Hollow Words Quotes

I have walked a stair of swords, I have worn a coat of scars. I have vowed with hollow words, I have lied my way to the stars -Songs of Sapphique

Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.

Words are like seeds, I think, planted into our hearts at a tender age. They take root in us as we grow, settling deep into our souls. The good words plant well. They flourish and find homes in our hearts. They build trunks around our spines, steadying us when we’re feeling most flimsy; planting our feet firmly when we’re feeling most unsure. But the bad words grow poorly. Our trunks infest and spoil until we are hollow and housing the interests of others and not our own. We are forced to eat the fruit those words have borne, held hostage by the branches growing arms around our necks, suffocating us to death, one word at a time.

This is. And thou art. There is no safety. There is no end. The word must be heard in silence. There must be darkness to see the stars. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss.

My stomach gets that hollowed-out feeling. It's amazing how words can do that, just shred your insides apart.

Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people’s anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed; that they gamble – yes, gamble – with a whole part of their life and their so called 'vital interests.

One word, Ma'am," he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one more thing to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things-trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say.

The Angel blade burns you, just as God's name chokes you," said Valentine, his cool voice sharp as crystal. "They say that those who die upon its point will achieve the gates of heaven. In which case, revenant, I am doing you a favor." He lowered the blade so that the tip touched Simon's throat. Valentine's eyes were the color of black water and there was nothing in them: no anger, no compassion, not even any hate. They were empty as a hollowed-out grave. "Any last words?" Simon knew what he was supposed to say. Sh'ma Yisrael, adonai elohanu, adonai echod. Hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. He tried to speak the words, but a searing pain burned his throat. "Clary," he whispered instead.

If we keep on beating about circumstantial futilities and remain plodding along in the hollowness of weasel words, we need not expect to discover genuine answers to fundamental questions challenging us. ("Wit of the staircase")

I do so like all-encompassing words. Verb, adjective, noun. Yes, you are shitted.

You claim you want to be heard. So you write your hollow words. You fill your life with deception. Because it’s all about perception. The world sees you one way. And they listen to all you say. You crave their attention. To feed your addiction. You have two sides. Two faces. You’re trying to hide. In two places.

But she was uncomfortable with what the professors called 'participation,' and did not see why it should be part of the final grade; it merely made students talk and talk, class time wasted on obvious words, hollow words, sometimes meaningless words.

Death as the destruction of all things no longer had meaning when life was revealed to be a fatuous sequence of empty words, the hollow jingle of a jester’s cap and bells.

Love is a hollow word which seems at home in song lyrics and greeting cards, until you fall in love and discover it’s disconcerting power. Depression means nothing more than the blues, commercially packaged angst, a hole in the ground; until you find it’s black weight settled inside your mother’s chest, disrupting her breathing, leaching her days, and yours, of colour and the nights of rest.

Peeta,” I say lightly. “You said at the interview you’d had a crush on me forever. When did forever start?” “Oh, let’s see. I guess the first day of school. We were five. You had on a red plaid dress and your hair... it was in two braids instead of one. My father pointed you out when we were waiting to line up,” Peeta says. “Your father? Why?” I ask. “He said, ‘See that little girl? I wanted to marry her mother, but she ran off with a coal miner,’” Peeta says. “What? You’re making that up!” I exclaim. “No, true story,” Peeta says. “And I said, ‘A coal miner? Why did she want a coal miner if she could’ve had you?’ And he said, ‘Because when he sings... even the birds stop to listen.’” “That’s true. They do. I mean, they did,” I say. I’m stunned and surprisingly moved, thinking of the baker telling this to Peeta. It strikes me that my own reluctance to sing, my own dismissal of music might not really be that I think it’s a waste of time. It might be because it reminds me too much of my father. “So that day, in music assembly, the teacher asked who knew the valley song. Your hand shot right up in the air. She stood you up on a stool and had you sing it for us. And I swear, every bird outside the windows fell silent,” Peeta says. “Oh, please,” I say, laughing. “No, it happened. And right when your song ended, I knew—just like your mother—I was a goner,” Peeta says. “Then for the next eleven years, I tried to work up the nerve to talk to you.” “Without success,” I add. “Without success. So, in a way, my name being drawn in the reaping was a real piece of luck,” says Peeta. For a moment, I’m almost foolishly happy and then confusion sweeps over me. Because we’re supposed to be making up this stuff, playing at being in love not actually being in love. But Peeta’s story has a ring of truth to it. That part about my father and the birds. And I did sing the first day of school, although I don’t remember the song. And that red plaid dress... there was one, a hand-me-down to Prim that got washed to rags after my father’s death. It would explain another thing, too. Why Peeta took a beating to give me the bread on that awful hollow day. So, if those details are true... could it all be true? “You have a... remarkable memory,” I say haltingly. “I remember everything about you,” says Peeta, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “You’re the one who wasn’t paying attention.” “I am now,” I say. “Well, I don’t have much competition here,” he says. I want to draw away, to close those shutters again, but I know I can’t. It’s as if I can hear Haymitch whispering in my ear, “Say it! Say it!” I swallow hard and get the words out. “You don’t have much competition anywhere.” And this time, it’s me who leans in.

There is a brokenness out of which comes the unbroken. There is a shatteredness out of which blooms the unshatterable. There is a sorrow beyond all grief, which leads to joy. And a fragility out of whose depths emerges strength. There is a hollow space too vast for words through which we pass with each loss, out of whose darkness we are sanctioned into being" --the poetess Rashani, quoted by

Mare,” he whispers. “Choose me.” Choose a crown. Choose another king’s cage. Choose a betrayal to everything you’ve bled for. I find my thread of steel too. Thin but unbreakable. “I am in love with you, and I want you more than anything else in the world.” His words sound hollow coming from me. “Anything else in this world.” Slowly, my eyelids flutter open. He finds the spine to match my gaze. “Think what we could do together,” he murmurs, trying to pull me closer. My feet hold firm. “You know what you are to me. Without you, I have no one. I am alone. I have nothing left. Don’t leave me alone.” My breathing turns ragged. I kiss him for what could be, what might be, what will be—the last time. His lips feel strangely cold as we both turn to ice. “You aren’t alone.” The hope in his eyes cuts deeply. “You have your crown.

Literature, real literature, must not be gulped down like some potion which may be good for the heart or good for the brain — the brain, that stomach of the soul. Literature must be taken and broken to bits, pulled apart, squashed — then its lovely reek will be smelt in the hollow of the palm, it will be munched and rolled upon the tongue with relish; then, and only then, its rare flavor will be appreciated at its true worth and the broken and crushed parts will again come together in your mind and disclose the beauty of a unity to which you have contributed something of your own blood.

She was like the dust that clung to his shirt. She was in the silences that had become so frequent at the house, silences that welled up between their words, sometimes cold and hollow, sometimes pregnant with things that went unsaid, like a cloud filled with rain that never fell.

You can trust me to keep my word. I always keep my word, promises or threats.

You took my heart and you held it in your mouth And, with a word all my love came rushing out And, every whisper, it's the worst, emptied out by a single word There is a hollow in me now... And Every whisper, every sigh Eats away at this heart of mine And there is a hollow in me now. So I put my faith in something unknown I'm living on such sweet nothing But I'm trying to hope with nothing to hold I'm living on such sweet nothing.

But the wind always swept my words away like cloud shadows, as if it mattered more that I said them, than who heard them.

She realized that being starved for words was the same as being starved for food, because both left a hollow place inside you, a place you needed filled to make it through another day. Rachel remembered how growing up she’d thought living on a farm with just a father was as lonely as you could be. (130)

I am nothing, yes; I am air and darkness, a word, a promise. I watch in the crystal and I wait in the hollow hills. But out there in the light I have a young king and a bright sword to do my work for me, and build what will stand when my name is only a word for forgotten songs and outworn wisdom, and when your name, Morgause, is only a hissing in the dark.

All their lives Nath had understood, better than anyone, the lexicon of their family, the things they could never truly explain to outsiders: that a book or a dress meant more than something to read or something to wear; that attention came with expectations that—like snow—drifted and settled and crushed you with their weight. All the words were right, but in this new Nath’s voice, they sounded trivial and brittle and hollow. The way anyone else might have heard them. Already her brother had become a stranger.

To be silent. In hopes of not offending, in hopes of being accepted. But what happened to people who never spoke, never raised their voices? Kept everything inside? Gamache knew what happened. Everything they swallowed, every word, thought, feeling rattled around inside, hollowing the person out. And into that chasm they stuffed their words, their rage.

Tears could not be equal, if I wept diamonds from the skies," Jenks whispered, empty and bereft. "My word silent, though I should howl. Muffled by death, my wings can't lift me high enough to find you. I feel you within. Unaware of my pain. Not knowing why I mourn. And why I breathe alone.

