Huntington Quotes

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion […] but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.

I think of love, and you, and my heart grows full and warm, and my breath stands still.

Some Westerners […] have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremists. Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise.

Expectations should not always be taken as reality; because you never know when you will be disappointed.

I knew myself well enough to know I didn’t survive books. They tore me to shreds. I’d never met an inanimate object as talented at breaking hearts as a book.

In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.

Every civilization sees itself as the center of the world and writes its history as the central drama of human history.

Suicide is a war of two fears—fear of death and fear of the thing that pushes you toward it. The stronger side always wins. And if you lose, the penalty is death.

Adolescent love is the greatest pain of all. It teaches you the power other people have to destroy you.

Your absence insanes me so-- I do not feel so peaceful, when you are gone from me.

Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate.

James Parkinson. George Huntington. Robert Graves. John Down. Now this Lou Gehrig fellow of mine. How did men come to monopolize disease names too?

I wish I had cancer. Or some other grand battle. Dementia, stroke, organ failure. If I lose those fights, I’m brave. But the thing I’m battling is my mind. And if I lose, they’ll just call me weak.

Sometimes, when I read, I realized I was happiest in a world that wasn’t mine.

Who loves you most, and loves you best, and thinks of you when others rest? 'Tis Emilie.

Her breast is fit for pearls, But I was not a "Diver" - Her brow is fit for thrones But I have not a crest, Her heart is fit for home- I- a Sparrow- build there Sweet of twigs and twine My perennial nest.

Islam's borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.

Oh my darling one, how long you wander from me, how weary I grow of waiting and looking, and calling for you; sometimes I shut my eyes, and shut my heart towards you, and try hard to forget you because you grieve me so, but you'll never go away, oh you never will.

Underneath this little stone Lies Robert Earl of Huntington; No other archer was so good - And people called him Robin Hood. Such outlaws as he and his men Will England never see again.

If I tell you anything worth learning, it’s this. Love is the most expensive thing you’ll ever own. You pay for it with grief, tears, and a piece of your soul, but in return, you receive happiness, memories, and life.

Sweet hour, blessed hour, to carry me to you, and to bring you back to me, long enough to snatch one kiss, and whisper goodbye again.

I miss you, mourn for you, and walk the streets alone- often at night, beside, I fall asleep in tears, for your dear face, yet not one word comes back to me. If it is finished, tell me, and I will raise the lid to my box of Phantoms, and lay one more love in; but if it lives and beats still, still lives and beats for me, then say so, and I will strike the strings to one more strain of happiness before I die.

Pain is growth. Fear is risk. You can’t be happy if you’re not growing and taking risks.

The existence of a word proves that someone in the history of humanity felt the same way I did and gave it a name. It means we’re not alone. If there’s a word for what we're feeling, we’re never alone.

Ya’aburnee is Arabic for you bury me. It is the hope that you will die before your one true love because you cannot bear to live without them.

She was broken. I was destroyed. This had disaster written all over it.

Tears are the language of grief. And grief is the language of love.

Don’t shrink yourself to help others grow.

If you had to change yourself to be accepted, you didn’t need that person in your life in the first place. Because it wasn’t you they wanted to be with. It was their version of you.

Multiculturalism is in its essence anti-European civilization. It is basically an anti-Western ideology.

Collective will supplants individual whim

Everyone will hurt you. The key to happiness is finding someone worth enduring the pain.

You’re going to be a headache, aren’t you?” “A headache?” I cocked my head. “You kidnapped me, you psycho. I’m not gonna be a headache. I’m going to be, at the very least, a deadly brain tumor.

Becoming a modern society is about industrialization, urbanization, and rising levels of literacy, education, and wealth. The qualities that make a society Western, in contrast, are special: the classical legacy, Christianity, the separation of church and state, the rule of law, civil society.

There can be no true friends without true enemies. Unless we hate what we are not, we cannot love what we are.

You’re my favorite plot twist.

It was a promise I shouldn’t have made. One that defied the hardest lesson I’d ever learned. Love is expensive. Its currency is grief. And sometimes, it costs more than you can afford.

Hope is a cruel bitch.

you are breathing, and it is beautiful, and i am so grateful for that

Even if it means I’ll never be the man you give yourself to, I’ll always do anything to protect you.

Love is just being there for someone. It’s that simple.

The dangerous clashes of the future are likely to arise from the interaction of Western arrogance, Islamic intolerance, and Sinic assertiveness.

Opportunity lasts a moment. Regret lasts a lifetime

I need you more and more, and the great world grows wider, and dear ones fewer and fewer, every day that you stay away. My heart goes wandering around and calls for Susie...My heart is full of you; none other than you are in my thoughts, yet when I seek to say to you something not for the world, words fail me. If you were here, we need not talk at all for our eyes would whisper for us and, your hand fast in mine, we would not ask for language.

Arabs and other Muslims generally agreed that Saddam Hussein might be a bloody tyrant, but, paralleling FDR's thinking, "he is our bloody tyrant." In their view, the invasion was a family affair to be settled within the family and those who intervened in the name of some grand theory of international justice were doing so to protect their own selfish interests and to maintain Arab subordination to the west.

