Howe Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Howe. Here they are! All 100 of them:

What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it feels about education.
Harold Howe
You and I won't lose each other, I will always find you again. No matter how well you hide. I'm unstoppable.
Stephenie Meyer (The Host (The Host, #1))
Jealous, O’Shea?" "Actually… I am.
Stephenie Meyer (The Host (The Host, #1))
When a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.
E.W. Howe
Neither heaven nor hell can keep me apart from you, Melanie.
Stephenie Meyer (The Host (The Host, #1))
But remember. Just because you don't believe in something doesn't mean it isn't real.
Katherine Howe (The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (The Physick Book, #1))
Of course mothers and daughters with strong personalities might see the world from very different points of view.
Katherine Howe (The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (The Physick Book, #1))
Life is short and there will always be dirty dishes, so let's dance.
James Howe (Totally Joe (The Misfits, #2))
My name is Jared Howe. I haven't spoken to another human being in more than two years, so I'm sure I must seem...a little crazy to you.
Stephenie Meyer (The Host (The Host, #1))
Another Thing I'm Sick of Hearing: If I started that gay rights group, I must be gay. So if i start an animal rights group, what does that make me? A giraffe?
James Howe (Addie on the Inside (The Misfits, #3))
Rule #1: The customer is always right. Rule #2: If the customer is wrong, please refer to rule #1. -Duncan Howe
Ann Brashares (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Sisterhood, #1))
A Psalm of Life Tell me not in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest, Was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to act, that each tomorrow Find us farther than today. Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave. In the world's broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife! Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act, - act in the living Present! Heart within, and God o'erhead! Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sand of time; Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solenm main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. Let us then be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Voices of the Night)
I am living. I remember you.
Marie Howe (What the Living Do: Poems)
Banning books is just another form of bullying. It's all about fear and an assumption of power. The key is to address the fear and deny the power.
James Howe
One of the most difficult things in the world is to convince a woman that even a bargain costs money.
E.W. Howe
She was always puzzled that people say that darkness falls. To her it seemed instead to rise, massing under trees an shrubs, pouring out from under furniture, only reaching the sky when the spaces near the ground were full.
Katherine Howe (The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (The Physick Book, #1))
Besides, when I look around me at the men, I feel that God never meant us women to be too particular.
Marie Jenney Howe (An Anti-Suffrage Monologue)
[Button] If Gay and Lesbian people are given civil rights, soon everyone will want them
James Howe (Totally Joe (The Misfits, #2))
Every poem holds the unspeakable inside it. The unsayable... The thing that you can't really say because it's too complicated. It's too complex for us. Every poem has that silence deep in the center of it.
Marie Howe
I hated that the soldier doll had my name. I mean, please. I didn't play with him much. He was another Christmas present from my clueless grandparents. One time when they were visiting, my grandpa asked me if G.I. Joe had been in any wars lately. I said, "No, but he and Ken got married last week." Every Christmas since then, my grandparents have sent me a check.
James Howe (Totally Joe (The Misfits, #2))
Sticks and stones may break our bones, but names will break our spirit.
James Howe (The Misfits (The Misfits, #1))
All hockey players are bilingual. They know English and profanity.
Gordie Howe
Just because you don't believe it[] [...]doesn't mean that it's not true.
Katherine Howe (The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (The Physick Book, #1))
Another thing I think about names is that they DO hurt. They hurt because we believe them. We think they are telling us something true about ourselves, something other people can see even if we don't. —Bobby Goodspeed
James Howe (The Misfits (The Misfits, #1))
When I get hold of a book I particularly admire, I am so enthusiastic that I loan it to someone who never brings it back.
E.W. Howe
So, this is a rabbit, I thought. He sort of looks like Chester, only he's got longer ears and a shorter tail. And a motor in his nose.
James Howe (Bunnicula (Bunnicula, #1))
When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they've never had, and never will have
E.W. Howe
Sometimes kids just act impulsively, but it's because we have strong feelings, not because we're trying to make trouble.
James Howe (The Misfits (The Misfits, #1))
Anything I’ve ever tried to keep by force I’ve lost.
Marie Howe (What the Living Do)
This business of really knowing people, deep down, including your own self, it is not something you can learn in school or from a book. It takes your whole being to do it—your eyes and your ears, your brain and your heart. Maybe your heart most of all.
