Inspection Love Quotes

It's been six months since she died. But Ove still inspects the whole house twice a day to feel the radiators and check that she hasn't sneakily turned up the heating.

His mouth captured hers, trying to show her with his kiss what he was still learning to express in words. He loved her. He worshipped her. He'd walk across fire for her. He— —still had the audience of her three brothers. Slowly breaking the kiss, he turned his face to the side. Anthony, Benedict, and Colin were still standing in the foyer. Anthony was studying the ceiling, Benedict was pretending to inspect his fingernails, and Colin was staring quite shamelessly.

I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans.

I do not like to work with patients who are in love. Perhaps it is because of envy—I, too, crave enchantment. Perhaps it is because love and psychotherapy are fundamentally incompatible. The good therapist fights darkness and seeks illumination, while romantic love is sustained by mystery and crumbles upon inspection. I hate to be love’s executioner.

Claire freed him, and then lifted Ryan to his feet. She pushed back his head to inspect his wound, overly rough. “You’ll live.” Ryan winced. “Thanks, Honey, I love you, too.

The first study for the man who wants to be a poet is knowledge of himself, complete: he searches for his soul, he inspects it, he puts it to the test, he learns it. As soon as he has learned it, he must cultivate it! I say that one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet becomes a seer through a long, immense, and reasoned derangement of all the senses. All shapes of love suffering, madness. He searches himself, he exhausts all poisons in himself, to keep only the quintessences. Ineffable torture where he needs all his faith, all his superhuman strength, where he becomes among all men the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed one--and the supreme Scholar! For he reaches the unknown! ....So the poet is actually a thief of Fire!

She wished she could explore his body and inspect him. Learn him and memorize him. That way she'd know what to miss when he was gone. Sam was heartbreakingly, hauntingly beautiful. It made her heart hurt. This couldn't end well.

I lean across his body and lift his hand for inspection. As i run my fingertips over his broken skin, careful not to cause more pain, I say "I meant you blowfish. Your bones." His hand trembles a little in mine. Somehow that rattles me more then anything else. I could deal with losing my fantasy Brody more then i can face a very real, trembling Quince. "No," He whispers. "I pulled my punches." Then, with some of his usual humor, he adds, "Principal Brown already thinks I'm one step away from juvie. Don't need to put myself there." I look up ready to argue, when a lumpy spot in his heather gray t-shirt catches my eye. Lifting my fingers to the place just beneath his collarbone, I'm both surprised and not to feel a sand-dollar shaped object. My gaze continues the journey up to his. "Your still wearing it." We both know it's not a question, just like we both seem to have lost the ability to breathe. A whole sea of emotions washes though his eyes-fear,anger, pain, trust, love. Love. It's when i see that last one that i close my eyes. He whispers, "Always.

Dating is probably the most fraught human interaction there is. You're sizing people up to see if they're worth your time and attention, and they're doing the same to you. It's meritocracy applied to personal life, but there's no accountability. We submit ourselves to these intimate inspections and simultaneously inflict them on others and try to keep our psyches intact - to keep from becoming cold and callous - and we hope that at the end of it we wind up happier than our grandparents, who didn't spend this vast period of their lives, these prime years, so thoroughly alone, coldly and explicitly anatomized again and again.

Distance gives a clearer view. You can't see the facade of a building while staying inside.

In the end, it seems to me that forgiveness may be the only realistic antidote we are offered in love, to combat the inescapable disappointments of intimacy." “Women’s sense of integrity seems to be entwined with an ethic of care, so that to see themselves as women as to see themselves in a relationship of connection…I believe that many modern women, my mother included, carry within them a whole secret New England cemetery, wherein that have quietly buried in many neat rows– the personal dreams they have given up for their families…(Women) have a sort of talent for changing form, enabling them to dissolve and then flow around the needs of their partners, or the needs of their children, or the needs of mere quotidian reality. They adjust, adapt, glide, accept.” “The cold ugly fact is that marriage does not benefit women as much as it benefits men. From studies, married men perform dazzingly better in life, live longer, accumulate more, excel at careers, report to be happier, less likely to die from a violent death, suffer less from alcoholism, drug abuse, and depression than single man…The reverse is not true. In fact, every fact is reverse, single women fare much better than married women. On average, married women take a 7% pay cut. All of this adds up to what Sociologists called the “Marriage Benefit Imbalance”…It is important to pause here and inspect why so women long for it (marriage) so deeply.

I'd rather hang out with five people that I love than with 400 strangers at a club who are all doing the up-and-down inspection thing. They appraise everybody from head to toe - the outfit, the handbag, the shoes, how much they weigh... I can't stand it!

I smashed his hand as hard as I could with the Wiffle bat. "Ow!" he screamed. Carson was rubbing his red palm, inspecting it for damage. "That hurt," he shrieked. "You really hurt me." "Right back at you," I said. "Good-bye Carson." He frowned, massaging his hand, the big baby. "I just wanted to end this nicely." "Yeah?" I cocked the bat up to hit him again. "Well, this time you don't get what you want.

Ralston didn't care. He turned on his brother as the surgeon knelt next to him and inspected the wound. "She could have been killed!" And what about you?" This time, it was Callie who spoke, her own pent-up energy releasing in anger, and the men turned as one to look at her, surprised that she and found her voice. "What about you and your idiotic pland to somehow restore my honor by playing guns out in the middle of nowhere with OXFORD?" She said the baron's name in disdain. "Like children? Of all the ridiculous, unnecessary, thoughtless, MALE things to do...who even FIGHTS duels anymore?!

We ate, we slept, we formed our kaleidoscopic relationships and marched ever forward. We licked chocolate from our fingers. We arranged flowers in vases. We inspected our backsides when we tried on new clothes. We gave ourselves over to art. We elected officials and complained. We stood up for home runs. We marked life passages in ceremonies we attended with impatience and pride. We reached out for new love when what we had died, confessing our unworthiness, confessing our great need. We felt at times that perhaps we really were visitors from another planet. We occasionally wondered if it was true that each of us was making everything up. But this was a wobbly saucer; this was thinking we could not endure; we went back to our elegant denial of unbreachable isolation, to refusing the lesson of being born alone and dying that way, too. We went back to loving, to eating, to sleeping, to marching and marching and marching along.

Foreigners have been encouraged to settle among you. Industry and virtue have been promoted by mutual emulation and mutual inspection; commerce and the arts have flourished; and I cannot help attributing those continual exertions of genius which appear among you to the inspiration of liberty, and that love of fame and knowledge which always accompany it. Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind, and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect. How far this is the case with Virginia will more clearly appear when the ensuing trial is made. [Letter to William Bradford Jr. April 1 1774]

Dear Fellow Human Being, You are born wild, You do not deserve to be tamed! Tell yourself, You do not deserve this! All those toxic words you have to listen from people, All those fears they try to pin on your mind, All those giggles they aim at your dreams, All those judgmental stares inspecting your individuality, All those fingers pointing towards your crude character, All those shackles that tie your feet to social expectations, All those cages that do not let your imagination fly free, Listen deeply, you do not deserve any of it. My dear fellow human, you do not deserve this hostility. You are born wild, You do not deserve to be tamed!

Jesus,” Kiernan said as he stepped from the Bronco and a gust of frigid wind lifted his hair. “I think my testicles just climbed up into my abdominal cavity in fear.” Matt chuckled. “Lovely visual.” He cautiously joined him on the icy sidewalk. “They’ll come back out of hiding as soon as you warm up.” “So you say. The poor things aren’t used to this kind of weather. It’s traumatizing. I’m going to expect you to check later to make sure they’re still where they belong.” “I can certainly make an inspection of the general area. I’m a detective. It’s all about gathering evidence.

We want lovers, friends, recruits, soldiers, and affiliations that support who we are. People, individuals, believe in themselves, want to survive, and on a Darwinistic level at least, want to have more, of ourselves. Initially, this is a visual choice. The where, what, when, and who…to our why. Upon closer inspection, which is the upfall of the politically correct culture of today, we learn to measure people on the competence of their values that we most value. When we do this, the politics of gender, race, and slanderous slang take a back seat to the importance of the values we share. The more we travel, the more we realize how similar our human needs are. We want to be loved, have a family, community, have something to look forward to. These basic needs are present in all socioeconomic and cultural civilizations. I have seen many tribes in the deserts of Northern Africa who, with nine children and no electricity, had more joy, love, honor, and laughter than the majority of the most materially rich people I’ve ever met. We have the choice to love, befriend, recruit, call to arms, associate, and support who we believe in, and more importantly, who, we believe, believes in us.

What is that?” Addison inspects the food with a look of sheer revulsion on her face. You’d swear I just handed her a plate full of arsenic. “The Works Burger with fries and extra onions and cheese, exactly as you ordered.” I keep my voice level. She sends me a scathing look. “Do I look like I’d ever consume that amount of saturated fat?

Though they were separated by two screens and vast amounts of empty space, she could feel the link being forged between them in that look. A bond that couldn’t be broken. Their eyes had met for the first time, and by the look of pure amazement on his face, she knew he felt it too. Heat crept up into her cheeks. Her hands began to shake. “Aces,” Carswell Thorne murmured. Dropping his feet to the ground, he leaned forward to inspect her closer. “Is that all hair?” The bond snapped, the fantasy of one perfect true-love moment disintegrating around her.

