Hungry At Midnight Quotes

The way to overcome the angry man is with gentleness, the evil man goodness, the miser with generosity, and the liar with truth. (Indian proverb) It sounds good, doesn’t it? If only people and life were that effing easy. Trust me, it takes more than a friendly biscuit to tame a hungry lion. And it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Then it’s war. (Savitar)

i tell my grandmother i think love is a hungry caterpillar i am no meal historically i have never been more than a midnight snack

The real magic - the magic we'd lived with all our lives, my mother's magic of charms and cantrips, of salt by the door and a red silk sachet to placate the little gods - had turned sour on us that summer, somehow, like a spider that turns from good luck to bad at the stroke of midnight, spinning its web to catch our dreams. And for every little spell of charm, for every card dealt and every rune cast and every sign scratched against a doorway to divert the path of malchance, the wind just blew a little harder, tugging at our clothes, sniffing at us like a hungry dog, moving us here and moving us there.

His gaze brushed over her, abstract and hungry. "You burn so very brightly, you know" "Yeah," she muttered. "You said.

You lied about knowing me. You could lie about anything. People lie all the time, usually for no reason whatsoever. (Aiden) But I’m not lying about being hungry. Could you toss me a piece of bread before the interrogation continues? Or do I have to beat your butt for a spoonful of peanut butter? (Leta)

Her heart pounded as the door lifted and Hunter got out dressed in faded jeans, a gray and black v-neck sweater, and a black leather jacket, the man was drop-dead stunning. And that deadly stagger of his made her weak in the knees. "Oh baby," she heard Tammy whisper as he came around the car. Hunter stopped in front of Amanda and raked a hungry look over her body. "Hi, luscious," he said in that deep, evocative voice. "Sorry I'm late." Before Amanda knew what he was doing, he pulled her into his arms and gave her a sizzling hot kiss. Her body burned in response to his tongue tasting hers as he fisted his hands against her back. Then, he dipped down and picked her up in his arms. "Hunter!" she gasped as he carried her effortlessly toward the car. He gave her that devilish tight-lipped smile. His midnight eyes were warm and alive with humor and hunger. With the toe of his boot, he opened the passenger-side door and set her inside. He retrieved her briefcase and purse from the sidewalk where she had dropped them and handed them to her. Then, he turned and gave a knowing smile to Cliff. "You really have to love a woman who lives to see you naked.

Feed them as is hungry, clothe them as is naked, and speak up for them as has no voices’? Well,

was as hungry for stories as the Low Man was for souls, devouring every book that wasn’t a spiritual, each one proof another world existed outside the one I knew.

I must go,” Gavriel said, pushing back ash-black hair and looking at her with the utter sincerity of the drunk or deranged. “You will take care, won’t you? This city is hungry.” “You’re going now?” Tana asked him. She should have been relieved, knowing what he was and what he was capable of, but she didn’t want him to go. The thought of being alone with Aidan and Midnight and Winter filled her with a nameless anxiety. “It’s almost dawn. You don’t even know where you’re going.” He smiled, a real smile, the kind real boys gave real girls. “It’s been a very long time since anyone worried for me.

Human beings don't work like this in China. Time goes slower there. Here we have to hurry, feed the hungry children before we're too old to work. I feel like a mother cat hunting for its kittens. She has to find them fast because in a few hours she will forget how to count or that she had any kittens at all. I can't sleep in this country because it doesn't shut down for the night. Factories, canneries, restaurants - always somebody somewhere working through the night. It never gets done all at once here. Time was different in China. One year lasted as long as my total time here; one evening so long, you could visit your women friends, drink tea, and play cards at each house, and it would still be twilight. It even got boring, nothing to do but fan ourselves. Here midnight comes and the floor's not swept, the ironing's not ready, the money's not made. I would be still young if we lived in China. (1983: 98)

Late December, in Bridgwater, Somerset, Western Province, a middle-aged man named Thomas Wharnton, going home from work shortly after midnight, was set upon by youths. These knifed him, stripped him, spitted him, basted him, carved him, served him—all openly and without shame in one of the squares of the town. A hungry crowd clamoured for hunks and slices, kept back—that the King's Peace might not be broken—by munching and dripping greyboys.

The supermarket is still open; it won't close till midnight. It is brilliantly bright. Its brightness offers sanctuary from loneliness and the dark. You could spend hours of your life here, in a state of suspended insecurity, meditating on the multiplicity of things to eat. Oh dear, there is so much! So many brands in shiny boxes, all of them promising you good appetite. Every article on the shelves cries out to you, take me, take me; and the mere competition of their appeals can make you imagine yourself wanted, even loved. But beware - when you get back to your empty room, you'll find that the false flattering elf of the advertisement has eluded you; what remains is only cardboard, cellophane and food. And you have lost the heart to be hungry.