James Howe (The Misfits (The Misfits, #1))
Poetry is telling something to someone.
Marie Howe
There's no such thing as a wasted wish.
James Howe (Totally Joe (The Misfits, #2))
A day can start out ordinary and end up being in the top ten. —Joe Bunch
James Howe (Totally Joe (The Misfits, #2))
The man who can keep a secret may be wise, but he is not half as wise as the man with no secrets to keep
E.W. Howe
I liked Hell, I liked to go there alone relieved to lie in the wreckage, ruined, physically undone. The worst had happened. What else could hurt me then? I thought it was the worst, thought nothing worse could come. Then nothing did, and no one.
Marie Howe (Magdalene)
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
 all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
Julia Ward Howe
Today vegetables. Tomorrow...the world!
Deborah Howe
When a Girl's on a pedestal, there's nothing some people would like better than to shove her off it, just to know what kind of noise she'd make when she shattered.
Katherine Howe (Conversion)
A man should be taller, older, heavier, uglier, and hoarser than his wife.
E.W. Howe
Why does a heart wear its eyes into hell like slivers of false sunshine
Fanny Howe
My name is Jared Howe. I haven't spoken to another human being in more than two years, so I'm sure I must seem... a little crazy to you. Please, forgive that and tell me your name, anyway." "Melanie," I whisper. "Melanie," he repeats. "I can't tell you how delighted I am to meet you.
Stephenie Meyer (The Host (The Host, #1))
A boy doesn't have to go to war to be a hero; he can say he doesn't like pie when he sees there isn't enough to go around.
E.W. Howe
The future is a trickster rabbit, full of surprises. Only the past is predictable.
James Howe (The Misfits (The Misfits, #1))
Without devotion any life becomes a stranger's story...told for the body to forget what it once loved.
Marie Howe (The Good Thief)
A traitor commits his crime but once. The rest/is retribution.
Marie Howe (The Good Thief)
All in all, Tolkien fans are as varied, remarkable and marvelous as the books and the worlds that they share. They make me feel a little like a Hobbit who glimpses colourful strangers passing but has never left the Shire.
John Howe
The way to be nothing is to do nothing
Nathaniel Howe
It comes down to this. Some one must wash the dishes. Now, would you expect man, man made in the image of God, to roll up his sleeves and wash the dishes? Why, it would be blasphemy. I know that I am but a rib and so I wash the dishes.
Marie Jenney Howe (An Anti-Suffrage Monologue)
And that's an even greater love: to love somebody when he's a little...worn at the edges. —Teddy Bear
James Howe (Teddy Bear'S Scrapbook)
Sometimes I think it's easier to stand up to the whole school -- or the whole world even -- than it is to stand up to one person, especially if that person really matters to you.
James Howe (Totally Joe (The Misfits, #2))
The wildness of the flower is all in the tone
Fanny Howe
Each of us suffers with envy/for the forgiven.
Marie Howe (The Good Thief)
Most people have seen worse things in private than they pretend to be shocked at in public.
E.W. Howe
Disarm, disarm. The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonour, nor violence indicate possession.
Julia Ward Howe
But looking back on the next day, I can tell you that happy endings are possible, even in situations as fraught with complications as this one was.
James Howe (Bunnicula (Bunnicula, #1))
The way I look at it, love does not necessarily make for a happy ending any more than winning does. What makes for a happy ending is what Addie said all along: freedom. The freedom to be who you are without anybody calling you names. —Bobby Goodspeed
James Howe (The Misfits (The Misfits, #1))
You are totally at the mercy of nature in this country, mate. It’s just a fact of life. But I tell you one thing.” “What’s that?” “It sure makes you appreciate something like this when you know it could all go up in a puff of smoke.”           HOWE
Bill Bryson (In a Sunburned Country)
Sometimes I open a book that’s so beautiful I have to shut it because it hurts me. I can’t stand it. It’s like, Oh no! Oh no! Oh no! This is going to drive me into my own heart. A day or two days later I’m saying, All right, and I just surrender to it: Do it to me. Go ahead. I want it. I don’t want it. I want it. I don’t want it.
Marie Howe
When you're living through them, events are nothing more than stuff that happens. You're not thinking about significance. Significance only comes when you look back at your life.