You’re rich. We get it.” She yawned. “The only billionaires I like are fictional.

Beasts were never born—they were made.

Perfection is unattainable. It’s stained by the suffering required to chase it. Perfect is something you think with your head. Lagom is something you feel with your heart.

People define themselves in terms of ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs, and institutions. They identify with cultural groups: tribes, ethnic groups, religious communities, nations, and, at the broadest level, civilizations. People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity. We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against.

Life really is amazing, and when you're about to lose it, you finally notice that you never really took it in before. And you realize the sheer magnitude of what it involves, from your first kiss to your hundredth slice of pizza. I guess that's why those tears drifted down my cheeks.

if we could just stay this way forever, maybe it wouldn't hurt to breathe

I’d never met an inanimate object as talented at breaking hearts as a book.

You must let me go first, Sue, because I live in the Sea always and know the Road. I would have drowned twice to save you sinking, dear, If I could only have covered your Eyes so you wouldn't have seen the Water.

Oh Susie, I often think that I will try to tell you how very dear you are, and how I'm watching for you, but the words won't come, though the tears will, and I sit down disappointed. Yet, darling, you know it all-- then why do I seek to tell you? I do not know. In thinking of those I love, my reason is all gone from me, and I do fear sometimes that I must make a hospital for the hopelessly insane, and chain myself up there so I won't injure you.

He taught me strength. Most importantly, he delivered the cruelest lesson of all—there’s beauty in every beast. Thorns in every rose. And a love story can blossom—even from the carcass of hate.

She tasted like sweet venom. Warm and cottony and dreamlike. Deadly toxic. Gorgeously addictive.

Books. Rain. Libraries. Driving alone at night with my favorite playlist in the background. Traveling—mainly for the food. But the historic stuff is decent, too.

Because that was what we were, essentially. Authors of our own stories.

Here’s a life lesson I’d never wanted to learn. Our secrets are nothing but a string of memories we wish to forget.

People assume strength is loud. In reality, strength is silent. It is resilience, the will to never surrender your dignity. And sometimes, the only person who knows strength exists inside you is you.

They say love is ten percent falling and ninety percent picking yourself back up. What they never tell you is how quick that ten percent passes and how long that ninety percent lasts.

God and Caesar, church and state, spiritual authority and temporal authority, have been a prevailing dualism in Western culture. Only in Hindu civilization were religion and politics also so distinctly separated. In Islam, God is Caesar; in China and Japan, Caesar is God; in Orthodoxy, God is Caesar’s junior partner.

The essence of Western civilization is the Magna Carta, not the Magna Mac. The fact that non-Westerners may bite into the latter has no implications for their accepting the former.

If you tell people the world is complicated, you're not doing your job as a social scientist. They already know it's complicated. Your job is to distill it, simplify it.

Falling in love makes you feel immortal. Don’t you want that?

Storms will always rage. Don’t run from them. Face them. Some things in life can only be learned in a storm.

I liked being too much because it meant I was never too little.

I lean against the door, watching my wife exist. Loudly. Messily. Unapologetically. Just the way a woman loved is meant to bloom.

reaffirming their Western identity and Westerners accepting their civilization as unique not universal and uniting to renew and preserve it against challenges from non-Western societies.

Hypocrisy, double standards, and "but nots" are the price of universalist pretensions. Democracy is promoted, but not if it brings Islamic fundamentalists to power; nonproliferation is preached for Iran and Iraq, but not for Israel; free trade is the elixir of economic growth, but not for agriculture; human rights are an issue for China, but not with Saudi Arabia; aggression against oil-owning Kuwaitis is massively repulsed, but not against non-oil-owning Bosnians. Double standards in practice are the unavoidable price of universal standards of principle.

She uncurled my fingers one by one and pressed my palm to my heart. “Hatred comes from here. When you hate someone, a piece of them is lodged in your heart. If you don’t let the hate go, you live with that person inside you forever.

Falling in love with you is like diving blindly into a book, not knowing it’s destined to be my favorite. Whatever’s more than love, I feel it for you. I am only ever going to be in love with you.

Lucy: Why do you want me to stay? Asher: Because I like you. Lucy: Why do you want me to go? Asher: Because I like you.

In a Life that stopped guessing, you and I should not feel at home

The problem with books about suicide is they’re written by people who are alive.

Don’t succumb to the fire. Be the bigger flame.

I shall think of you at sunset, and at sunrise, again; and at noon, and forenoon, and afternoon, and always, and evermore, till this little heart stops beating and is still.

I wasn’t concerned about your sex life because you were a patient,” he said casually. “I’m concerned about it because I want to fuck your brains out until you lose the ability to walk straight. Unfortunately for me.

To lose what we never owned might seem an eccentric Bereavement but Presumption has its Affliction as actually as Claim --

Love is the most expensive thing you’ll ever own. You pay for it with grief, tears, and a piece of your soul, but in return, you receive happiness, memories, and life.

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. Winston Churchill

You make my soul breathe fire, my beautiful dark desire.