Dear Fellow Human Being, You are born wild, You do not deserve to be tamed! Tell yourself, You do not deserve this! All those toxic words you have to listen from people, All those fears they try to pin on your mind, All those giggles they aim at your dreams, All those judgmental stares inspecting your individuality, All those fingers pointing towards your crude character, All those shackles that tie your feet to social expectations, All those cages that do not let your imagination fly free, Listen deeply, you do not deserve any of it. My dear fellow human, you do not deserve this hostility. You are born wild, You do not deserve to be tamed! ― Jasz Gill

The Christian soul knows it needs Divine Help and therefore turns to Him Who loved us even while we were yet sinners. Examination of conscience, instead of inducing morbidity, thereby becomes an occasion of joy. There are two ways of knowing how good and loving God is. One is by never losing Him, through the preservation of innocence, and the other is by finding Him after one has lost Him. Repentance is not self-regarding, but God-regarding. It is not self-loathing, but God-loving. Christianity bids us accept ourselves as we really are, with all our faults and our failings and our sins. In all other religions, one has to be good to come to God—in Christianity one does not. Christianity might be described as a “come as you are” party. It bids us stop worrying about ourselves, stop concentrating on our faults and our failings, and thrust them upon the Saviour with a firm resolve of amendment. The examination of conscience never induces despair, always hope…Because examination of conscience is done in the light of God’s love, it begins with a prayer to the Holy Spirit to illumine our minds. A soul then acts toward the Spirit of God as toward a watchmaker who will fix our watch. We put a watch in his hands because we know he will not force it, and we put our souls in God’s hands because we know that if he inspects them regularly they will work as they should…it is true that, the closer we get to God, the more we see our defects. A painting reveals few defects under candlelight, but the sunlight may reveal it as daub. The very good never believe themselves very good, because they are judging themselves by the Ideal. In perfect innocence each soul, like the Apostles at the Last Supper, cries out, “Is it I, Lord” (Matt. 26:22).

God is like a child, constantly in need of Love and guidance; being told what to do, what to think, what to believe. On closer inspection, we might find that every story ever written is but a moral on this very subject.

Carol would not be a bad one to [settle down] with. She's pretty and bright, and maybe this is what love is. She's good company: her interests broaden almost every day. She reads three books to my one, and I read a lot. We talk far into the night. She still doesn't understand the first edition game: Hemingway, she says, reads just as well in a two-bit paperback as he does in a $500 first printing. I can still hear myself lecturing her the first time she said that. Only a fool would read a first edition. Simply having such a book makes life in general and Hemingway in particular go better when you do break out the reading copies. I listened to myself and thought, This woman must think I'm a government-inspected horse's ass. Then I showed her my Faulkners, one with a signature, and I saw her shiver with an almost sexual pleasure as she touched the paper where he signed. Faulkner was her most recent god[.]

The young girl inspected her flounces and smoothed her ribbons again; and Winterbourne presently risked an observation upon the beauty of the view. He was ceasing to be embarrassed, for he had begun to perceive that she was not in the least embarrassed herself.

His hair, at first glance, appears merely dark, but upon closer inspection is actually many strands of chestnut brown, gold, and black. He wears it long, for a guy, not because doing so is “in,” but because he’s too busy with his many interests to remember to get it cut regularly. His eyes seem dark at first glance, as well, but are actually a kaleidoscope of russets and mahoganies, flecked here and there with ruby and gold, like twin lakes during an Indian summer, into which you feel as if you could dive and swim forever. Nose: aquiline. Mouth: imminently kissable. Neck: aromatic—an intoxicating blend of Tide from his shirt collar, Gillette shaving foam, and Ivory soap, which together spell: my boyfriend. B– Better. I would have liked more description on what exactly about his mouth you find so imminently kissable. —C. Martinez

It would be nice to think that the menacing aspects of North Korea were for display also, that the bombs and reactors were Potemkin showcases or bargaining chips. On the plane from Beijing I met a group of unsmiling Texan types wearing baseball caps. They were the 'in-country' team from the International Atomic Energy Agency, there to inspect and neutralize North Korea's plutonium rods. Not a nice job, but, as they say, someone has to do it. Speaking of the most controversial reactor at Yongbyon, one of the guys said, 'No sweat. She's shut down now.' Nice to know. But then, so is the rest of North Korean society shut down—animation suspended, all dead quiet on the set, endlessly awaiting not action (we hope) or even cameras, but light.

And most of all I will love myself. For when I do I will zealously inspect all things which enter my body, my mind, my soul, and my heart. Never will I overindulge the requests of my flesh, rather I will cherish my body with cleanliness and moderation. Never will I allow my mind to be attracted to evil and despair, rather I will uplift it with the knowledge and wisdom of the ages. Never will I allow my soul to become complacent and satisfied, rather I will feed it with meditation and prayer. Never will I allow my heart to become small and bitter, rather I will share it and it will grow and warm the earth.

Well, cast your mind back to the books he wrote. What is the one theme that keeps recurring from book to book? It is that the woman doesn’t fall in love with the man. The man may or may not love the woman; but the woman never loves the man. What do you think that theme reflects? My guess, my highly informed guess, is that it reflects his life experience. Women didn’t fall for him—not women in their right senses. They inspected him, maybe they even tried him our. Then they moved on.

Our journey progressed very slowly, because Danny wanted to stop and look at everything. Absolutely everything. If I didn’t love him so much, I would have already told him—several times—that not every plant or rock or bug warranted a thorough inspection and ten questions. Is it poisonous? What are those spikes for? Will it bite me? Why does it look like a dick?

The monsoons had cooled down the temperature and a thick blanket, folded into a perfect rectangle, lay at the foot of my bed. Grandma must have come to inspect the settings a hundred times, being a perfectionist. Her love was evident in every little thing that was present in the house. It was soothing to be back in the house. Something unwounded from within, the moment I entered it.

Do you think, little flower, that there will ever come a day when you regret meeting me?” he asked quietly. “Yes,” she said simply. “I see,” he said tightly. “Would you like a specific date?” “You are teasing me,” he realized suddenly. “No, I’m dead serious. I have an exact date in mind.” Jacob pulled back to see her eyes, looking utterly perplexed as her pupils sparkled with mischief. “What date is that? And why are you thinking of pink elephants?” “The date is September 8, because, according to Gideon, that’s possibly the day I will go into labor. I say ‘possibly,’ because combining all this human/Druid and Demon DNA ‘may make for a longer period of gestation than usual for a human,’ as the Ancient medic recently quoted. Now, as I understand it, women always regret ever letting a man touch them on that day.” Jacob lurched to his feet, dropping her onto her toes, grabbing her by the arms, and holding her still as he raked a wild, inspecting gaze over her body. “You are pregnant?” he demanded, shaking her a little. “How long have you known? You went into battle with that monster while you are carrying my child?” “Our child,” she corrected indignantly, her fists landing firmly on her hips, “and Gideon only just told me, like, five seconds ago, so I didn’t know I was pregnant when I was fighting that thing!” “But . . . he healed you just a few days ago! Why not tell you then?” “Because I wasn’t pregnant then, Jacob. If you recall, we did make love between then and now.” “Oh . . . oh Bella . . .” he said, his breath rushing from him all of a sudden. He looked as if he needed to sit down and put a paper bag over his head. She reached to steady him as he sat back awkwardly on the altar. He leaned his forearms on his thighs, bending over them as he tried to catch his breath. Bella had the strangest urge to giggle, but she bit her lower lip to repress to impulse. So much for the calm, cool, collected Enforcer who struck terror into the hearts of Demons everywhere. “That is not funny,” he grumbled indignantly. “Yeah? You should see what you look like from over here,” she teased. “If you laugh at me I swear I am going to take you over my knee.” “Promises, promises,” she laughed, hugging him with delight. Finally, Jacob laughed as well, his arm snaking out to circle her waist and draw her back into his lap. “Did you ask . . . I mean, does he know what it is?” “It’s a baby. I told him I didn’t want to know what it is. And don’t you dare find out, because you know the minute you do I’ll know, and if you spoil the surprise I’ll murder you.” “Damn . . . she kills a couple of Demons and suddenly thinks she can order all of us around,” he taunted, pulling her close until he was nuzzling her neck, wondering if it was possible for such an underused heart as his to contain so much happiness.

Bond again walked round the room. This time he carefully inspected the walls and the neighbourhood of the bed and the telephone. Why not take the room? Why would there be microphones or secret doors? What would be the point of them?

Her mother was peaceful. She was calm. The sight filled Alice with the kind of green hope she found at the bottom of rock pools at low tide but never managed to cup in her hands. The more time she spent with her mother in the garden, the more deeply Alice understood- from the tilt of Agnes's wrist when she inspected a new bud, to the light that reached her eyes when she lifted her chin, and the thin rings of dirt that encircled her fingers as she coaxed new fern fronds from the soil- the truest parts of her mother bloomed among her plants. Especially when she talked to the flowers. Her eyes glazed over and she mumbled in a secret language, a word here, a phrase there as she snapped flowers off their stems and tucked into her pockets. Sorrowful remembrance, she'd say as she plucked a bindweed flower from its vine. Love, returned. The citrusy scent of lemon myrtle would fill the air as she tore it from a branch. Pleasures of memory. Her mother pocketed a scarlet palm of kangaroo paw.