James Howe (The Misfits (The Misfits, #1))
To be an ideal guest, stay at home.
E.W. Howe
A reasonable probability is the only certainty.
E.W. Howe
If getting is the key to your happiness your key will open few doors. If giving is the key to your happiness you will find few doors locked.
James Howe
Modernity consists in a revolt against the prevailing style, an unyielding rage against the official order.
Irving Howe
Any religion which sacrifices women to the brutality of men is no religion.
Julia Ward Howe
Dear Skeezie, Today I ran after a boy as he was trying to get away. I tackled him and we both landed in the mud. Do you think I appeared desperate?-Joe Bunch
James Howe (The Misfits (The Misfits, #1))
Harold: "It so happens I was discussing great works of literature with Toby." Chester: "Since when is a Twinkies wrapper considered a great work of literature?
James Howe (Bunnicula (Bunnicula, #1))
...You can have this whole entire life, with all your opinions, your loves, your fears. Eventually those parts of you disappear. And then the people who could remember those parts of you disappear, and before long, all that's left is your name in some ledger. This...person -- she had a favorite food. She had friends and people she disliked. We don't even know how she died...I guess that's why I like preservation better than history. In preservation I feel like I can keep some of it from slipping away.
Katherine Howe (The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (The Physick Book, #1))
The point is that being a minority isn't only about the color of your skin or your religion. it's about not fitting in, being on the outside.
James Howe (The Misfits)
The ring comes whenever it will because it's dark where the mountains mother and being stuck in one spot is something to ring bells about
Fanny Howe
In his voice resonated the timbre of a man who thinks he has convinced himself of an idea, but masks his own doubt by laboring to persuade others.
Katherine Howe
Harold (about max): he looks kinda like a football couch Chester (sarcastically): Yay team rah rah. if he says anything athletic i'll scream max: want to jog? (chester screams).
James Howe (Howliday Inn (Bunnicula, #2))
I remember wishing the moment would hold forever; that we could be fixed there, laughing and irredescent... Then I got panicky because I knew it would pass; that it was passing already.
Tina Howe (Painting Churches: A Play in Two Acts)
I am who I say I am, I'm not some fantasy of how you think you think you know or who I ought to be. I am a girl who is growing up in my own sweet time, I am a girl who knows enough to know this life is mine. I am this and I am that and I am everything in-between. I'm a dreamer, I'm a dancer, I'm a part-time drama queen. I'm a worrier, I'm a warrior, I'm a loner and a friend, I'm an outspoken defender of justice to the end. I'm the girl in the mirror who likes the girl she sees, I'm the girl in the gypsy shawl with music in her knees. I'm a singer and a scholar, I'm a girl who has been kissed. I'm a solver of equations wearing bangles on my wrist. I am bigger than i ever knew, I am stronger than before, I am every girl I have ever been, and all that are in store. I am who I say I am. I'm not some fantasy. I am the me I am inside. I am who I chose to be.
James Howe
I never thought I could write this much and now that it's coming to an end, I feel sad that I have to stop, sort of the way you feel at the end of a really good book and you know you're going to miss the main character. But in this case, the main character is me! Myself. Joe (formerly JoDan) Bunch. —Joe Bunch
James Howe (Totally Joe (The Misfits, #2))
When you're living through it, though, especially when you are twelve and you think the whole world is changing until you realize it isn't the world, it's you, no piece seems little. It's all so big you think it can kill you. But it doesn't. Which is why the story goes on.
James Howe (The Misfits (The Misfits, #1))
If thou be one whose heart the holy forms Of young imagination have kept pure, Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know, that pride, Howe'er disguised in its own majesty, Is littleness; that he, who feels contempt For any living thing, hath faculties Which he has never used; that thought with him Is in its infancy. The man, whose eye Is ever on himself, doth look on one, The least of nature's works, one who might move The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds Unlawful, ever. O, be wiser thou! Instructed that true knowledge leads to love, True dignity abides with him alone Who, in the silent hour of inward thought, Can still suspect, and still revere himself, In lowliness of heart.