She shook her head. The more she thought about it, the more stupid she felt. She was probably infected, but that didn’t mean she should have tempted him into making it a sure thing. And, hungry as he was, crazy as he might be, he could have drained her dead, pinned her against the brick wall, and ripped out her throat. She’d been playing with fire, just as he’d accused Midnight of doing. Clever girl. You play with fire because you want to be burnt.

Because she had no idea; she was still figuring out when it had happened, exactly. It somehow felt as if it had always been Chaol, even from the very beginning, even before they’d ever met. He began to protest, but she pulled him back down on top of her. “And that’s enough talking. I might be tired, but there are still plenty of things to do instead of going for a run.” The grin Chaol gave her was hungry and wicked enough that she shrieked when he yanked her under the blankets.

It's rude to discuss religion', the Buraq sniffed. 'But I don't hold with Teatimers. I'm of the Midnight Snack school. You have tea because it's three o'clock and that's what's done and yes, yes, it's pleasant to have a nice cup and a sandwich with no crusts on, but pleasant is not enough for me! When you tuck into a Midnight Snack, it's because you're hungry in the dark. You want that bit of roast you couldn't finish at supper and you want it now. Midnight Snackery is primal, like a wolf in the wood, hunkering down over her kill.

My hair is hungry,” announced Carol. That brought the conversation to its second screeching halt in as many minutes, as everyone turned to stare at the gorgon.

The rewards of wealth beyond measure had proved cold; only the hungry desire for that wealth hissed with heat.

Heaven will provide. Or else it won't, and I'll go hungry.

Prison is one of the places where we should look for Him. I remember a Good Friday in a cell in the Romanian jail of Jilava. We were all very hungry. But that day when the bowl of gruel was brought to us, we refused to eat it. We fasted. Good Friday is the only fast day described by the Lord Himself: “But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast” (Matthew 9:15). Days of fasting, with deep repentance for our past sins and ardent prayers for the persecuted, are the greatest gifts anyone can give to members of the underground church and the missions that help them.

Absently, she brushed back some of the hair from her face, and she saw as Jaguar's eyes followed how the long strands slid across her throat. Though his dark skin did not show pallor as clearly as Lord Daryl's had, Turquoise could tell Jaguar had not fed yet, and she recognized the hungry look in his black eyes. Testing, she stood, the movement appearing reluctant. "I"ll leave you to your work if you'd like." He answered the way she had expected him to. Not raising his gaze from her throat, he said, "Come here." Though the words were an order, the tone left room for argument. For a moment, Turquoise almost felt guilty. She was intentionally manipulating him. A feeding vampire is an easy target; most of them completely lost sense of their surroundings as they drew blood. Jaguar did not even try to catch her mind as his lips fell to her throat. If she had been armed, it would have been revoltingly easy to kill him.

Which would be nicest — Jane with a touch of Charlotte, or Charlotte with a touch of Jane?” This is the kind of discussion I like very much but I wanted to get on with my journal, so I just said: “Fifty per cent each way would be perfect,” and started to write determinedly. Now it is nearly midnight. I feel rather like a Brontë myself, writing by the light of a guttering candle with my fingers so numb I can hardly hold the pencil. I wish Stephen hadn’t made me think of food, because I have been hungry ever since; which is ridiculous as I had a good egg tea not six hours ago. Oh, dear — I have just thought that if Stephen was worrying about me being hungry, he was probably hungry himself. We are a household!

On the way to after-prom, Peter says he’s hungry, and can we stop at the diner first. “I think there’s going to be pizza at after-prom,” I say. “Why don’t we just eat there?” “But I want pancakes,” he whines. We pull into the diner parking lot, and after we park, he gets out of the car and runs around to the passenger side to open my door. “So gentlemanly tonight,” I say, which makes him grin. We walk up to the diner, and he opens the door for me grandly. “I could get used to this royal treatment,” I say. “Hey, I open doors for you,” he protests. We walk inside, and I stop short. Our booth, the one we always sit in, has pale pink balloons tied around it. There’s a round cake in the center of the table, tons of candles, pink frosting with sprinkles and Happy Birthday, Lara Jean scrawled in white frosting. Suddenly I see people’s heads pop up from under the booths and from behind menus--all of our friends, still in their prom finery: Lucas, Gabe, Gabe’s date Keisha, Darrell, Pammy, Chris. “Surprise!” everyone screams. I spin around. “Oh my God, Peter!” He’s still grinning. He looks at his watch. “It’s midnight. Happy birthday, Lara Jean.