Only people who have been discriminated against can really know how much it hurts. Each person feels the pain in his own way, each has his own scars. So I think I'm as concerned about fairness and justice as anybody. But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Elliot calls 'hollow men'. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they're doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don't want to.

Always remember that the people are not fighting for ideas, nor for what is in men’s minds. The people fight and accept the sacrifices demanded by the struggle in order to gain material advantages, to live better and in peace, to benefit from progress, and for the better future of their children. National liberation, the struggle against colonialism, the construction of peace, progress and independence are hollow words devoid of any significance unless they can be translated into a real improvement of living conditions.

I’m so lucky to have you, Leni,” Mama said, trying to organize her cards with one hand. “We’re a team,” Leni said. “Peas in a pod.” “Two of a kind.” Words they said all the time to each other; words that felt a little hollow now. Maybe even sad.

I did not look at the words on the wall. If I didn't look at them, they didn't matter. Words are meaningless until you read them.

For a long time he had been white smoke. He did not realize that until he left the hospital, because white smoke had no consciousness of itself. It faded into the white world of their bed sheets and walls; it was sucked away by the words of doctors who tried to talk to the invisible scattered smoke... They saw his outline but they did not realize it was hollow inside.

At the word sacrifice, something sparked in the Fate's cold eyes. He held the girl tighter, carrying her in his bloodstained arms as he stood and started down the ancient hall. 'What are you doing?' A crack of alarm showed in the queen's implacable face. 'I'm going to fix this.' He continued marching forward, holding the girl close as he carried her back through the arch. The angels who'd been guarding it now wept. They cried tears of stone as the Fate set the girl at their feet and began wrenching stone after stone from the arch. 'Jacks of the Hollow,' warned the queen. 'Those arch stones can only be used one time to go back. They were not created for infinite trips to the past.' 'I know,' Jacks growled. 'I'm going to go back and stop your son from killing her.' The queen's face fell. For a moment, she looked as old as the years she'd spent lying in suspended state. 'This is not a small mistake to fix. If you do this, Time will take something equally valuable from you.' The Fate gave the queen a look more vicious than any curse. 'There is nothing of equal value to me.

The word is a flame burning in a dark glass.

I guess I'm the perfect match, then, for a girl who likes to visit a cemetery." He drew out every syllable so that it sounded like a love song. I closed my eyes, savoring those words. "A perfect match," I murmured. "My other half.

Discipline" is a difficult word for most of us. It conjures up images of somebody standing over you with a stick, telling you that you're wrong. But self-discipline is different. It's the skill of seeing through the hollow shouting of your own impulses and piercing their secret. They have no power over you. It's all a show, a deception. Your urges scream and bluster at you; they cajole; they coax; they threaten; but they really carry no stick at all. You give in out of habit. You give in because you never really bother to look beyond the threat. It is all empty back there. There is only one way to learn this lesson, though. The words on this page won't do it. But look within and watch the stuff coming up-restlessness, anxiety, impatience, pain-just watch it come up and don't get involved. Much to your surprise, it will simply go away. It rises, it passes away. As simple as that. There is another word for self-discipline. It is patience.

We have no time to waste on insignificant books, hollow books, books that are there to please... We want books that cost their authors a great deal, books where you can feel the years of work, the backache, the writer's block, the author's panic at the thought that he might be lost: his discouragement, his courage, his anguish, his stubbornness, the risk of failure that he has taken.

The gentle sound of her words became the shushing of my blood in my head, and I listened, hovering on the edge of consciousness, bathed in the oblivion of whatever drug they had given me.

Coupla weeks ago, you gave me a fuckin’ sweet nightie and words I loved hearing.” I felt my entire body go still as I held his eyes. “Forgot to mention I feel the same,” he stated and my insides hollowed out. “What?” I breathed. “Put down the rice and come here, baby, I wanna tell you I love you when you’re in my arms.” I didn’t move. I stared at him, my internal organs gone but still, my body managed to produce tears which gathered in my eyes and then promptly and silently slid down my cheeks.

She tends the fire Burning his letters. They turn black like thin mourning dresses. Yellow names, leaping; above them a blonde woman's hair on her bare shoulders. Red hollow glowing beneath. Illusion of passion. Like fragile layers of widow weeds, matted bluish, shiny, worn and buttons, yes, cheap buttons and words. Her fingers touch the smooth skin on her breasts. She tends the fire.

This can’t happen. Minias said it couldn’t happen. I’m not a demon. It shouldn’t work for me! I’m not a demon!” “Apparently,” Al said, slamming into the bars in time with his words, “you’re so damn close, it doesn’t matter!

If you are ready to trade the hollow self-made beauty of this world for the glorious Christ-built beauty of a set-apart young woman, this is where it all begins. Denying self, taking up your cross, and following the Lamb wherever He leads. In other words, letting go of all preoccupation with self: our comfort, our pleasure, our agenda, our popularity, our ability to gain the world's approval, even our own dreams and desires. And, as Paul did, treating all those things as rubbish for the excellence of the knowledge of Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings (Philippians 3:7-9).

At the sound of the word, she saw a land of pine and snow, of sun-bleached cliffs and white-capped seas, a land where light was swallowed in the velvety green of bumps and hollows—a land that she had forgotten.

How could one express in words these emotions of the body? Express that emptiness there? It was one's body feeling, not one's mind. To want and not to have sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have - to want and want - how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again.

mingling with the remains of the plane, equally fragmented, equally absurd, there floated the debris of the soul, broken memories, sloughed-off selves, severed mother tongues, violated privacies, untranslatable jokes, extinguished futures, lost loves, the forgotten meaning of hollow, booming words, land, belonging, home.

Was there a word to describe grief so deep that it cleaved you apart, carved a hole inside of you and left you hollow?

You're good at this,' she murmured. 'Do you often travel with girls who've been flayed?' That earned her a soft laugh. 'No.' Then quietly, as he ran a cloth along her lower back, just below the dip in her waist. 'Would you be jealous if I did?' I'm not a jealous person was what Evangeline intended to say, but instead the words 'of course' came out. Jacks laughed, louder this time. Embarrassment surged through her. 'That's not what I meant to say.' 'It's all right. I'd probably kill another man if I found him with you like this.' Jacks' hands pressed harder as they went to her shoulders and, one by one, ripped off the sleeves of her dress so that what remained of the gown completely fell away. She made a sound somewhere between a squeal and a gasp. 'What that really necessary?' 'No, but everyone should have their clothes ripped off at some point.' She imagined Jacks was mostly trying to distract her from all the pain, yet she blushed all the way from her cheeks to her chest. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw him smile. And for a second, nothing hurt.

I am not alone in this. I only let him do to me what men have ever done to women: march off to empty glory and hollow acclaim and leave us behind to pick up the pieces. The broken cities, the burned barns, the innocent injured beasts, the ruined bodies of the boys we bore and the men we lay with. The waste of it. I sit here, and I look at him, and it is as if a hundred women sit beside me: the revolutionary farm wife, the English peasant woman, the Spartan mother-'Come back with your shield or on it,' she cried, because that was what she was expected to cry. And then she leaned across the broken body of her son and the words turned to dust in her throat.

Little Fox. Two simple words. Only they did not feel simple at all. They felt like falling. They felt like hope. They felt like the most important words in the world. The words made her blood rush and her head spin until once again it was only her and Jacks. Nothing existed except for the press of his cool forehead, the feel of his strong hand tangling in her hair, and the pleading, broken look in his quicksilver blue eyes.

Jess couldn't stop spitting out words, because they were words like blades to hurt, and if she swallowed them, she'd be scraped hollow.

She said nothing, refusing to meet his gaze. After a long moment, he released her. “So that’s the way it is, then.” His words were not a question. The door closed quietly behind him, leaving her cold to the bone, hollowed out and empty. Leaving her alone. Just like always.

Let no one reduce to tears or reproach This statement of the mastery of God, Who, with magnificent irony, gave Me at once both books and night Of this city of books He pronounced rulers These lightless eyes, who can only Peruse in libraries of dreams The insensible paragraphs that yield With every new dawn. Vainly does the day Lavish on them its infinite books, Arduous as the arduous manuscripts Which at Alexandria did perish. Of hunger and thirst (a Greek story tells us) Dies a king amidst fountains and gardens; I aimlessly weary at the confines Of this tall and deep blind library. Encyclopedias, atlases, the East And the West, centuries, dynasties Symbols, cosmos and cosmogonies Do walls proffer, but pointlessly. Slow in my shadow, I the hollow shade Explore with my indecisive cane; To think I had imagined Paradise In the form of such a library. Something, certainly not termed Fate, rules on such things; Another had received in blurry Afternoons both books and shadow. Wandering through these slow corridors I often feel with a vague and sacred dread That I am another, the dead one, who must Have trodden the same steps at the same time. Which of the two is now writing this poem Of a plural I and of a single shadow? How important is the word that names me If the anathema is one and indivisible? Groussac or Borges, I see this darling World deform and extinguish To a pale, uncertain ash Resembling sleep and oblivion

The thing is not to write what no one else has written but to write what only you could have written.' I found this fragment in my old notebooks. The person who wrote that couldn't have known what would happen: how a voice hollows how words you once loved can wither on a page.