William Wordsworth (Lyrical Ballads)
Even If I Don’t See it Again Even if I don’t see it again.–nor ever feel it I know it is–and that if once it hailed me it ever does– and so it is myself I want to turn in that direction not as towards a place, but it was a tilting within myself, as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where it isn’t.–I was blinded like that–and swam in what shone at me only able to endure it by being no one and so specifically myself I thought I’d die from being loved like that.
Marie Howe
Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better.
Edward W. Howe
The most destructive criticism is indifference.
E.W. Howe
(...) You're very young." "No one's young anymore. Anyone who's survived this long is ancient." There's a smile pulling up one corner of his mouth.
Stephenie Meyer (The Host (The Host, #1))
What's wrong with being out there, out there like a star shining in the night when that's the only way the star can be seen? You never tell a star: Hey Tone it down.
James Howe (Addie on the Inside (The Misfits, #3))
I can't rescue what never happened though I came here to do so.
Fanny Howe (Come and See)
Il est bon à savoir. It is good to know.
Katherine Howe (Conversion)
But an attentive researcher--like you--might be able to see something that all the experts can't see. If she asks the right questions.
Katherine Howe (Conversion)
But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass, say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless: I am living. I remember you.
Marie Howe (What the Living Do: Poems)
There is utopia and utopia. The kind imposed by an elite in the name of a historical imperative—that utopia is hell. It must lead to terror and then, terror exhausted, to cynicism and torpor. But surely there is another utopia. It cannot be willed either into existence or out of sight, it speaks for our sense of what may yet be.
Irving Howe
The point is that something I thought was perfect has been broken, and I'm having to find the beauty in what is there instead of what I thought was there. Like this shell. I can either spend all my time wishing it were perfect, trying to imagine it the way it was or might have been, or I can see how beautiful it is just like this.
James Howe (The Watcher)
Fangs are more pointed, and vampires use fangs to bite people on the neck.' 'Yech! Who'd want to do that?' 'Vampires would, that's who.' 'Wait a minute. I saw Mrs. Monroe bite Mr. Monroe on the neck once. Does that mean she's a vampire?' 'Boy, are you dumb. She's not a vampire. She's a lawyer.
Deborah and James Howe (Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery (Bunnicula and Friends))
Crying can help, too. People are often afraid to cry because they are told that crying is for babies. Crying does not make you a baby, no matter what anyone says. There are times when people feel so bad that they can't express their feelings in words. At those times, crying helps.
James Howe (The Hospital Book)
WHAT THE LIVING DO Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there. And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of. It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through the open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it off. For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking, I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve, I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it. Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning. What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss--we want more and more and then more of it. But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass, say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless: I am living. I remember you.
Marie Howe (What the Living Do: Poems)
I hurried to the southern corridor, relieved when I was safe in the blackness there. Relieved and horrified. It was really over now. I'm so afraid, I whimpered. Before Mel could respond, a heavy hand dropped on my shoulder from the darkness. "Going somewhere?" I was so tightly wound that I shrieked in terror; I was so terrified that my shriek was only a breathless little squeal. "Sorry!" Jared's arm went round my shoulders, comforting. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you." "What are you doing here?" I demanded, still breathless. "Following you. I've been following you all night." "Well, stop it now." There was a hesitation in the dark, and his arm didn't move. I shrugged out from under it, but he caught my wrist. His grip was firm; I wouldn't be able to shake free easily. "You're going to see Doc?" he asked, and there was no confusion in his question. It was obvious that he wasn't talking about a social visit. "Of course I am." I hissed the words so that he wouldn't hear the panic in my voice. "What else can I do after today?It's not going to get any better. And this isn't Jeb's decision to make." "I know. I'm on your side." It made me angry that these words still had the power to hurt me, to bring tears stinging into my eyes. I tried to hold onto the thought of Ian - he was the anchor, as Kyle somehow had been for Sunny - but it was hard with Jared's hand touching me, with the smell of him in my nose. Like trying to make out the song of one violin when the entire percussion section was bashing away... "Then let me go, Jared. Go away. I want to be alone." The words came out fierce and fast and hard. It was easy to hear that they weren't lies. "I should come with you." "You'll have Melanie back soon enough," I snapped. "I'm only asking for a few minutes, Jared. Give me that much." Another pause; his hand didn't loosen. "Wanda, I would come to be with you." The tears spilled over. I was grateful for the darkness. "It wouldn't feel that way," I whispered. "So there's no point.
