Home Alone Movie Quotes

Books are the mile markers of my life. Some people have family photos or home movies to record their past. I’ve got books. Characters. For as long as I can remember, books have been my safe place.

Books are the mile markers of my life. Some people have family photos or home movies to record their past. I’ve got books. Characters. For as long as I can remember, books have been my safe place. I read about places I can barely imagine and lose myself in journeys to foreign lands to save girls who didn’t know they were really princesses.

It's nothing like the way they describe it in the movies, like all the stars aligning and fireworks exploding across an ink-black sky. It feels both quieter and bigger than that, as simple as coming home and as dizzying and all-encompassing as the wind rushing in around us. It feels like a thousand banished and buried moments have been building up to this - to us alone and untethered and weak with wanting - and maybe they have.

I don't watch scary movies. I mean it. Not ever. They make me scared. Scared of being alone in the house. Scared of being alone upstairs at night. Scared of walking home from work in the dark.

In a society that is essentially designed to organize, direct, and gratify mass impulses, what is there to minister to the silent zones of man as an individual? Religion? Art? Nature? No, the church has turned religion into standardized public spectacle, and the museum has done the same for art. The Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls have been looked at so much that they've become effete, sucked empty by too many stupid eyes. What is there to minister to the silent zones of man as an individual? How about a cold chicken bone on a paper plate at midnight, how about a lurid lipstick lengthening or shortening at your command, how about a Styrofoam nest abandoned by a 'bird' you've never known, how about a pair of windshield wipers pursuing one another futilely while you drive home alone through a downpour, how about something beneath a seat touched by your shoe at the movies, how about worn pencils, cute forks, fat little radios, boxes of bow ties, and bubbles on the side of a bathtub? Yes, these are the things, these kite strings and olive oil cans and Valentine hearts stuffed with nougat, that form the bond between the autistic vision and the experiential world, it is to show these things in their true mysterious light that is the purpose of the moon.

One of the sicknesses of the twentieth century? I'll tell you the worst one. People can't stand to be alone. Can't tolerate it! So they go to the movies, get drive-in hamburgers, put their home telephone numbers in the crapsheets and say 'Please call me up!' It's sick. People hate their own company --- they cry when they see themselves in mirrors. It scares them, the way their faces look. Maybe that's a clue to the whole thing...

When did the mammals get confusing? Who can’t look at a baby and a puppy and see the differences? You can’t leave babies at home alone with a chew toy when you go to the movies. Babies will not shimmy under the covers to sleep on your feet when you’re cold. Babies, for all their many unarguable charms, will not run with you in the park, or wait by the door for your return, and, as far as I can tell, they know absolutely nothing of unconditional love.

Creation is built upon the promise of hope, that things will get better, that tomorrow will be better than the day before. But it's not true. Cities collapse. Populations expand. Environments decay. People get ruder. You can't go to a movie without getting in a fight with the guy in the third row who won't shut up. Filthy streets. Drive-by shootings. Irradiated corn. Permissible amounts of rat-droppings per hot dog. Bomb blasts, and body counts. Terror in the streets, on camera, in your living room. Aids and Ebola and Hepatitis B and you can't touch anyone because you're afraid you'll catch something besides love and nothing tastes as good anymore and Christopher Reeve is [dead] and love is statistically false. Pocket nukes and subway anthrax. You grow up frustrated, you live confused, you age frightened, you die alone. Safe terrain moves from your city to your block to your yard to your home to your living room to the bedroom and all you want is to be allowed to live without somebody breaking in to steal your tv and shove an ice-pick in your ear. That sound like a better world to you? That sound to you like a promise kept?

There is a tremendous difference between alone and lonely. You could be lonely in a group of people. I like being alone. I like eating by myself. I go home at night and just watch a movie or hang out with my dog. I have to exert myself and really say, oh God, I’ve got to see my friends because I’m too content with myself.

I thought he’d last a few months and then grow weary of my insistence on sleeping at home—alone—every night. How sometimes dark places like movie theaters or dive bars made me nervous. “Take your time,” Scott had said, over and over again. “You’re worth it.

You say you know these streets pretty well? The city knows you better than any living person because it has seen you when you are alone. It saw you steeling yourself for the job interview, slowly walking home after the late date, tripping over nonexistent impediments on the sidewalk. It saw you wince when the single frigid drop fell from the air-conditioner 12 stories up and zapped you. It saw the bewilderment on your face as you stepped out of the stolen matinee, incredulous that there was still daylight after such a long movie. It saw you half-running up the street after you got the keys to your first apartment. It saw all that. Remembers too. Consider what all your old apartments would say if they got together to swap stories. They could piece together the starts and finishes of your relationships, complain about your wardrobe and musical tastes, gossip about who you are after midnight. 7J says, ''So that's what happened to Lucy; I knew it would never work out.'' You picked up yoga, you put down yoga, you tried various cures. You tried on selves and got rid of them, and this makes your old rooms wistful: why must things change? 3R says: ''Saxophone, you say? I knew him when he played guitar.'' Cherish your old apartments and pause for a moment when you pass them. Pay tribute, for they are the caretakers of your reinventions.