Whatever any of us may have thought about Hatsumomo, she was like an empress in our okiya since she earned the income be which we all lived. And being an empress she would have been very displeased, upon returning late at night, to find her palace dark and all the servants asleep. That is to say, when she came home too drunk to unbutton her socks, someone had to unbutton them for her; and if she felt hungry, she certainly wasn't going to stroll into the kitchen and prepare something by herself--such as an umeboshi ochazuke, which was a favorite snack of hers, made with leftover rice and pickled sour plums, soaked in hot tea. Actually our okiya wasn't at all unusual in this respect. The job of waiting up to bow and welcome the geisha home almost always fell to the most junior of the "cocoons"--as the young geisha-in-training were often called. And from the moment I began taking lessons at the school, the most junior cocoon in our okiya was me. Long before midnight, Pumpkin and the two elderly maids were sound asleep on their futons only a meter or so away on the wood floor of the entrance hall; but I had to go on kneeling there, struggling to stay awake until sometimes as late as two o'clock in the morning. Granny's room was nearby and she slept with her light on and her door opened a crack. The bar of light that fell across my empty futon made me think of a day, not long before Satsu [Chiyo's sister] and I were taken away from our village, when I'd peered into the back room of our house to see my mother asleep there. My father had draped fishing nets across the paper screens to darken the room, but it looked so gloomy I decided to open one of the windows; and when I did, a strip of bright sunlight fell across my mother's futon and showed her hand so pale and bony. To see the yellow lights streaming from Granny's room onto my futon...I had to wonder if my mother was still alive. We ere so much alike, I felt sure I would have known if she'd died; but of course, I'd had no sign one way or the other.

plugged in my headphones. In the sermon, King uses the parable of the neighbor who knocks upon his friend’s door at midnight, seeking three loaves to feed a hungry traveler. The man’s need is great, King reminds us, because the loaves of bread he seeks are spiritual loaves. The bread of faith, the bread of hope, the bread of love. The man’s friend refuses him. “Do not bother me; the door is now shut,” his friend says, “and my children are with me in bed, I cannot get up and give you anything.” In his tremendous tenor, his voice rolling with the calm power and depth of the sea, King explains that the man continues to persistently knock; he will not be denied. He urges us to embrace the hope, faith, and love necessary to continue our struggle for justice in midnight’s darkest hour. With faith in his friend’s generosity, and out of a deep need to provide loaves to his visitor, the man knocks. “Midnight is a confusing hour when it is difficult to be faithful.” His voice sonorous, King intones, “The weary traveler by midnight who asks for bread is really seeking the dawn. Our eternal message of hope is that dawn will come.

No, little rich boy; there is no third principle; there is only money-and-poverty, and have-and-lack, and right-and-left; there is only me-against-the-world! The world is not ideas, rich boy; the world is no place for dreamers or their dreams; the world, little Snotnose, is things. Things and their makers rule the world; look at Birla, and Tata, and all the powerful: they make things. For things, the country is run. Not for people. For things, America and Russia send aid; but five hundred million stay hungry. When you have things, then there is time to dream; when you don’t, you fight.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness,— That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease. O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth; That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim: Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs, Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays; But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that oft-times hath Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf. Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep? - Ode to a Nightingale

Midnight has fallen on the darkened streets of Haught and Battens Hill, and the watchman saith, All is well. We have prospered by the day, set our lock and bolt, and tried the windows, and all is well. Want, murder, desperation, and despair still roam in the filthy alleys and tenements of The Steps and breed countless wrongs in their path, yet the watchman passing cries, All is well. The watchman clears away the hungry children who hunt for scraps behind the New Theatre while a nobleman’s carriage rolls by, but decent folk turn, sighing in their sleep, and faintly hear the report: all is well. The prison gates are shut, and what is within is surely confined there, and touches us not; therefore, all is well.

She leans back again against the pine’s trunk. Some slight change in the atmosphere, the humidity, and her mind becomes a greener thing. At midnight, on this hillside, perched in the dark above this city with her pine standing in for a Bo, Mimi gets enlightened. The fear of suffering that is her birthright—the frantic need to steer—blows away on the wind, and something else wings down to replace it. Messages hum from out of the bark she leans against. Chemical semaphores home in over the air. Currents rise from the soil-gripping roots, relayed over great distances through fungal synapses linked up in a network the size of the planet. The signals say: A good answer is worth reinventing from scratch, again and again. They say: The air is a mix we must keep making. They say: There’s as much belowground as above. They tell her: Do not hope or despair or predict or be caught surprised. Never capitulate, but divide, multiply, transform, conjoin, do, and endure as you have all the long day of life. There are seeds that need fire. Seeds that need freezing. Seeds that need to be swallowed, etched in digestive acid, expelled as waste. Seeds that must be smashed open before they’ll germinate. A thing can travel everywhere, just by holding still. The next day dawns. The sun rises so slowly that even the birds forget there was ever anything else but dawn. People drift back through the park on their way to jobs, appointments, and other urgencies. Making a living. Some pass within a few feet of the altered woman. Mimi comes to, and speaks her very first Buddha’s words. “I’m hungry.” The answer comes from right above her head. Be hungry. “I’m thirsty.” Be thirsty. “I hurt.” Be still and feel.