Stephenie Meyer (The Host (The Host, #1))
We all start out thinking that there is such a thing as perfection and that there's something wrong with us if we settle for less. First we won't eat the food with the brown spots. Then we hate ourselves because we have our own brown spots—pimples or ears that are too big or legs that are too skinny.
James Howe (The Watcher)
I remember a man, a very lonely man, coming up to me at the end of a reading and looking into my face and saying, 'I feel as if I have looked down a corridor and seen into your soul.' And I looked at him and said, 'You haven't.' You know, Here's the good news and the bad news: you haven't! I made something, and you and I could look at it together, but it's not me; you don’t live with me; you're not intimate with me. You're not the man I live with or my friend. You will never know me in that way. I'm making something, like Joseph Cornell makes his boxes and everyone looks into them, but it's the box you look into; it's not the man or the woman. It's alchemy of language and memory and imagination and time and music and sounds that gets made, and that's different from 'Here is what happened to me when I was ten.
Marie Howe
Love between women could take on a new shape in the late nineteenth century because the feminist movement succeeded both in opening new jobs for women, which would allow them independence, and in creating a support group so that they would not feel isolated and outcast when they claimed their independence. … The wistful desire of Clarissa Harlowe’s friend, Miss Howe, “How charmingly might you and I live together,” in the eighteenth century could be realised in the last decades of the nineteenth century. If Clarissa Harlowe had lived about a hundred and fifty years later, she could have gotten a job that would have been appropriate for a woman of her class. With the power given to her by independence and the consciousness of a support group, Clarissa as a New Woman might have turned her back on both her family and Lovelace, and gone to live “charmingly” with Miss Howe. Many women did.
Lillian Faderman (Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present)
There is no longer any class outside the class of character, and no history to put your faith in. You can actually live as if you have no culture, no perspective particular to a date in time. You are an individual whose prime and solitary property is your own body. Dying becomes a hell beyond all reason or justice in this ahistorical context.
Fanny Howe (The Deep North (Sun & Moon Classics))
One reason why the cycle of archetypes recurs is that each youth generation tries to correct or compensate for what it perceives as the excesses of the midlife generation in power. For example, Boomers (a Prophet generation, whose strength is individualism, culture and values) raised Millennial children (a Hero generation, whose strength is in collective civic action). Archetypes do not create archetypes like themselves, they create opposing archetypes. Your generation isn’t like the generation that shaped you, but it has much in common with the generation that shaped the generation that shaped you.
William Strauss
It is Never Too Late to Mend." Since it can never be too late To change your life, or else renew it, Let the unpleasant process wait Until you are compelled to do it. The State provides (and gratis too) Establishments for such as you. Remember this, and pluck up heart, That, be you publican or parson, Your ev'ry art must have a start, From petty larceny to arson; And even in the burglar's trade, The cracksman is not born, but made. So, if in your career of crime, You fail to carry out some "coup", Then try again a second time, And yet again, until you do; And don't despair, or fear the worst, Because you get found out at first. Perhaps the battle will not go, On all occasions, to the strongest; You may be fairly certain tho' That He Laughs Last who laughs the Longest. So keep a good reserve of laughter, Which may be found of use hereafter. Believe me that, howe'er well meant, A Good Resolve is always brief; Don't let your precious hours be spent In turning over a new leaf. Such leaves, like Nature's, soon decay, And then are only in the way. The Road to—-well, a certain spot, (A Road of very fair dimensions), Has, so the proverb tells us, got A parquet-floor of Good Intentions. Take care, in your desire to please, You do not add a brick to these. For there may come a moment when You shall be mended willy-nilly, With many more misguided men, Whose skill is undermined with skilly. Till then procrastinate, my friend; "It Never is Too Late to Mend!
