Inspirational Shooting Quotes

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.

Shoot for the moon, even if you fail, you'll land among the stars

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

Write it. Shoot it. Publish it. Crochet it, sauté it, whatever. MAKE.

That's what mortal means," I say with a sigh that I don't have to fake. "We die. Think of us like shooting stars, brief but bright.

Be wary of strong drink, it can make you shoot at the tax collector...and miss.

I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.

I'm not going to die, I'm going home like a shooting star.

I have realized; it is during the times I am far outside my element that I experience myself the most. That I see and feel who I really am, the most! I think that's what a comet is like, you see, a comet is born in the outer realms of the universe! But it's only when it ventures too close to our sun or to other stars that it releases the blazing "tail" behind it and shoots brazen through the heavens! And meteors become sucked into our atmosphere before they burst like firecrackers and realize that they're shooting stars! That's why I enjoy taking myself out of my own element, my own comfort zone, and hurling myself out into the unknown. Because it's during those scary moments, those unsure steps taken, that I am able to see that I'm like a comet hitting a new atmosphere: suddenly I illuminate magnificently and fire dusts begin to fall off of me! I discover a smile I didn't know I had, I uncover a feeling that I didn't know existed in me... I see myself. I'm a shooting star. A meteor shower. But I'm not going to die out. I guess I'm more like a comet then. I'm just going to keep on coming back.

Shoot for the moon, because even if you miss you miss, you'll land in the stars.

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.

Excuses are tools of incompetence used to build bridges to nowhere and monuments of nothingness, and those who use them seldom specialize in anything else.

When the white man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom that he destroys.

If a man was around when Aunt Kathy came by, she would berate him and throw him out. I even saw her toss guys out at gunpoint. She’d threaten them and say, “I will shoot you until I can’t see you!” I remember thinking, “How is that possible? That’s a lot of damn shooting!” 

A friend is someone who can brighten your day with a simple smile, when others try to do it with a thousand words.

All photos speak a thousand words. This one contained a library.

O shooting star that fell into my eyes and through my body-: not to forget you. To endure.

Yet, at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways—the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with. The lower animals are, of course, spared this painful contradiction, as they lack a symbolic identity and the self-consciousness that goes with it. They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If they pause at all, it is only a physical pause; inside they are anonymous, and even their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were, in a state of dumb being. This is what has made it so simple to shoot down whole herds of buffalo or elephants. The animals don't know that death is happening and continue grazing placidly while others drop alongside them. The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams and even the most sun-filled days—that's something else.

I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don't dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital- T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness — awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: “This is water, this is water.” It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out.

Oh! to shoot for the stars if feels right. Aim for my heart if it feels right.

Peace is not so much a political mandate as it is a shared state of consciousness that remains elevated and intact only to the degree that those who value it volunteer their existence as living examples of the same... Peace ends with the unraveling of individual hope and the emergence of the will to worship violence as a healer of private and social dis-ease.

What she did not know, and would never have believed, was that though her soul seemed to have been grown over with an impenetrable layer of mould, some delicate blades of grass, young and tender, were already pushing their way upwards, destined to take root and send out living shoots so effectively that her all-consuming grief would soon be lost and forgotten. The wound was healing from inside.

We remember shooting stars for their shine, not the darkness of the night. Trying to wish away grief extinguishes those memories that glow so bright.

I never saved anything for the swim back.

What a man wants is is an arrow into the future and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from.

The Earth was singing her revolution. She was calling her brave men and women to her defense.

Basketball Rule #2 (random text from Dad) Hustle dig Grind push Run fast Change pivot Chase pull Aim shoot Work smart Live smarter Play hard Practice harder

The woman looked out at the madness of the world and dared to hope. Her eyes were burning coals of stars.

We've got to make change our national pastime and hold protests more regularly than weekend parties.

This will be my last year, Lord. I have gotten what I can. Thank You.

Geography and mileage mean nothing. Separate is a single word that covers all distances that aren't together.