SOCIAL/GENERAL ICEBREAKERS 1. What do you think of the movie/restaurant/party? 2. Tell me about the best vacation you’ve ever taken. 3. What’s your favorite thing to do on a rainy day? 4. If you could replay any moment in your life, what would it be? 5. What one thing would you really like to own? Why? 6. Tell me about one of your favorite relatives. 7. What was it like in the town where you grew up? 8. What would you like to come back as in your next life? 9. Tell me about your kids. 10. What do you think is the perfect age? Why? 11. What is a typical day like for you? 12. Of all the places you’ve lived, tell me about the one you like the best. 13. What’s your favorite holiday? What do you enjoy about it? 14. What are some of your family traditions that you particularly enjoy? 15. Tell me about the first car you ever bought. 16. How has the Internet affected your life? 17. Who were your idols as a kid? Have they changed? 18. Describe a memorable teacher you had. 19. Tell me about a movie/book you’ve seen or read more than once. 20. What’s your favorite restaurant? Why? 21. Tell me why you were named ______. What is the origin of your last name? 22. Tell me about a place you’ve visited that you hope never to return to. get over your mom’s good intentions. 23. What’s the best surprise you’ve ever received? 24. What’s the neatest surprise you’ve ever planned and pulled off for someone else? 25. Skiing here is always challenging. What are some of your favorite places to ski? 26. Who would star as you in a movie about your life? Why that person? 27. Who is the most famous person you’ve met? 28. Tell me about some of your New Year’s resolutions. 29. What’s the most antiestablishment thing you’ve ever done? 30. Describe a costume that you wore to a party. 31. Tell me about a political position you’d like to hold. 32. What song reminds you of an incident in your life? 33. What’s the most memorable meal you’ve eaten? 34. What’s the most unforgettable coincidence you’ve experienced or heard about? 35. How are you able to tell if that melon is ripe? 36. What motion picture star would you like to interview? Why? 37. Tell me about your family. 38. What aroma brings forth a special memory? 39. Describe the scariest person you ever met. 40. What’s your favorite thing to do alone? 41. Tell me about a childhood friend who used to get you in trouble. 42. Tell me about a time when you had too much to eat or drink. 43. Describe your first away-from-home living quarters or experience. 44. Tell me about a time that you lost a job. 45. Share a memory of one of your grandparents. 46. Describe an embarrassing moment you’ve had. 47. Tell me something most people would never guess about you. 48. What would you do if you won a million dollars? 49. Describe your ideal weather and why. 50. How did you learn to ski/hang drywall/play piano?

I hear the wind call my name The sound that leads me home again It sparks up the fire - a flame that still burns To you I'll always return I know the road is long But where you are is home Wherever you stay-I'll find the way I'll run like the river-I'll follow the sun I'll fly like an eagle To where I belong I can't stand the distance I can't dream alone I can't wait to see you-yes I'm on my way home Now I know it's true My every road leads to you And in the hour of darkness, Your light gets me through You run like the river-you shine like the sun Yeah You fly like an eagle-yeah you are the one I seen every sunset and with all that I've learned Oh, it's to you, I will always, always, return

But without Emily, Greg would feel—paradoxically for such a social creature—alone. Before they met, most of Greg’s girlfriends were extroverts. He says he enjoyed those relationships, but never got to know his girlfriends well, because they were always “plotting how to be with groups of people.” He speaks of Emily with a kind of awe, as if she has access to a deeper state of being. He also describes her as “the anchor” around which his world revolves. Emily, for her part, treasures Greg’s ebullient nature; he makes her feel happy and alive. She has always been attracted to extroverts, who she says “do all the work of making conversation. For them, it’s not work at all.” The trouble is that for most of the five years they’ve been together, Greg and Emily have been having one version or another of the same fight. Greg, a music promoter with a large circle of friends, wants to host dinner parties every Friday—casual, animated get-togethers with heaping bowls of pasta and flowing bottles of wine. He’s been giving Friday-night dinners since he was a senior in college, and they’ve become a highlight of his week and a treasured piece of his identity. Emily has come to dread these weekly events. A hardworking staff attorney for an art museum and a very private person, the last thing she wants to do when she gets home from work is entertain. Her idea of a perfect start to the weekend is a quiet evening at the movies, just her and Greg. It seems an irreconcilable difference: Greg wants fifty-two dinner parties a year, Emily wants zero. Greg says that Emily should make more of an effort. He accuses her of being antisocial. “I am social,” she says. “I love you, I love my family, I love my close friends. I just don’t love dinner parties. People don’t really relate at those parties—they just socialize. You’re lucky because I devote all my energy to you. You spread yours around to everyone.” But Emily soon backs off, partly because she hates fighting, but also because she doubts herself. Maybe I am antisocial, she

Some people stay married for lifetimes, decade after decade, great skelps of centuries together until they're almost in the same skin, growing into each other, shrinking to each other's sizes and shapes, speaking with one voice, clinging fast together, dying days or hours apart. Love doesn't come into it. Not the love of cartoon hearts and cards and cakes and movies and ads for things that no one needs; that grisly synthetic thing, that smiling dog. Love is just a word used to explain away the impossibility of this co-existence, the glorious achievement of being together in the same place, of being happy, and peaceful, and calm, and meeting up again at Heaven's gate, and walking hand in hand to the eternal light. Fairy stories. Couples in care homes curled together in fear of being alone, of being left in darkness and silence, listening for the step of a stranger, too afraid even to use the commode. This happens, people are left like this. It's better this way, to have smashed it all to bits while we're still to separate people.