There's that feeling that comes when you read something and the lines speak directly to you, and to you only, even though the person who wrote them died long before you were born, or, even if alive, has no idea you exist. The words seep right into your mind. They pour into your secret hollows and take their shape, a perfect fit, like water. And you are slightly less alone in the universe, because you have been witnessed, because you have been filled, because someone once found words for things within you that you couldn't yourself name – something gesturing not only toward what you are, but what you could become.

I wished I had told her what I was doing. I wished I had said more, argued more. Maybe then I wouldn't have this hollow ache in my chest whenever I thought of our parting words. Had she already moved on, forgotten me? In her position, what she said made sense, but the thought of her with someone else made me wish I had something to fight, to kill, just so I could forget.

so that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again as she sat with the children the words of some old cradle song, murmured by nature, ‘I am guarding you—I am your support," but at other times suddenly and unexpectedly, especially when her mind raised itself slightly from the task actually in hand, had no such kindly meaning, but like a ghostly roll of drums remorsely beat the measure of life, made one think of the destruction of the island and its engulfment in the sea, and warned her whose day had slipped past in one quick doing after another that it was all ephemeral as a rainbow—this sound which had been obscured and concealed under the other sounds suddenly thundered hollow in her ears and made her look up with an impulse of terror.

Safe," she said with a hollow smile. "That is a pretty word." "Come on," snapped Kate beside the door. "But--" "Don't worry, August. I'm not afraid of the dark." Our sister has two sides. He took Ilsa's face in his hands. "Please be careful." They do not meet. "Go," she said. "Before the cracks catch up.

THIS IS THE ACCOUNT of when all is still silent and placid. All is silent and calm. Hushed and empty is the womb of the sky. THESE, then, are the first words, the first speech. There is not yet one person, one animal, bird, fish, crab, tree, rock, hollow, canyon, meadow, or forest. All alone the sky exists. The face of the earth has not yet appeared.

She melted once more at the memory of how he'd said the word mine. It was only supposed to be for the night, but the pretending hadn't stopped. Light was bleeding through the windows, showering them in sunshine as they lay together, legs and arms entwined. One of his cool hands wrapped protectively around her waist, and the other had made its way up her skirt, holding her to him as if touching were a form of breathing. They had moved closer as they slept, as if drawn by some force that she suspected was simply each other.

True poetry is composed of metaphors and symbols which are born in the heart, rise like clouds, and assume a celestial form; verses formed otherwise are not poetry, but only artificial words, each of which contradicts the feelings inside. The utterances and words that have not been formed in a person’s soul as the voice of conscience are all hollow, no matter how embellished they are or how dazzling they seem to be.

Have you ever wondered, Anne, in your untiring dance of seduction, whether you might not be dancing to Henry's tune instead of your own? I know how clever you are. How enticing. People whisper the word "witch" whenever you smile at him. But which of you is pale and hollow-eyed from too many scheming, sleepless nights? Which of you is growing more feverish day by day? Which of you is truly bewitched, Anne?

When I throw back my head and howl People (women mostly) say But you've always done what you want, You always get your way - A perfectly vile and foul Inversion of all that's been. What the old ratbags mean Is I've never done what I don't. So the shit in the shuttered chateau Who does his five hundred words Then parts out the rest of the day Between bathing and booze and birds Is far off as ever, but so Is that spectacled schoolteaching sod (Six kids, and the wife in pod, And her parents coming to stay)... Life is an immobile, locked, Three-handed struggle between Your wants, the world's for you, and (worse) The unbeatable slow machine That brings what you'll get. Blocked, They strain round a hollow stasis Of havings-to, fear, faces. Days sift down it constantly. Years. --The Life with the Hole in It

Each word, as someone once wrote, contains the universe. The visible carries all the invisible on its back. Tonight, in the unconditional, what moves in the long-limbed grasses, what touches me As though I didn’t exist? What is it that keeps on moving, a tiny pillar of smoke Erect on its hind legs, loose in the hollow grasses? A word I don’t know yet, a little word, containing infinity, Noiseless and unrepentant, in sift through the dry grass.

Only people who've been discriminated against can really know how much it hurts. Each person feels the pain in his own way, each has his own scars. So I think I'm as concerned about fairness and justice as anybody. But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Eliot calls hollow men. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they're doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don't want to. Like that lovely pair we just met.” He sighs and twirls the long slender pencil in his hand. “Gays, lesbians, straights, feminists, fascist pigs, communists, Hare Krishnas-- none of them bother me. I don't care what banner they raise. But what I can't stand are hollow people. When I'm with them I just can't bear it, and wind up saying things I shouldn't. With those women--I should've just let it slide, or else called Miss Saeki and let her handle it. She would have given them a smile and smoothed things over. But I just can't do “do that. I say things I shouldn't, do things I shouldn't do. I can't control myself. That's one of my weak points. Do you know why that's a weak point of mine?” “'Cause if you take every single person who lacks much imagination seriously, there's no end to it,” I say.

Head lowered, Al looked at his bare hands, folded in his lap. “I knew you could, otherwise I wouldn’t have let you get into that position. But now everyone else knows it, too. I wasn’t expecting how vulnerable you would be, and word gets around. It is too easy for…” He hesitated. “You’re so damn helpless…,” he tried again, his words cutting off once more. “How am I supposed to keep them off you now that they know?

Why did you take this job?” I ask. “It doesn’t make sense. You’re so young—” “It was an honor to be promoted,” she says, but the words have a hollow ring. I can see her drawing back into herself, into her role. “Who did you lose?” I ask. Carmen flashes a smile that is at once dazzling and sad. “I’m a Librarian, Miss Bishop. I’ve lost everyone.

But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Eliot calls hollow men. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they’re doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don’t want to. Gays, lesbians, straights, feminists, fascist pigs, communists, Hare Krishnas – none of them bother me. I don’t care what banner they raise. But what I can’t stand are hollow people. [...] Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course it's important to know what’s right and what’s wrong. Individual errors in judgment can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive.

It was not the sorrowful, lovely piece she had once played for Dorian, and it was not the light, dancing melodies she'd played for sport; it was not the complex and clever pieces she had played for Nehemia and Chaol. This piece was a celebration—a reaffirmation of life, of glory, of the pain and beauty in breathing. Perhaps that was why she'd gone to hear it performed every year, after so much killing and torture and punishment: as a reminder of that she was, of what she struggled to keep. Up and up it built, the sound breaking from the pianoforte like the heart-song of a god, until Rowan drifted over to stand beside the instrument, until she whispered to him, “Now,” and the crescendo shattered into the world, note after note after note. The music crashed around them, roaring through the emptiness of the theater. The hollow silence that had been inside her for so many months now overflowed with sound. She brought the piece home to its final explosive, triumphant chord. When she looked up, panting slightly, Rowan's eyes were lined with silver, his throat bobbing. Somehow, after all this time, her warrior-prince still managed to surprise her. He seemed to struggle for words, but he finally breathed, “Show me—show me how you did that.” So she obliged him.

Why are you being so cruel?' 'Because you won't leave!' Jacks shouted. 'And if you stay, you will die. Chaos hasn't fed in thousands of years. I know he thinks he can control his hunger, but he can't. That's why they put the helm on him.' 'You could have just said that. If you didn't want me to say goodbye or you want me to leave, you don't have to hurt me to get me to do it.' 'I'm not- I-' Jacks broke off abruptly. His eyes were no longer just red, they were blazing with fear. She'd never seen him look so terrified before. She'd been poisoned, shot, lashed across the back, and Jacks had always kept his calm until now. With a great deal of effort, he took a deep breath, and when he spoke again, his voice was soft but uneven. 'I'm sorry, Little Fox. I didn't want to hurt you, I just-' He looked suddenly at a loss for words, as if whatever he said next might be the wrong thing. He's never looked at her like this before. 'Jacks, please, don't use the stones tonight. Come with me instead.' He took a jagged breath. For a second, he looked torn. He raked a hand through his hair, his movements jagged. Evangeline took a step closer. He shuttered his expression and took a step back. 'This doesn't change anything. I still can't have you in my life. You and I aren't meant to be.' 'What if you're wrong?' Evangeline had once heard a tale about a pair of doomed stars, drawn across skies toward each other's brightness, even though they knew that if they drew too close, their desire would end in a fiery explosion. This was how Jacks looked at her now. As if neither of them would survive if they drew any closer. 'Evangeline, you need to go.' A thunderous roar poured out from the Valory, so loud it shook the arch and the angels and the ground at Evangeline's feet. 'Get out of here.' Jacks said. She held his gaze, one final time, wishing she knew how to change his mind. 'I wish our story could have had another ending.' 'I don't want another ending,' Jacks said flatly. 'I just want you to leave.