Try never to abandon hope for if you do, hope will surely try to abandon you.

When you have spent long years in the dark, there is joy in seeing the light and pleasure, above all, in the ordinary.

Ninety-nine percent talent…ninety-nine percent discipline…ninety-nine percent work. He must never be satisfied with what he does. It is never as good as it can be done. Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn’t know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.

As long as we don't cut off our hearts, the inner workings of the universe illuminate before us.

I can just close my eyes and let myself fall into oblivion. Maybe I'll hit the exact same rocks and my blood will mingle with his and maybe there's some kind of life after death and he's waiting for me there with his hand outstretched just like mine. But... I don't want to die. I try to twist my body backwards and pain shoots up my neck. It's too late. I chose life too late.

My blood was in a ferment within me, my heart was full of longing, sweetly and foolishly; I was all expectancy and wonder; I was tremulous and waiting; my fancy fluttered and circled about the same images like martins round a bell-tower at dawn; I dreamed and was sad and sometimes cried. But through the tears and the melancholy, inspired by the music of verse or the beauty of the evening, there always rose upwards, like the grasses of early spring, shoots of happy feeling, of young and surging life.

You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise!

Precarious, life is. A flying leap. A sweep of hand. A star flung across the night. A lucky catch in this whirling juggling circus act. From Steam Drills, Treadmills, and Shooting Stars

How could I explain in words my craving for freedom, that longing for anonymity, the need to distance myself from everything I knew in my universe?

Staying on the fence is safe ... until someone shoots you off!

Reality is what we tell to go screw itself every time we write or read a book, shoot or watch a movie.

In such a regime, I say you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murderer in the chest - without asking to be paid.

Stop listening to the TV tell you about America the beautiful . . . get up and be America the beautiful.

Pruned my subconscious. Discovered new shoots.

You wanted to know how I did it? That's how I did it, Anton. I never saved anything for the swim back.

I don't get as much fan mail as an actor or singer would, but when I get a letter 99% of the time it's pointing out something that really had an impact. Like after 'My Own Private Rodeo' all these people wrote to me and said Dale's dad inspired them to come out. And this was when it was still illegal to be gay in Texas and a few other states. Another one that really stuck with me was this girl who survived Columbine. See, "Wings of the Dope," the episode where Luanne's boyfriend comes back as an angel, aired two weeks after the shooting. About a month after that, I got a letter from a girl who was there and hid somewhere in the school when it was all going on. She said the first thing she was gonna do if she survived was tell a friend of hers she was in love with him. She never did. He ended up being one of the kids responsible for it. So you can imagine how - you know, to her, it felt wrong to grieve almost, and she bottled it up. But she saw that episode and Buckley walking away at the end and something just let her finally break down and greive and miss the guy. I remember she quoted Luanne - 'I wonder if he's guardianing some other girl,' or something along that line, because she never had the guts to tell the kid. That really gets to people at Comic Con.

No one's life made sense on paper. You cannot condense a person into facts.

when you shoot for the stars, you can't ever look back.

Shoot for the stars because the moon is just too close.

he felt himself for a moment as the stump of a rotten old tree, putting up thin green shoots at strange new angles.

As he patiently observed her every move, from the flickering movement of her hair to the twinkle in her blue eyes, he privately thought to himself, that after years of waiting for a shooting star, he had finally stumbled upon a star of his very own in her; all the while, learning what his version of heaven looked like, here on earth.