The theological perspective of participation actually saves the appearances by exceeding them. It recognizes that materialism and spiritualism are false alternatives, since if there is only finite matter there is not even that, and that for phenomena really to be there they must be more than there. Hence, by appealing to an eternal source for bodies, their art, language, sexual and political union, one is not ethereally taking leave of their density. On the contrary, one is insisting that behind this density resides an even greater density – beyond all contrasts of density and lightness (as beyond all contrasts of definition and limitlessness). This is to say that all there is only is because it is more than it is. (...) This perspective should in many ways be seen as undercutting some of the contrasts between theological liberals and conservatives. The former tend to validate what they see as the modern embrace of our finitude – as language, and as erotic and aesthetically delighting bodies, and so forth. Conservatives, however, seem still to embrace a sort of nominal ethereal distancing from these realities and a disdain for them. Radical orthodoxy, by contrast, sees the historic root of the celebration of these things in participatory philosophy and incarnational theology, even if it can acknowledge that premodern tradition never took this celebration far enough. The modern apparent embrace of the finite it regards as, on inspection, illusory, since in order to stop the finite vanishing modernity must construe it as a spatial edifice bound by clear laws, rules and lattices. If, on the other hand, following the postmodern options, it embraces the flux of things, this is an empty flux both concealing and revealing an ultimate void. Hence, modernity has oscillated between puritanism (sexual or otherwise) and an entirely perverse eroticism, which is in love with death and therefore wills the death also of the erotic, and does not preserve the erotic as far as an eternal consummation. In a bizarre way, it seems that modernity does not really want what it thinks it wants; but on the other hand, in order to have what it thinks it wants, it would have to recover the theological. Thereby, of course, it would discover also that that which it desires is quite other than it has supposed

You could pretend that Guenever was a sort of man-eating lioncelle herself, or that she was one of those selfish women who insist on ruling everywhere. In fact, this is what she did seem to be to a superficial inspection. She was beautiful, sanguine, hot-tempered, demanding, impulsive, acquisitive, charming - she had all the proper qualities for a man-eater. But the rock on which these easy explanations founder, is that she was not promiscuous. There was never anybody in her life except Lancelot and Arthur. She never ate anybody except these. And even these she did not eat in the full sense of the word. People who have been digested by a man-eating lioncelle tend to become nonentities - to live no life except within the vitals of the devourer. Yet both Arthur and Lancelot, the people whom she apparently devoured, lived full lives, and accomplished things of their own. She lived in warlike times, when the lives of young people were as short as those of airmen in the twentieth century. In such times, the elderly moralists are content to relax their moral laws a little, in return for being defended. The condemned pilots, with their lust for life and love which is probably to be lost so soon, touch the hearts of young women, or possibly call up an answering bravado. Generosity, courage, honesty, pity, the faculty to look short life in the face - certainly comradeship and tenderness - these qualities may explain why Guenever took Lancelot as well as Arthur. It was courage more than anything else - the courage to take and give from the heart, while there was time. Poets are always urging women to have this kind of courage. She gathered her rose-buds while she might, and the striking thing was that she only gathered two of them, which she kept always, and that those two were the best.

At the stomp of boots on grass, I ease my eyes open. Aithinne leans down with a grin. “You didn’t die. See? I told you it was easy.” She offers me a hand and I take it, rising unsteadily to my feet. “I’ve been bitten by some demonic woodland creature. My legs have been shredded by razor-sharp trees. We almost died. Easy? I’m getting you a damn dictionary.” I inspect my bleeding arm. The cut bisects five of the marks Lonnrach made, and I feel inexplicably proud of that. Good. Replace the old, bad memories with new badges. Start over. “A dictionary,” she repeats. “Is that a type of dessert?” For the love of—“It’s a type of book that explains the meaning of words.” “Oh. That sounds terribly dull. I was really hoping for dessert.” I’m hoping to end this rescue with my sanity intact.

He was wonderful, your dad – the love of my life. I knew he was the one for me. He listened to me. He always paid attention. There is no greater way to show love than by paying full attention. Inspecting the tiny details of someone else’s character like they are precious diamonds,

Let us suppose you give your three-year-old daughter a coloring book and a box of crayons for her birthday. The following day, with the proud smile only a little once can muster, she presents her first pictures for inspection. She has colored the sun black, the grass purple, and the sky green. In the lower right-hand corner, she has added woozy wonders of floating slabs and hovering rings; on the left, a panoply of colorful, carefree squiggles. You marvel at her bold strokes and intuit that her psyche is railing against its own cosmic puniness in the face of a big, ugly world. Later at the office, you share with your staff your daughter's first artistic effort and you make veiled references to the early work of van Gogh. A little child can not do a bad coloring; nor can a child of God do bad prayer. "A father is delighted when his little one, leaving off her toys and friends, runs to him and climbs into his arms. As he holds hi little one close to him, he cared little whether the child is looking around, her attention flittering from one thing to another or just settling down to sleep. Essentially the child is choosing to be with the father, confident of the love, the care, the security that is hers in those arms. Our prayer is much like that. We settle down in our Father's arms, in his loving hands. Our minds, our thoughts, our imagination may flit about here and there; we might even fall asleep; but essentially we are choosing for this time to remain intimately with our Father, giving ourselves to him, receiving his love and care, letting him enjoy us as he will. It is very simple prayer. It is very childlike prayer. It is prayer that opens us out to all the delights of the kingdom.

Still, this moment belongs to the two of them, Mom and this handsome stranger. He reaches the passenger side door and stares down at her with steely violet eyes-down at my mother who never cries, down at my mother who’s now bawling like a spanked child-his face contorted in a rainbow of so many emotions, some that I can’t even name. Then Grom the Triton king sinks to his knees in front of her, and a single tear spills down his face. “Nalia,” he whispers. And then my mother slaps him. It’s not the kind of slap you get for talking back. It’s not the kind of punch she dealt Galen and Toraf in our kitchen. It’s the kind of slap a woman gives a man when he’s hurt her deeply. And Grom accepts it with grace. “I looked for you,” she shouts, even though he’s inches from her. Slowly, as if in a show of peace, he takes the hand that slapped him and sandwiches it between his own. He seems to revel in the feel of her touch. His face is pure tenderness, his voice like a massage to the nerves. “And I looked for you.” “Your pulse was gone,” she insists. By now she chokes back sobs between words. She’s fighting for control. I’ve never seen my mother fight for control. “As was yours.” I realize Grom knows what not to say, what not to do to provoke her. He is the complete opposite of her, or maybe just a completion of her. Her eyes focus on his wrist, and tears slip down her face, leaving faint trails of mascara on her cheeks. He smiles and slowly pulls his hand away. I think he’s going to show her the bracelet he’s wearing, but instead he rips it off his wrist and holds it out for her inspection. From where I’m standing it looks like a single black ball tied to some sort of string. By my mom’s expression, this black ball has meaning. So much meaning that I think she’s forgotten to breathe. “My pearl,” she whispers. “I thought I’d lost it.” He encloses it in her hand. “This isn’t your pearl, love. That one was lost in the explosion with you. For almost an entire season, I scoured the oyster beds, looking for another one that would do. I don’t know why, but I thought maybe if I found another perfect pearl, I would somehow find you, too. When I found this though, it didn’t bring me the peace I’d hoped for. But I couldn’t bring myself to discard it. I’ve worn it on my wrist ever since.” This is all it takes for my mom to throw herself into his arms, bringing Rachel partially with her. Even so, it’s probably the most moving moment I’ve ever encountered in my eighteen years. Or at least it would be, if my mom weren’t clinging to a man who is not my dad.

Was there no sword, nothing with which to batter down these walls, this protection, this begetting of children and living behind curtains, and becoming daily more involved and committed, with books and pictures? Better burn one’s life out like Louis, desiring perfection; or like Rhoda leave us, flying past us to the desert; or choose one out of millions and one only like Neville; better be like Susan and love and hate the heat of the sun or the frost-bitten grass; or be like Jinny, honest, an animal. All had their rapture; their common feeling with death; something that stood them in stead. Thus I visited each of my friends in turn, trying, with fumbling fingers, to prise open their locked caskets. I went from one to the other holding my sorrow—no, not my sorrow but the incomprehensible nature of this our life—for their inspection. Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends, I to my own heart, I to seek among phrases and fragments something unbroken—I to whom there is not beauty enough in moon or tree; to whom the touch of one person with another is all, yet who cannot grasp even that, who am so imperfect, so weak, so unspeakably lonely. There I sat.

But now it is Norris's privilege and pleasure to see her as no one else does, for he has been struck by love for Vida. And in his eyes, under the transforming inspection of his gaze―well, who can tell? Vida may become something more than she appears at the very moment, waiting quietly on her bench, the world breathing delicately around her.

The women would not be looking at him like this if he were carrying lilies, reflects Jean-Paul. Flowers have there own silent vocabulary. There are blooms for love, for friendship, for sorrow, and for joy. He inspect the roses he is carrying. Long-stemmed and elegant, they have been grown, selected, arranged, and purchased for a single, unambiguous purpose: to seduce.

It’s no one’s fault really,” he continued. “A big city cannot afford to have its attention distracted from the important job of being a big city by such a tiny, unimportant item as your happiness or mine.” This came out of him easily, assuredly, and I was suddenly interested. On closer inspection there was something aesthetic and scholarly about him, something faintly professorial. He knew I was with him, listening, and his grey eyes were kind with offered friendliness. He continued: “Those tall buildings there are more than monuments to the industry, thought and effort which have made this a great city; they also occasionally serve as springboards to eternity for misfits who cannot cope with the city and their own loneliness in it.” He paused and said something about one of the ducks which was quite unintelligible to me. “A great city is a battlefield,” he continued. “You need to be a fighter to live in it, not exist, mark you, live. Anybody can exist, dragging his soul around behind him like a worn-out coat; but living is different. It can be hard, but it can also be fun; there’s so much going on all the time that’s new and exciting.” I could not, nor wished to, ignore his pleasant voice, but I was in no mood for his philosophising. “If you were a negro you’d find that even existing would provide more excitement than you’d care for.” He looked at me and suddenly laughed; a laugh abandoned and gay, a laugh rich and young and indescribably infectious. I laughed with him, although I failed to see anything funny in my remark. “I wondered how long it would be before you broke down and talked to me,” he said, when his amusement had quietened down. “Talking helps, you know; if you can talk with someone you’re not lonely any more, don’t you think?” As simple as that. Soon we were chatting away unreservedly, like old friends, and I had told him everything. “Teaching,” he said presently. “That’s the thing. Why not get a job as a teacher?” “That’s rather unlikely,” I replied. “I have had no training as a teacher.” “Oh, that’s not absolutely necessary. Your degrees would be considered in lieu of training, and I feel sure that with your experience and obvious ability you could do well.” “Look here, Sir, if these people would not let me near ordinary inanimate equipment about which I understand quite a bit, is it reasonable to expect them to entrust the education of their children to me?” “Why not? They need teachers desperately.” “It is said that they also need technicians desperately.” “Ah, but that’s different. I don’t suppose educational authorities can be bothered about the colour of people’s skins, and I do believe that in that respect the London County Council is rather outstanding. Anyway, there would be no need to mention it; let it wait until they see you at the interview.” “I’ve tried that method before. It didn’t work.” “Try it again, you’ve nothing to lose. I know for a fact that there are many vacancies for teachers in the East End of London.” “Why especially the East End of London?” “From all accounts it is rather a tough area, and most teachers prefer to seek jobs elsewhere.” “And you think it would be just right for a negro, I suppose.” The vicious bitterness was creeping back; the suspicion was not so easily forgotten. “Now, just a moment, young man.” He was wonderfully patient with me, much more so than I deserved. “Don’t ever underrate the people of the East End; from those very slums and alleyways are emerging many of the new breed of professional and scientific men and quite a few of our politicians. Be careful lest you be a worse snob than the rest of us. Was this the kind of spirit in which you sought the other jobs?