And she wanted to say not one thing, but everything. Little words that broke up the thought and dismembered it said nothing. “About life, about death; about Mrs. Ramsay”—no, she thought, one could say nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low. Then one gave it up; then the idea sunk back again; then one became like most middle-aged people, cautious, furtive, with wrinkles between the eyes and a look of perpetual apprehension. For how could one express in words these emotions of the body? express that emptiness there? (She was looking at the drawing-room steps; they looked extraordinarily empty.) It was one’s body feeling, not one’s mind. The physical sensations that went with the bare look of the steps had become suddenly extremely unpleasant. TO want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have—to want and want—how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again! Oh, Mrs. Ramsay! She called out silently, to that essence which sat by the boat, that abstract one made of her, that woman in grey, as if to abuse her for having gone, and then having gone, come back again. It seemed so safe, thinking of her. Ghost, air, nothingness, a thing you could play with easily and safely at any time of day or night, she had been that, and then suddenly she put her hand out and wrung the heart thus. Suddenly, the empty drawing-room steps, the frill of the chair inside, the puppy tumbling on the terrace, the whole wave and whisper of the garden became like curves and arabesques flourishing around a centre of complete emptiness.

Words are like seeds, I think, planted into our hearts at a tender age. They take root in us as we grow, settling deep into our souls. The good words plant well. They flourish and find homes in our hearts. They build trunks around our spines, steadying us when we're feeling most flimsy; planting our feet firmly when we're feeling most unsure. But the bad words grow poorly. Our trunks infest and spoil until we are hollow and housing the interests of others and not our own. We are forced to eat the fruit those words have borne, held hostage by the branches growing arms around our necks, suffocating us to death, one word at a time.

Ivy had once said that sharing blood was a way to show deep affection, loyalty, and friendship. I felt that way about her, but what she wanted from me was so far from what I understood that I was afraid. She wanted to share with me something so complex and intangible that the shallow emotional vocabulary of human and witch didn’t have the words or cultural background to define it. She was waiting for me to figure it out. And I lumped it all with sex because I didn’t understand.

I mean... it's just one night,' he said softly. 'In the morning, you can forget it. You can go back to pretending you don't like me, and I can pretend that I don't care. But for tonight, let me pretend you're mine.' She melted at the word mine. For a dizzying second, she couldn't think. She couldn't bring herself to pull away, and yet she couldn't tell him she would stay. 'If it's easier, you can pretend, too,' he whispered. 'You can pretend I'm still Jacks of the Hollow and that you want to be mine.' His mouth pressed against her throat once more and slowly traced a blissful line up her neck, to her ear. Then his teeth nipped her earlobe. She gasped. The bite was sharp and a little painful, as if he wanted to hold her and punish her, too. But he didn't have to punish her. This was already torture because she wanted it so much. She wanted him to want her, even if he was half-delirious in his wanting. 'I'm not delirious.' His voice was husky with something like sleep, but when he looked down on her, his eyes were clear and lucid. And Evangeline felt as if she was tumbling in to them.

In November, when our nation remembers her fallen soldiers and honours the lost youth of my generation, the Prime Minister, government leaders and the hollow men of business affix paper poppies to their lapels and afford the dead of war two minutes' silence. Afterwards, they speak golden platitudes about the struggle and the heroism of that time. Yet the words they speak are meaningless because they have surrendered the values my generation built after the horrors of the Second World War.

Everything between them felt as fragile as a raindrop that would cease to exist when it touched the ground. But the Hollow also felt like the sort of place where raindrops never touched the ground. Jacks slowly ran a hand up and down her spine. 'Have you decided to stay.' 'I thought you already heard what I was thinking?' she whispered. 'I want you to say it out loud.' His words were low and quiet; she wouldn't have heard them if she hadn't been so close. And it struck her how intimate words could be, how they could be spoken only once , for only one person, and they would never be heard again, they would disappear like a moment, gone almost as soon as you realised they were there. ... She meant to say, For tonight, I'm yours, but all that came out was 'I'm yours.

If you really believe this is what you want, you're lying to yourself.' 'I'm not lying to myself,' Jacks snarled. 'Then tell me this is what you truly want. Swear you want this more than anything else and I'll never mention it again.' Jacks grabbed her by the shoulders and looked directly in to her eyes. For a minute, he didn't speak. He just looked at her, at the remaining blood still on her lips and the dried tears staining her cheeks. 'I swear this is what I really want.' He spoke each word like a vow. 'I want to erase every moment you and I have spent together, every word you've said to me, and every time I've touched you, because if I don't, I'll kill you, just like I killed the Fox.' Evangeline's heart stopped. She searched Jacks' eyes, but all she saw was darkness, and all she felt was the press of his hands. He held on to her the way a person might grasp the edge of a cliff, knowing once they let go, there was no taking hold again.

It is possible for a writer to make, or remake at least, for a reader, the primary pleasures of eating, or drinking, or looking on, or sex. Novels have their obligatory tour-de-force, the green-flecked gold omelette aux fines herbes, melting into buttery formlessness and tasting of summer, or the creamy human haunch, firm and warm, curved back to reveal a hot hollow, a crisping hair or two, the glimpsed sex. They do not habitually elaborate on the equally intense pleasure of reading. There are obvious reasons for this, the most obvious being the regressive nature of the pleasure, a mise-en-abîme even, where words draw attention to the power and delight of words, and so ad infinitum, thus making the imagination experience something papery and dry, narcissistic and yet disagreeably distanced, without the immediacy of sexual moisture or the scented garnet glow of a good burgundy. And yet, natures such as Roland's are at their most alert and heady when reading is violently yet steadily alive. (What an amazing word "heady" is, en passant, suggesting both acute sensuous alertness and its opposite, the pleasure of the brain as opposed to the viscera—though each is implicated in the other, as we know very well, with both, when they are working.)

Hollow Horn Bear knew that to be leader and adviser of his people he must be honest and reliable, and that his word once given in promise must never be taken back. He knew that he must be a man of will-power, standing for the right no matter what happened to him personally; that he must have strength of purpose, allowing no influence to turn him from doing what was best for the tribe. He must be willing to serve his people without thought of pay. He must be utterly unselfish and kind-hearted to the old and poor and stand ready to give to those in need. Above all, he must be unafraid to deal equal justice to all.

He completely lacked any ardent interest that might have occupied his mind. His interior life was impoverished, had undergone a deterioration so severe that it was like the almost constant burden of some vague grief. And bound up with it all was an implacable sense of personal duty and the grim determination to present himself at his best, to conceal his frailties by any means possible, and to keep up appearances. It had all contributed to making his existence what it was: artificial, self-conscious, and forced—until every word, every gesture, the slightest deed in the presence of others had become a taxing and grueling part in a play.

It’s this thing I have. I’m sorry if it scared you. I feel other people’s feelings. I imagine crumbling insides and splitting hearts, goodbyes that hang in the air before they break into tiny pieces. I hear words that aren’t said, the echoes of lonely hallways and hollow footsteps. I hear sobs that soak pillowcases when all the lights are out and the world is sleeping. I carry this inside of me, all of it. I knew you paced the floor at night, trying to walk over all the things you didn’t want me to know. But I felt every wound you ever endured when I rested against you. I felt the ache that I have, deep inside of me, on your lips. Every time we kissed, I tasted a lifetime of tangled paths and bumpy roads woven with joined hands. Love isn’t blind, you see. I felt everything you were and could be, if only you stopped hiding in the same darkness you sheltered me from. I knew who you could become if someone loved you just right. I’m sorry if that scared you. Just in case you were wondering, I still love you and I'll keep the lights dim. Come home.