With the nausea gone, evenings with Marlboro Man slowly began resembling the way they’d been before. We watched movies on the couch together--his head on one end, my head on the other, our legs in a tangled mess of coziness. He’d play with my toes. I’d rub his calves, which were rock hard and tough from day after day on horseback. After the purgatory of the previous weeks, things were officially delicious again. Marlboro Man was delicious again. After a love-drenched honeymoon in Australia, we’d returned home to a bitter reality that had put a screeching halt to what should have been the most romantic days of our lives together. Since my nausea had been so bad that the mere smell of skin made me sick, it had been difficult for me to lie in bed with him some nights--let alone entertain any other thoughts. It had been a cold, frigid autumn in more ways than one. If Marlboro Man hadn’t been so happy about his child developing in my body, I imagined he might have taken me back for a refund. I was so glad that this time had finally passed.

Why can't we sit together? What's the point of seat reservations,anyway? The bored woman calls my section next,and I think terrible thoughts about her as she slides my ticket through her machine. At least I have a window seat. The middle and aisle are occupied with more businessmen. I'm reaching for my book again-it's going to be a long flight-when a polite English accent speaks to the man beside me. "Pardon me,but I wonder if you wouldn't mind switching seats.You see,that's my girlfriend there,and she's pregnant. And since she gets a bit ill on airplanes,I thought she might need someone to hold back her hair when...well..." St. Clair holds up the courtesy barf bag and shakes it around. The paper crinkles dramatically. The man sprints off the seat as my face flames. His pregnant girlfriend? "Thank you.I was in forty-five G." He slides into the vacated chair and waits for the man to disappear before speaking again. The guy onhis other side stares at us in horror,but St. Clair doesn't care. "They had me next to some horrible couple in matching Hawaiian shirts. There's no reason to suffer this flight alone when we can suffer it together." "That's flattering,thanks." But I laugh,and he looks pleased-until takeoff, when he claws the armrest and turns a color disturbingy similar to key lime pie. I distract him with a story about the time I broke my arm playing Peter Pan. It turned out there was more to flying than thinking happy thoughts and jumping out a window. St. Clair relaxes once we're above the clouds. Time passes quickly for an eight-hour flight. We don't talk about what waits on the other side of the ocean. Not his mother. Not Toph.Instead,we browse Skymall. We play the if-you-had-to-buy-one-thing-off-each-page game. He laughs when I choose the hot-dog toaster, and I tease him about the fogless shower mirror and the world's largest crossword puzzle. "At least they're practical," he says. "What are you gonna do with a giant crossword poster? 'Oh,I'm sorry Anna. I can't go to the movies tonight. I'm working on two thousand across, Norwegian Birdcall." "At least I'm not buying a Large Plastic Rock for hiding "unsightly utility posts.' You realize you have no lawn?" "I could hide other stuff.Like...failed French tests.Or illegal moonshining equipment." He doubles over with that wonderful boyish laughter, and I grin. "But what will you do with a motorized swimming-pool snack float?" "Use it in the bathtub." He wipes a tear from his cheek. "Ooo,look! A Mount Rushmore garden statue. Just what you need,Anna.And only forty dollars! A bargain!" We get stumped on the page of golfing accessories, so we switch to drawing rude pictures of the other people on the plane,followed by rude pictures of Euro Disney Guy. St. Clair's eyes glint as he sketches the man falling down the Pantheon's spiral staircase. There's a lot of blood. And Mickey Mouse ears. After a few hours,he grows sleepy.His head sinks against my shoulder. I don't dare move.The sun is coming up,and the sky is pink and orange and makes me think of sherbet.I siff his hair. Not out of weirdness.It's just...there. He must have woken earlier than I thought,because it smells shower-fresh. Clean. Healthy.Mmm.I doze in and out of a peaceful dream,and the next thing I know,the captain's voice is crackling over the airplane.We're here. I'm home.

When it begins it is like a light in a tunnel, a rush of steel and steam across a torn up life. It is a low rumble, an earthquake in the back of the mind. My spine is a track with cold black steel racing on it, a trail of steam and dust following behind, ghost like. It feels like my whole life is holding its breath. By the time she leaves the room I am surprised that she can’t see the train. It has jumped the track of my spine and landed in my mothers’ living room. A cold dark thing, black steel and redwood paneling. It is the old type, from the western movies I loved as a kid. He throws open the doors to the outside world, to the dark ocean. I feel a breeze tugging at me, a slender finger of wind that catches at my shirt. Pulling. Grabbing. I can feel the panic build in me, the need to scream or cry rising in my throat. And then I am out the door, running, tumbling down the steps falling out into the darkened world, falling out into the lifeless ocean. Out into the blackness. Out among the stars and shadows. And underneath my skin, in the back of my head and down the back of my spine I can feel the desperation and I can feel the noise. I can feel the deep and ancient ache of loudness that litters across my bones. It’s like an old lover, comfortable and well known, but unwelcome and inappropriate with her stories of our frolicking. And then she’s gone and the Conductor is closing the door. The darkness swells around us, enveloping us in a cocoon, pressing flat against the train like a storm. I wonder, what is this place? Those had been heady days, full and intense. It’s funny. I remember the problems, the confusions and the fears of life we all dealt with. But, that all seems to fade. It all seems to be replaced by images of the days when it was all just okay. We all had plans back then, patterns in which we expected the world to fit, how it was to be deciphered. Eventually you just can’t carry yourself any longer, can’t keep your eyelids open, and can’t focus on anything but the flickering light of the stars. Hours pass, at first slowly like a river and then all in a rush, a climax and I am home in the dorm, waking up to the ringing of the telephone. When she is gone the apartment is silent, empty, almost like a person sleeping, waiting to wake up. When she is gone, and I am alone, I curl up on the bed, wait for the house to eject me from its dying corpse. Crazy thoughts cross through my head, like slants of light in an attic. The Boston 395 rocks a bit, a creaking noise spilling in from the undercarriage. I have decided that whatever this place is, all these noises, sensations - all the train-ness of this place - is a fabrication. It lulls you into a sense of security, allows you to feel as if it’s a familiar place. But whatever it is, it’s not a train, or at least not just a train. The air, heightened, tense against the glass. I can hear the squeak of shoes on linoleum, I can hear the soft rattle of a dying man’s breathing. Men in white uniforms, sharp pressed lines, run past, rolling gurneys down florescent hallways.