Harry Graham (Perverted Proverbs: A Manual of Immorals for the Many)
Let's press ahead a little further by sketching out a few variations among short shorts: ONE THRUST OF INCIDENT. (Examples: Paz, Mishima, Shalamov, Babel, W. C. Williams.) In these short shorts the time span is extremely brief, a few hours, maybe even a few minutes: Life is grasped in symbolic compression. One might say that these short shorts constitute epiphanies (climactic moments of high grace or realization) that have been tom out of their contexts. You have to supply the contexts yourself, since if the contexts were there, they'd no longer be short shorts. LIFE ROLLED UP. (Examples: Tolstoy's 'Alyosha the Pot,' Verga's 'The Wolf,' D. H. Lawrence's 'A Sick Collier.') In these you get the illusion of sustained narrative, since they deal with lives over an extended period of time; but actually these lives are so compressed into typicality and paradigm, the result seems very much like a single incident. Verga's 'Wolf' cannot but repeat her passions, Tolstoy's Alyosha his passivity. Themes of obsession work especially well in this kind of short short. SNAP-SHOT OR SINGLE FRAME. (Examples: Garda Marquez, Boll, Katherine Anne Porter.) In these we have no depicted event or incident, only an interior monologue or flow of memory. A voice speaks, as it were, into the air. A mind is revealed in cross-section - and the cut is rapid. One would guess that this is the hardest kind of short short to write: There are many pitfalls such as tiresome repetition, being locked into a single voice, etc. LIKE A FABLE. (Examples: Kafka, Keller, von Kleist, Tolstoy's 'Three Hermits.') Through its very concision, this kind of short short moves past realism. We are prodded into the fabulous, the strange, the spooky. To write this kind of fable-like short short, the writer needs a supreme self-confidence: The net of illusion can be cast only once. When we read such fable-like miniatures, we are prompted to speculate about significance, teased into shadowy parallels or semi allegories. There are also, however, some fables so beautifully complete (for instance Kafka's 'First Sorrow') that we find ourselves entirely content with the portrayed surface and may even take a certain pleasure in refusing interpretation. ("Introduction")
Irving Howe (Short Shorts)
The Three-Decker "The three-volume novel is extinct." Full thirty foot she towered from waterline to rail. It cost a watch to steer her, and a week to shorten sail; But, spite all modern notions, I found her first and best— The only certain packet for the Islands of the Blest. Fair held the breeze behind us—’twas warm with lovers’ prayers. We’d stolen wills for ballast and a crew of missing heirs. They shipped as Able Bastards till the Wicked Nurse confessed, And they worked the old three-decker to the Islands of the Blest. By ways no gaze could follow, a course unspoiled of Cook, Per Fancy, fleetest in man, our titled berths we took With maids of matchless beauty and parentage unguessed, And a Church of England parson for the Islands of the Blest. We asked no social questions—we pumped no hidden shame— We never talked obstetrics when the Little Stranger came: We left the Lord in Heaven, we left the fiends in Hell. We weren’t exactly Yussufs, but—Zuleika didn’t tell. No moral doubt assailed us, so when the port we neared, The villain had his flogging at the gangway, and we cheered. ’Twas fiddle in the forc’s’le—’twas garlands on the mast, For every one got married, and I went ashore at last. I left ’em all in couples a-kissing on the decks. I left the lovers loving and the parents signing cheques. In endless English comfort by county-folk caressed, I left the old three-decker at the Islands of the Blest! That route is barred to steamers: you’ll never lift again Our purple-painted headlands or the lordly keeps of Spain. They’re just beyond your skyline, howe’er so far you cruise In a ram-you-damn-you liner with a brace of bucking screws. Swing round your aching search-light—’twill show no haven’s peace. Ay, blow your shrieking sirens to the deaf, gray-bearded seas! Boom out the dripping oil-bags to skin the deep’s unrest— And you aren’t one knot the nearer to the Islands of the Blest! But when you’re threshing, crippled, with broken bridge and rail, At a drogue of dead convictions to hold you head to gale, Calm as the Flying Dutchman, from truck to taffrail dressed, You’ll see the old three-decker for the Islands of the Blest. You’ll see her tiering canvas in sheeted silver spread; You’ll hear the long-drawn thunder ’neath her leaping figure-head; While far, so far above you, her tall poop-lanterns shine Unvexed by wind or weather like the candles round a shrine! Hull down—hull down and under—she dwindles to a speck, With noise of pleasant music and dancing on her deck. All’s well—all’s well aboard her—she’s left you far behind, With a scent of old-world roses through the fog that ties you blind. Her crew are babes or madmen? Her port is all to make? You’re manned by Truth and Science, and you steam for steaming’s sake? Well, tinker up your engines—you know your business best— She’s taking tired people to the Islands of the Blest!