I'm broken. I like to break things. Sometimes I want to break you.' 'Then break me, Jacks.' His fingers tensed against her neck. 'For once I want to do the right thing. I can't do this. I can't watch you die again.' The word again scraped against her like a thorn. 'What do you mean, again?' 'You died, Evangeline.' Jacks pulled her closer until she could feel the ragged rise and fall of his chest as he rasped. 'I held you in my arms as it happened.' 'Jacks... I don't know what you're talking about. I never died.' 'Yes, you did. The night you opened the Valory. The first time you did it, I didn't go with you.' He went silent for a moment and then she heard him think, I couldn't say goodbye. 'It was only you and Chaos,' he whispered. 'As soon as his helm was off, he killed you. I tried to stop him- I tried to save you- but-' Jacks opened and shut his mouth as if he could barely get the words out. 'I couldn't. When I got there, he had already bitten you- and he'd already taken too much blood. You died as soon as you were in my arms. The only thing I could do was use the stones to turn back time. I was warned that it would cost me something. But I thought it would cost me. I didn't imagine it would take from you.' I'm sorry, he thought. 'You don't need to be sorry, Jacks.' 'It's my fault,' he gritted out. 'No, it's not. I didn't lose my memories because you turned back time. I lost them because Apollo took them from me.' Jacks looked murderous for a second. Then just as quickly he shook off her words. 'It doesn't matter. What matters is that you died. And if you die again, I cannot bring you back.' 'So you'd rather live without me?' 'I'd rather you live.' 'I am living, Jacks, and I am not going to die anytime soon.' Evangeline closed her eyes and then she kissed him.

At this point there's something I should explain about myself, which is that I don't talk much, probably too little, and I think this has been detrimental to my social life. It's not that I have trouble expressing myself, or no more than people generally have when they're trying to put something complex into words. I'd even say I have less trouble than most because my long involvement with literature has given me a better-than-average capacity for handling language. But I have no gift for small talk, and there's no point trying to learn or pretend; it wouldn't be convincing. My conversational style is spasmodic (someone once described it as "hollowing"). Every sentence opens up gaps, which require new beginnings. I can't maintain any continuity. In short, I speak when I have something to say. My problem, I suppose - and this may be an effect of involvement with literature - is that I attribute too much importance to the subject. For me, it's never simply a question of "talking" but always a question of "what to talk about". And the effort of weighing up potential subjects kills the spontaneity of dialogue. In other words, when everything you say has to be "worth the effort", it's too much effort to go on talking. I envy people who can launch into a conversation with gusto and energy, and keep it going. I envy them that human contact, so full of promise, a living reality from which, in my mute isolation, I feel excluded. "But what do they talk about?" I wonder, which is obviously the wrong question to ask. The crabbed awkwardness of my social interactions is a result of this failing on my part. Looking back, I can see that it was responsible for most of my missed opportunities and almost all the woes of solitude. The older I get, the more convinced I am that this is a mutilation, for which my professional success cannot compensate, much less my "rich inner life." And I've never been able to resolve the conundrum that conversationalists pose for me: how do they keep coming up with things to talk about? I don't even wonder about it anymore, perhaps because I know there's no answer.

What exactly are you doing?' Jacks drawled. The breath left her lungs, and the broken heart scar on her wrist caught fire. She hadn't even heard him enter. Evangeline stopped mid-twirl, her skirts still swishing as she caught his dashing reflection in the mirror. Her heart gave a silly jolt. She tried to stop it. But while Jacks was many terrible things, there was no denying that he was also painfully handsome. It was the golden hair. In certain lights, it looked like real gold, shining over eyes that glittered more than human eyes ever could. So maybe it was the eyes as well. And perhaps she could blame a little on his lips. They were perfect, of course, and right now they were smiling with amusement. 'So this is what you do when I'm not around?' Evangeline felt the sudden urge to hide inside her wardrobe, but she tampered it down as she turned and met his gaze with a smile of her own. 'You think about what I do when you're not around?' 'Careful, Little Fox.' He took a step forward. 'You sound excited by the idea.' 'I'm not, I assure you,' she said, wishing she didn't sound so breathless. 'I merely like the thought that I torment you as much as you torment me.' Jacks flashed one of his dimples, making him look deceptively charming. 'So you're the one who thinks about what I do when you're not around?' 'Only because I know you're up to no good.' 'No good.' He laughed as he said the words. 'I would hope you know by now that I'm up to far worse than just "no good".

God the horror of watching yourself from the outside as everything you know about yourself gets stripped away and demolished. Not just the loss of power over your body, but power over your mind. Rape in the deepest, most hellish sense of the word. But wait, there's a spark. Inside that hollowed out woman there's a place they can't touch. There's more to me than I thought there was. Something that no one and nothing can take away from me. They can't break me. I won't cease. I'm strong, and I am never going to go away until I've gotten what I came for. I might have been lost for awhile but I was never gone. WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU? With an explosive inhalation I snap upright in bed, and my eyes fly open like coming alive after being dead and interred in a coffin. I AM Mac and I am BACK!

I actually do have a motto,” said Heat. “It’s ‘Never forget who you work for.'" And as she voiced the words, Nikki felt a creeping unease. It wasn’t exactly shame, but it was close. For the first time it sounded hollow. Fake. Why? She examined herself, trying to see what was different. The stress, that was new. And when she looked at that, she recognized that the hardest part of her day lately was working to avoid confrontation with Captain Montrose. That’s when it came to her. In that moment, sitting nearly naked in Rook’s living room, playing some silly nineteenth-century parlor game, she came to an unexpected insight. In that moment Nikki woke up and saw with great clarity who she had become - and who she had stopped being. Without noticing it, Heat had begun seeing herself as working for her captain and had lost sight of her guiding principle, that she worked for the victim.

The Universe is made of hands; Hands that twist fabric and sizzle in the air. Hands that grasp curls and flick words away Small, smooth fingers pouring gold over gaping wounds Before slicing into soft tissue, Blood mixing with gold. Hands that make it beautiful. The Universe is made of bones; Bones that cut against yards of skin, Warm and yielding and moulded around the wings that splay across his back. Bones that cage the heart and dig into the hollows. Bones that break, Tear the warm, yielding skin. Bones that shred and brush his chin. The Universe is made of lips; Lips that breathe and stutter warm sighs, Caressing the cracks in his broken body, the body that he broke. Lips that carve paths into stone, That leave trails upon gooseflesh, Lips that make incisions, Too delicate to mend. The Universe is made of blood; Blood that runs warm and hot and steady and crimson, Pumping beneath the stone and the gold. Blood that burns with every jerk of limbs. Blood that spills on open palms, Staining the fabric, Filling up his throat. The Universe is made of eyes; Eyes that breach and eyes that splice and eyes that never leave. Eyes that ripple oceans. Eyes that whisper in the dark. Eyes that rip open the seams. Eyes that create wounds, create chaos, create broken shards of blue. Eyes that alight and won’t let go. The Universe was built. The Universe fell. You took it apart, Dragged the chaos from my soul with your hands, Your bones, Your lips, Your blood, Your eyes. And now you’re back. And so is the Universe. And so, I suppose, am I. The Universe is made of five things. The Universe is made of you.

Why, I . . . I still like you.” Nerves fluttered in her chest, but she kept her tone light. “Do you like me?” A few moments passed in silence. She would have counted them in heartbeats, but her foolish heart had become a most unreliable timepiece. It gave three pounding beats in a flurry, then none at all. Just when she’d begun to despair, he turned his head, catching her in a passionate, openmouthed kiss. He put both arms around her, fisting his hands in the fabric of her dress, lifting her up and against his chest. So that her body recalled every inch of his, every second of their blissful lovemaking. The now-familiar ache returned—that sweet, hollow pang of desire that only deepened as his tongue flickered over hers. In a matter of seconds, he had her gasping. Needing. Damp. Then he set her back on her toes. Pressed his brow to hers and released a deep, resonant sigh. And just before turning to leave, he spoke a single word. He said, “No.

There was a man whom Sorrow named his Friend, And he, of his high comrade Sorrow dreaming, Went walking with slow steps along the gleaming And humming Sands, where windy surges wend: And he called loudly to the stars to bend From their pale thrones and comfort him, but they Among themselves laugh on and sing alway: And then the man whom Sorrow named his friend Cried out, Dim sea, hear my most piteous story.! The sea Swept on and cried her old cry still, Rolling along in dreams from hill to hill. He fled the persecution of her glory And, in a far-off, gentle valley stopping, Cried all his story to the dewdrops glistening. But naught they heard, for they are always listening, The dewdrops, for the sound of their own dropping. And then the man whom Sorrow named his friend Sought once again the shore, and found a shell, And thought, I will my heavy story tell Till my own words, re-echoing, shall send Their sadness through a hollow, pearly heart; And my own talc again for me shall sing, And my own whispering words be comforting, And lo! my ancient burden may depart. Then he sang softly nigh the pearly rim; But the sad dweller by the sea-ways lone Changed all he sang to inarticulate moan Among her wildering whirls, forgetting him.