We did the dishes and talked--about the cattle business, about my job back in L.A., about his local small town, about family. Then we adjourned to the sofa to watch an action movie, pausing occasionally to remind each other once again of the reason God invented lips. Curiously, though, while sexy and smoldering, Marlboro Man kept his heavy breathing to a minimum. This surprised me. He was not only masculine and manly, he lived in the middle of nowhere--one might expect that because of the dearth of women within a twenty-mile range, he’d be more susceptible than most to getting lost in a heated moment. But he wasn’t. He was a gentleman through and through--a sizzling specimen of a gentleman who was singlehandedly introducing me to a whole new universe of animal attraction, but a gentleman, nonetheless. And though my mercury was rising rapidly, his didn’t seem to be in any hurry. He walked me to my car as the final credits rolled, offering to follow me all the way home if I wanted. “Oh, no,” I said. “I can get home, no problem.” I’d lived in L.A. for years; it’s not like driving alone at night bothered me. I started my car and watched him walk back toward his front door, admiring every last thing about him. He turned around and waved, and as he walked inside I felt, more than ever, that I was in big trouble. What was I doing? Why was I here? I was getting ready to move to Chicago--home of the Cubs and Michigan Avenue and the Elevated Train. Why had I allowed myself to stick my toe in this water? And why did the water have to feel so, so good?

I am speaking of the evenings when the sun sets early, of the fathers under the streetlamps in the back streets returning home carrying plastic bags. Of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to deserted stations in the middle of winter, where sleepy sailors scrub the decks, pail in hand and one eye on the black-and-white television in the distance; of the old booksellers who lurch from one ϧnancial crisis to the next and then wait shivering all day for a customer to appear; of the barbers who complain that men don’t shave as much after an economic crisis; of the children who play ball between the cars on cobblestoned streets; of the covered women who stand at remote bus stops clutching plastic shopping bags and speak to no one as they wait for the bus that never arrives; of the empty boathouses of the old Bosphorus villas; of the teahouses packed to the rafters with unemployed men; of the patient pimps striding up and down the city’s greatest square on summer evenings in search of one last drunken tourist; of the broken seesaws in empty parks; of ship horns booming through the fog; of the wooden buildings whose every board creaked even when they were pashas’ mansions, all the more now that they have become municipal headquarters; of the women peeking through their curtains as they wait for husbands who never manage to come home in the evening; of the old men selling thin religious treatises, prayer beads, and pilgrimage oils in the courtyards of mosques; of the tens of thousands of identical apartment house entrances, their facades discolored by dirt, rust, soot, and dust; of the crowds rushing to catch ferries on winter evenings; of the city walls, ruins since the end of the Byzantine Empire; of the markets that empty in the evenings; of the dervish lodges, the tekkes, that have crumbled; of the seagulls perched on rusty barges caked with moss and mussels, unϩinching under the pelting rain; of the tiny ribbons of smoke rising from the single chimney of a hundred-yearold mansion on the coldest day of the year; of the crowds of men ϧshing from the sides of the Galata Bridge; of the cold reading rooms of libraries; of the street photographers; of the smell of exhaled breath in the movie theaters, once glittering aϱairs with gilded ceilings, now porn cinemas frequented by shamefaced men; of the avenues where you never see a woman alone after sunset; of the crowds gathering around the doors of the state-controlled brothels on one of those hot blustery days when the wind is coming from the south; of the young girls who queue at the doors of establishments selling cut-rate meat; of the holy messages spelled out in lights between the minarets of mosques on holidays that are missing letters where the bulbs have burned out; of the walls covered with frayed and blackened posters; of the tired old dolmuşes, ϧfties Chevrolets that would be museum pieces in any western city but serve here as shared taxis, huϫng and puϫng up the city’s narrow alleys and dirty thoroughfares; of the buses packed with passengers; of the mosques whose lead plates and rain gutters are forever being stolen; of the city cemeteries, which seem like gateways to a second world, and of their cypress trees; of the dim lights that you see of an evening on the boats crossing from Kadıköy to Karaköy; of the little children in the streets who try to sell the same packet of tissues to every passerby; of the clock towers no one ever notices; of the history books in which children read about the victories of the Ottoman Empire and of the beatings these same children receive at home; of the days when everyone has to stay home so the electoral roll can be compiled or the census can be taken; of the days when a sudden curfew is announced to facilitate the search for terrorists and everyone sits at home fearfully awaiting “the oϫcials”; CONTINUED IN SECOND PART OF THE QUOTE