Yeah?” he said, looking down into her hungry gaze. “You want to drink from me as I make you come?” She nodded weakly and gave him another small bite in reply. “You got it, sweetheart. But not the wrist this time.” Holding her against him, he rolled onto his back and brought her up astride him. “I want to feel you at my neck, Elise. I want to hold you while you drink from me. I want to feel you bite into me.” Touching her, he felt her uncertainty. “I’ve never done it that way before.” “Good,” he said, entirely too pleased to hear it. “I’ve never asked anyone to do it that way before. So, will you, Elise?” She frowned, but her eyes were rooted on his throat. “I don’t want to hurt you…” He chuckled, adoring her all the more for her concern. “Come here,” he said, wrapping his hand around her nape and guiding her down to the exposed column of his neck. “Sink your teeth into me, Elise. Take your fill.” She

Claire tipped her head back, and this time he found her lips. It was, she thought, supposed to be a fast and sweet little kiss, but somehow it slowed down, got warmer and deeper. His lips were damp and soft as silk, and that was such a contrast to the hard lines of his body pressed against her. The strength of his hands sliding around her waist and pulling her even closer. She heard him growl low in his throat, a wild and hungry sound that made her go weak and faint. He broke the kiss and leaned against her, breathing hard. "Good morning to you too. Man, I just can't stay mad when you do that." "Do what?" she asked innocently. She didn't feel innocent. She also didn't feel sixteen-nearly-seventeen, not at all. Shane always made her feel older. Much older. Ready for anything. It was a good thing Shane wasn't as dumb as her hormones seemed to be. "Unless you want to stay home and cut class, we don't really have time to talk about it," he said, and waggled his eyebrows. "So. Wanna cut class and make out?

scrub oak trees. Kieran was leaning against him, pinning him to the tree, and they were kissing. Cristina hesitated a moment, blood rising into her face, but it was clear Mark wasn’t being touched against his will. Mark’s hands were tangled in Kieran’s hair, and he was kissing him as fiercely as if he were starving. Their bodies were pressed together tightly; nevertheless, Kieran clutched at Mark’s waist, his hands moving restlessly, desperately, as if he could pull Mark closer still. They slid up, pushing Mark’s jacket off his shoulders, stroking the skin at the edge of his collar. He made a low keening sound, like a cry of grief, deep in his throat, and broke away. He was staring at Mark, his gaze as hungry as it was hopeless. Never had a faerie looked so human to Cristina as Kieran did then. Mark looked back at him, eyes wide, shining in the moonlight. A shared look of love and longing and terrible sadness. It was too much. It had already been too much: Cristina knew she shouldn’t have been watching them but she hadn’t been able to stop, mingled shock and fascination rooting her to the spot. And desire. There was desire, too. Whether for Mark, or for both of them, or just for the idea of wanting someone so much, she wasn’t sure. She moved back, her heart pounding, about to pull the