So it was a matter of love at first sight?. . .How romantic. I am always suspicious of love earned by familiarity—it shows a lack of imagination. Of course, a quick inspection of financial records can only prove true love's value. But who am I to comment? Only an old maid who knows nothing of the joys of being dominated by a man, living self-reliant as I do in my own small home.

Just let me grab my thinking cap,” she told him, heading for her locker. The long floppy hat was required during midterms, designed to restrict Telepaths and preserve the integrity of the tests—not that anything could block Sophie’s enhanced abilities. But after the exams, the hats became present sacks, and everyone filled them with treats and trinkets and treasures. “I’ll need to inspect your presents before you open them,” Sandor warned as he helped Sophie lift her overstuffed hat. “That’s perfect,” Fitz said. “While he does that, you can open mine.” He pulled a small box from the pocket of his waist-length cape and handed it to Sophie. The opalescent wrapping paper had flecks of teal glitter dusted across it, and he’d tied it with a silky teal bow, making her wonder if he’d guessed her favorite color. She really hoped he couldn’t guess why. . . . “Hopefully I did better this year,” Fitz said. “Biana claimed the riddler was a total fail.” The riddle-writing pen he’d given her last time had been a disappointment, but . . . “I’m sure I’ll love it,” Sophie promised. “Besides. My gift is boring.” Sandor had declared an Atlantis shopping trip to be far too risky, so Sophie had spent the previous day baking her friends’ presents. She handed Fitz a round silver tin and he popped the lid off immediately. “Ripplefluffs?” he asked, smiling his first real smile in days. The silver-wrapped treats were what might happen if a brownie and a cupcake had a fudgey, buttery baby, with a candy surprise sunken into the center. Sophie’s adoptive mother, Edaline, had taught her the recipe

The blue pieces are rare,” he says, examining it and then pressing it into my hand. “This is a good piece. Some people call them mermaid’s tears. Do you want to hear the story?” I nod as I inspect the smooth glass in my palm—it looks like a gem, a tear of frosted sapphire. “The story goes that a mermaid watched as a storm threatened to wreck the ship of the man she loved,” Ted says. His voice is hypnotic, I love listening to him. I sink my head back onto his shoulder as he speaks and he runs a hand across my hair, my whole body alert to his touch. “She was forbidden by Neptune from intervening in the weather, but she calmed the sea and tamed the waves to save her love from certain death. For her disobedience, she was banished to the ocean floor, never to surface again. Her tears wash up on the shore as glass, a reminder of true love.

Before they entered the slave market or inspected a slave, many slaveholders had well-developed ideas about what they would find there. these ideas had less to do with the real people they would meet in the market, however, than they did with the slaveholder’s themselves, about the type of people they would become by buying slaves. As they talked about and wrote about buying slaves, slaveholders mapped a world made of slavery. They dreamed of people arrayed in meaningful order by their value as property, of fields full of productive hands and a slave quarter that reproduced itself, of well ordered households and of mansions where services were swift and polished. They dreamed of beating and healing and sleeping with slaves; sometimes they even dreamed that their slaves would love them. They imagined who they could be by thinking about whom they could buy.

The first study for the man who wants to be a poet is knowledge of himself, complete: he searches for his soul, he inspects it, he puts it to the test, he learns it. As soon as he has learned it, he must cultivate it! I say that one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet becomes a seer through a long, immense, and reasoned derangement of all the senses. All shapes of love suffering, madness. He searches himself, he exhausts all poisons in himself, to keep only the quintessences. Ineffable torture where he needs all his faith, all his superhuman strength, where he becomes among all men the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed one--and the supreme Scholar! For he reaches the unknown! ....So the poet is actually a thief of Fire! ― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete. (Modern Library; Reprint edition January 14, 2003) Originally published 1870.

What does being understood do for you? It makes you feel safe and seen. It makes you feel like your flaws aren't 'that bad'. It enables you. But whilst being around people who make the effort to understand you is beneficial, you still need to inspect yourself. My way of releasing the unhealthy need to be understood by others often comes in the form of me accepting that I am a complex, multi-faceted being - it would be impossible for me to be entirely understood even by myself.

One woman, a petite Oriental girl, gives me a toothy grin. ‘Hello to you! I’m Lolly! This first time?’ she says in that clipped efficient manner Asians have when English isn’t their first language. ‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘Ah . . . good! Good!’ she turns to a white guy in his fifties standing next to her. ‘They like us two week ago Brian!’ ‘Looks like it,’ Brian replies. The dynamic between the two of them is fairly obvious. I have to wonder whether he paid for her up-front or on inspection of the goods at the airport. ‘Why

The words of prophecy were fulfilled: “There shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming?’ for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” 609 Many who professed to love the Saviour, declared that they had no opposition to the doctrine of the second advent; they merely objected to the definite time. But God's all-seeing eye read their hearts. They did not wish to hear of Christ's coming to judge the world in righteousness. They had been unfaithful servants, their works would not bear the inspection of the heart-searching God, and they feared to meet their Lord. Like the Jews at the time of Christ's first advent, they were not prepared to welcome Jesus. They not only refused to listen to the plain arguments from the Bible, but ridiculed those who were looking for the Lord. Satan and his angels exulted, and flung the taunt in the face of Christ and holy angels, that His professed people had so little love for Him that they did not desire His appearing.

Oh, it doesn't work at all. That's the problem! It's an endless, halting parade of inspections, bribes, and nonsense—but if you're aboard a Texas vessel, you'll find less inconvenience along the way." "It's because of their guns!" declared Mr. Henderson, once more escaping his reverie, bobbing out of it as if to gasp for air. "Concise, my love." Mrs. Henderson gave him a smile. "And correct. Texans are heavily armed and often impatient. They don't need to be transporting arms and gunpowder to create a great nuisance for anyone who stops them, so they tend to be stopped…less often.

We didn’t understand why Cecilia had killed herself the first time and we understood even less when she did it twice. Her diary, which the police inspected as part of the customary investigation, didn’t confirm the supposition of unrequited love. Dominic Palazzolo was mentioned only once in that tiny rice-paper journal illuminated with colored Magic Markers to look like a Book of Hours or a medieval Bible. Miniature designs crowded the pages. Bubblegum angels swooped from top margins, or scraped their wings between teeming paragraphs. Maidens with golden hair dripped sea-blue tears into the book’s spine.

We decided to attend to our community instead of asking our community to attend the church.” His staff started showing up at local community events such as sports contests and town hall meetings. They entered a float in the local Christmas parade. They rented a football field and inaugurated a Free Movie Night on summer Fridays, complete with popcorn machines and a giant screen. They opened a burger joint, which soon became a hangout for local youth; it gives free meals to those who can’t afford to pay. When they found out how difficult it was for immigrants to get a driver’s license, they formed a drivers school and set their fees at half the going rate. My own church in Colorado started a ministry called Hands of the Carpenter, recruiting volunteers to do painting, carpentry, and house repairs for widows and single mothers. Soon they learned of another need and opened Hands Automotive to offer free oil changes, inspections, and car washes to the same constituency. They fund the work by charging normal rates to those who can afford it. I heard from a church in Minneapolis that monitors parking meters. Volunteers patrol the streets, add money to the meters with expired time, and put cards on the windshields that read, “Your meter looked hungry so we fed it. If we can help you in any other way, please give us a call.” In Cincinnati, college students sign up every Christmas to wrap presents at a local mall — ​no charge. “People just could not understand why I would want to wrap their presents,” one wrote me. “I tell them, ‘We just want to show God’s love in a practical way.’ ” In one of the boldest ventures in creative grace, a pastor started a community called Miracle Village in which half the residents are registered sex offenders. Florida’s state laws require sex offenders to live more than a thousand feet from a school, day care center, park, or playground, and some municipalities have lengthened the distance to half a mile and added swimming pools, bus stops, and libraries to the list. As a result, sex offenders, one of the most despised categories of criminals, are pushed out of cities and have few places to live. A pastor named Dick Witherow opened Miracle Village as part of his Matthew 25 Ministries. Staff members closely supervise the residents, many of them on parole, and conduct services in the church at the heart of Miracle Village. The ministry also provides anger-management and Bible study classes.