You're breathing, Charlie. You are breathing, and it is beautiful, and I am so grateful for that.

Fenway seats just over thirty-seven thousand, about the same number of people as have Huntington’s in the United States. Thirty-seven thousand. It’s a faceless number,

It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation-states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.

the situation between Ukraine and Russia is ripe for the outbreak of security competition between them. Great powers that share a long and unprotected common border, like that between Russia and Ukraine, often lapse into competition driven by security fears. Russia and Ukraine might overcome this dynamic and learn to live together in harmony, but it would be unusual if they do.”16

How vain it seems to write, when one knows how to feel-- how much more near and dear to sit beside you, talk with you, hear the tones of your voice...Give me strength, Susie, write me of hope and love, and of hearts that endure...

What you're experiencing isn't a dry spell. It's a dust bowl. Tell me, do you find cob webs in there every time you get yourself off?

We may not be enemies anymore, Shortbread, but we will never be lovers.

...Dearer you cannot be, for I love you so already, that it almost breaks my heart - perhaps I can love you anew, every day of my life, every morning and evening - oh, if you will let me, how happy I shall be!

You will forgive me, for I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with the Dandelion, make but sorry figure in a Drawing -- room -- Did you ask me out with a bunch of Daisies, I should thank you, and accept --

Love always wins. After every war, there’s a baby boom. After every storm, spring sweeps in and everything blooms. It’s always darkest before the dawn. Love is an effortlessly potent fuel. It is easier to maintain than hate. It doesn’t consume—it fuels.

Is this how Julia Roberts' character feels like in Pretty Woman? Two parts princess, one part whore?

Grief is a side effect of love. It lasts as long as the love lasts. You get used to the pain until you’re reminded it’s there.

interaction of Western arrogance, Islamic intolerance, and Sinic assertiveness. Alone among civilizations the West

there was something perpetually tragic about us. even in moments of peace. we were two empty planets, bound by grief and a gravitational pull neither of us could deny. destined to collide and end in a fiery death.

ability of Asian regimes to resist Western human rights pressures was reinforced by several factors. American and European businesses were desperately anxious to expand their trade with and their investment in these rapidly

These transnationalists have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite's global operations

When I loved a book, I didn’t read it once. I read it over and over again—until the pages fell off, until I could anticipate the words before I read them, until they sunk into me and melted inside my bones in a way that never happened with books I’d only read once.

The argument now that the spread of pop culture and consumer goods around the world represents the triumph of Western civilization trivializes Western culture. The essence of Western civilization is the Magna Carta, not the Magna Mac. The fact that non-Westerners may bite into the latter has no implications for their accepting the former.

i am infront of you, around you, in your head. and i'm here to stay

We have to know who we are before we can know what our interests are.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. Lao Zi

The pendants unite two souls. Fate knows what we don’t.

,To own a Susan of my own Is of itself a Bliss — Whatever realm I forfeit, Lord, Continue me in this!

My first. My only. My always.

I don’t want someone who holds an umbrella over my head when it rains. I want someone who doesn't even own an umbrella. Someone who watches me balter in the rain when they don’t know the word exists. Someone who stares at me instead of the stars in the sky.

In the post-Cold War world flags count and so do other symbols of cultural identity, including crosses, crescents, and even head coverings, because culture counts, and cultural identity is what is most meaningful to most people.

Ottoman Empire. “The West,” writes Huntington, “won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion…but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”29

One grim Weltanschauung for this new era was well expressed by the Venetian nationalist demagogue in Michael Dibdin’s novel, Dead Lagoon: “There can be no true friends without true enemies. Unless we hate what we are not, we cannot love what we are. These are the old truths we are painfully rediscovering after a century and more of sentimental cant. Those who deny them deny their family, their heritage, their culture, their birthright, their very selves! They will not lightly be forgiven.

James Parkinson. George Huntington. Robert Graves. John Down. Now this Lou Gehrig fellow of mine. How did men come to monopolize disease names too?” I blink and my mother blinks back, and then she is laughing and so am I. Even as I crumple inside.

Tacenda originates from the Latin participle taceo for ‘I am silent’. Taceo is also the verb for ‘I am still or at rest’. Taceo reminds us silence isn’t a sign of weakness. It is a sign of rest, of certainty, of contentment. Silence is the best response to people who don’t deserve your words.

I don't know which it is - I only know that when you shall come back again, the Earth will seem more beautiful, and bigger than it does now, and the blue sky from the window will be all dotted with gold - though it may not be evening, or time for the stars to come.

Oh Susie, I would nestle close to your warm heart, and never hear the wind blow, or the storm beat, again. Is there any room there for me, or shall I wander away all homeless and alone? Thank you for loving me, darling...

the distinguished Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington, in his text American Politics, observes that power must remain invisible if it is to be effective: “The architects of power in the United States must create a force that can be felt but not seen. Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate.

You’re going to be my favorite mistake.

Adulation is inexpensive Except to him who accepts it. It has cost him -- Himself.

Again and again both Westerners and non-Westerners point to individualism as the central distinguishing mark of the West.

I would let him ruin me as thoroughly and impressively as Elon Musk destroyed Twitter.