Someday you will murder your father and be with your mother, he said.” Once I’ve spoken this, put this thought into concrete words, a hollow feeling grabs hold of me. And inside that hollow, my heart pounds out a vacant, metallic rhythm. Expression unchanged, Oshima gazes at me for a long time. “So he said that someday you would kill your father with your own hands, that you would sleep with your mother.” I nod a few more times. “The same prophecy made about Oedipus. Though of course you knew that.” I nod. “But that’s not all. There’s an extra ingredient he threw into the mix. I have a sister six years older than me, and my father said I would sleep with her, too.” “Your father actually said this to you?” “Yeah. I was still in elementary school then, and didn’t know what he meant by ‘be with.’ It was only a few years later that I caught on.” Oshima doesn’t say anything. “My father told me there was nothing I could do to escape this fate. That prophecy is like a timing device buried inside my genes, and nothing can ever change it. I will kill my father and be with my mother and sister.

According to the biographical notes, Monsieur Julian Carax was twenty-seven, born with the century in Barcelona, and currently living in Paris; he wrote in French and worked at night as a professional pianist in a hostess bar. The blurb, written in the pompous, moldy style of the age, proclaimed that this was a first work of dazzling courage, the mark of a protean and trailblazing talent, and a sign of hope for the future of all of European letters. In spite of such solemn claims, the synopsis that followed suggested that the story contained some vaguely sinister elements slowly marinated in saucy melodrama, which, to the eyes of Monsieur Roquefort, was always a plus: after the classics what he most enjoyed were tales of crime, boudoir intrigue, and questionable conduct. One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep. She laughed nervously. She had around her a burning aura of loneliness. "You remind me a bit of Julian," she said suddenly. "The way you look and your gestures. He used to do what you are doing now. He would stare at you without saying a word, and you wouldn't know what he was thinking, and so, like an idiot, you'd tell him things it would have been better to keep to yourself." "Someone once said that the moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever." I gulped down the last of my coffee and looked at her for a few moments without saying anything. I thought about how much I wanted to lose myself in those evasive eyes. I thought about the loneliness that would take hold of me that night when I said good-bye to her, once I had run out of tricks or stories to make her stay with me any longer. I thought about how little I had to offer her and how much I wanted from her. "You women listen more to your heart and less to all the nonsense," the hatter concluded sadly. "That's why you live longer." But the years went by in peace. Time goes faster the more hollow it is. Lives with no meaning go straight past you, like trains that don't stop at your station.

I love you, Jacks.' He closed his eyes as she said the word love. She hoped a little harder. She wanted to ask him to look at her, but all that mattered was that he didn't let her go. 'I used to wonder if fate was real,' she said gently. 'I used to fear it meant that I had no real choices. Then I secretly hoped fate was real and that you and I were fated, that by some miraculous chance I was your true love. But now I don't care if fate is real- because I don't need it to decide for me. I don't it to make this choice. I've made my decision, Jacks. It's you. It will always be you, until the end of time. And I'll fight fate or anyone else who tries to tear us apart- including you. You are my choice. You are my love. You are mine. And you are not going to be the end of me, Jacks.' 'I think I already am.' He opened his eyes as they dripped red tears. 'Let me go, Evangeline.' 'Tell me you won't set fire to your heart, and I will let you go.' 'Don't ask me to do that.' 'Then don't ask me to let you go!

He leaned closer. “That’s what I’m trying to do. Your face is absolutely adorable when you blush.” My ears burned. Oh great, am I the color of a tomato now? “Yeah, well, I can make you blush,” I retorted. “By telling you how hot you are, and that when that little piece of black hair falls into your eyes, it’s so sexy it makes me forget my words, and...” I stopped, suddenly aware of how warm the mausoleum was. “Go on,” Caspian prodded, shaking his head so that his hair covered one green eye. I blushed again, and glanced around me, slowly backing away from him. I just needed some... space to clear my head. He followed me, stalking my every move. My blood felt like pure oxygen racing through my veins, fizzy and bubbling and making me want to float away. A hard wall at my back stopped me, but Caspian kept coming. I thought desperately of some way to change the subject. “I got you Moby-Dick,” I blurted out. He gave me a sly smile. “Mmmm, did you? How... interesting.” “And Treasure Island, and The Count of Monte Cristo.” I babbled on. “I thought you might like some boy books.” He stopped an inch away from me. I felt like I was his prisoner. “Let’s go back to the sexy and hot thing,” Caspian said. “Could we add a gorgeous or mysterious in there, too?” I gulped. “Like you don’t already know you’re all of those things. You probably had girls falling all over you before.” Caspian cocked his head to one side. “True. But I always thought it was because I was the quiet new guy. And besides, there’s only one person I was ever really interested in.” “Was?” I squeaked. Then I cleared my throat and tried again. “I mean—” “Am,” Caspian corrected himself. “Technically, I guess it’s both. I was interested the first day I saw her, and I still am interested in her.” His eyes glowed in the soft candlelight around us, and every last ounce of coherent thought left me. “It’s... um... really. It’s...” My head felt like it was thickening and my body was overheating, every word dragged from somewhere in the depths of my fuzzy brain. I waved a hand in front of my face to fan myself, and finally spit out what I was trying to say. “It’s hot in here. Don’t you think? It’s really warm.” “I only feel warmth when I’m standing next to you,” Caspian said. He stepped half an inch closer. “Like right now.

She looked now at the drawing-room step. She saw, through William’s eyes, the shape of a woman, peaceful and silent, with downcast eyes. She sat musing, pondering (she was in grey that day, Lily thought). Her eyes were bent. She would never lift them. . . . [N]o, she thought, one could say nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low. Then one gave it up; then the idea sunk back again; then one became like most middle-aged people, cautious, furtive, with wrinkles between the eyes and a look of perpetual apprehension. For how could one express in words these emotions of the body? Express that emptiness there? (She was looking at the drawing-room steps; they looked extraordinarily empty.) It was one’s body feeling, not one’s mind. The physical sensations that went with the bare look of the steps had become suddenly extremely unpleasant. To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have – to want and want – how that wrung the heart, and wrung again and again! Oh, Mrs. Ramsay! she called out silently, to that essence which sat by the boat, that abstract one made of her, that woman in grey, as if to abuse her for having gone, and then having gone, come back again. It had seemed so safe, thinking of her. Ghost, air, nothingness, a thing you could play with easily and safely at any time of day or night, she had been that, and then suddenly she put her hand out and wrung the heart thus. Suddenly, the empty drawing-room steps, the frill of the chair inside, the puppy tumbling on the terrace, the whole wave and whisper of the garden became like curves and arabesques flourishing round a centre of complete emptiness. . . . A curious notion came to her that he did after all hear the things she could not say. . . . She looked at her picture. That would have been his answer, presumably – how “you” and “I” and “she” pass and vanish; nothing stays; all changes; but not words, not paint. Yet it would be hung in the attics, she thought; it would be rolled up and flung under a sofa; yet even so, even of a picture like that, it was true. One might say, even of this scrawl, not of that actual picture, perhaps, but of what it attempted, that it “remained for ever,” she was going to say, or, for the words spoken sounded even to herself, too boastful, to hint, wordlessly; when, looking at the picture, she was surprised to find that she could not see it. Her eyes were full of a hot liquid (she did not think of tears at first) which, without disturbing the firmness of her lips, made the air thick, rolled down her cheeks. She had perfect control of herself – Oh, yes! – in every other way. Was she crying then for Mrs. Ramsay, without being aware of any unhappiness? She addressed old Mr. Carmichael again. What was it then? What did it mean? Could things thrust their hands up and grip one; could the blade cut; the fist grasp? Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle of a tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life? – startling, unexpected, unknown? For one moment she felt that if they both got up, here, now on the lawn, and demanded an explanation, why was it so short, why was it so inexplicable, said it with violence, as two fully equipped human beings from whom nothing should be hid might speak, then, beauty would roll itself up; the space would fill; those empty flourishes would form into shape; if they shouted loud enough Mrs. Ramsay would return. “Mrs. Ramsay!” she said aloud, “Mrs. Ramsay!” The tears ran down her face.

Of all the laughs that strictly speaking are not laughs, but modes of ululation, only three I think need detain us, I mean the bitter, the hollow and the mirthless. They correspond to successive… how shall I say successive… suc… successive excoriations of the understanding, and the passage from the one to the other is the passage from the lesser to the greater, from the lower to the higher, from the outer to the inner, from the gross to the fine, from the matter to the form. The laugh that now is mirthless once was hollow, the laugh that once was hollow once was bitter. And the laugh that once was bitter? Eyewater, Mr. Watt, eyewater. But do not let us waste our time with that. . . . The bitter, the hollow and—Haw! Haw!— the mirthless. The bitter laugh laughs at that which is not good, it is the ethical laugh. The hollow laugh laughs at that which is not true, it is the intellectual laugh. Not good! Not true! Well well. But the mirthless laugh is the dianoetic laugh, down the snout—Haw!—so. It is the laugh of laughs, the risus purus, the laugh laughing at the laugh, the beholding, the saluting of the highest joke, in a word the laugh that laughs—silence please—at that which is unhappy”.