But shall we inspect what we see beyond?” he went on. “Please, after you…” Elspeth thought: I am so fortunate. I am married to a man who says “Please, after you.” How fortunate is that? And she thought of a friend who did not even have a husband, although she dearly would have loved one, and how her life would be transformed, would be made perfect, if she had one who said, “Please, after you” or indeed by one who did not even say that, who said nothing, in fact. Bless you, my darling, she thought. And thank you for this: for this house, for our marriage, for our three boys, for bothering to say “Please, after you.

The crude reality is that we are in a concentration camp: all kids, different ages, different sizes, and different skin colors. We are divided from the outside world by a big electric fence and united with each other by fear, hunger, and the hope to stay alive until the war ends and somebody will grant us freedom. “Joshy, it’s time for us to get inspected. The guards will check how big and strong we are,” I declare, with fake joy. I gaze down at my little brother, the only family I have left. His brown eyes are a deep chocolate swirl; his mouth is curved into a timid smile. His soiled blond hair is flowing around his face like a lion’s mane.

Can I come look?” He sat back on his heels and gestured to his artwork. “By all means. I’m done.” I got up, happily noting that my ankle was now pain free. I carefully tiptoed around the two square feet of floor over which his drawing sprawled, and settled in next to him. “It’s beautiful,” I told him. “I’m flattered. I’ve never had anyone draw a picture of me before.” Sage cocked his head and studied what he’d etched. “You think it looks like you?” Again a hot crawl of embarrassment raced up my neck and flooded my face. I looked more closely at the etching. The image did look like me, but only if you really wanted to see the resemblance. The woman in it had the same hair, and slept in the same position I had, but on closer inspection her features were quite different. Her eyes were farther apart, her nose more pointed, her cheekbones less defined…differences that seemed insignificant when I’d assumed the picture was of me, but knowing it wasn’t… I was an egocentric idiot. My dreams about this man may have been vivid, but they were dreams. They had nothing to do with reality; not mine, and clearly not his. I stammered, groping for some kind of explanation. I had nothing. “She does look like you, a little,” Sage admitted. His eyes lingered on the contours of the drawing’s face. I was eager to change the subject, but I felt like I had to ask. “Who is she?” “Someone I loved a long time ago,” he murmured.

Sargon, the obscure adventurer who had emerged as though from nowhere to nurture this proud ambition, to extinguish the independence of neighboring city-states and to rule supreme over the “totality of the lands under heaven,” had always remained the model of a Mesopotamian strongman. Almost two thousand years after his foundation of Akkad, he remained the cynosure of great kings. Indeed, in the decades before the Persian conquest, the obsession with him had become a veritable craze. At Susa, the capital of Elam, a victory memorial originally inscribed by Sargon’s grandson had been lovingly dusted down and put on prominent display; in Akkad itself, when a statue of the great man was excavated, Nabonidus had come rushing in high excitement to inspect it, and to supervise its restoration. Museums had sprung up everywhere: at Ur, for instance, the antiquities collection maintained by Nabonidus’ daughter, Princess En-nigaldi-Nanna, had been carefully labeled and put on display for the edification of the public. Meanwhile, in Babylon itself, scholars pored over great libraries of archives, tracing ancient documents, recycling archaic phrases, looking to the distant past to legitimize the needs and whims of their masters. The people of Mesopotamia, living as they did amid the lumber of millennia, had always been profoundly respectful of antiquity. Rather than feeling oppressed by it, they recycled it, cannibalized it, and turned it to their advantage.

On the Eighth Day Adam Slept Alone It must have been the eighth day. A day the scribes and Pharisees conveniently left out. Adam was either inspecting goats or naming the birds when something pinched my side. I had to stop pruning the tree of knowledge to catch my breath. God had taken a long weekend. At first I thought the solitude of gardening was going to my head. Was it loneliness? An omen? A vision? For a moment I thought I would ascend. Then I realized it was just a rib missing. How you found your way in along the banks of the third river I will never know but I still shiver to recall how perfectly your fingers fell into place along the ridges of my ribcage. Go ahead, Love, take every last bone. Make of me what you will.

On Love and Happiness:When someone embarks on his research, if he ever makes it, (there is, in addition, a contingency that he/she will never embark on it), then he sails on a journey, a course that incubates various events. It's like opening a precious gift that hides myriads of secrets. Nobody acknowledges its content unless he attempts to inspect it. Happiness is not always dominated by heavenly chances, blue and green seashores of euphoria and pink clouds of serenity. Happiness does not dwell in luxurious mansions and expensive cars neither in glamorous appearances. Many times Unhappiness and loneliness lurk behind the ledges of luxury and surface brightness. There are so many examples around us, in newspapers, magazines, television and radio of people who are plunged in uncertainty, grief and insecurity. I wonder why this is.

The fact is, nobody would have known from looking. An outsider walking past my cubicle that morning would have seen a petite woman of thirty-four with long, light brown hair pulled back in a barrette, neat and orderly-looking. Closer inspection would have suggested a perfectionistic, polished exterior, a careful attention to detail: a young woman with well-manicured nails and black leggings and Italian shoes; a daily list of things to do sitting on the desk, written in perfect print, several items already neatly ticked off; a workspace so compulsively tidy that one of my staff writers used to say you could fly a plane over my desk and it would look like a map of the Midwest, everything at perfect right angles. Colleagues saw me as smart and introspective, a little reserved maybe, and a paragon of efficiency at work: organized, professional, productive.

The first study for the man who wants to be a poet is knowledge of himself, complete: he searches for his soul, he inspects it, he puts it to the test, he learns it. As soon as he has learned it, he must cultivate it! I say that one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet becomes a seer through a long, immense, and reasoned derangement of all the senses. All shapes of love suffering, madness. He searches himself, he exhausts all poisons in himself, to keep only the quintessences. Ineffable torture where he needs all his faith, all his superhuman strength, where he becomes among all men the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed one–and the supreme Scholar! For he reaches the unknown! ….So the poet is actually a thief of Fire! ― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete. (Modern Library; Reprint edition January 14, 2003) Originally published 1870.

the difference unless she looks very, very carefully.” The few times I’ve gotten out a mirror and checked out the unit, it seems like that’s true. Also, I’m pretty sure Asher’s not going to be doing an inspection. For all I know, everything’s going to be under blankets, and maybe we’ll have the lights out? I’d like that, I admit, just so I don’t have to worry about all of this. But another part of me thinks, Dammit, when do I get to stop hiding? I want to see Asher’s face. I want to see his body. I want to see everything. People think that being trans is about sex. I suppose for some, it is. But for me, sex was the last thing I was thinking about. I want to be alive and I want to be joyful and I want to be on fire, I want to be so human it makes the ice in my water glass melt. So, sure: I love sex—or at least the idea of it—and I want to experience every last

Reader, it gives me no pleasure to inform you that behind me was a floor-to-ceiling display, museum, of Tony Packo’s–branded gender pickles—and no, not those gender pickles. There is a second brand of gender pickles, and they are even hornier. It absolutely wrenches my guts to let you know that after ordering the Hungarian hot dog, which I will foreshadow is terrific, I carefully inspected every aggressively anthropomorphized heterosexual pickle, pepper, sausage, and tomato. It makes me sick to know it is my duty as the sole chronicler of This Sort of Thing to disclose what I have learned. It feels awful to share that there appears to be a storyline to this wall of pickles and mustard, a love story I will retell as faithfully as possible. With deepest regrets, this is the story of how the Tony Packo’s pickle and the Tony Packo’s pepper fucked each other and had a baby.

Neliss, why is this rug wet?” Legna peeked around the corner to glance at the rug in question, looking as if she had never seen it before. “We have a rug there?” “Did you or did you not promise me you were not going to practice extending how long you can hold your invisible bowls of water in the house? And what on earth is that noise?” “Okay, I confess to the water thing, which was an honest mistake, I swear it. But as for a noise, I have no idea what you are talking about.” “You cannot hear that? It has been driving me crazy for days now. It just repeats over and over again, a sort of clicking sound.” “Well, it took a millennium, but you have finally gone completely senile. Listen, this is a house built by Lycanthropes. It is more a cave than a house, to be honest. I have yet to decorate to my satisfaction. There is probably some gizmo of some kind lying around, and I will come across it eventually or it will quit working the longer it is exposed to our influence. Even though I do not hear anything, I will start looking for it. Is this satisfactory?” “I swear, Magdelegna, I am never letting you visit that Druid ever again.” “Oh, stop it. You do not intimidate me, as much as you would love to think you do. Now, I will come over there if you promise not to yell at me anymore. You have been quite moody lately.” “I would be a hell of a lot less moody if I could figure out what that damn noise is.” Legna came around the corner, moving into his embrace with her hands behind her back. He immediately tried to see what she had in them. “What is that?” “Remember when you asked me why I cut my hair?” “Ah yes, the surprise. Took you long enough to get to it.” “If you do not stop, I am not going to give it to you.” “Okay. I am stopping. What is it?” She held out the box tied with a ribbon to him and he accepted it with a lopsided smile. “I do not think I even remember the last time I received a gift,” he said, leaning to kiss her cheek warmly. He changed his mind, though, and opted to go for her mouth next. She smiled beneath the cling of their lips and pushed away. “Open it.” He reached for the ribbon and soon was pulling the top off the box. “What is this?” “Gideon, what does it look like?” He picked up the woven circlet with a finger and inspected it closely. It was an intricately and meticulously fashioned necklace, clearly made strand by strand from the coffee-colored locks of his mate’s hair. In the center of the choker was a silver oval with the smallest writing he had ever seen filling it from top to bottom. “What does it say?” “It is the medics’ code of ethics,” she said softly, taking it from him and slipping behind him to link the piece around his neck beneath his hair. “And it fits perfectly.” She came around to look at it, smiling. “I knew it would look handsome on you.” “I do not usually wear jewelry or ornamentation, but . . . it feels nice. How on earth did they make this?” “Well, it took forever, if you want to know why it took so long for me to make good on the surprise. But I wanted you to have something that was a little bit of me and a little bit of you.” “I already have something like that. It is you. And . . . and me, I guess,” he laughed. “We are a little bit of each other for the rest of our lives.” “See, that makes this a perfect symbol of our love,” she said smartly, reaching up on her toes to kiss him. “Well, thank you, sweet. It is a great present and an excellent surprise. Now, if you really want to surprise me, help me find out what that noise is.