It was the first moment I let myself admit I wanted to be fucked by Dr. Tatum Marchetti. Ruthlessly hard and mercilessly filthy.

It was difficult to reconcile the existence of fairness when Tate Marchetti had been born with an assault rifle for a cock. Thick, hard, and longer than should be legal.

Religion for them, as Régis Debray put it, is not “the opium of the people, but the vitamin of the weak.

Forgiving others is a myth. The only prisoner freed when you forgive someone is you.

I never really gave much thought to Fate, but every time I considered how hard the world must have worked to get our paths to intersect so many different ways, I became a believer.

Break me.” She stared at me like she wasn’t completely whole and didn’t entirely care. “Then put me back together, mismatched, scarred, and chaotic as this storm.

I'd been born with a spine, and I fully intended on using it. Flowers wilted. Girls didn't.

If you were here, and Oh that you were, my Susie, we need not talk at all, our eyes would whisper for us...

To lose what we never owned might seem an eccentric Bereavement but Presumption has its Affliction as actually as Claim —

I feel like your soul and mine are made of the same stuff.

« See you in the next life. Maybe we’ll actually be brothers in that one. »

I drink Coke-zero while I score coke from an honors student in Huntington Beach.

Jessica Huntington was lying to herself. Cooper didn’t know why, but he was going to find out. By then the doc would be in his bed. Right where they both knew she belonged.

Hiraeth is a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was. It is the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past. I’ve always thought of it as the saddest entry in the dictionary.

The evolutionary process cares little about what happens to us after we have children and get them to a safe age, so there are a whole bunch of middle-aged maladies, including Huntington’s and most forms of cancer, that we humans would want to eliminate, even though nature sees no need to.

What, however, makes culture and ideology attractive? They become attractive when they are seen as rooted in material success and influence. Soft power is power only when it rests on a foundation of hard power. Increases in hard economic and military power produce enhanced self-confidence, arrogance, and belief in the superiority of one’s own culture or soft power compared to those of other peoples and greatly increase its attractiveness to other peoples. Decreases in economic and military power lead to self-doubt, crises of identity, and efforts to find in other cultures the keys to economic, military, and political success.

Bolt is a contronym—a word that is opposite itself. If you bolt something, you hold it together. If you bolt, you separate by fleeing. Bolt is a reminder that words were made by humans, and sometimes, humans make mistakes. Mistakes are powerful, not because they have the power to ruin your life, but because they possess the power to make you stronger.

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.

You must let me go first, Sue, because I live in the Sea always and know the Road – I would have drowned twice to save you sinking, dear, If I could only have covered your Eyes so you would’nt have seen the Water –

He taught me darkness. He taught me strength. Most importantly, he delivered the cruelest lesson of all—there’s beauty in every beast. Thorns in every rose. And a love story can blossom—even from the carcass of hate.

There are a number of good books that draw upon fox legends -- foremost among them, Kij Johnson's exquisite novel The Fox Woman. I also recommend Neil Gaiman's The Dream Hunters (with the Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano);  Larissa Lai's unusual novel, When Fox Is a Thousand; Helen Oyeyemi's recent novel, Mr. Fox; and Ellen Steiber's gorgeous urban fantasy novel, A Rumor of Gems, as well as her heart-breaking novella "The Fox Wife" (published in Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears). For younger readers, try the "Legend of Little Fur" series by Isobelle Carmody.  You can also support a fine mythic writer by subscribing to Sylvia Linsteadt's The Gray Fox Epistles: Wild Tales By Mail.  For the fox in myth, legend, and lore, try: Fox by Martin Wallen; Reynard the Fox, edited by Kenneth Varty; Kitsune: Japan's Fox of Mystery, Romance, and Humour by Kiyoshi Nozaki;Alien Kind: Foxes and Late Imperial Chinese Narrative by Raina Huntington; The Discourse on Foxes and Ghosts: Ji Yun and Eighteenth-Century Literati Storytelling by Leo Tak-hung Chan; and The Fox and the Jewel: Shared and Private Meanings in Contemporary Japanese Inari Worship, by Karen Smythers.

When you come home, darling, I shant have your letters, but I shall have yourself, which is more-- oh more, and better, than I can even think! I sit here with my little whip, cracking the time away, 'till not an hour is left of it- then you are here! And joy is here-- joy now and forevermore! Tis only a few days, Susie, it will soon go away, yet I say, "go now, this very moment, for I need her- I must have her, oh, give her to me!" Sometimes when I do feel so, I think it may be wrong, and that God will punish me by taking you away; for He is very kind to let me write to you, and to give me your sweet letters, but my heart wants more.

Thus with a kiss I die.

And, I realized, I love her. “Ask me the question, Tiger.” Her eyes fluttered open, not staring at me but into me. “Is this just lust?” “It's everything.

Where you are is always where you are meant to be.

If you keep staring at my cock with your mouth open like that, I’m going to take it as an invitation to enter.” My mouth watered. “Please, do.

Balter?” “To dance—artlessly, with no grace, no skill, but always with enjoyment.