I let go of him and remain standing. I promised myself I would do this, if I ever had the chance again.. I promised I would do this the first moment I could. 'I love you,' I say, the words coming out in an unintelligible rush. Cardan looks taken aback. Or possibly I spoke so fast he's not even sure what I said. 'You need not say it out of pity,' he says finally, with great deliberateness. 'Or because I was under a curse. I have asked you to lie to me in the past, in this very room, but I would beg you not to lie now.' My cheeks heat at the memory of those lies. 'I have not made myself easy to love,' he says, and I hear the echo of his mother's words in his. When I imagined telling him, I thought I would say the words, and it would be like pulling off a bandage- painful and swift. But I didn't think he would doubt me. 'I first started liking you when we went to talk to the rulers of the low Courts,' I say. 'You were funny, which was weird. And when we went to Hollow Hall, you were clever. I kept remembering how you'd been the one to get us out of the brugh after Dain's coronation, right before I put the knife to your throat.' He doesn't try to interrupt, so I have to choice but to barrel on. 'After I tricked you into being High King,' I say. 'I thought once you hated me, I could go back to hating you. But I didn't. And I felt so stupid. I thought I would get my heart broken. I thought it was a weakness that you would use against me. But then you saved me from the Undersea when it would have been much more convenient to just leave me to rot. After that, I started to hope my feelings were returned. But then there was the exile-' I take a ragged breath. 'I hid a lot, I guess. I thought if I didn't, if I let myself love you, I would burn up like a match. Like the whole matchbook.' 'But now you've explained it,' he says. 'And you do love me.' 'I love you,' I confirm. 'Because I am clever and funny,' he says, smiling. 'You didn't mention my handsomeness.' 'Or your deliciousness,' I say. 'Although those are both good qualities.' He pulls me to him, so that we're both lying on the couch. I look down at the blackness of his eyes and the softness of his mouth. I wipe a fleck of dried blood from the top of one pointed ear. 'What was it like?' I ask. 'Being a serpent.' He hesitates. 'It was like being trapped in the dark,' he says. 'I was alone, and my instinct was to lash out. I was perhaps not entirely an animal, but neither was I myself. I could not reason. There was only feelings- hatred and terror and the desire to destroy.' I start to speak, but he stops me with a gesture. 'And you.' He looks at me, his lips curving in something that's not quite a smile; it's more and less than that. 'I knew little else, but I always knew you.' And when he kisses me, I feel as though I can finally breathe again.

Bill.' If you don't, I'll do this," and with that he gave me a twitch that I thought would have made me faint. Between this and that, I was so utterly terrified of the blind beggar that I forgot my terror of the captain, and as I opened the parlour door, cried out the words he had ordered in a trembling voice. The poor captain raised his eyes, and at one look the rum went out of him and left him staring sober. The expression of his face was not so much of terror as of mortal sickness. He made a movement to rise, but I do not believe he had enough force left in his body. "Now, Bill, sit where you are," said the beggar. "If I can't see, I can hear a finger stirring. Business is business. Hold out your left hand. Boy, take his left hand by the wrist and bring it near to my right." We both obeyed him to the letter, and I saw him pass something from the hollow of the hand that held his stick into the palm of the captain's, which closed upon it instantly. "And now that's done," said the blind man; and at the words he suddenly left hold of me, and with incredible accuracy and nimbleness, skipped out of the parlour and into the road, where, as I still stood motionless, I could hear his stick go tap-tap-tapping into the distance. It was some time before either I or the captain seemed to gather our senses, but at length, and about at the same moment, I released his wrist, which I was still holding, and he drew in his hand and looked sharply into the palm. "Ten o'clock!" he cried. "Six hours. We'll do them yet," and he sprang to his feet. Even as he did so, he reeled, put his hand to his throat, stood swaying for a moment, and then, with a peculiar sound, fell from his whole height face foremost to the floor. I ran to him at once, calling to my mother. But haste was all in vain. The captain had been struck dead by thundering apoplexy. It is a curious thing to understand, for I had certainly never liked the man, though of late I had begun to pity him, but as soon as I saw that he was dead, I burst into a flood of tears. It was the second death I had known, and the sorrow of the first was still fresh in my heart. 4 The Sea-chest I LOST no time, of course, in telling my mother all that I knew, and perhaps should have told her long before, and we saw ourselves at once in a difficult and dangerous position. Some of the man's money—if he had any—was certainly due to us, but it was not likely that our captain's shipmates, above all the two specimens seen by me, Black Dog and the blind beggar, would be inclined to give up their booty in payment of the dead man's debts. The captain's order to mount at once and ride for Doctor Livesey would have left my mother alone and unprotected, which was not to be thought of. Indeed, it seemed impossible for either of us to remain much longer in the house; the fall of coals in the kitchen grate, the very ticking of the clock, filled us with alarms. The neighbourhood, to our ears, seemed haunted by approaching footsteps; and what between the dead body of the captain on the parlour floor and the thought of that detestable blind beggar hovering near at hand and ready to return, there were moments when, as the saying goes, I jumped in my skin for terror. Something must speedily be resolved upon, and it occurred to us at last to go forth together and seek help in the neighbouring hamlet. No sooner said than done. Bare-headed as we were, we ran out at once in the gathering evening and the frosty fog. The hamlet lay not many hundred yards away, though out of view, on the other side of the next cove; and what greatly encouraged me, it was in an opposite direction from that whence the blind man had made his appearance and whither he had presumably returned. We were not many minutes on the road, though we sometimes stopped to lay hold of each other and hearken. But there was no unusual sound—nothing but the low wash of the ripple and the croaking of the inmates of the wood.

Perched upon the stones of a bridge The soldiers had the eyes of ravens Their weapons hung black as talons Their eyes gloried in the smoke of murder To the shock of iron-heeled sticks I drew closer in the cripple’s bitter patience And before them I finally tottered Grasping to capture my elusive breath With the cockerel and swift of their knowing They watched and waited for me ‘I have come,’ said I, ‘from this road’s birth, I have come,’ said I, ‘seeking the best in us.’ The sergeant among them had red in his beard Glistening wet as he showed his teeth ‘There are few roads on this earth,’ said he, ‘that will lead you to the best in us, old one.’ ‘But you have seen all the tracks of men,’ said I ‘And where the mothers and children have fled Before your advance. Is there naught among them That you might set an old man upon?’ The surgeon among this rook had bones Under her vellum skin like a maker of limbs ‘Old one,’ said she, ‘I have dwelt In the heat of chests, among heart and lungs, And slid like a serpent between muscles, Swum the currents of slowing blood, And all these roads lead into the darkness Where the broken will at last rest. ‘Dare say I,’ she went on,‘there is no Place waiting inside where you might find In slithering exploration of mysteries All that you so boldly call the best in us.’ And then the man with shovel and pick, Who could raise fort and berm in a day Timbered of thought and measured in all things Set the gauge of his eyes upon the sun And said, ‘Look not in temples proud, Or in the palaces of the rich highborn, We have razed each in turn in our time To melt gold from icon and shrine And of all the treasures weeping in fire There was naught but the smile of greed And the thick power of possession. Know then this: all roads before you From the beginning of the ages past And those now upon us, yield no clue To the secret equations you seek, For each was built of bone and blood And the backs of the slave did bow To the laboured sentence of a life In chains of dire need and little worth. All that we build one day echoes hollow.’ ‘Where then, good soldiers, will I Ever find all that is best in us? If not in flesh or in temple bound Or wretched road of cobbled stone?’ ‘Could we answer you,’ said the sergeant, ‘This blood would cease its fatal flow, And my surgeon could seal wounds with a touch, All labours will ease before temple and road, Could we answer you,’ said the sergeant, ‘Crows might starve in our company And our talons we would cast in bogs For the gods to fight over as they will. But we have not found in all our years The best in us, until this very day.’ ‘How so?’ asked I, so lost now on the road, And said he, ‘Upon this bridge we sat Since the dawn’s bleak arrival, Our perch of despond so weary and worn, And you we watched, at first a speck Upon the strife-painted horizon So tortured in your tread as to soak our faces In the wonder of your will, yet on you came Upon two sticks so bowed in weight Seeking, say you, the best in us And now we have seen in your gift The best in us, and were treasures at hand We would set them humbly before you, A man without feet who walked a road.’ Now, soldiers with kind words are rare Enough, and I welcomed their regard As I moved among them, ’cross the bridge And onward to the long road beyond I travel seeking the best in us And one day it shall rise before me To bless this journey of mine, and this road I began upon long ago shall now end Where waits for all the best in us. ―Avas Didion Flicker Where Ravens Perch