Next, comparing children to arrows in the hands of a warrior, Psalm 127:4-5 talks about how parents are to handle their offspring. Wise and skillful parents are to know their children, understand them, and carefully point them in the right direction before shooting them into the world. And, as you may have learned in an archery class, shooting an arrow straight and hitting a target is a lot harder in real life than it looks like in the movies or on TV. Likewise, godly and skillful parenting isn’t easy. The last section of today’s selection teaches the importance of the Lord’s presence in the home. • The Lord blesses a home that follows His ways (Psalm 128:1-2). • A wife who knows the Lord will be a source of beauty and life in the home (Psalm 128:3a). • With the Lord’s blessing, children will flourish like olive trees, which generously provide food, oil, and shelter (Psalm 128:3b). Ask yourself, What can I do to make the Lord’s presence more recognizable in our home? Or a more pointed question, What kind of steward am I being in my home? God has entrusted to you some very special people—your children. You will be held accountable for how you take care of them. But you’re not in it alone. God offers to walk with you today and always. He provides you with guidelines like those we looked at today, plus His wisdom and His love, to help you do the job and do it well.9 Prayer: Father God, forgive me for the ways I shortchange my children. Help me know how to slow down the pace of life. Help me stay very aware that my children will be with me for just a short time, and that how I treat them will affect them and their children’s lives too. Continue to teach me how to be the parent You want me to be. Amen.   Action: Give your child/children the gift of time—today and every day.   Today’s Wisdom: The Christian home is the Master’s workshop where the processes of character-molding are silently, lovingly, faithfully, and successfully carried on. —RICHARD M. MILNES

He takes my hand and pulls me out of the room. Paul is in the lazy chair with Hayley in his lap, reading a book, and Sam and Pete are on one of the sofas. Matt is alone on the other, so I sit down beside him and lean into his shoulder. He reaches up to tousle my hair and smiles at me. “I’m glad you’re back, kid,” he says. I lean more heavily into him, and he lifts his arm to the back of the sofa so I can nestle into his side. I breathe him in. He’s so much softer than Logan. But the cancer took its toll. He’s lost weight, and he has dark shadows beneath his eyes. “You sure you’re okay?” I whisper to him. He looks down at me and tweaks my nose as Logan pulls my feet into his lap. I lay my head on Matt’s thigh and he leans down to whisper to me. “Quit worrying about me and enjoy being back.” His hand strokes absently down the length of my hair as someone presses “play” to start the movie. I love this gentle giant. The movie starts, and it’s not a thriller or a car chase. There’s no shooting. It’s a love story. My eyes well up with tears, and I scrub them on Matt’s leg. “There’s no place like home,” I say quietly.

He’d stopped talking about bonding her to him forever and had apparently decided to concentrate on being charming instead. Liv never would have believed that such an intensely alpha male could be light and playful but she had been seeing an entirely different side of Baird lately. Aside from the sushi class, he’d also taken her to an alien petting zoo where she was able to see and touch animals that were native to the three home worlds of the Kindred and they’d been twice to the Kindred version of a movie theater where the seats were wired to make the viewer feel whatever was happening on the screen. He’d also taken her to a musical performance where the musicians played giant drums bigger than themselves and tiny flutes smaller than her pinky finger. The music had been surprisingly beautiful—the melodies sweet and haunting and Liv had been moved. But it was the evenings they spent alone together in the suite that made Liv really believe she was in danger of feeling too much. Baird cooked for her—sometimes strange but delicious alien dishes and once Earth food, when she’d taught him how to make cheeseburgers. They ate in the dim, romantic light of some candle-like glow sticks he’d placed on the table and there was always very good wine or the potent fireflower juice to go with the meal. Liv was very careful not to over-imbibe because she needed every ounce of willpower she had to remember why she was holding out. For dessert Baird always made sure there was some kind of chocolate because he’d learned from his dreams how much she loved it. Liv had been thinking lately that she might really be in trouble if she didn’t get away from him soon. If all he’d had going for him was his muscular good looks she could have resisted easily enough. But he was thoughtful too and endlessly interested in her—asking her all kinds of questions about her past and friends and family as well as people he’d seen while they were “dream-sharing” as he called it. Liv found herself talking to him like an old friend, actually feeling comfortable with him instead of being constantly on her guard. She knew that Baird was actively wooing her, doing everything he could to earn her affection, but even knowing that couldn’t stop her from liking him. She had never been so ardently pursued in her life and she was finding that she actually liked it. Baird had taken her more places and paid her more attention in the past week than Mitch had for their entire relationship. It was intoxicating to always be the center of the big warrior’s attention, to know that he was focused exclusively on her needs and wants. But attention and attraction aside, there was another factor that was making Liv desperate to get away. Just as he had predicted, the physical attraction she felt for Baird seemed to be growing exponentially. She only had to be in the same room with him for a minute or two, breathing in his warm, spicy scent, and she was instantly ready to jump his bones. The need was growing every day and Liv didn’t know how much longer she could fight it.

Ashima feels lonely suddenly, horribly, permanently alone, and briefly, turned away from the mirror, she sobs for her husband. She feels overwhelmed by the thought of the move she is about to make, to the city that was once home and is now in its own way foreign. She feels both impatience and indifference for all the days she still must live, for something tells her she will not go quickly as her husband did. For thirty-three years she missed her life in India. Now she will miss her job at the library, the women with whom she's worked. She will miss throwing parties. She will miss living with her daughter, the surprising companionship they have formed, going into Cambridge together to see old movies at the Brattle, teaching her to cook the food Sonia had complained of eating as a child. She will miss the opportunity to drive, as she sometimes does on her way home from the library, to the university, past the engineering building where her husband once worked. She will miss the country in which she had grown to know and love her husband. Though his ashes have been scattered into the Ganges, it is here, in this house and in this town, that he will continue to dwell in her mind.