People assume strength is loud. In reality, strength is silent. It is resilience, the will to never surrender your dignity.

Cultural assertion follows material success; hard power generates soft power.

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore. André Gide

querencia.

Just remember you are the most precious woman in my life.” “Why are you reminding me that?” “Because I’m about to treat you like a dirty whore.

I write from the Land of Violets, and from the Land of Spring...

By the time we fell asleep, I’d planted flowers in Nash’s graveyard of haunted memories. Wilted ones, because those were me. And he watered them with stormwater, because that was him

When the battery in my watch died, I still wore it. There was something about the watch that said: It doesn’t matter what time it is. Think in months. Years. Someone loves you. Where are you going? There are some things you will never do. It doesn’t matter. There is no rush. Be the best prisoner you can be.

Art is not stuff.” He put his hand over mine to stop me from tapping my knee. “It’s a person’s soul poured into material. Souls are priceless, Zach. Try to protect yours any way you can.

On January 3, 1992, a meeting of Russian and American scholars took place in the auditorium of a government building in Moscow. Two weeks earlier the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and the Russian Federation had become an independent country. As a result, the statue of Lenin which previously graced the stage of the auditorium had disappeared and instead the flag of the Russian Federation was now displayed on the front wall. The only problem, one American observed, was that the flag had been hung upside down.

Cultural arena” thus became the key postliberal concept, supplanting the “individual” in the idealist geography and history of Carl Ritter’s generation.35 Those ideas, later to resurface in the work of Samuel P. Huntington, were a typical fin de siècle phenomenon, expressing an oversimplistic view of the world such as was also to be found in the terminology used by followers of geopolitics.

America's industrial success produced a roll call of financial magnificence: Rockefellers, Morgans, Astors, Mellons, Fricks, Carnegies, Goulds, du Ponts, Belmonts, Harrimans, Huntingtons, Vanderbilts, and many more based in dynastic wealth of essentially inexhaustible proportions. John D. Rockefeller made $1 billion a year, measured in today's money, and paid no income tax. No one did, for income tax did not yet exist in America. Congress tried to introduce an income tax of 2 percent on earnings of $4,000 in 1894, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. Income tax wouldn't become a regular part of American Life until 1914. People would never be this rich again. Spending all this wealth became for many a more or less full-time occupation. A kind of desperate, vulgar edge became attached to almost everything they did. At one New York dinner party, guests found the table heaped with sand and at each place a little gold spade; upon a signal, they were invited to dig in and search for diamonds and other costly glitter buried within. At another party - possibly the most preposterous ever staged - several dozen horses with padded hooves were led into the ballroom of Sherry's, a vast and esteemed eating establishment, and tethered around the tables so that the guests, dressed as cowboys and cowgirls, could enjoy the novel and sublimely pointless pleasure of dining in a New York ballroom on horseback.

Do I repine, is it all murmuring, or am I sad and lone, and cannot, cannot help it? Sometimes when I do feel so, I think it may be wrong, and that God will punish me by taking you away; for he is very kind to let me write to you, and to give me your sweet letters, but my heart wants more.

I do. Let’s cut the shit and stop pretending that we’re strangers. You never belonged with Reed, Little Tiger. He is domesticated. You are wild. To tame you would be a travesty. The sooner you get that, the sooner you can move on.

Finifugal originates from the Latin word fuga, for flight. It shows us that endings are fleeting. We may hate them. We may fear them. We may avoid them. But we don’t need to. Like sunsets, endings can be beautiful. The next morning, the sun always rises again, because there is no such thing as an ending, just a new beginning.

The philosophical assumptions, underlying values, social relations, customs, and overall outlooks on life differ significantly among civilizations. The revitalization of religion throughout much of the world is reinforcing these cultural differences. Cultures can change, and the nature of their impact on politics and economics can vary from one period to another. Yet the major differences in political and economic development among civilizations are clearly rooted in their different cultures. East Asian economic success has its source in East Asian culture, as do the difficulties East Asian societies have had in achieving stable democratic political systems. Islamic culture explains in large part the failure of democracy to emerge in much of the Muslim world.

Ob-gyns don’t have the best dirty talk game in the world, huh?”My back was to Tate when he answered me. “Bet you all the pennies in your cheap little purse that I can make you drip cum on my face in less than ten seconds—before I even use my tongue or cock.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. Winston Churchill

I fell down on my knees. My hands hit the concrete, and I felt something. I picked it up, squeezing it in my hand. A penny. He’d left me a gift. His very own version of goodbye.

Do you think you’re in anyone’s favorite memory?

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. Anaïs Nin

Cages aren’t made of bars. They’re made of thoughts, expectations, and fear.

her presence soothed me where i normally burned

I like my things mine. Concealed from view. For my own private entertainment.

Evil had a face. It was breathtakingly beautiful…and belonged to the man who had just become my future husband.

No, my precious Shortbread. That once broken, a heart can never mend. Function—yes. But you cannot repair something that is already in pieces.

You never really lose people if your memories are greater than your pain , because the heart still holds on when reality has made you let it go.

It is absurd to assume that the new political societies emerging in the East will be copies of the societies we know in the West.