Yesterday it was sun outside. The sky was blue and people were lying under blooming cherry trees in the park. It was Friday, so records were released, that people have been working on for years. Friends around me find success and level up, do fancy photo shoots and get featured on big, white, movie screens. There were parties and lovers, hand in hand, laughing perfectly loud, but I walked numbly through the park, round and round, 40 times for 4 hours just wanting to make it through the day. There's a weight that inhabits my chest some times. Like a lock in my throat, making it hard to breathe. A little less air got through and the sky was so blue I couldn’t look at it because it made me sad, swelling tears in my eyes and they dripped quietly on the floor as I got on with my day. I tried to keep my focus, ticked off the to-do list, did my chores. Packed orders, wrote emails, paid bills and rewrote stories, but the panic kept growing, exploding in my chest. Tears falling on the desk tick tick tick me not making a sound and some days I just don't know what to do. Where to go or who to see and I try to be gentle, soft and kind, but anxiety eats you up and I just want to be fine. This is not beautiful. This is not useful. You can not do anything with it and it tries to control you, throw you off your balance and lovely ways but you can not let it. I cleaned up. Took myself for a walk. Tried to keep my eyes on the sky. Stayed away from the alcohol, stayed away from the destructive tools we learn to use. the smoking and the starving, the running, the madness, thinking it will help but it only feeds the fire and I don't want to hurt myself anymore. I made it through and today I woke up, lighter and proud because I'm still here. There are flowers growing outside my window. The coffee is warm, the air is pure. In a few hours I'll be on a train on my way to sing for people who invited me to come, to sing, for them. My own songs, that I created. Me—little me. From nowhere at all. And I have people around that I like and can laugh with, and it's spring again. It will always be spring again. And there will always be a new day.

COBB: What do you want from us? SAITO: Inception. Arthur raises his eyebrows. Cobb is poker-faced. SAITO: Is it possible? ARTHUR: Of course not. SAITO: If you can steal an idea from someone's mind, why can't you plant one there instead? ARTHUR: Okay, here's planting an idea: I say to you, "Don't think about elephants." (Saito nods) What are you thinking about? SAITO: Elephants. ARTHUR: Right. But it's not your idea because you know I gave it to you. SAITO: You could plant it subconsciously- ARTHUR: The subject's mind can always trace the genesis of the idea. True inspiration is impossible to fake. COBB: No, it isn't. SAITO: Can you do it? COBB: I won't do it. SAITO: In exchange, I'll give you the information you were paid to steal. COBB: Are you giving me a choice? Because I can find my own way to square things with Cobol. SAITO: Then you do have a choice. COBB: And I choose to leave.

You can only achieve what you aim for - so shoot for the stars!!!

Your creativity has value. You’re not wasting your time dreaming.

If you aim upward, you will at shoot higher things (future prospects). If you aim downwards, you may shoot your feet (foundation).

There is always something beautiful to hope for. Always have a goal to shoot for.

Shoot for the moon, the worst that could happen is you land amongst the stars

Shoot your enemies with the bullets of love, it will kill them instantly and forever.

A hunter only shoots a deer he can see, if you ain't being seen you ain't doing nothing!

Bring your dreams to reality. Believe in yourself. You know you have what it takes to make your dreams come true. Start now and dedicate yourself for success. Shoot for the stars and make it happen.

It’s not enough to shelve your own competitive streak. You have to try, consciously, to help others succeed. Some people feel this is like shooting themselves in the foot - why aid someone else in creating a competitive advantages? I don't look at it that way. Helping someone else look good doesn't make me look worse. In fact, it often improves my own performance, particularly in stressful situations.

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may tread me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? 'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops, Weakened by my soulful cries. Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard 'Cause I laugh like I got gold mines Diggin' in my own back yard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I'll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history's shame I rise Up from a past that's rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.

Scott: What's the cure? Doctor: There is none. Scott: But that isn't what I heard. The optimist in me translated the gloomy news as "Scott, you will be the first person in the world to be cured of spasmodic dysphonia." And I decided that after I cured myself, somehow, someway, I would spread the word to others. I wouldn't be satisfied escaping from my prison of silence. I was planning to escape, free the other inmates, shoot the warden, and burn down the prison.

Strap on those wings and close your eyes and take a step off that ledge with your arms spread and let the faith in yourself be enough to have the wind whip underneath your entire body and lift it back up into the air like a firework or a bird of paradise or a shooting star. It doesn't matter what heights you reach or what storms might set you back or how often you want to yank the feathers from your body and let them burn. You've already done it. Bask in the pride for a moment and soak in the fact that you are amazing.