to look around. At first sight, the apartment was perfectly ordinary. He made a quick circuit of the living room, kitchenette, bathroom, and bedroom. The place was tidy enough, but with a few items strewn here and there, the sort of things that might be left lying around by a busy person—a magazine, a half-finished crossword puzzle, a book left open on a night table. Abby had the usual appliances—an old stove and a humming refrigerator, a microwave oven with an unpronounceable brand name, a thirteen-inch TV on a cheap stand, a boom box near a modest collection of CDs. There were clothes in her bedroom closet and silverware, plates, and pots and pans in her kitchen cabinets. He began to wonder if he’d been unduly suspicious. Maybe Abby Hollister was who she said she was, after all. And he’d taken a considerable risk coming here. If he was caught inside her apartment, all his plans for the evening would be scotched. He would end up in a holding cell facing charges that would send him back to prison for parole violation. All because he’d gotten a bug up his ass about some woman he hardly knew, a stranger who didn’t mean anything. He decided he’d better get the hell out. He was retracing his steps through the living room when he glanced at the magazine tossed on the sofa. Something about it seemed wrong. He moved closer and took a better look. It was People, and the cover showed two celebrities whose recent marriage had already ended in divorce. But on the cover the stars were smiling over a caption that read, Love At Last. He picked up the magazine and studied it in the trickle of light through the filmy curtains. The date was September of last year. He put it down and looked at the end tables flanking the sofa. For the first time he noticed a patina of dust on their surfaces. The apartment hadn’t been cleaned in some time. He went into the kitchen and looked in the refrigerator. It seemed well stocked, but when he opened the carton of milk and sniffed, he discovered water inside—which was just as well, since the milk’s expiration period had ended around the time that the People cover story had been new. Water in the milk carton. Out-of-date magazine on the sofa. Dust everywhere, even coating the kitchen counters. Abby didn’t live here. Nobody did. This apartment was a sham, a shell. It was a dummy address, like the dummy corporations his partner had set up when establishing the overseas bank accounts. It could pass inspection if somebody came to visit, assuming the visitor didn’t look too closely, but it wasn’t meant to be used. Now that he thought about it, the apartment was remarkable for what

Through the buzzing in her ears, she heard new sounds from outside, shouting and cursing. All of a sudden the carriage door was wrenched open and someone vaulted inside. Evie squirmed to see who it was. Her remaining breath was expelled in a faint sob as she saw a familiar glitter of dark golden hair. It was Sebastian as she had never seen him before, no longer detached and self-possessed, but in the grip of bone-shaking rage. His eyes were pale and reptilian as his murderous gaze fastened on Eustace, whose breath began to rattle nervously behind the pudgy ladder of his chin. “Give her to me,” Sebastian said, his voice hoarse with fury. “Now, you pile of gutter sludge, or I’ll rip your throat out.” Seeming to realize that Sebastian was eager to carry out the threat, Eustace released his chokehold on Evie. She scrambled toward Sebastian and took in desperate pulls of air. He caught her with a low murmur, his hold gentle but secure. “Easy, love. You’re safe now.” She felt the tremors of rage that ran in continuous thrills through his body. Sebastian sent a lethal glance to Eustace, who was trying to gather his jellylike mass into the far end of the seat. “The next time I see you,” Sebastian said viciously, “no matter what the circumstances, I’m going to kill you. No law, nor weapon, nor God Himself will be able to stop it from happening. So if you value your life, don’t let your path cross mine again.” Leaving Eustace in a quivering heap of speechless fear, Sebastian hauled Evie from the vehicle. She clung to him, still trying to regain her breath as she glanced apprehensively around the scene. It appeared that Cam had been alerted to the fracas, and was keeping her two uncles at bay. Brook was on the ground, while Peregrine was staggering backward from some kind of assault, his beefy countenance turning ruddy from enraged surprise. Swaying as her feet touched the ground, Evie turned her face into her husband’s shoulder. Sebastian was literally steaming, the chilly air striking off his flushed skin and turning his breath into puffs of white. He subjected her to a brief but thorough inspection, his hands running lightly over her, his gaze searching her pale face. His voice was astonishingly tender. “Are you hurt, Evie? Look up at me, love. Yes. Sweetheart… did they do you any injury?” “N-no.” Evie stared at him dazedly. “My uncle Peregrine,” she whispered, “he’s very p-powerful—” “I’ll handle him,” he assured her, and called out to Cam. “Rohan! Come fetch her.” The young man obeyed instantly, approaching Evie with long, fluid strides. He spoke to her with a few foreign-sounding words, his voice soothing her overwrought nerves. She hesitated before going with him, casting a worried glance at Sebastian. “It’s all right,” he said without looking at her, his icy gaze locked on Peregrine’s bullish form. “Go.

We want lovers, friends, recruits, soldiers, and affiliations that support who we are. People, individuals, believe in themselves, want to survive, and on a Darwinistic level at least, want to have more, of ourselves. Initially, this is a visual choice. The where, what, when, and who…to our why. Upon closer inspection, which is the upfall of the politically correct culture of today, we learn to measure people on the competence of their values that we most value. When we do this, the politics of gender, race, and slanderous slang take a back seat to the importance of the values we share. The more we travel, the more we realize how similar our human needs are. We want to be loved, have a family, community, have something to look forward to. These basic needs are present in all socioeconomic and cultural civilizations. I have seen many tribes in the deserts of Northern Africa who, with nine children and no electricity, had more joy, love, honor, and laughter than the majority of the most materially rich people I’ve ever met. We have the choice to love, befriend, recruit, call to arms, associate, and support who we believe in, and more importantly, who, we believe, believes in us. I think that’s what we all want. To believe in and be believed in. We all must earn belief in ourselves first, then for each other. Earn it with you, then earn it with me, then we earn it for we. Travel and humanity have been my greatest educators. They have helped me understand the common denominator of mankind. Values. Engage with yourself then engage with the world. Values travel. And sometimes we get a stamp in our passport just by crossing the street.

He loved to tell his students a story which summarized his attitudes on this matter of intellectual inspection: “A Roman came to Rabbi Gimzo the Water Carrier, and asked, ‘What is this study of the law that you Jews engage in?’ and Gimzo replied, ‘I shall explain. There were two men on a roof, and they climbed down the chimney. One’s face became sooty. The other’s not. Which one washed his face?’ The Roman said, ‘That’s easy, the sooty one, of course.’ Gimzo said, ‘No. The man without the soot looked at his friend, saw that the man’s face was dirty, assumed that his was too, and washed it.’ Cried the Roman, ‘Ah ha! So that’s the study of law. Sound reasoning.’ But Gimzo said, ‘You foolish man, you don’t understand. Let me explain again. Two men on a roof. They climb down a chimney. One’s face is sooty, the other’s not. Which one washes?’ The Roman said, ‘As you just explained, the man without the soot.’ Gimzo cried, ‘No, you foolish one! There was a mirror on the wall and the man with the dirty face saw how sooty it was and washed it.’ The Roman said, ‘Ah ha! So that’s the study of law! Conforming to the logical.’ But Rabbi Gimzo said, ‘No, you foolish one. Two men climbed down the chimney. One’s face became sooty? The other’s not? That’s impossible. You’re wasting my time with such a proposition.’ And the Roman said, ‘So that’s the law! Common sense.’ And Gimzo said, ‘You foolish man! Of course it was possible. When the first man climbed down the chimney he brushed the soot away. So the man who followed found none to mar him.’ And the Roman cried, ‘That’s brilliant, Rabbi Gimzo. Law is getting at the basic facts.’ And for the last time Gimzo said, ‘No, you foolish man. Who could brush all the soot from a chimney? Who can ever understand all the facts?’ Humbly the Roman asked, ‘Then what is the law?’ And Gimzo said quietly, ‘It’s doing the best we can to ascertain God’s intention, for there were indeed two men on a roof, and they did climb down the same chimney. The first man emerged completely clean while it was the second who was covered with soot, and neither man washed his face, because you forgot to ask me whether there was any water in the basin. There was none.’ 

Catherine drew out an object wrapped in soft cloth. Gently she unwrapped a new pair of spectacles made of silver... gleaming and perfect, the oval lenses sparkling. Marveling at the workmanship, she drew a finger along one of the intricate filigreed earpieces, all the way to the curved tip. "They're so beautiful," she said in wonder. "If they please you, we'll have another pair made in gold. Here, let me help you..." Leo gently drew the old spectacles off her face, seeming to savor the gesture. She put the new ones on. They felt light and secure on the bridge of her nose. As she looked around the room, everything was wonderfully detailed and in focus. In her excitement, she jumped up and hurried to the looking glass that hung over the entryway table. She inspected her own glowing reflection. "How pretty you are," Leo's tall, elegant form appeared behind hers. "I do love spectacles on a woman." Catherine's smiling gaze met his in the silvered glass. "Do you? What an odd preference." "Not at all." His hands came to her shoulders, lightly fondling up to her throat and back again. "They emphasize your beautiful eyes. And they make you look capable of secrets and surprises- which, as much as we know, you are." His voice lowered. "Most of all I love the act of removing them- getting you ready for a tumble in bed." She shivered at his bluntness, her eyes half closing as she felt him pull her back against him. His mouth went to the side of her neck. "You like them?" Leo murmured, kissing her soft skin. "Yes." Her head listed to the side as his tongue traced a subtle path along her throat. "I... I don't know why you went to such trouble. It was very kind." Leo's dark head lifted, and he met her drowsy gaze in the looking glass. His fingers went to the side of her throat, stroking as if to rub the feel of his mouth into her skin. "I wasn't being kind," he murmured, a smile touching his lips. "I merely wanted you to see clearly." I'm beginning to, she was tempted to tell him, but Poppy returned to the apartment before she was able.