People are hardwired to believe charity is selfless. In reality, charity is giving to yourself by giving to others. That’s not selfless. That’s penance.

He did, because he gave me the most wonderful gift before he died. He gave me Venom.

We weren’t even acquaintances. Just two passing strangers who happened to be mourning the same person.

No horoscope matches this accuracy. No theory of human causality, Freudian, Marxist, Christian or animist, has ever been so precise. No prophet in the Old Testament, no entrail-grazing oracle in ancient Greece, no crystal-ball gypsy clairvoyant on the pier at Bognor Regis ever pretended to tell people exactly when their lives would fall apart, let alone got it right.

Charlie kissed Kellan, and he wrote an entire book about it. Named it after her taste. Immortalized her inside the same coffin he’d locked his soul. And above all, he’d given them a happy ending.

You should leave her entirely." Caire's mouth twisted humourlessly. "I find I cannot." "Why?" St. John shook his head. "She isn't even your type." "What is my type?" St. John glanced away. They both knew well enough the kind of women Caire favoured. "There's something about her," Caire said in a low voice. "She cares for everyone about her, yet neglects herself. I want to be the one who cares for her.

Today China’s economic power,” Richard Nixon observed in 1994, “makes U.S. lectures about human rights imprudent. Within a decade it will make them irrelevant. Within two decades it will make them laughable.

It seems to me that the greatest adventure is to find a home in the world, particularly in the natural world, to earn a sense of belonging deeply to a place and to feel the deep response well up within you and become a part of you. When it is done, it can't be lost; the knowledge is as acute and sure as falling in love.

Why?" she asked urgently. "Why me?" "Because," he murmured, "you draw me. Because you are kind but not soft. Because you cradle a desperate secret to your bosom, like a viper in your arms, and don't let go of it even as it gnaws on your very flesh. I want to pry that viper from your arms. To take that pain within myself and make it mine.

Nash reminded me of a favorite song. One you play so often you think you can't stand anymore. But in the silence, when the world is quiet and your brain is pliant, the chords repeat in your mind, and you remember it’s your favorite melody.

Bolt is a contronym—a word that is opposite itself. If you bolt something, you hold it together. If you bolt, you separate by fleeing. Bolt is a reminder that words were made by humans, and sometimes, humans make mistakes. Mistakes are powerful, not because they have the power to ruin your life, but because they possess the power to make you stronger. The worst mistakes make the greatest lessons, and those who learn them… bolt. It’s your journey to figure out which bolt.

That’s swell. That’s what I call answering like a man. When is your birthday?” “In January.” “I’d have sworn to it. So is mine. I believe the highest types are born in January. It’s barometric—you can look it up in Ellsworth Huntington. The parents make love in spring when the organism is healthiest and then the best specimens are conceived. If you want children you should plan to knock up your dear one in that season. Ancient wisdom is right. Now science comes lately and finds it out.

I love words, because they're mine. Utterly, completely mine. I can share them with others. I can keep them to myself. I can use them over and over again. No matter what I do, they’ll always be mine. No one can take them from me. Want to know what the best part is?” “I’m sure you’ll tell me.” “The existence of a word proves that someone in the history of humanity felt the same way I did and gave it a name. It means we’re not alone. If there’s a word for what we're feeling, we’re never alone.” “Tell

The prevalence of anti-patriotic attitudes among liberal intellectuals led some of them to warn their fellow liberals of the consequences of such attitudes for the future not of America but of American liberalism. Most Americans, as the American public philosopher Richard Rorty has written, take pride in their country, but 'many of the exceptions to this rule are found in colleges and universities, in the academic departments that have become sanctuaries for left-wing political views.' These leftists have done 'a great deal of good for . . . women, African-Americans, gay men and lesbians. . . . But there is a problem with this Left: it is unpatriotic. It repudiates the idea of a national identity and the emotion of national pride.' If the Left is to retain influence, it must recognize that a 'sense of shared national identity . . . is an absolutely essential component of citizenship.' Without patriotism, the Left will be unable to achieve its goals for America. Liberals, in short, must use patriotism as a means to achieve liberal goals

Moira is the idea that each person possesses a predetermined course of events that shapes his or her life. It is the idea that some events are inevitable—a person’s fate (every decision leading to the present) and their destiny (the future) is not always in his or her control.

There is a significant hereditary contribution to ADD but I do not believe any genetic factor is decisive in the emergence of ADD traits in any child. Genes are codes for the synthesis of the proteins that give a particular cell its characteristic structure and function. They are, as it were, alive and dynamic architectural and mechanical plans. Whether the plan becomes realized depends on far more than the gene itself. It is determined, for the most part, by the environment. To put it differently, genes carry potentials inherent in the cells of a given organism. Which of multiple potentials become expressed biologically is a question of life circumstances. Were we to adopt the medical model — only temporarily, for the sake of argument — a genetic explanation by itself would still be unsuitable. Medical conditions for which genetic inheritance are fully or even mostly responsible, such as muscular dystrophy, are rare. “Few diseases are purely genetic,” says Michael Hayden, a geneticist at the University of British Columbia and a world-renowned researcher into Huntington’s disease. “The most we can say is that some diseases are strongly genetic.” Huntington’s is a fatal degeneration of the nervous system based on a single gene that, if inherited, will almost invariably cause the disease. But not always. Dr. Hayden mentions cases of persons with the gene who live into ripe old age without any signs of the disease itself. “Even in Huntington’s, there must be some protective factor in the environment,” Dr. Hayden says.