... she thought about back home, about how she had been all alone most of the time then too, but that this lonesomeness was different. Then she stopped staring at the green chairs, at the delivery truck; she went to the movies instead. There in the dark her memory was refreshed, and she succumbed to her earlier dreams. Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another -- physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion. In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it, and collected self-contempt by the heap. She forgot lust and simple caring for. She regarded love as possessive mating, and romance as the goal of the spirit. It would be for her a well-spring from which she would draw the most destructive emotions, deceiving the lover, and seeking to imprison the beloved, curtailing freedom in every way.

When you complete a major quest and return home, do take a few moments to celebrate with friends and family, or simply celebrate alone with your thoughts. If there’s a chance to capture a memento or stick your achievement on the wall, go for it. You’ve earned it, and you should be proud of your accomplishments. However, after a little while it’s time to grab the sword, don your cape once again, and set out on another adventure. If your life is a movie, then you just got green-lit for a sequel with an even bigger budget.

Dear 18-Year-Old Self, Slow down -- everything is going to be fine. You aren't going to fail at anything you care about or anything important. Be less afraid. Less afraid to talk to people. Less afraid to assert yourlsef. Less afraid that time alone is a bad thing. It's okay that you cry a few times a week. Living away from home is hard, and that part won't get easier. You will cry less. Walk away from the things that take more than they give. Give to the things that nourish you or make you happy. Give more of yourself to less things. At 21, you are going to realize that you don't need to count the moments where you are happy. You will be happy almost all the time. Movies about injustices are going to make you cry. Don't stop watching them. They are going to give you purpose. Don't freak out that you change your life goal with every movies. As long as you plan to do good, you are staying true to yourself. Stop comparing yourself to those around you. Their struggles do not invalidate your own. Their successes do not diminish yours. You will never have all the answers. You will always have some. Taking your life a day at a time is not a failure -- you are not a failure.

Growin up, before I got interested in boobs, there was one movie I loved above all others, Home Alone! My plans for a trap covered farm would make Kevin McCallister proud!

The street was vacant. Like a big old movie set. Nothing. Nobody to do a thing with. What could she do alone? Better yet, what could she do alone that could exclude the white folks, who were nowhere to be seen except in her wounds and aches of memories. Betsey decided to play hop-scotch, but she laid the hop-scotch pattern out with enough room to write “For Colored Only,” “Crackers and Dogs Not Allowed,” “Peckerwoods Got No Welcome Here,” “Guineas Go Home.” Betsey’s hop-scotch was something to behold. Chalk never seemed so powerful as when it messed with white folks.

Some people have family photos or home movies to record their past. I've got books. Characters. For as long as I can remember, books have been my safe place.

My Seclusion Just like, I remember the- Fireflies at night, they all carry their- own light in flight. They fly higher and higher until they are out of sight. They are never in fear of the darkness because they carry their light. They constantly have hope, and it shines brightly. The firefly flies by, unlike me there are never shy. I am lying outside on the grounds a few feet from my home, yet I am still feeling all alone, listening to all the sounds of the night as they moan. I look at the full moon, knowing that I will be back in hell soon, seeing all the faces at lunch at noon. Wondering what is going to happen on my vacation in the upcoming summer in the months like in June. I lie on the cold hard ground outside looking up with the stars in the sky, remembering all the days flashing that have gone by, seeing all the faces that never even say hi, remembering the terror from the wandering eyes. (Right now) My head is pounding just like the thunder and lightning, the evil faces streaks crossed my face, with every bolt of lightning. This takes me back to when I was a little girl; I hope that the pink suspended feathers sweep them away in the white webs. So, I can have a sunny day on all these rainy days that seem to never end, I just do not have much to say. I am not safe anywhere… the voices haunt me as they do. However, I just have an overwhelming urge to cry, all night and watch movies by myself. Like, I have done, these last two years of my high school life. Is anything going to change? Why must I live like this? Why do I keep living? Why can I not just pass on? I look out my window, and sometimes it takes me back to when I was young. Some days I look out the window and the skies are scarlet, and that reminds me that I should be out doing things with people of my age. The summer has come and gone, and the school days have started with no one to see me, or even ask if I was alive. No one cares! Is the plan going to work? I have no idea at this point, yet I keep trying!

Actions that Indians and Americans agreed were wrong: • While walking, a man saw a dog sleeping on the road. He walked up to it and kicked it. • A father said to his son, “If you do well on the exam, I will buy you a pen.” The son did well on the exam, but the father did not give him anything. Actions that Americans said were wrong but Indians said were acceptable: • A young married woman went alone to see a movie without informing her husband. When she returned home her husband said, “If you do it again, I will beat you black and blue.” She did it again; he beat her black and blue. (Judge the husband.) • A man had a married son and a married daughter. After his death his son claimed most of the property. His daughter got little. (Judge the son.) Actions that Indians said were wrong but Americans said were acceptable: • In a family, a twenty-five-year-old son addresses his father by his first name. • A woman cooked rice and wanted to eat with her husband and his elder brother. Then she ate with them. (Judge the woman.) • A widow in your community eats fish two or three times a week. • After defecation a woman did not change her clothes before cooking.