Sophie?” He knocked, though not that hard, then decided she wasn’t going hear anything less than a regiment of charging dragoons over Kit’s racket. He pushed the door open to find half of Sophie’s candles lit and the lady pacing the room with Kit in her arms. “He won’t settle,” she said. “He isn’t wet; he isn’t hungry; he isn’t in want of cuddling. I think he’s sickening for something.” Sophie looked to be sickening. Her complexion was pale even by candlelight, her green eyes were underscored by shadows, and her voice held a brittle, anxious quality. “Babies can be colicky.” Vim laid the back of his hand on the child’s forehead. This resulted in a sudden cessation of Kit’s bellowing. “Ah, we have his attention. What ails you, young sir? You’ve woken the watch and disturbed my lady’s sleep.” “Keep talking,” Sophie said softly. “This is the first time he’s quieted in more than an hour.” Vim’s gaze went to the clock on her mantel. It was a quarter past midnight, meaning Sophie had gotten very little rest. “Give him to me, Sophie. Get off your feet, and I’ll have a talk with My Lord Baby.” She looked reluctant but passed the baby over. When the infant started whimpering, Vim began a circuit of the room. “None of your whining, Kit. Father Christmas will hear of it, and you’ll have a bad reputation from your very first Christmas. Do you know Miss Sophie made Christmas bread today? That’s why the house bore such lovely scents—despite your various efforts to put a different fragrance in the air.” He went on like that, speaking softly, rubbing the child’s back and hoping the slight warmth he’d detected was just a matter of the child’s determined upset, not inchoate sickness. Sophie would fret herself into an early grave if the boy stopped thriving. “Listen,” Vim said, speaking very quietly against the baby’s ear. “You are worrying your mama Sophie. You’re too young to start that nonsense, not even old enough to join the navy. Go to sleep, my man. Sooner rather than later.” The child did not go to sleep. He whimpered and whined, and by two in the morning, his nose was running most unattractively. Sophie would not go to sleep either, and Vim would not leave her alone with the baby. “This is my fault,” Sophie said, her gaze following Vim as he made yet another circuit with the child. “I was the one who had to go to the mews, and I should never have taken Kit with me.” “Nonsense. He loved the outing, and you needed the fresh air.” The baby wasn’t even slurping on his fist, which alarmed Vim more than a possible low fever. And that nose… Vim surreptitiously used a hankie to tend to it, but Sophie got to her feet and came toward them. “He’s ill,” she said, frowning at the child. “He misses his mother and I took him out in the middle of a blizzard and now he’s ill.” Vim put his free arm around her, hating the misery in her tone. “He has a runny nose, Sophie. Nobody died of a runny nose.” Her expression went from wan to stricken. “He could die?” She scooted away from Vim. “This is what people mean when they say somebody took a chill, isn’t it? It starts with congestion, then a fever, then he becomes weak and delirious…” “He’s not weak or delirious, Sophie. Calm down.

Your breakfast is ready,” Toby said to Call, leaning through the open office door. “I made waffles--your favorite. And I’ve got some of that Saskatoon syrup you like.” “Someday, you’ll make someone a great wife, Toby,” Call grumbled, forcing himself to his feet though he wasn’t really hungry. Toby just grinned.

Your breakfast is ready,” Toby said to Call, leaning through the open office door. “I made waffles--your favorite. And I’ve got some of that Saskatoon syrup you like.” “Someday, you’ll make someone a great wife, Toby,” Call grumbled, forcing himself to his feet though he wasn’t really hungry. Toby just grinned. Call walked past him into the kitchen and sat down at the breakfast table. Toby was babying him again. For nearly a week he’d been foul-tempered and edgy, and he hadn’t been sleeping well. Apparently Toby had noticed the shadows under his eyes and his surly disposition. Call raked a hand through his hair as the boy set a steaming plate of crisp golden waffles in front of him, then sat down in the chair across the table. “So…what’s going on with our gorgeous next-door neighbor?” Call nearly choked on the bite of bacon he’d just taken. “Nothing’s going on. She lives there. I live here. That’s all there is to it.” And Call was determined to keep it that way. To ensure that it did, he hadn’t seen Charity since last week, hadn’t even picked up the binoculars to see what she was up to. Since then, he had been able to block thoughts of her for, oh, maybe an hour or two at a time. Christ, the woman drove him crazy and she wasn’t even near. “Man, she is really something,” Toby went on between bites of waffle. “I wonder how old she is.” Call glanced up, caught the interest in Toby’s eyes. “Too old for you, so forget it.” “Hey--I like older women. And that one is definitely hot.” Too damned hot, Call thought, trying not to remember what it felt like to kiss her. “If you’re really not interested, maybe I could--” “I told you to forget it,” Call snapped, then looked over just in time to see Toby grin. “That’s what I thought.” Call just grunted.

It was near midnight when his cell phone finally rang. Thank God, it was her. He answered the phone, short and sharp. “Jesus, Taylor, where have you been? You scared the hell out of me.” He heard the thickness in her voice, like she’d been crying recently. It broke his heart. Not a characteristic that was common to his woman. Weakness wasn’t her style. She spoke softly. “Don’t yell at me, okay? I’m fine. I’m heading home. I need sleep. I need to figure out what I’m going to do. I’m tired. Are you there?” “I am.” He softened his tone. “Have you eaten?” “I’m not hungry,” came the flat reply. “I could use a cigarette, though.

That afternoon I took home a very hot jar of floated intentions and the lesson of the banana heart, the charm that I have kept in my pocket ever since: ‘Close to midnight, when the heart bows from its stem, wait for its first dew. It will drop like a gem. Catch it with your tongue. When you eat the heart of the matter, you’ll never grow hungry again.

There was death. Violent, oblivious death, in bear form, staring at her with its black eyes. And she knew then, more than she’d known anything, that she wasn’t ready to die. This knowledge grew bigger than fear itself as she stood there, face to face with a polar bear, itself hungry and desperate to exist, and banged the ladle against the saucepan. Harder. A fast, staccato bang bang bang. I’m. Not. Scared.