America's core culture has been and, at the moment, is still primarily the culture of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century settlers who founded American society. The central elements of that culture can be defined in a variety of ways but include the Christian religion, Protestant values and moralism, a work ethic, the English language, British traditions of law, justice, and the limits of government power, and a legacy of European art, literature, philosophy, and music.

This changing international environment brought to the fore the fundamental cultural differences between Asian and American civilizations. At the broadest level the Confucian ethos pervading many Asian societies stressed the values of authority, hierarchy, the subordination of individual rights and interests, the importance of consensus, the avoidance of confrontation, “saving face,” and, in general, the supremacy of the state over society and of society over the individual. In addition, Asians tended to think of the evolution of their societies in terms of centuries and millennia and to give priority to maximizing long-term gains. These attitudes contrasted with the primacy in American beliefs of liberty, equality, democracy, and individualism, and the American propensity to distrust government, oppose authority, promote checks and balances, encourage competition, sanctify human rights, and to forget the past, ignore the future, and focus on maximizing immediate gains. The sources of conflict are in fundamental differences in society and culture.

The West is and will remain for years to come the most powerful civilization. Yet its power relative to that of other civilizations is declining. As the West attempts to assert its values and to protect its interests, non-Western societies confront a choice. Some attempt to emulate the West and to join or to "bandwagon" with the West. Other Confucian and Islamic societies attempt to expand their own economic and military power to resist and to "balance" against the West. A central axis of post--Cold War world politics is thus the interaction of Western power and culture with the power and culture of non-Western civilizations. In sum, the post--Cold War world is a world of seven or eight major civilizations. Cultural commonalities and differences shape the interests, antagonisms, and associations of states. The most important countries in the world come overwhelmingly from different civilizations. The local conflicts most likely to escalate into broader wars are those between groups and states from different civilizations. The predominant patterns of political and economic development differ from civilization to civilization. The key issues on the international agenda involve differences among civilizations. Power is shifting from the long predominant West to non-Western civilizations. Global politics has become multipolar and multicivilizational.

In addition, as the Russians stopped behaving like Marxists and began behaving like Russians, the gap between Russia and the West broadened. The conflict between liberal democracy and Marxist-Leninism was between ideologies which, despite their major differences, were both modern and secular and ostensibly shared ultimate goals of freedom, equality, and material well-being. A Western democrat could carry on an intellectual debate with a Soviet Marxist. It would be impossible for him to do that with a Russian Orthodox nationalist.

ASPARTAME AND MSG: EXCITOTOXINS Aspartame is, in fact, an excitotoxin, one of a group of substances, usually acidic amino acids, that in high amounts react with specialized receptors in the brain, causing destruction of certain types of neurons. A growing number of neurosurgeons and neurologists are convinced that excitotoxins play a critical role in the development of several neurological disorders, including migraines, seizures, learning disorders in children, and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).1 Glutamate and aspartate are two powerful amino acids that act as neurotransmitters in the brain in very small concentrations, but they are also commonly available in food additives. Glutamate is in MSG, a flavor enhancer, and in hydrolyzed vegetable protein, found in hundreds of processed foods. Aspartate is one of three components of aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal), a sugar substitute. In higher concentrations as food additives, these chemicals constantly stimulate brain cells and can cause them to undergo a process of cell death known as excitotoxicity—the cells are excited to death.

Some Americans have promoted multiculturalism at home; some have promoted universalism abroad; and some have done both. Multiculturalism at home threatens the United States and the West; universalism abroad threatens the West and the world. Both deny the uniqueness of Western culture. The global monoculturalists want to make the world like America. The domestic mulitculturalists want to make America like the world. A multicultural America is impossible because a non-Western America is not American. A multicultural world is unavoidable because global empire is impossible. The preservation of the United States and the West requires the renewal of Western identity. The security of the world requires acceptance of global multiculturality.

