impulse, drove men to the darker powers when dealing with practical problems. There was a sort of secret and perverse feeling that the darker powers would really do things; that they had no nonsense about them. And indeed that popular phase exactly expresses the point. The gods of mere mythology had a great deal of nonsense about them. They had a great deal of good nonsense about them; in the happy and hilarious sense in which we talk of the nonsense of Jabberwocky or the Land where Jumblies live. But the man consulting a demon felt as many a man has felt in consulting a detective, especially a private detective; that it was dirty work but the work would really be done. A man did not exactly go into the wood to meet a nymph; he rather went with the hope of meeting a nymph. It was an adventure rather than an assignation. But the devil really kept his appointments and even in one sense kept his promises; even if a man sometimes wished afterwards, like Macbeth, that he had broken them.

Late in the evening I heard the distant rumbling of wagons over bridges — a sound heard farther than almost any other at night — the baying of dogs, and sometimes again the lowing of some disconsolate cow in a distant barn-yard. In the mean-while all the shore rang with the trump of bullfrogs, the sturdy spirits of ancient wine-bibbers and wassailers, still unrepentant, trying to sing a catch in their Stygian lake — if the Walden nymphs will pardon the comparison, for though there are almost no weeds, there are frogs there — who would fain keep up the hilarious rules of their old festal tables, though their voices have waxed hoarse and solemnly grave, mocking at mirth, and the wine has lost its flavor, and become only liquor to distend their paunches, and sweet intoxication never comes to drown the memory of the past, but mere saturation and waterloggedness and distention.

My parents have always worried that I’d take Amy too personally — they always tell not to read too much into her, And yet I can’t fail to notice that whenever I screw something up, Amy does it right: When I finally quit violin at age twelve, Amy was revealed as a prodigy in the next book. (“Sheesh, violin can be hard work, but handwork is the only way to get better!”) When I blew off the junior championship at age sixteen to do a beach weekend with friends, Amy recommitted to the game. (“Sheesh, I know it’s fun to spend time with friends, but I’d be letting myself and everyone else down if I didn’t show up for the tournament.”) This used to drive me mad, but after I wend off to Harvard (and Amy correct those my parents’ alma mater), I decided it was all too ridiculous to think about. That my parents, two child psychologists, chose this particular public form of passive-aggressiveness toward their child was not just fucked up but also stupid and weird and kind of hilarious.

That's it," Rayna said, pushing my laptop closed. It was about a week before the Rio trip, and she and I were at the kitchen island working on term papers. "Rayna!" I complained. "I could've lost my work!" "Please. You hadn't typed anything in the last hour. Consider this a one-person intervention: Who is he and why haven't you told me about him?" I felt the blush rise into my face. "Who is who?" "Seriously? You're going to play that with me? Clea, it's obvious. You're practically delirious; you've been a million miles away since we got back from-" She gasped and smacked my arm. "Oh! My! God! It's Ben, isn't it? I did interrupt something the night we got back from Paris. It's Ben, and you haven't told me because you didn't want me to say I told you so, when I so told you so! You loser!" She hurled the epithet with a grin of such complete delight that I almost hated to tell her the truth. "No! Rayna, it's not Ben. It's not anyone." "Liar." "Okay, it's not anyone real, I said, grimacing.

Then a low voice murmured in my ear. "Clea." I screamed and shot an immediate hammer punch to the side. "Whoa!" cried Ben. He reeled back to avoid my fist and tripped over the rug, tumbling to the ground and spilling a fresh mug of coffee over his gray shawl-neck sweater. "OH!" he gasped. "Hot. Very, very hot. Oh, not good." "Ben! Oh my God, wait-" I darted into the bathroom and grabbed a hand towel, then raced back to him, knelt down, and sopped the spilled coffee from his chest. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know you were there! You didn't say anything!" "I yelled from downstairs...I thought you'd heard me." A strange smell tickled my nose, and I bent closer to Ben, just inches from his face. "What's that smell?" I asked. "Cardamom clove coffee," he said, gesturing to the now empty mug on the floor beside us. "I thought you might like it." "I like the smell. Maybe you should wear it as a cologne." "Could work," he agreed. "You could give a testimonial that it makes women crazy." "Not crazy-nimble. Ten years of Krav Maga gives you catlike reflexes. If you'd been an intruder...