Being in a combat zone is almost a constant adrenaline rush, and it should be. The moment you get comfortable and complacent is the moment you lose. When you’re on a deployment, it almost feels like time stops, or maybe it feels more like you’re in some kind of a twilight zone. Your family and friends are all moving on without you while you’re stuck living the same day over and over, like in the movie Groundhog Day. You get up, conduct personal hygiene, report to duty, conduct physical fitness somewhere in there, and do personal hygiene again before you pass out in your bunk for the night. If you’re lucky, you might get to sleep through the night. The base sirens would interrupt other nights, signaling you to grab your gear and get in a bunker. Your friends and family back home don’t understand this. They don’t understand the fear, the adrenaline rush, the twilight zone effect, and it sometimes seems pretty lonely. But you’re not alone. No matter what walk of life you’ve come from, you’re not alone. Everyone out there is in a similar situation and understands what it’s like. They become your new family during the deployment. While deployed, there’s a good chance you’ll see and/or experience things that will haunt you. Some learn to detach themselves from those situations and almost experience them from a bird’s eye view, somehow making them seem less real. Often, soldiers cope by making light of a bad situation. As a result, dark humor runs rampant amongst Service Members. While those on the outside may see that dark humor as cruel, it is just another way that you learn to deal with the atrocities of war. I digress. Let’s get back into it.

But I was stuck for a long time by myself at Abraham Lincoln's portrait, standing in the middle of the huge hall as people moved all around me with mostly children. I felt as if time had stopped as I watched Lincoln, facing him, while watching the woman’s back as she was looking out the window. I felt wronged, so much like Truman from the movie, standing there in the middle of the museum alone. I was wondering what would Abraham Lincoln do if he realized he was the slave in his own cotton fields, being robbed by evil thieves, nazis. I had taken numerous photos of Martina from behind, as well as silhouettes of her shadow. I remember standing there, watching as she stood in front of the window; it was almost as if she was admiring the view of the mountains from our new home, as I did take such pictures of her, with a very similar composition to that of the female depicted in the iconic Lincoln portrait looking outwards from the window. I hadn't realized how many photographs I snapped of Martina with her back turned towards me while we travelled to picturesque places. Fernanda and I walked side-by-side in utter silence, admiring painting after painting of Dali's, without exchanging a single word. Meanwhile, Luis and Martina had got lost somewhere in the museum. When I finally found her, she was taking pictures outside of the Rainy Cadillac. We both felt something was amiss without having to say it, as Fernanda knew things I didn't and vice versa. We couldn't bring ourselves to discuss it though, not because we lacked any legal authority between me and Martina, but because neither Fernanda or myself had much parental authority over the young lady. It felt like when our marriages and divorces had dissolved, it was almost as if our parenting didn't matter anymore. It was as if I were unwittingly part of a secret screenplay, like Jim Carrey's character in The Truman Show, living in a fabricated reality made solely for him. I was beginning to feel a strange nauseous feeling, as if someone was trying to force something surreal down my throat, as if I were living something not of this world, making me want to vomit onto the painted canvas of the personalised image crafted just for me. I couldn't help but wonder if Fernanda felt the same way, if she was aware of the magnitude of what was happening, or if, just like me, she was completely oblivious, occasionally getting flashes of truth or reality for a moment or two. I took some amazing photographs of her in Port Lligat in Dali's yard in the port, and in Cap Creus, but I'd rather not even try to describe them—they were almost like Dali's paintings which make all sense now. As if all the pieces are coming together. She was walking by the water and I was walking a bit further up on the same beach on pebbles, parallel to each other as we walked away from Dali's house in the port. I looked towards her and there were two boats flipped over on the two sides of my view. I told her: “Run, Bunny! Run!

So, with no prospects and no skills (again, I majored in The History and Literature of Russia and Britain), I got ahead of the millennial curve and moved back to my parents’ house and into my childhood bedroom. Which, if you haven’t done it, is one of the most humiliating experiences an adult can go through. At first you think, No big deal. It’s like I’m back in high school, except no curfew and I can drink in front of my parents! Then you have one drink in front of your parents in your childhood kitchen and you’re like, I’m the saddest boy on Earth. There’s something about moving back home after college that eliminates all the respect you accumulated by going away to college. All the bragging your parents did about you going to a good school disappears overnight. You live in their house, yet they dare not speak your name in public, for fear that a friend of theirs with a working child will ask, “And what is Colin doing now?” So you slink around and try to eat alone at odd hours and then go to a movie at 11:45 P.M. on a Tuesday with your one other loser friend who moved back home. Then you go to a diner at 2 A.M. and see your high school girlfriend and she’s already married with three kids and you don’t understand how that’s even physically possible. (Or why she’s at a diner at 2 A.M. with three kids at home.) So you ask the diner to make your plate of eggs “to go” to escape the whole scene and now you’re eating cold eggs in the basement of your house at 3 A.M., watching Howard Stern tell a porn star to kiss Gary the Retard, because that’s easily the most thrilling moment of your day. And pretty soon you’re thinking, Why the fuck did I major in the History and Literature of Russia and Britain? After a few weeks of extreme depression, I talked to a couple friends from college who were equally miserable and unemployed, and we all decided: Let’s move to Manhattan or Brooklyn or wherever we can get an apartment and just force ourselves to get jobs and become actual adults. And my parents were like, “No…don’t…” And then closed the door behind me and locked it.