Temperance Dews stood with quiet confidence, a respectable women who lived in the sewer that was St. Giles. Her eyes had widened at the sight of Lazarus, but she made no move to flee. Indeed, finding a strange man in her pathetic sitting room seemed not to frighten her at all. Interesting. “I am Lazarus Huntington, Lord Caire,” he said. “I know. What are you doing here?” He tilted his head, studying her. She knew him, yet did not recoil in horror? Yes, she’d do quite well. “I’ve come to make a proposition to you, Mrs. Dews.” Still no sign of fear, though she eyed the doorway. “You’ve chosen the wrong woman, my lord. The night is late. Please leave my house.” No fear and no deference to his rank. An interesting woman indeed. “My proposition is not, er, illicit in nature,” he drawled. “In fact, it’s quite respectable. Or nearly so.” She sighed, looked down at her tray, and then back up at him. “Would you like a cup of tea?” He almost smiled. Tea? When had he last been offered something so very prosaic by a woman? He couldn’t remember. But he replied gravely enough. “Thank you, no.” She nodded. “Then if you don’t mind?” He waved a hand to indicate permission. She set the tea tray on the wretched little table and sat on the padded footstool to pour herself a cup. He watched her. She was a monochromatic study. Her dress, bodice, hose, and shoes were all flat black. A fichu tucked in at her severe neckline, an apron, and cap—no lace or ruffles—were all white. No color marred her aspect, making the lush red of her full lips all the more startling. She wore the clothes of a nun, yet had the mouth of a sybarite. The contrast was fascinating—and arousing. “You’re a Puritan?” he asked. Her beautiful mouth compressed. “No.

Historically, American liberals have been idealists, pressing forward toward the goals of greater freedom, social equality, and more meaningful democracy. The articulate exposition of a liberal ideology was necessary to convert others to liberal ideas and to reform existing institutions continuously along liberal lines. Today, however, the greatest need is not so much the creation of more liberal institutions as the successful defense of those which already exist. This defense requires American liberals to lay aside their liberal ideology and to accept the values of conservatism for the duration of the threat. Only by surrendering their liberal ideas for the present can liberals successfully defend their liberal institutions for the future. Liberals should not fear this change. Is a liberal any less liberal because he adjusts his thinking so as to defend most effectively the most liberal institutions in the world? To continue to expound the philosophy of liberalism simply gives the enemy a weapon with which to attack the society of liberalism. The defense of American institutions requires a conscious articulate conservatism which can spring only from liberals deeply concerned with the preservation of those institutions. As Boorstin, Niebuhr, and others have pointed out, the American political genius is manifest not in our ideas but in our institutions. The stimulus to conservatism comes not from the outworn creeds of third-rate thinkers but from the successful performance of first-rate institutions. … Conservatism does not ask ultimate questions and hence does not give final answers. But it does remind men of the institutional prerequisites of social order. And when these prerequisites are threatened, conservatism is not only appropriate, it is essential. In preserving the achievements of American liberalism, American liberals have no recourse but to turn to conservatism. For them especially, conservative ideology has a place in America today.

She was too narcoleptic to speak. Or move. How long had this been going on? Was she like this yesterday? Had I missed her illness in my quest to prove to my brain that my dick wasn’t the one behind this train wreck’s wheel? I touched her forehead again. It sizzled. “Sweetheart.” “Please get out.” The words clawed past her throat. “Someone needs to take care of you.” “That someone definitely isn’t you. You made that clear these past couple days.” I said nothing. She was right. I hadn’t bothered to check on her. Perhaps I’d wished she’d check on me. In truth, she’d already gone beyond any expectations in trying to make whatever it was between us work. Meanwhile, I’d shut her down. Repeatedly. “Shortbread, let me get you some medicine and tea.” “I don’t want you to nurse me to health. Do you hear me?” She must have hated that I’d seen her like this. Weak and ill. “Call Momma and Frankie. It’s them I want by my side.” I swallowed but didn’t argue. I understood she didn’t want to feel humiliated. To be taken care of by the man who ensured she understood her insignificance to him. How did her bullshit meter not fry? How could she think I really felt nothing toward her? “First, I’ll get you medicine, tea, and water. Then I’ll call for Hettie to stay with you. Then I’ll notify your mother.” I tugged her comforter up to her chin. “No arguments.” She tried to wave me out, groaning at the slightest movement. “Whatever. Just go. I don’t want to see your face.” I gave her what she wanted, though as always, not in the way she expected. The sequence of actions didn’t proceed as promised. First, I contacted Cara to dispatch the private jet to Georgia. Then I called my mother-in-law and Franklin—separately—demanding their presence. Only then did I enter the kitchen to grab water, tea, and ibuprofen for Shortbread’s fever. Naturally, like the chronic idler he often proved to be, Oliver still sat at the island, now enjoying an extra-large slice of red velvet cake I was pretty sure was meant to be consumed by Dallas. “What are you still doing here?” I demanded, collecting the things I needed for her. He scratched his temple with the handle of his fork, brows pulled together. “You invited me here. You wanted to watch a soccer game, remember?” I did not remember. I didn’t even remember my own address right now. “Get out.” “What about the—” I snatched the plate from his fingers, admitting to myself that I’d treaded into feral grounds. “This cake wasn’t for you to eat.” “You’ve gone insane in the ten minutes you were gone.” Oliver gawked at me, wide-eyed. “What happened to you? Did Durban not get her hands on the latest Henry Plotkin book and take her anger out on you?” Shit. The Henry Plotkin book. I shoved Oliver out with a fork still clutched in his grimy fist, dialing Hettie with my free hand. She half-yawned, half-spoke. “Yes?” “Dallas is ill. You need to come here and take care of her until my in-laws arrive in about two hours.” “Oh, yeah?” Her energy returned tenfold. “And what the hell are you gonna do during this time?” “Freeze my balls off.”(Chapter 58)