If any accolades come in the writing of this story, all praise will be His, all Glory will rightly go to Him. If He will allow me to share some part in this, I am truly humbled.

In fact, Harold had never once paid attention to his watch other than to find out the time. And, honestly, it drove his watch crazy.

you don't need a shooting star, you can do it yourself.

I am not here to be average, I am not here to be great, I am not here to be successful, and I am not here to be happy, I am here to simply be all of me.

If you see a shot, shoot.

In such a regime, I say you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murdered in the chest - without asking to be paid.

I am not going to die; I’m going home like a shooting star.

I’m not going to die, honey. I’m going home like a shooting star.

Who shoots at the midday sun, though he be sure he shall never hit the mark, yet as sure he is he shall shoot higher than who aims but at a bush.

Transform your dreams into reality. You know you have what it takes to make your dreams come true. Start now and dedicate yourself to success. Shoot for the stars. You can do it.

As I sat up I turned my head to the side, but immediately straightened it again when I felt a sharp pain shoot through my neck.

Treasure your Ideas, for they are like seeds that germinate in your mind. They Root, Shoot, and Fruit into Concepts & Creativity that are beyond Imagination.

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars. –Les Brown

If you keep chasing shooting stars, you'll never feel the warmth of the sun.

I’d be willing to bet no kid, no matter how disturbed, was inspired to go out and shoot up a classroom by boogeying around his living room to “Moves Like Jagger.” There

Life is like a war. There will always be people trying to shoot you down. But it's your choice whether you're going to surrender, fight back, or dodge the bullet.

If our minds can hold us back, then they can push us forwards too.

The world needs a vaccine to eradicate Racism, hatred, war, shooting, rampage, rage… And it needs it now.

The myth persists in Egypt to this day that Napoleon’s soldiers actually disfigured some of these ruins, and are even said to have used the Sphinx as target practice for their cannons, shooting off its nose. This last is a calumny: it is known that the Sphinx was defaced as early as the eighth century by the Sufi iconoclast Saim-ed-Dahr,28 and was further damaged in 1380 by fanatical Muslims prompted by the Koran’s strictures against images. During these early times the Sphinx was not regarded as a precious historical object, but instead inspired fear: through the centuries it became known to the Egyptians as Abul-Hol (Father of Terrors), and would only begin to be regarded more favorably when it became a tourist attraction in the later nineteenth century.

Bring your dreams to reality. Believe in yourself. You know you have what it takes, to make your dreams come true. Start now and dedicate yourself to success. Shoot for the stars and make it happen.

Okay, I know--my superpower--I'd be able to shoot lightening bolts out from my fingertips--great big knowledge network lightening bolts--and when a person was zapped by one of those bolts, they'd fall down on their knees and once on their knees, they'd be under water, in this place I saw once off the east coast of the Bahamas, a place where a billion electric blue fish swam up to me and made me a part of their school--and then they'd be up in the air, up in Manhattan, above the World Trade Center, with a flock of pigeons, flying amid the skyscrapers, and then--then what? And then they'd go blind, and then they'd be taken away--they'd feel homesick--more homesick than they'd felt in their entire life--so homesick they were throwing up--and they'd be abandoned, I don't know...in the middle of a harvested corn field in Missouri. And then they'd be able to see again, and from the edges of the field people would appear--everybody they'd known--and they'd be carrying Black Forest cakes and burning tiki lamps and boom boxes playing the same song, and they sky would turn into a sunset, the way it does in Walt Disney brochure, and the person I zapped would never be alone or isolated again.

Sharing a meal put people at ease, helped them forget the cameras were there, and inspired them to open up about their lives. Most importantly, food had become our cover, at least as far as I was concerned. In Iran and Laos, it was actually thought we were CIA like in the movie Argo. And in certain ways they were right. If it wasn’t for the cover of a “food show,” we never would have been able to get to the places we did. Season after season while planning the shoots, food had morphed from the show’s raison d’être to almost an afterthought. By the end, it was a show about people far more than one about food.