We have snacks, everybody!” “Where’d you get them from, Delaware?” Ben asked. He was glaring behind me, where Sage leaned casually against the wall. “Practically,” I said. “My fault-I was dying for Red Hots. Pretty much impossible to find. So what movie are we watching?” Back in the cave, Sage had told me I wasn’t much of an actress, and apparently he was right. I thought I put on a brilliant show, but Ben’s eyes were filled with suspicion, Rayna looked like she was ready to pounce, and Sage seemed to be working very hard to stifle his laughter. Rayna yawned. “Can’t do it. I’m so tired. I’m sorry, but I have to kick you guys out and get some sleep.” She wasn’t much better at acting than I was. I knew she wanted to talk, but the idea of being away from Sage killed me. “No worries,” I said. “I can bring he snacks to the guys’ room. We can watch there and let you sleep.” “Great!” Ben said. Rayna gaped, and in the space of ten seconds, she and I had a full conversation with only our eyes. Rayna: “What the hell?” Me: “I know! But I want to hang out with Sage.” Rayna: “Are you insane?! You’ll be with him for the rest of your life. I’m only with you until morning!” I couldn’t fight that one. She was right. “Actually, I’m pretty tired too,” I said. I even forced a yawn, though judging from Sage’s smirk, it wasn’t terribly convincing. “You sure?” Ben asked. He was staring at me in a way that made me feel X-rayed. “Positive. Take some snacks, though. I got dark chocolate M&Ms and Fritos.” “Sounds like a slumber party!” Rayna said. “Absolutely,” Sage deadpanned. “Look out, Ben-I do a mean French braid.” Ben paid no attention. He had moved closer and was looking at me suspiciously, like a dog whose owner comes from after playing with someone else’s pet. I almost thought he was going to smell me. “G’night,” he said. He had to brush past Sage to get to the door, but he didn’t say a word to him. Sage raised an amused eyebrow to me. “Good night, ladies,” he said, then turned and followed Ben out. It hurt to see him go, like someone had run an ice cream scoop through my core, but I knew that was melodramatic. I’d see him in the morning. We had our whole lives to be together. Tonight he could spend with Ben. I laughed out loud, imagining the two of them actually cheating, snacking, and French braiding each other’s hair as they sat cross-legged on the bed. Then a pillow smacked me in the side of the head. “’We can watch there and let you sleep’?” Rayna wailed. “Are you crazy?” “I know! I’m sorry. I took it back, though, right?” “You have two seconds to start talking, or I reload.” Before now, if anyone had told me that I could have a night like tonight and not want to tell Rayna everything, I’d have thought they were crazy. But being with Sage was different. It felt perfectly round and complete. If I said anything about it, I felt like I’d be giving away a giant scoop of it that I couldn’t ever get back. “It was really nice,” I said. “Thanks.” Rayna picked up another pillow, then let it drop. She wasn’t happy, but she understood. She also knew I wasn’t thanking her just for asking, but for everything. “Ready for bed?” she asked. “We have to eat the guys to breakfast so they don’t steal all the cinnamon rolls.” I loved her like crazy.

Delbert was the only Bumpus kid in my grade, but they infested Warren G. Harding like termites in an outhouse. There was Ima Jean, short and muscular, who was in the sixth grade, when she showed up, but spent most of her time hanging around the poolroom. There was a lanky, blue-jowled customer they called Jamie, who ran the still and was the only one who ever wore shoes. He and his brother Ace, who wore a brown fedora and blue work shirts, sat on the front steps at home on the Fourth of July, sucking at a jug and pretending to light sticks of dynamite with their cigars when little old ladies walked by. There were also several red-faced girls who spent most of their time dumping dishwater out of windows. Babies of various sizes and sexes crawled about the back yard, fraternizing indiscriminately with the livestock. They all wore limp, battleship-gray T-shirts and nothing else. They cried day and night. We thought that was all of them—until one day a truck stopped in front of the house and out stepped a girl who made Daisy Mae look like Little Orphan Annie. My father was sprinkling the lawn at the time; he wound up watering the windows. Ace and Emil came running out onto the porch, whooping and hollering. The girl carried a cardboard suitcase—in which she must have kept all her underwear, if she owned any—and wore her blonde hair piled high on her head; it gleamed in the midday sun. Her short muslin dress strained and bulged. The truck roared off. Ace rushed out to greet her, bellowing over his shoulder as he ran: “MAH GAWD! HEY, MAW, IT’S CASSIE! SHE’S HOME FROM THE REFORMATORY!” Emil