They showed a movie, and my neighbor got headphones. Sometimes, I watched the figures moving across the little screen, but I couldn't even tell if the movie was supposed to be a romance or a horror film. After an eternity, the plane began to descend toward New York City. Olivia remained in her trance. I dithered, reaching out to touch her, only to pull my hand back again. This happened a dozen times before the plane touched down with a jarring impact. ‘Olivia,’ I finally said. ‘Olivia, we have to go.’ I touched her arm. Her eyes came open very slowly. She shook her head from side to side for a moment. ‘Anything new?’ I asked in a faint voice, conscious of the man listening on the other side of me. ‘Not exactly,’ she breathed in a voice I could barely catch. ‘He's getting closer. He's deciding how he's going to ask.’ We had to run for our connection, but that was good-better than having to wait. As soon as the plane was in the air, Olivia closed her eyes and slid back into the same stupor as before. I waited as patiently as I could. When it was dark again, I opened the window to stare out into the flat black that was no better than the window shade. I was grateful that I'd had so many months' practice with controlling my thoughts. Instead of dwelling on the terrifying possibilities that, no matter what Olivia said I did not intend to survive, I concentrated on lesser problems. Like, what I was going to say to Mr. Anderson if I got back:' That was a thorny enough problem to occupy several hours, and Marcel? He had promised to wait for me, but did that promise still apply? Would I end up home alone in Pittsburgh, with no one at all? I didn't want to survive, no matter what happened. It felt like seconds later when Olivia shook my shoulder-I hadn't realized I'd fallen asleep. ‘Bell,’ she hissed, her voice a little too loud in the darkened cabin full of sleeping humans. I wasn't disoriented-I hadn't been out long enough for that. ‘What's wrong?

Layla sat on the floor in costume and makeup, waiting for the others for the pre-performance activities that Miss Ginger insisted on. First practice. Then pep talk and prayer. Mercedes slipped into the tiny room and sat beside her, stretching a little. “You okay?” Layla asked. “Talking to the cops freaked me out,” Mercedes confessed. “How am I supposed to dance after that?” Layla met her eyes. “I don't know if Diamond is kidnapped or at a party with movie stars. But somehow I'm not feeling a party.” She spritzed more hair spray on her wayward curls. “Yeah, me neither,” Mercedes admitted. “I got this bad feeling. Damn it! I never should have let her go to the food court alone.” “Hey, you can't swallow this blame,” Layla told her. “That mall is like our second home. There was no way you could have guessed something bad would happen.” “Yeah, I know, but I still feel responsible. I didn't need that new leotard! We shoulda stayed together. If I had just....

What are you doing here?” “My dad called and--what the hell is that?” He pointed to the cleaver. I angled my chin. “I was in the middle of cutting my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.” “With a meat cleaver?” “It’s quick and makes a perfectly straight cut.” He grinned. “Yeah, right. You’ve obviously watched too many movies. Who’d you think I was? Freddy Krueger?” “What are you doing here?” I repeated, not in the mood for his sarcasm or teasing. Plus I was feeling a little silly holding my weapon of choice. “Like I said, my dad called. The ferry shut down before they could get back. I decided to check to make sure that you were okay.” “Why wouldn’t I be okay?” “The storms here can get pretty intense, and if you’ve never been through one”--he dropped his gaze back to the cleaver--“I just thought you might get freaked if you were all alone.” It was nice of him to worry about me but totally unnecessary. I sighed. “I’m fine, thanks. You can go back home now.” “You’re kidding, right? Did you not look out there?” “It’s snowing.” “It’s a blizzard. I’m not going back out.” “You’re not staying here.” He raised an eyebrow. “This is an inn.” “Not yet. We’re not officially open for business.” “Tough. It’s easy to get disoriented out there. Last year a guy froze to death three feet from his front porch.” “Call a taxi.” The other eyebrow shot up. “Is this any way to thank me for showing concern?” “You know, I think you probably came over here because you were afraid to be alone.” “I really did want to make sure you were okay.” “You could have called.” “It’s not the same.” I didn’t want to admit to him that a little part of me was glad not to be alone anymore. Because the wind was loud and now that it was right, it was scary. “Oh, all right.” Besides, if the ferry wasn’t running, the taxi probably wasn’t either. “Come on. I’ll split my sandwich with you.” “I make a mean grilled cheese sandwich, and I’m really in the mood for something warm.

need sleep? I need to do whatever it takes to restore physically. 2. Have I been reading my Bible? Even if it is putting an app on my phone with a voice I can listen to while still in bed in the mornings or at night, I need to hear from the God who walks through these valleys with me. 3. Do I feel alone? I need to call someone who is a spiritually engaging friend, one who loves God, loves me, and whom I can completely trust. I will meet that person for coffee or lunch to share my heart and to ask for prayer. 4. Am I watching my health? Exercise is a stress reducer and helps happy hormones to develop. I have developed the habit of walking and hiking. 5. How can I get help? Is there someone who can help me clean my home? Do I have a friend I can ask to keep my kids, so I can have a little time away? 6. What do I need to invest in the joy factor of my life? Am I creating spaces of beauty for my own soul—candles, music, fresh flowers, and other such life-giving things? Perhaps it’s as simple as going to a movie with my husband or friend, or buying a new scarf.

He’s got a gold tooth for his left second incisor that makes me think of Joe Pesci in Home Alone—my favorite movie as a kid.

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