Every generation of children instinctively nests itself in nature, no matter matter how tiny a scrap of it they can grasp. In a tale of one city child, the poet Audre Lord remembers picking tufts of grass which crept up through the paving stones in New York City and giving them as bouquets to her mother. It is a tale of two necessities. The grass must grow, no matter the concrete suppressing it. The child must find her way to the green, no matter the edifice which would crush it. "The Maori word for placenta is the same word for land, so at birth the placenta is buried, put back in the mothering earth. A Hindu baby may receive the sun-showing rite surya-darsana when, with conch shells ringing to the skies, the child is introduced to the sun. A newborn child of the Tonga people 'meets' the moon, dipped in the ocean of Kosi Bay in KwaZulu-Natal. Among some of the tribes of India, the qualities of different aspects of nature are invoked to bless the child, so he or she may have the characteristics of earth, sky and wind, of birds and animals, right down to the earthworm. Nothing is unbelonging to the child. "'My oldest memories have the flavor of earth,' wrote Frederico García Lorca. In the traditions of the Australian deserts, even from its time in the womb, the baby is catscradled in kinship with the world. Born into a sandy hollow, it is cleaned with sand and 'smoked' by fire, and everything -- insects, birds, plants, and animals -- is named to the child, who is told not only what everything is called but also the relationship between the child and each creature. Story and song weave the child into the subtle world of the Dreaming, the nested knowledge of how the child belongs. "The threads which tie the child to the land include its conception site and the significant places of the Dreaming inherited through its parents. Introduced to creatures and land features as to relations, the child is folded into the land, wrapped into country, and the stories press on the child's mind like the making of felt -- soft and often -- storytelling until the feeling of the story of the country is impressed into the landscape of the child's mind. "That the juggernaut of ants belongs to a child, belligerently following its own trail. That the twitch of an animal's tail is part of a child's own tale or storyline, once and now again. That on the papery bark of a tree may be written the songline of a child's name. That the prickles of a thornbush may have dynamic relevance to conscience. That a damp hollow by the riverbank is not an occasional place to visit but a permanent part of who you are. This is the beginning of belonging, the beginning of love. "In the art and myth of Indigenous Australia, the Ancestors seeded the country with its children, so the shimmering, pouring, circling, wheeling, spinning land is lit up with them, cartwheeling into life.... "The human heart's love for nature cannot ultimately be concreted over. Like Audre Lord's tufts of grass, will crack apart paving stones to grasp the sun. Children know they are made of the same stuff as the grass, as Walt Whitman describes nature creating the child who becomes what he sees: There was a child went forth every day And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became... The early lilacs became part of this child... And the song of the phoebe-bird... In Australia, people may talk of the child's conception site as the origin of their selfhood and their picture of themselves. As Whitman wrote of the child becoming aspects of the land, so in Northern Queensland a Kunjen elder describes the conception site as 'the home place for your image.' Land can make someone who they are, giving them fragments of themselves.

Ode to the Beloved’s Hips" Bells are they—shaped on the eighth day—silvered percussion in the morning—are the morning. Swing switch sway. Hold the day away a little longer, a little slower, a little easy. Call to me— I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock right now—so to them I come—struck-dumb chime-blind, tolling with a throat full of Hosanna. How many hours bowed against this Infinity of Blessed Trinity? Communion of Pelvis, Sacrum, Femur. My mouth—terrible angel, ever-lasting novena, ecstatic devourer. O, the places I have laid them, knelt and scooped the amber—fast honey—from their openness— Ah Muzen Cab’s hidden Temple of Tulúm—licked smooth the sticky of her hip—heat-thrummed ossa coxae. Lambent slave to ilium and ischium—I never tire to shake this wild hive, split with thumb the sweet- dripped comb—hot hexagonal hole—dark diamond— to its nectar-dervished queen. Meanad tongue— come-drunk hum-tranced honey-puller—for her hips, I am—strummed-song and succubus. They are the sign: hip. And the cosign: a great book— the body’s Bible opened up to its Good News Gospel. Alleluias, Ave Marías, madre mías, ay yay yays, Ay Dios míos, and hip-hip-hooray. Cult of Coccyx. Culto de cadera. Oracle of Orgasm. Rorschach’s riddle: What do I see? Hips: Innominate bone. Wish bone. Orpheus bone. Transubstantiation bone—hips of bread, wine-whet thighs. Say the word and healed I shall be: Bone butterfly. Bone wings. Bone Ferris wheel. Bone basin bone throne bone lamp. Apparition in the bone grotto—6th mystery— slick rosary bead—Déme la gracia of a decade in this garden of carmine flower. Exile me to the enormous orchard of Alcinous—spiced fruit, laden-tree—Imparadise me. Because, God, I am guilty. I am sin-frenzied and full of teeth for pear upon apple upon fig. More than all that are your hips. They are a city. They are Kingdom— Troy, the hollowed horse, an army of desire— thirty soldiers in the belly, two in the mouth. Beloved, your hips are the war. At night your legs, love, are boulevards leading me beggared and hungry to your candy house, your baroque mansion. Even when I am late and the tables have been cleared, in the kitchen of your hips, let me eat cake. O, constellation of pelvic glide—every curve, a luster, a star. More infinite still, your hips are kosmic, are universe—galactic carousel of burning comets and Big Big Bangs. Millennium Falcon, let me be your Solo. O, hot planet, let me circumambulate. O, spiral galaxy, I am coming for your dark matter. Along las calles de tus muslos I wander— follow the parade of pulse like a drum line— descend into your Plaza del Toros— hands throbbing Miura bulls, dark Isleros. Your arched hips—ay, mi torera. Down the long corridor, your wet walls lead me like a traje de luces—all glitter, glowed. I am the animal born to rush your rich red muletas—each breath, each sigh, each groan, a hooked horn of want. My mouth at your inner thigh—here I must enter you—mi pobre Manolete—press and part you like a wound— make the crowd pounding in the grandstand of your iliac crest rise up in you and cheer.

You were burning in the middle of the worst solar storm our records can remember. (...) Everyone else fled. All your companions and crew left you alone to wrestle with the storm. “You did not blame them. In a moment of crystal insight, you realized that they were cowards beyond mere cowardice: their dependence on their immortality circuits had made it so that they could not even imagine risking their lives. They were all alike in this respect. They did not know they were not brave; they could not even think of dying as possible; how could they think of facing it, unflinching? “You did not flinch. You knew you were going to die; you knew it when the Sophotechs, who are immune to pain and fear, all screamed and failed and vanished. “And you knew, in that moment of approaching death, with all your life laid out like a single image for you to examine in a frozen moment of time, that no one was immortal, not ultimately, not really. The day may be far away, it may be further away than the dying of the sun, or the extinction of the stars, but the day will come when all our noumenal systems fail, our brilliant machines all pass away, and our records of ourselves and memories shall be lost. “If all life is finite, only the grace and virtue with which it is lived matters, not the length. So you decided to stay another moment, and erect magnetic shields, one by one; to discharge interruption masses into the current, to break up the reinforcement patterns in the storm. Not life but honor mattered to you, Helion: so you stayed a moment after that moment, and then another. (...) “You saw the plasma erupting through shield after shield (...) Chaos was attempting to destroy your life’s work, and major sections of the Solar Array were evaporated. Chaos was attempting to destroy your son’s lifework, and since he was aboard that ship, outside the range of any noumenal circuit, it would have destroyed your son as well. “The Array was safe, but you stayed another moment, to try to deflect the stream of particles and shield your son; circuit after circuit failed, and still you stayed, playing the emergency like a raging orchestra. “When the peak of the storm was passed, it was too late for you: you had stayed too long; the flames were coming. But the radio-static cleared long enough for you to have last words with your son, whom you discovered, to your surprise, you loved better than life itself. In your mind, he was the living image of the best thing in you, the ideal you always wanted to achieve. “ ‘Chaos has killed me, son,’ you said. ‘But the victory of unpredictability is hollow. Men imagine, in their pride, that they can predict life’s each event, and govern nature and govern each other with rules of unyielding iron. Not so. There will always be men like you, my son, who will do the things no one else predicts or can control. I tried to tame the sun and failed; no one knows what is at its fiery heart; but you will tame a thousand suns, and spread mankind so wide in space that no one single chance, no flux of chaos, no unexpected misfortune, will ever have power enough to harm us all. For men to be civilized, they must be unlike each other, so that when chaos comes to claim them, no two will use what strategy the other does, and thus, even in the middle of blind chaos, some men, by sheer blind chance, if nothing else, will conquer. “ ‘The way to conquer the chaos which underlies all the illusionary stable things in life, is to be so free, and tolerant, and so much in love with liberty, that chaos itself becomes our ally; we shall become what no one can foresee; and courage and inventiveness will be the names we call our fearless unpredictability…’ “And you vowed to support Phaethon’s effort, and you died in order that his dream might live.