Never stop loving, never stop evolving, never stop existing, never give up, never resist to change never lie, never stop telling truth, never stop trusting, never stereotype, never judge, never cheat, never be manipulated, never be enslaved, never stop learning, never stop improving, never stop moving, never stop kicking, never stop innovating, never be shy, never conceal facts, never obstruct justice, never fight for no reason, never stop craving for knowledge, never stop keeping your head up, never stop shooting for stars, never sell yourself short, never give promises you can't keep, never stop complementing, never stop thanking, never stop appreciating life, never stop being grateful, never be dishonest, never be a loser, never stop working hard, never stop dreaming, never stop imagining, never forget your past, never think in the box, never be arrogant, never stop trying, and never stop...

THE ANTHEM OF HOPE Tiny footprints in mud, metal scraps among thistles Child who ambles barefooted through humanity’s war An Elderflower in mud, landmines hidden in bristles Blood clings to your feet, your wee hands stiff and sore You who walk among trenches, midst our filth and our gore Box of crayons in hand, your tears tumble like crystals Gentle, scared little boy, at the heel of Hope Valley, The grassy heel of Hope Valley. And the bombs fall-fall-fall Down the slopes of Hope Valley Bayonets cut-cut-cut Through the ranks of Hope Valley Napalm clouds burn-burn-burn All who fight in Hope Valley, All who fall in Hope Valley. Bullets fly past your shoulder, fireflies light the sky Child who digs through the trenches for his long sleeping father You plant a kiss on his forehead, and you whisper goodbye Vain corpses, brave soldiers, offered as cannon fodder Nothing is left but a wall; near its pallor you gather Crayon ready, you draw: the memory of a lie Kind, sad little boy, sketching your dream of Hope Valley Your little dream of Hope Valley. Missiles fly-fly-fly Over the fields of Hope Valley Carabines shoot-shoot-shoot The brave souls of Hope Valley And the tanks shell-shell-shell Those who toiled for Hope Valley, Those who died for Hope Valley. In the light of gunfire, the little child draws the valley Every trench is a creek; every bloodstain a flower No battlefield, but a garden with large fields ripe with barley Ideations of peace in his dark, final hour And so the child drew his future, on the wall of that tower Memories of times past; your tiny village lush alley Great, brave little boy, the future hope of Hope Valley The only hope of Hope Valley. And the grass grows-grows-grows On the knolls of Hope Valley Daffodils bloom-bloom-bloom Across the hills of Hope Valley The midday sun shines-shines-shines On the folk of Hope Valley On the dead of Hope Valley From his Aerodyne fleet The soldier faces the carnage Uttering words to the fallen He commends their great courage Across a wrecked, tower wall A child’s hand limns the valley And this drawing speaks volumes Words of hope, not of bally He wipes his tears and marvels The miracle of Hope Valley The only miracle of Hope Valley And the grass grows-grows-grows Midst all the dead of Hope Valley Daffodils bloom-bloom-bloom For all the dead of Hope Valley The evening sun sets-sets-sets On the miracle of Hope Valley The only miracle of Hope Valley (lyrics to "the Anthem of Hope", a fictional song featured in Louise Blackwick's Neon Science-Fiction novel "5 Stars".

Sometimes God speaks to a man in a whisper… But sometimes His Spirit explodes in a man suddenly, lighting up in shocking crimson brilliance the cowardly and sullied things he’s let his drowsy soul become mired in, and bringing unlooked for tears at the glimpse of the man he ought to have been all along. With that despairing realization the astounding truth blossoms like a bursting field of wildflowers or a brilliant new dawn shooting from the peak of a dark hill, that because of Christ’s work for him, he can change.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a child in possession of a good instructor must be in want of an education. Alas, kids don’t care. It’s impossible to demand inspiration, passion, or self-discipline without affinity for learning. Let me rephrase that: you can’t coerce caring. Adults try! We use grades, little statues, and ice cream sundaes to prod kids into reading, diagramming sentences, and practicing piano. Meanwhile that same child will stand in the hot sun for five hours shooting free throws to break a personal record. No reward except satisfaction. How do we get more of that into traditional school subjects?