Once Alex enters the room, I forget I’m even hungry and nearly drop my plate. A helpful servant scoops it up from my hands. I see him in profile, his long lean body in stark shades of black and white: knee-high socks, dark, well-fitted pants, a jacket the color of midnight, and a snowy-white cravat as pressed and starched as ever. I’d think he looked entirely too formal, except my own dress is at least as fancy. Today, it’s appropriate. As much as it would be great to see him in a T-shirt, jeans, and ball cap, the formal attire simply suits him. He surveys the room as the others take notice of his presence, but before they can bombard him, his eyes sweep across to me and then stop. His lips give way to the slightest of smiles, and then he’s heading straight toward me, leaving a gaggle of disappointed faces in his wake. “Do I look okay?” I whisper to Emily, unable to take my eyes off of him long enough to check. She squeezes my hand. “You look…” “Stunning,” Alex finishes as he arrives in front of me. “Your Grace,” I say, for the first time, and curtsy. He looks amused that I’ve addressed him so formally. “My lady.” He bows, a deeper bow than I’ve ever seen him do. I rise and look him in the eye again. “I thought you said I wasn’t a lady.” He smirks. “I thought you said you were.” We smile at one another, and the room fades around me. “Save the next dance?” I nod. “Wonderful. I shall find you then.” And then he leaves me with Emily, and I finally know what a swoon is as I grab her elbow. “I thought he might ravish you right here on the floor,” she says with a giggle. “Emily!” “What?” And then I can’t help it; I burst into a fit of giggles with her, until my sides ache and I can hardly breathe. A few guests stare as they pass us--I’m betting such behavior is frowned upon--but I find that I don’t even care. It’s been so long since I’ve had a friend who made me feel like I could be myself. Ironic, since I’m Rebecca here, but it’s still invigorating and exhilarating, and all we’re doing is standing here laughing like total lunatics. It’s definitely against Victoria’s Rules for Proper Young Ladies. But I don’t care. I am me. Whether that is someone they like or someone they despise, I am who I am, and that’s the truth. When have I ever been this sure of myself? “Is everything all right?” Emily stops giggling. “Yes. I--” I pause, taking a breath. “I’m…better than all right.” I glance around at the beautiful, sparkling ballroom and then back at Emily’s smiling face. “I’m perfect.

When Bush—code-named Timberwolf—was vice president, agent William Albracht was on the midnight shift at the vice president’s residence. While agents refer to the President’s Protective Detail as the Show, they call the Vice President’s Protective Detail the Little Show with Free Parking. That’s because, unlike the White House, the vice president’s residence provides parking for agents. Albracht was new to the post, and Agent Dowling filled him in. “Well, Bill, every day the stewards bake the cookies, and that is their job, and that is their responsibility,” Dowling told him. “And then our responsibility on midnights is to find those cookies or those left from the previous day and eat as many of them as possible.” Assigned to the basement post around 3 A.M., Albracht was getting hungry. “We never had permission to take food from the kitchen, but sometimes you get very hungry on midnights,” Albracht says. “I walked into the kitchen that was located in the basement and opened up the refrigerator. I’m hoping that there are some leftover snacks from that day’s reception,” the former agent says. “It was slim pickin’s. All of a sudden, there’s a voice over my shoulder.” “Hey, anything good in there to eat?” the man asked. “No, looks like they cleaned it out,” Albracht said. “I turned around to see George Bush off my right shoulder,” Albracht says. “After I get over the shock of who it was, Bush says, ‘Hey, I was really hoping there would be something to eat.’ And I said, ‘Well, sir, every day the stewards bake cookies, but every night they hide them from us.’ With a wink of his eye he says, ‘Let’s find ’em.’ So we tore the kitchen apart, and sure enough we did find them. He took a stack of chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk and went back up to bed, and I took a stack and a glass of milk and went back to the basement post.” When Albracht returned to the post, Dowling asked, “Who the hell were you in there talking to?” Albracht told him what had happened. “Oh yeah, sure, right,” Dowling said. When