Rudyard Kipling
Irrelevant’ Chris Fogle turns a page. Howard Cardwell turns a page. Ken Wax turns a page. Matt Redgate turns a page. ‘Groovy’ Bruce Channing attaches a form to a file. Ann Williams turns a page. Anand Singh turns two pages at once by mistake and turns one back which makes a slightly different sound. David Cusk turns a page. Sandra Pounder turns a page. Robert Atkins turns two separate pages of two separate files at the same time. Ken Wax turns a page. Lane Dean Jr. turns a page. Olive Borden turns a page. Chris Acquistipace turns a page. David Cusk turns a page. Rosellen Brown turns a page. Matt Redgate turns a page. R. Jarvis Brown turns a page. Ann Williams sniffs slightly and turns a page. Meredith Rand does something to a cuticle. ‘Irrelevant’ Chris Fogle turns a page. Ken Wax turns a page. Howard Cardwell turns a page. Kenneth ‘Type of Thing’ Hindle detaches a Memo 402-C(1) from a file. ‘Second-Knuckle’ Bob McKenzie looks up briefly while turning a page. David Cusk turns a page. A yawn proceeds across one Chalk’s row by unconscious influence. Ryne Hobratschk turns a page. Latrice Theakston turns a page. Rotes Group Room 2 hushed and brightly lit, half a football field in length. Howard Cardwell shifts slightly in his chair and turns a page. Lane Dean Jr. traces his jaw’s outline with his ring finger. Ed Shackleford turns a page. Elpidia Carter turns a page. Ken Wax attaches a Memo 20 to a file. Anand Singh turns a page. Jay Landauer and Ann Williams turn a page almost precisely in sync although they are in different rows and cannot see each other. Boris Kratz bobs with a slight Hassidic motion as he crosschecks a page with a column of figures. Ken Wax turns a page. Harriet Candelaria turns a page. Matt Redgate turns a page. Ambient room temperature 80° F. Sandra Pounder makes a minute adjustment to a file so that the page she is looking at is at a slightly different angle to her. ‘Irrelevant’ Chris Fogle turns a page. David Cusk turns a page. Each Tingle’s two-tiered hemisphere of boxes. ‘Groovy’ Bruce Channing turns a page. Ken Wax turns a page. Six wigglers per Chalk, four Chalks per Team, six Teams per group. Latrice Theakston turns a page. Olive Borden turns a page. Plus administration and support. Bob McKenzie turns a page. Anand Singh turns a page and then almost instantly turns another page. Ken Wax turns a page. Chris ‘The Maestro’ Acquistipace turns a page. David Cusk turns a page. Harriet Candelaria turns a page. Boris Kratz turns a page. Robert Atkins turns two separate pages. Anand Singh turns a page. R. Jarvis Brown uncrosses his legs and turns a page. Latrice Theakston turns a page. The slow squeak of the cart boy’s cart at the back of the room. Ken Wax places a file on top of the stack in the Cart-Out box to his upper right. Jay Landauer turns a page. Ryne Hobratschk turns a page and then folds over the page of a computer printout that’s lined up next to the original file he just turned a page of. Ken Wax turns a page. Bob Mc-Kenzie turns a page. Ellis Ross turns a page. Joe ‘The Bastard’ Biron-Maint turns a page. Ed Shackleford opens a drawer and takes a moment to select just the right paperclip. Olive Borden turns a page. Sandra Pounder turns a page. Matt Redgate turns a page and then almost instantly turns another page. Latrice Theakston turns a page. Paul Howe turns a page and then sniffs circumspectly at the green rubber sock on his pinkie’s tip. Olive Borden turns a page. Rosellen Brown turns a page. Ken Wax turns a page. Devils are actually angels. Elpidia Carter and Harriet Candelaria reach up to their Cart-In boxes at exactly the same time. R. Jarvis Brown turns a page. Ryne Hobratschk turns a page. ‘Type of Thing’ Ken Hindle looks up a routing code. Some with their chin in their hand. Robert Atkins turns a page even as he’s crosschecking something on that page. Ann Williams turns a page. Ed Shackleford searches a file for a supporting document. Joe Biron-Maint turns a page. Ken Wax turns a page.
David Foster Wallace (The Pale King)