When I went to prison and came out, it was like another stripe being added to my shoulder—another notch of respect on my belt. On the streets, you cannot get a name until you do something. You have to prove who you are by doing something outrageous, like shooting someone from a rival gang. It allowed others to see what type of person you were, and established the fact that you were ready for anything. Back in the day, what we were looking for was for someone to have our backs. So every time I did something and was recognized for what I did, it gave me more nerves to continue. After the deed was all said and done, and we were hanging on the blocks, everyone is praising you and talking about what you did. You all should have been there. You should have seen how Taco rushed up on that fella and dealt with him. Those praises were like drugs that eventually poison the mind, and gave you more inspiration to do things to have more people talking about you. People recognizing you as one who isn’t scared, one who is ready to do whatever is needed. No one ever wants to go to prison. I never wanted to go to prison. I just wanted to be recognized as one willing and ready for a battle anytime. Troit Lynes, former death row inmate of Her Majesty Prison in the Bahamas

What on earth did we do wrong? What harm did we inflict? What did we do to you? Who are you to judge us? Who gave you the right? Are you the representatives of mankind, or what? Who appointed you? Was it God? Yourselves? You don't care if someone loves to go bowling or shooting! You don't care if someone wants to be a doctor or a flight attendant! So why can't we love someone of the same gender? What makes you say that the way we love is wrong? Because we're not "normal"? Because we don't abide by the provisions of God? The laws of nature? Well, fuck you. What a load of bullshit. You want to create a land for God? Good. Then let's bring back the regulations on sex positions first! Don't use condoms, and only fuck in the missionary position, damn it! Since sex should only be for childbirth, and any other pleasure is against the will of God, am I right? Come to think of it, you guys are fucking disgusting. I mean, I know you all fuck doggy-style and blow each other! So I guess you're all going to hell as well! The same goes for singles who don't copulate at all! If the union of man and woman is what is "normal", singles are the most abnormal of all! You're all going to hell, too! On, and let's just kill all the ugly people, fat people, and poor people while we're at it. Then it'll be heaven on earth, with no abnormal beings! Where the normal are free to kill the abnormal! If you ask me, you uneducated, narrow-minded scumbags are the ones that degrade human nobility! You're fucking revolting! Ignorant morons! Do you feel good? Or pissed off? Mad? Then come at me! Instead of being fucking cowards, bashing someone that's all tied up. Won't it be more fun to beat up a person of color? Kill me before I infect your brains and turn all of you into homosexuals! Kill me first! Stupid scumbags!

Dave does extra-mural work for the University, and collects about him many youths who have a part-time interest in truth. Dave’s pupils adore him, but there is a permanent fight on between him and them. They aspire like sunflowers. They are all natural metaphysicians, or so Dave says in a tone of disgust. This seems to me a wonderful thing to be, but it inspires in Dave a passion of opposition. To Dave’s pupils the world is a mystery; a mystery to which it should be reasonably possible to discover a key. The key would be something of the sort that could be contained in a book of some eight hundred pages. To find the key would not necessarily be a simple matter, but Dave’s pupils feel sure that the dedication of between four and ten hours a week, excluding University vacations, should suffice to find it. They do not conceive that the matter should be either more simple or more complex than that. They are prepared within certain limits to alter their views. Many of them arrive as theosophists and depart as Critical Realists or Bradeians. It is remarkable how Dave’s criticism seems os often to be purely catalytic in its action. He blazes upon them with the destructive fury of the sun, but instead of shrivelling up their metaphysical pretensions, achieves merely their metamorphosis from one rich stage into another. This curious fact makes me think that perhaps after all Dave is, in spite of himself, a good teacher. Occasionally he succeeds in converting some peculiarly receptive youth to his own brand of linguistics analysis; after which as often as not the youth loses interest in philosophy altogether. To watch Dave at work on these young men is like watching someone prune a rose bush. It is all the strongest and most luxuriant shoots which have to come off. Then later perhaps there will be blossoms; but not philosophical ones, Dave trusts. His great aim is to dissuade the young from philosophy. He always warns me off it with particular earnestness.