BEHIND THE WALL The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, twenty-five years ago this month, but the first attempts to breach it came immediately after it went up, just past midnight on August 13, 1961. The East German regime had been secretly stockpiling barbed wire and wooden sawhorses, which the police, who learned of their mission only that night, hastily assembled into a barrier. For many Berliners, the first sign that a historic turn had been taken was when the U-Bahn, the city’s subway, stopped running on certain routes, leaving late-night passengers to walk home through streets that were suddenly filled with soldiers. As realization set in, so did a sense of panic. By noon the next day, as Ann Tusa recounts in “The Last Division,” people were trying to pull down the barbed wire with their hands. Some succeeded, in scattered places, and a car drove through a section of the Wall to the other side. In the following weeks, the authorities began reinforcing it. Within a year, the Wall was nearly eight feet high, with patrols and the beginnings of a no man’s land. But it still wasn’t too tall for a person to scale, and on August 17, 1962, Peter Fechter, who was eighteen years old, and his friend Helmut Kulbeik decided to try. They picked a spot on Zimmerstrasse, near the American Checkpoint Charlie, and just after two o’clock in the afternoon they made a run for it. Kulbeik got over, but Fechter was shot by a guard, and fell to the ground. He was easily visible from the West; there are photographs of him, taken as he lay calling for help. Hundreds of people gathered on the Western side, shouting for someone to save him. The East German police didn’t want to, and the Americans had been told that if they crossed the border they might start a war. Someone tossed a first-aid kit over the Wall, but Fechter was too weak to pick it up. After an hour, he bled to death. Riots broke out in West Berlin, and many asked angrily why the Americans had let Fechter die. He was hardly more than a child, and he wanted to be a free man. It’s a fair question, though one can imagine actions taken that day which could have led to a broader confrontation. It was not a moment to risk grand gestures; Fechter died two months before the Cuban missile crisis. (When the Wall went up, John F. Kennedy told his aides that it was “not a very nice solution, but a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.”) And there was something off key about Germans, so soon after the end of the Second World War, railing about others being craven bystanders. Some observers came to see the Wall as the necessary scaffolding on which to secure a postwar peace. That’s easy to say, though, when one is on the side with the department stores, and without the secret police. Technically, West Berlin was the city being walled in, a quasi-metropolis detached from the rest of West Germany. The Allied victors—America, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union—had divided Germany into four parts, and, since Berlin was in the Soviet sector, they divided the city into four parts, too. In 1948, the Soviets cut off most road and rail access to the city’s three western sectors, in an effort to assert their authority. The Americans responded with the Berlin Airlift, sending in planes carrying food and coal, and so much salt that their engines began to corrode. By the time the Wall went up, it wasn’t the West Berliners who were hungry. West Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder , or economic miracle, was under way, while life in the East involved interminable shortages. West Berliners were surrounded by Soviet military encampments, but they were free and they could leave—and so could anyone who could get to their part of the city. The East Berliners were the prisoners. In the weeks before the Wall went up, more than a thousand managed to cross the border each day; the Wall was built to keep them from leaving. But people never stopped trying to tear it down.

She made a hungry, eager sound, parted her lips and took the tip of his cock in her moth. Belatedly her mind caught up with what she had done. Um, maybe she should have asked first. If somebody had grabbed her crotch and helped himself without so much as checking in with the rest of her, you can bet your ass she would react with a strategically aimed knee to the privates. Just because he had an erection didn't mean he was willing or prepared to act on it.... Her face flooded with heat. Pulling back, she muttered, "Sorry." Incredulity sharpened his gaze, "You're sorry?" Her shoulders crept up to her ears. "I just grabbed hold and started sucking. Then I thought maybe I should have asked first." Amusement bolted over his hard features, completely banishing his moody isolation. Then, sobering -- or at least appearing to -- he said, "Melly, please suck me off. Fasten your sexy mouth around my cock and pull on me until I don't have anything left to give. My God, just looking at the erotic shape of your lips makes me want to spill all over your gorgeous face.

Well,” Chaol said with forced lightness, “I suppose having Adarlan’s Assassin in my debt could be useful.” She gave him a bow. “At your service.” His smile was genuine this time. “Come on, Captain,” she said, starting into a slow jog. “I’m hungry and I don’t feel like freezing my ass off out here.” He chuckled underneath his breath, and they ran on through the park.

So,” he said, flicking her nose, “how long have you wanted—” “I don’t see how that’s any of your business, Captain Westfall. And I won’t tell you until you tell me.” He flicked her nose again, and she batted away his fingers. He caught her hand in his, holding it up so he could look at her amethyst ring—the ring she never took off, not even to bathe. “The Yulemas ball. Maybe earlier. Maybe even Samhuinn, when I brought you this ring. But Yulemas was the first time I realized I didn’t like the idea of you with—with someone else.” He kissed the tips of her fingers. “Your turn.” “I’m not telling you,” she said. Because she had no idea; she was still figuring out when it had happened, exactly. It somehow felt as if it had always been Chaol, even from the very beginning, even before they’d ever met. He began to protest, but she pulled him back down on top of her. “And that’s enough talking. I might be tired, but there are still plenty of things to do instead of going for a run.” The grin Chaol gave her was hungry and wicked enough that she shrieked when he yanked her under the blankets.