Steve was a warrior in every sense of the word, but battling wildlife perpetrators just wasn’t the same as old-fashioned combat. Because Steve’s knees continued to deteriorate, his surfing ability was severely compromised. Instead of giving up in despair, Steve sought another outlet for all his pent-up energy. Through our head of security, Dan Higgins, Steve discovered mixed martial arts (or MMA) fighting. Steve was a natural at sparring. His build was unbelievable, like a gorilla’s, with his thick chest, long arms, and outrageous strength for hugging things (like crocs). Once he grabbed hold of something, there was no getting away. He had a punch equivalent to the kick of a Clydesdale, he could just about lift somebody off the ground with an uppercut, and he took to grappling as a wonderful release. Steve never did anything by halves. I remember one time the guys were telling him that a good body shot could really wind someone. Steve suddenly said, “No one’s given me a good body shot. Try to drop me with a good one so I know what it feels like.” Steve opened up his arms and Dan just pile drove him. Steve said, in between gasps, “Thanks, mate. That was great, I get your point.” I would join in and spar or work the pads, or roll around until I was absolutely exhausted. Steve would go until he threw up. I’ve never seen anything like it. Some MMA athletes are able to seek that dark place, that point of total exhaustion--they can see it, stare at it, and sometimes get past it. Steve ran to it every day. He wasn’t afraid of it. He tried to get himself to that point of exhaustion so that maybe the next day he could get a little bit further. Soon we were recruiting the crew, anyone who had any experience grappling. Guys from the tiger department or construction were lining up to have a go, and Steve would go through the blokes one after another, grappling away. And all the while I loved it too. Here was something else that Steve and I could do together, and he was hilarious. Sometimes he would be cooking dinner, and I’d come into the kitchen and pat him on the bum with a flirtatious look. The next thing I knew he had me in underhooks and I was on the floor. We’d be rolling around, laughing, trying to grapple each other. It’s like the old adage when you’re watching a wildlife documentary: Are they fighting or mating? It seems odd that this no-holds-barred fighting really brought us closer, but we had so much fun with it. Steve finally built his own dojo on a raised concrete pad with a cage, shade cloth, fans, mats, bags, and all that great gear. Six days a week, he would start grappling at daylight, as soon as the guys would get into work. He had his own set of techniques and was a great brawler in his own right, having stood up for himself in some of the roughest, toughest, most remote outback areas. Steve wasn’t intimidated by anyone. Dan Higgins brought a bunch of guys over from the States, including Keith Jardine and other pros, and Steve couldn’t wait to tear into them. He held his own against some of the best MMA fighters in the world. I always thought that if he’d wanted to be a fighter as a profession, he would have been dangerous. All the guys heartily agreed.