So is that what you love about sailing?" she asked. "It keeps your mind busy and occupied?" He still seemed distracted as he tipped his head up to inspect the mainsail. "I guess that's part of it. I like to get everything working just so in order to get the most out of the boat, and I can't rest until she's moving as fast as she can." Evelyn turned the wheel slightly. "And you tell me I'm the one who needs to relax?" His gaze darted to her profile, then he laughed and shook his head. "I did say we were similar creatures, didn't I? We have that in common, I suppose- we both need some slack in our lines." "Speak for yourself!" she replied, feigning great umbrage. "I like my lines pulled very tight, sir, because with my inconceivable beauty, I have to do something to keep the wicked rakes like you at a safe distance." He stared at her, dumbfounded, then they both gave in to their laughter. She wondered how it was possible they could be having this conversation. Who knew she could be amusing? "You're quite a woman, Evelyn." Then he wagged a warning finger at her. "It's a good thing I didn't know you better back at Eton, or you would have been in considerable trouble.

We stitched little rugs for the children to lie down on and I painted the small tables and chairs for them. The school fortunately provided all the art material that I needed, so I took advantage of this and decorated everything! My little Ursula loved being in class with me and appeared to be in seventh heaven. One day Herr Erdmann, the Nazi Civil Affairs Supervisor or Ortsgruppenleiter, came on a visitation and inspected my work. Not being familiar with titles I mistakenly addressed him as Mayor or Burgermeister. I knew that he liked me since he readily approved of nearly everything I did and offered to get almost everything I needed. He was short in stature with a baldhead, rosy cheeks, and a large white mustache. Although he was a Nazi autocrat in Bischoffsheim, he had a jolly disposition and was easy to talk to.

It makes me sad that not every book is good,' I said. 'Not every book can be loved.' 'But when I pull a book off a shelf, and examine it, turning it this way and that, inspecting the cover, flipping through the pages and glancing at the words as they flash by, a thought here and a sentence there and I know that there is potential between those pages for love. Even if in my opinion the book is bad, someone else may find it good. Isn’t that like love?

The Internet has created the most precise mirror of people as a whole that we've yet had. It is not a summary prepared by a social scientist or an elite think tank. It is not the hagiography of an era, condensed by a romantic idealist or a sneering cynic. It is the real us, available for direct inspection for the first time. Our collective window shades are now open. We see the mundanity, the avarice, the ugliness, the perversity, the loneliness, the love, the inspiration, the serendipity, and the tenderness that manifest in humanity. Seen in proportion, we can breathe a sigh of relief. We are basically OK.

The Internet has created the most precise mirror of people as a whole that we've yet had. It is not a summary prepared by a social scientist or an elite think tank. It is not the hagiography of an era, condensed by a romantic idealist or a sneering cynic. It is the real us, available for direct inspection for the first time. Our collective window shades are now open. We see the mundanity, the avarice, the ugliness, the perversity, the loneliness, the love, the inspiration, the serendipity, and the tenderness that manifest in humanity. Seen in proportion, we can breathe a sigh of relief. We are basically OK. - Jaron Lanier

what she ought to have done as soon as she discovered that Lady Webb was not in London to help her. She was going to find the Earl of Durbury if he was still in town. If he was not, she was going to find out where the Bow Street Runners had their headquarters and go there. She was going to write to Charles. She was going to tell her story to anyone who would listen. She was going to embrace her fate. Perhaps she would be arrested and tried and convicted of murder. Perhaps that would mean a hanging or at the very least transportation or lifelong imprisonment. But she would not give in meekly. She would fight like the very devil to the last moment—but not by running away and hiding. She was going to come out into the open at last and fight. But not just yet. That was the agreement she made with herself as she pulled weeds from about the rosebushes and turned the soil until it was a richer brown. A definite time limit must be set so that she would not continue to procrastinate week after week, month after month. She was going to give herself one month, one calendar month, starting today. One month to be Jocelyn’s mistress, his love, though he would not be aware of the latter, of course. One month to spend with him as a person, as a friend in the den, if he ever returned there, as a lover in the bed upstairs. One month. And then she was going to give herself up. Without telling him. There might be scandal for him, of course, when it became known that he had harbored her at Dudley House for three weeks, or if anyone knew that she had been his mistress here. But she would not worry about that. His life had been one scandal after another. He appeared to thrive on them. She thought he would probably be rather amused by this particular one. One month. Jane leaned back on her heels to inspect her work, but Phillip was approaching from the direction of the house. “Mr. Jacobs sent me, ma’am,” he said, “to tell you that a new pianoforte just arrived and an easel and other parcels too. He wants to know where you want them put.” Jane got to her feet, her heart soaring, and followed him back to the house. One glorious month, in which she would not even try to guard her feelings. One month of love. There followed a week during

Hanna reached her hand out and rubbed her palm on the stubble of his face with an ease and affection Fire found hard to bear, so that she had to look away and stare fiercely at Blotchy, who was shedding silky hairs all over her skirt. “How long do you stay, Papa?” “I don’t know, love. I’m needed in the north.” “You have a wound, too, Papa.” Hanna took Brigan’s left hand, which was wrapped in a bandage, and inspected it. “Did you throw the first punch?

She comes downstairs and is surprised to be handed a curious-looking bouquet. Only on closer inspection does it become apparent that this is, in fact, a bunch made up of candied flowers---pale orange blossoms, bright blue florets of borage, even tender young rosebuds, all encased in hard, clear shells of sugar, like tiny caramel apples.

On closer inspection, I realized the lettering wasn’t a logo, but an inscription: MAYA, ALICE, ZORA, TONI, ROXANE, JESMYN, DANI. A knot formed in my throat and I started shaking until I felt my mom’s strong hands behind me, gripping me upright.

Young female primates are as infant-obsessed as girls, whereas male interest in infants reflects an almost technical curiosity rather than a nurturing tendency. Young male chimpanzees often carry babies in an awkward manner without letting them cling to their bodies as ape babies love to do. I have watched in horror as young males inspect a small infant by stretching its limbs to the limit, sticking their big fingers down its throat, or making it the object of a tussle with a male peer.

Before I could give it too much thought, my attention snagged on Darius as he charged across the pitch like a stampeding rhino, tackling a member of the other team so hard that I heard something crack. My breath caught in my throat as the Starlight player groaned on the ground while Darius snatched the ball from him and launched it across the pitch with the force of a torpedo. A timer was counting down as the Starlight player failed to get up and Darius raced away from him without a backwards glance. I knew it was part of the game but it was insanely brutal. Although if I was being totally honest, watching all of them brawl like that and seeing the power they exuded even while they were losing, was totally hot too. Darius’s muscles pumped fiercely as he sprinted away from me and I found myself staring at his legs which were splattered with mud and somehow looked even better because of it. “Olef you’re Out!” Prestos yelled but the Starlight player still didn’t move. A pair of medics jogged onto the pitch and gave him a quick inspection. “Broken back!” one of them yelled. “This is a long heal, call in a sub once his time out is up.” My lips parted, I stared on in shock and I couldn’t quite believe what I’d heard. “Did he just say that Darius broke that guy’s back?” I asked in disbelief. “That’s the risk you take when you play,” Orion said darkly as he walked past me to regain his seat. Darcy raised her eyebrows at me and I returned my gaze to the match just as Geraldine tore up the pitch with a rumble of writhing earth magic, knocking the Starlight Waterguard off of her feet and forcing her to drop the ball. A huge -5 flashed into place on the Starlight scoreboard and I leapt from my seat in excitement to applaud my friend. “Go Geraldine!” I screamed and she flashed me a smile as she somehow managed to hear me. Seth almost missed the ball as it was thrown to him next while he was distracted by scratching his head. He managed to wrangle it with a gust of air magic and started sprinting for the Pit as the timer above us ticked down to ten seconds. The crowd started counting down, “Nine! Eight! Seven-” Seth leapt into the air, propelling himself forward with his magic but the two air Elementals on the opposing team threw their own magic up to counter him. “Three! Two-” Seth gritted his teeth as he threw even more power into his propulsion but he was out of time. The ball in his arms exploded in a blast of pure air which snapped his head back and sent him tumbling out of the sky. He hit the ground hard as the crowd oooohed in disappointment. For three whole seconds my heart didn’t beat at all as I stared at his prone body in the mud, wondering if he was dead. Seth coughed, pushing himself into a sitting position just as Darius appeared to offer him a hand up. He shook his head to clear it and my eyebrows rose all the way into my hairline. “This game is crazy,” Darcy breathed, her eyes wide with the thrill of it. “I think I love it,” I agreed. (tory)

A deserted beach at dawn was the perfect place to nurse my feelings of desolation, to let them trot out a bit, like a kid plays with the breaking waves, then pull them back inside for another close inspection.

sign of things to come, radioactive particles were detected over San Francisco a few days later, and after that over Paris, bringing this “fallout” threat to wide public attention for the first time. Also endangered were the forty thousand U.S. sailors and soldiers who had been crowded cavalierly nearby, or who mounted the ships later to inspect or clean them—with safety guidelines widely ignored—and were exposed to troubling levels of radiation.