I move around hungry, sniffing the moonlight, drifting around the hills, hunting for you, your passionate kisses, like a cougar prowling in the streets at Midnight.

FUCK EVERYTHING THEY PREACH & EXTOL AS VIRTUE, until they can give to a hungry man (& not just on the corner in every major city, but in every dusty village spanning this globe) THEY CAN KEEP THEIR GODDAMNED VIRTUE, THEIR BULLSHIT HOUSE-OF-CARDS BELIEF SYSTEM, & THEIR GODS. My God can be nothing like theirs, their kindergarten God that keeps score & gives big shiny stars to those who don't ask questions, & frowny faces to those who want to know how & why. A God that insists we never laugh at misery...IT'S MISERY, FOR GOD'S SAKE, WHAT ELSE CAN WE DO WITH IT BUT LAUGH & BY LAUGHING REFUSE TO BE COMPLETELY BEATEN BY IT...

Guilt was such a powerful, debilitating, all-encompassing emotion. It gnawed through your soul like a hungry rodent.

What was I to do, after sailing the seven seas now that we moved to 33 Van Wart Avenue, on the Scarsdale line of White Plains, NY. Like they say, money doesn’t grow on trees, so it was up to me to find a job. The economy wasn’t all that great and the best I could do was to find a commission job selling home fire detection units. One of the senior salesmen took me under his wing and showed me the ropes. The most important part of the pitch was to emphasize the importance of the fire detection unit and how, after declining our product a family had a fire in their home. The hapless husband was found stretched across the bed where he obviously died attempting to reach the telephone, while his family succumbed to the super-heated poisonous gasses and raging flames. It all could have been prevented if only they would have bought the fire detection unit when it was offered. I hated cold calling and selling something to people that they couldn’t afford was not in my nature. I wasn’t like my brother who could lure a hungry dog off the back of a meat wagon! It wasn’t that I didn’t try, because the more often I told the story the worse it got! I could just tell that the people I talked to knew that I was full of shXt and all I wanted to do was get out of there, although one of the sales rules was that you stayed until the people invited you to leave at least three times. For every rebuttal I had an answer and for every financial problem I had a solution, to put them even further into debt. In the end I would come home with my tail between my legs and with Ursula, watched the midnight horror show with John Zacherle. Dick Clark, a friend, gave Zacherle his nickname, "The Cool Ghoul," and for us it was television at it’s very best in the 1960’s.

The study of history, my dear, is not for the faint of heart. To do it properly, to do it truthfully, you have to be willing to learn how the sausages get made. History is made of blood and guts and oft-hallowed men doing terrible things.

Hey, you okay?” “Yeah,” she said. “I need to find my friends.” He chuckled. “Don’t we all.

I’ve been kicked out of pretty much everywhere. That happens enough times, you start to expect it. And you start thinking there must be something wrong with you, something bad inside of you, that it’s all your own fault.

Appearances were everything. You couldn’t work too slow, obviously. Slackers worked too slow. Couldn’t work too fast or you were grandstanding, and that was almost as bad. Finding the right speed was all-important.

Told me I can’t leave before I file my final story,” he told her. “Between you and me, I’m not entirely sure where I’m going or what’s waiting for me on the other side. They gave me a whole ream of paper, so you’d better believe I’m using every last page.

The summer of love was melting away and winter was on the horizon.

The Titans had a nasty habit of eating their children. Zeus, eldest of the Olympians, decided to do something about it before he ended up on the dinner menu.

This is what death is, kid. It’s dark, and quiet, and cold, and you’re all alone. Forever.

It’s all hatch, match, and dispatch.

Leda picked up the phone. No preamble. “You actually dated that man?” she asked, her voice light as the summer breeze. “You hired him.” “We’re both guilty of poor taste. He has his uses, though.

You know, smoking’s a vile habit, but there was a brief time when everyone carried fire in their pockets.

And to happy endings,” Seelie added. “That’s my rule. Everybody gets a happy ending tonight.

You can’t heal a man,” she said, “if he thinks he deserves to be in pain.

His men called Richard “Black Dick,” not so much for his side-parted hair—dark as night next to William’s dirty blond—but for his perpetual dour glare and hangdog look.

You quit while you still can, you see it through to the end and earn your victory laurels, or you die trying.

There was death. Violent, oblivious death, in bear form, staring at her with its black eyes. And she knew then, more than she'd known anything, that she wasn't ready to die. This knowledge grew bigger than fear itself as she stood there, face to face with a polar bear, itself hungry and desperate to exist, and banged the ladle against the saucepan. Harder. A fast, staccato bang bang bang.