Bailey,” I say, my voice carrying easily across the marble floor. “Wait.” She turns back and rolls her eyes, clearly annoyed to see me coming her way. She quickly wipes at her cheeks then holds up her hand to wave me off. “I’m off the clock. I don’t want to talk to you right now. If you want to chew me out for what happened back there, you’ll have to do it on Monday. I’m going home.” “How?” Her pretty brown eyes, full of tears, narrow up at me in confusion. “How what?” “How are you getting home? Did you park on the street or something?” Her brows relax as she realizes I’m not about to scold her. “Oh.” She turns to the window. “I’m going to catch the bus.” The bus? “The stop is just down the street a little bit.” “Don’t you have a car?” She steels her spine. “No. I don’t.” I’ll have to look into what we’re paying her—surely she should have no problem affording a car to get her to and from work. “Okay, well then what about an Uber or something?” Her tone doesn’t lighten as she replies, “I usually take the bus. It’s fine.” I look for an umbrella and frown when I see her hands are empty. “You’re going to get drenched and it’s freezing out there.” She laughs and starts to step back. “It’s not your concern. Don’t worry about me.” Yes, well unfortunately, I do worry about her. For the last three weeks, all I’ve done is worry about her. Cooper is to blame. He fuels my annoyance on a daily basis, updating me about their texts and bragging to me about how their relationship is developing. Relationship—I find that laughable. They haven’t gone on a date. They haven’t even spoken on the phone. If the metric for a “relationship” lies solely in the number of text messages exchanged then as of this week, I’m in a relationship with my tailor, my UberEats delivery guy, and my housekeeper. I’ve got my hands fucking full. “Well I’m not going to let you wait out at the bus stop in this weather. C’mon, I’ll drive you.” Her soft feminine laugh echoes around the lobby. “Thank you, but I’d rather walk.” What she really means is, Thank you, but I’d rather die. “It’s really not a request. You’re no good to me if you have to call in sick on Monday because you caught pneumonia.” Her gaze sheens with a new layer of hatred. “You of all people know you don’t catch pneumonia just from being cold and wet.” She tries to step around me, but I catch her backpack and tug it off her shoulder. I can’t put it on because she has the shoulder straps set to fit a toddler, so I hold it in my hand and start walking. She can either follow me or not. I tell myself I don’t care either way. “Dr. Russell—” she says behind me, her feet lightly tap-tap-tapping on the marble as she hurries to keep up. “You’re clocked out, aren’t you? Call me Matt.” “Doctor,” she says pointedly. “Please give me my backpack before I call security.” I laugh because really, she’s hilarious. No one has ever threatened to call security on me before. “It’s Matt, and if you’re going to call security, make sure you ask for Tommy. He’s younger and stands a decent chance of catching me before I hightail it out of here with your pink JanSport backpack. What do you have in here anyway?” It weighs nothing. “My lunchbox. A water bottle. Some empty Tupperware.” Tupperware. I glance behind me to check on her. She’s fast-walking as she trails behind me. Am I really that much taller than her? “Did you bring more banana bread?” She nods and nearly breaks out in a jog. “Patricia didn’t get any last time and I felt bad.” “I didn’t get any last time either,” I point out. She snorts. “Yeah well, I don’t feel bad about that.” I face forward again so she can’t see my smile.

If you don't tell me why you're avoiding me, then, like, we might as well just get it over with and stop being friends." He stiffens and turns red, even visible in the dim light. It dawns on me that we're never going to be best friends again. "It's...," he says. "It is very difficult... for me... to be around you." "Why?" It take him a while to answer. He smooths his hair to one side, and rubs his eye, and checks that his collar isn't turned up, and scratches his knee. And then he starts to laugh. "You're so funny, Victoria." He shakes his head. "You're just so funny." At this, I get a sudden urge to punch him in the face. Instead, I descend into hysteria. "For fuck's sake! What are you talking about?!" I begin to shout, but you can't really tell over the noise of the crowd. "You're insane. I don't know why you're saying this to me. I don't know why you decided you wanted to become BFFs all over again, and now I don't know why you won't even look me in the eye. I don't understand anything you're doing or saying, and it's killing me, because I already don't understand anything about me or Michael or Becky or my brother or anything on this shitty planet. If you secretly hate me or something, you need to spit it out. I'm asking you to give me one straight answer, one single sentence that might sort at least something out in my head, but NO. You don't care, do you!? You don't give a SINGLE SHIT about my feelings, or anyone else's. You're just like everyone else." "You're wrong," he says. "You're wro-" "Everyone's got such dreadful problems." I shake my head wildly, holding on to it with both hands. "Even you. Even perfect innocent Lucas has problems." He's staring at me in a kind of terrified confusion, and it's absolutely hilarious. I start to crack up. "Maybe, like, everyone I know has problems. Like, there are no happy people. Nothing works out. Even if it's someone who you think is perfect. Like my brother!" I grin wildly at him. "My brother, my little brother, he's soooo perfect, but he's- he doesn't like food, like, he literally doesn't like food, or, I don't know, he loves it. He loves it so much that that it has to be perfect all the time, you know?" I grabbed Lucas by one shoulder again so he understands. "And then one day he gets so fed up with himself, like, he was annoyed, he hated how much he loves food, yeah, so he thought that it was better if there wasn't any food." I started laughing so much that my eyes water. "But that's so silly! Because you've got to eat food or you'll die, won't you? So my brother Charles, Charlie, he, he thought it would be better if he just got it over with then and there! So he, last year, he-" I hold up my wrist and point at it-"he hurt himself. And he wrote me this card, telling me he was really sorry and all, but I shouldn't be sad because he was actually really happy about it." I shake my head and laugh and laugh. "And you know what just makes me want to die? The fact that, like, all the time, I knew it was coming, but I didn't do anything. I didn't say anything to anyone about it, because I thought I'd been imagining it. Well, didn't I get a nice surprise when I walked into the bathroom that day?" There are tears running down my face. "And you know what's literally hilarious? The card had a picture of a cake on it!" He's not saying anything because he doesn't find anything hilarious, which strikes me as odd. He makes this pained sound and turns at a sharp right angle and strides away. I wipe the tears of laughter from my eyes, and then I take that flyer out of my pocket and look at it, but the music has started again and 'm too cold and my brain doesn't seem to be processing anything. Only that goddamn picture of that goddamn cake.