Swaying as her feet touched the ground, Evie turned her face into her husband's shoulder. Sebastian was literally steaming, the chilly air striking off his flushed skin and turning his breath into puffs of white. He subjected her to a brief but thorough inspection, his hands running lightly over her, his gaze searching her pale face. His voice was astonishingly tender. "Are you hurt, Evie? Look up at me, love. Yes. Sweetheart... did they do you any injury?" "N-no." Evie stared at him dazedly.

Why, for instance, were we going to the grocery store en famille, when it made Tom tense and Sylvie antsy? As I mentioned earlier, I happen to love grocery shopping—so now if I need to do it on the weekends, Tom drops me off and takes Sylvie to a nearby park. They kick a soccer ball around while I obsessively inspect every new granola flavor (“Ooh, coffee–dark chocolate–hazelnut? Into the cart it goes!”). Doo-de-doo. I text Tom when I’m done and they help load the car.

The modern man whether of Bloomsbury Baltimore or Berlin has vanquished vanity—he offers himself to his own inspection as the worm he turns out to be. If he is vain at all, and it must be conceded that self-love is hard to kill, it is about his humility. His own Vernichtung is his greatest pride the laying bare of the nullity, the Nichtigkeit, that is the “ self” at the heart of energy, (which is merely the doctrine of Xt. that “ he who humbleth himself shall be exalted ” ! Be modest, protest you are nobody, a biological bagatelle and hi presto ! you will get top-marks, and be given authority, that is the idea—it is the Christian strategy.

us. He made his choice that night in the laundry room when he let me go. He has his priorities, and right now I’m not one of them. She takes the box I was wrapping and returns it in front of her and starts wrapping it again. “That night I told you I had cancer, and you ran to Will’s house?” Her voice softens. She clears her throat, still avoiding my eyes. “I need to tell you what he said to me… at the door.” I remember the conversation she’s referring to, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. “When he answered the door I told him you needed to come home. That we needed to talk about it. He looked at me with heartache in his eyes. He said, ‘Let her stay, Julia. She needs me right now.’ “Lake, you broke my heart. It broke my heart that you needed him more than you needed me. As soon as the words came out of his mouth, I realized that you were grown up… that I wasn’t your whole life anymore. Will could see that. He saw how bad his words hurt me. When I turned away to walk back to the house, he followed me into the yard and hugged me. He told me he would never take you from me. He said he was going to let you go… let you focus on me and on the time I had left.” She places the wrapped gift on the bed. She scoots toward me and takes my hands in hers again. “Lake, he didn’t move on. He didn’t choose this new job over you… he chose us over you. He wanted you to have more time with me.” I take a deep breath as I absorb everything my mother just revealed. Is she right? Does he love me enough that he would be willing to let me go? “Mom?” My voice is weak. “What if you’re wrong?” “What if I’m not wrong, Lake? Question everything. What if he wants to choose you? You’ll never know if you don’t tell him how you feel. You’ve completely shut him out. You haven’t given him the chance to pick you.” She’s right, I haven’t. I’ve been completely closed off since that night in the laundry room. “It’s seven thirty, Lake. You know where he is. Go tell him how you feel.” I don’t move. My legs feel like Jell-O. “Go!” she laughs. I jump off the bed and run to my room. My hands are shaking and my thoughts are all jumbled together while I change my pants. I put on the purple shirt that I wore on our first and only date. I go to the bathroom and inspect my reflection. There’s something missing. I run to my room and reach under my pillow and pull out

I’d hate for us to get into an argument,” he said, “but if that’s the only way we could communicate....” Carlotta said that grown-ups recover from arguments if they keep their knives in the drawer. “What if our talents don’t mesh?” he worried. “We’ll create a weave that works,” she said in a silvery tone. He brought her to a bench by the lake; they chatted while kids played soccer behind them. “I’m not sure the west coast would appeal with me.” “So you don’t want me to disrupt your life,” Carlotta needled him. “I know two men who’ll provide for me from their millions.” “And let their money ruin your talent?” he nearly exploded. “Over my dead body. I thought you could support yourself. You and I together....” We’ve encircled each other; I can about guess what will happen next. Either her “no” or her “yes” would cause him to quake. They inspected the flowers in a rock garden – purple and red, daisies past their prime, white dots and white dust on deep green leaves, brown tufts that created an impression of mauve from a distance but looked red and green as they moved closer – all on purplish brown stalks. Other nearby blooms could have been the tails of the proudest birds – the kind that have red maple feathers and violet eyes. Carlotta interrupted his reverie. “You’ll have to speak up. I can’t say ‘yes’ for both of us.

I inspected my own body in the mirror one day. My chest was flat and appeared to actually indent at my sternum. Even sucking in my gut, my stomach bulged, flaring at my sides in generous love handles before it met my hips. I was somehow both fat and skinny. Still,

inspect and adapt.

Maybe you should tell Sam how you feel about his roommate,” Allie said. “Maybe he’d invite Brad to come home with him on the weekends.” “Right. Like Sam is going to care. He thinks I’m just his stupid baby sister.” “You think he’s your stupid older brother, so it all works out,” Leah said, backing up a little to inspect the snowman’s abs.

Brian stood by the fountain; his eyes locked on her while she inspected the plants and inhaled their sweet scents. He didn’t move as he watched her with a predatory hunger. She smiled as she walked back toward him; her fingers itching with the impulse to touch him. Her skin became electrified with her need for him. When she was only a foot away from him, he pulled something from his pocket and went down onto one knee before her. Abby froze, and her hand flew to her mouth as he opened the box to reveal the large diamond within. Tears burned in her eyes as the fading sun lit his hair and eyes and caressed his chiseled body. “I don’t know how long I’ll have to work with Ronan, but I can promise you that when it’s done, I will take you everywhere you ask to go and live out every one of your dreams with you. I will love you every second of every day for the rest of our lives, and I will protect and cherish our children with everything I am.” Her

Hands grab me, steady me. I jerk back, but they are surprisingly gentle. He doesn’t smile as I turn to see his face. He just stands there, letting me inspect him. He’s tall with a wide forehead and dark blond hair that’s cut short. His green eyes are deeply set beneath that forehead. His lips are wide and rugged like the rest of him. His hands have huge knuckles like he’s a boxer or arthritic or hits walls. He looks like he did when he pulled me out of the car, but stronger, taller somehow. He must be completely healed. He looks my age and he looks good, like the guy in high school that everyone, even the teachers, fall in love with.

The night she met Safiye she stole her earrings right out of her earlobes and, having retired to a quiet corner of the mansion to inspect them, found that the gems were paste. Then she discovered that her base metal bangle was missing and quickly realized that she could only have lost it to the person she was stealing from; she’d been distracted by the baubles and the appeal of those delicate earlobes. Cornered by a banker whose false memory of having been in love with her since matriculation day might prove profitable, Lucy wavered between a sensible decision and a foolhardy one. Ever did foolhardiness hold the upper hand with Lucy; she found Safiye leaning against an oil lantern and saw for herself that she wasn’t the only foolish woman in the world, or even at that party, for Safiye had Lucy’s highly polished bangle in her hand and was turning it this way and that in order to catch fireflies in the billowing, transparent left sleeve of her gown. All this at the rise of being set alight, but then from where Lucy stood Safiye looked as if she was formed of fire herself, particles of flame dancing the flesh of her arm into existence. That or she was returning to fire.

Seated on the blue upholstered sofa, Daisy held up the embroidery frame for her maid’s inspection.

I dreamed once after he died that Lord Goodsleep came to me in the night on a stallion made of storm clouds,” she admitted. “He was monstrously large, with a pair of shining golden scissors in his hand, and he approached me while I slept and snipped me wide open from my neck to my navel, as if my skin were made of muslin. Then he took a pair of iron tongs and lifted out my heart—it was a crystalline globe, just a lovely thing, really, throwing dazzling sparks all over the sky like a magic lamp.” Fergal’s eyes lit. “How wonderful.” “He rolled it around in his fingers as if he were inspecting a plum… then he laid it on an anvil and smashed it with a silver hammer—not enough to turn it to dust, just enough to leave jagged edges upon it all the way around. Then he pushed it back inside of me with no concern whatsoever for my anguish, and he stitched me up tightly, so that when I woke, I would possess a pain that could never be dissolved.

To the non-suspecting citizen at large, things are entirely plain: he sees naught but a man and a woman in love. But upon closer inspection things are, in fact, incredibly complicated: it is the love of a man who feels like a woman, but feels attracted to a woman instead of other men; a woman who, in turn, feels like a man and not like a woman, but nonetheless loves the man! Eventually the complexity of the problem is annulled entirely naturally: the mutual feelings are experienced as normal and only slightly tainted by a suspicion of inversion. "The Death Of Baron Jesus Maria Von Friedel

Jesus, I am from a wealthy family I can help You support Your ministry we should marry, it would be a good match.” Yeshua stopped and put His hand up to her cheek. “My Pretty Rose, I have told you before I am not for you.” “But I know You have feelings for me; I can see it in Your eyes.” “Ken (Yes), I love you truly, but as I have said before, you are meant for another.” Mary lowered her head dejectedly as tears welled up in her eyes, I felt sick for her; it would be a good match why would Yeshua be so steadfast against such a marriage? She would make an excellent queen. “Be of good cheer,” He smiled, “for your future husband is in that vary courtyard even now.” Mary brightened and ran into the officer’s courtyard; it was a beautifully manicured garden of trees, flowers, and topiary sculptures but was devoid of people. Mary looked to and fro; only to see two Roman guards standing watch over of the entrance to the quarters, as a Centurion was inspecting them. Disappointed once more Mary left, she returned to where we were but we had continued down the lane. After a moment she saw us and ran to catch up.