Robert Askins Brings ‘Hand to God’ to Broadway Chad Batka for The New York Times Robert Askins at the Booth Theater, where his play “Hand to God” opens on Tuesday. By MICHAEL PAULSON The conceit is zany: In a church basement, a group of adolescents gathers (mostly at the insistence of their parents) to make puppets that will spread the Christian message, but one of the puppets turns out to be more demonic than divine. The result — a dark comedy with the can-puppets-really-do-that raunchiness of “Avenue Q” and can-people-really-say-that outrageousness of “The Book of Mormon” — is “Hand to God,” a new play that is among the more improbable entrants in the packed competition for Broadway audiences over the next few weeks. Given the irreverence of some of the material — at one point stuffed animals are mutilated in ways that replicate the torments of Catholic martyrs — it is perhaps not a surprise to discover that the play’s author, Robert Askins, was nicknamed “Dirty Rob” as an undergraduate at Baylor, a Baptist-affiliated university where the sexual explicitness and violence of his early scripts raised eyebrows. But Mr. Askins had also been a lone male soloist in the children’s choir at St. John Lutheran of Cypress, Tex. — a child who discovered early that singing was a way to make the stern church ladies smile. His earliest performances were in a deeply religious world, and his writings since then have been a complex reaction to that upbringing. “It’s kind of frustrating in life to be like, ‘I’m a playwright,’ and watch people’s face fall, because they associate plays with phenomenally dull, didactic, poetic grad-schoolery, where everything takes too long and tediously explores the beauty in ourselves,” he said in a recent interview. “It’s not church, even though it feels like church a lot when we go these days.” The journey to Broadway, where “Hand to God” opens on Tuesday at the Booth Theater, still seems unlikely to Mr. Askins, 34, who works as a bartender in Brooklyn and says he can’t afford to see Broadway shows, despite his newfound prominence. He seems simultaneously enthralled by and contemptuous of contemporary theater, the world in which he has chosen to make his life; during a walk from the Cobble Hill coffee shop where he sometimes writes to the Park Slope restaurant where he tends bar, he quoted Nietzsche and Derrida, described himself as “deeply weird,” and swore like, well, a satanic sock-puppet. “If there were no laughs in the show, I’d think there was something wrong with him,” said the actor Steven Boyer, who won raves in earlier “Hand to God” productions as Jason, a grief-stricken adolescent with a meek demeanor and an angry-puppet pal. “But anybody who is able to write about such serious stuff and be as hilarious as it is, I’m not worried about their mental health.” Mr. Askins’s interest in the performing arts began when he was a boy attending rural Texas churches affiliated with the conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod denomination; he recalls the worshipers as “deeply conservative, old farm folks, stone-faced, pride and suffering, and the only time anybody ever really livened up was when the children’s choir would perform.” “My grandmother had a cross-stitch that said, ‘God respects me when I work, but he loves me when I sing,’ and so I got into that,” he said. “For somebody who enjoys performance, that was the way in.” The church also had a puppet ministry — an effort to teach children about the Bible by use of puppets — and when Mr. Askins’s mother, a nurse, began running the program, he enlisted to help. He would perform shows for other children at preschools and vacation Bible camps. “The shows are wacky, but it was fun,” he said. “They’re badly written attempts to bring children to Jesus.” Not all of his formative encounters with puppets were positive. Particularly scarring: D