Now that we've come up with all the obvious answers to our problem, it's time to come up with some truly ridiculous ones." "Ridiculous?" asked Brasque. "Yes, ridiculous. Think of something impossible, improbable or downright ridiculous and go from there." "Like we all flap our arms and fly out of here," said Katherine. "Exactly!" said Spider. "How about we form a long line all the way to the mountains and pass the charges along it?" said Brasque. "Excellent," said Spider. "Keep it coming." "What if we each carry one charge, run back, carry another, and so on?" said Tom, getting into the swing of things. "Lovely!" laughed Spider. "Now we're cooking." The shower of sparks shot out of the top of the Amadragon. Joe shielded his eyes with his hand. "Yeah, and we can all climb on the Amadragon and ride out of here," he said. "What was that, Joe?" said Spider, suddenly dropping the jokey manner. "What's the Amadragon?" Katherine's eyes glittered. "He means that," she said, pointing at the excavator. Everyone except Spider turned and looked. "He's talking about the giant machine, the one that keeps shooting sparks in the air." Spider cocked his ear and listened to the rumble of the Amadragon's engine. "So Orlemann built the dragon, did he?" he said. "I'd been wondering what the noise was. If they built it to the original specifications, it should get us out of here within an hour. Let's pray that will give us enough time!

In Tokyo, ramen is a playground for the culinary imagination. As long as the dish contains thin wheat noodles, it's ramen. In fact, there's a literal ramen playground called Tokyo Ramen Street in the basement of Tokyo Station, with eight top-rated ramen shops sharing one corridor. We stopped by one evening after a day of riding around on the Shinkansen. After drooling over the photos at establishments such as Junk Garage, which serves oily, brothless noodles hidden under a towering slag heap of toppings, we settled on Ramen Honda based on its short line and the fact that its ramen seemed to be topped with a massive pile of scallions. However, anything in Tokyo that appears to be topped with scallions is actually topped with something much better. You'll meet this delectable dopplegänger soon, and in mass quantities. The Internet is littered with dozens if not hundreds of exclamation point-bedecked ramen blogs (Rameniac, GO RAMEN!, Ramen Adventures, Ramenate!) in English, Japanese, and probably Serbian, Hindi, and Xhosa. In Tokyo, you'll find hot and cold ramen; Thai green curry ramen; diet ramen and ramen with pork broth so thick you could sculpt with it; Italian-inspired tomato ramen; and Hokkaido-style miso ramen. You'll find ramen chains and fiercely individual holes-in-the-wall. Right now, somewhere in the world, someone is having a meet-cute with her first bowl of ramen. As she fills up on pork and noodles and seaweed and bamboo shoots, she thinks, we were meant to be together, and she is embarrassed at her atavistic reaction to a simple bowl of soup.

The thunder howled and the rain splashed, the leaves played with the breeze and the lightning flashed, and the tigress growled at last. She looked here and she looked there, she hadn't seen so much rain anywhere, a desire suddenly came in her heart, a mad longing that had to start, she felt deep love in the rain, looking at her cubs all over again But two years ago she had been wounded, By cowardly men who wanted her grounded, They were afraid of her power, they wanted to capture her and to enslave her in their tower They laid traps and they waited in the trees, The jungle was full of birds and the bees, The tigress was out hunting for meat, her cubs awaiting in the cave for their treat There was something missing in the air, the fragrance of jasmine was not there, The tigress looked up into the trees and saw the men's faces painted in grease, She challenged them looking into their eyes, And saw fear, fright , and faces full of lies! She roared with all her might, This was her land, She had all the right! The cowardly men crouching behind the trees, Fired their guns in twos and threes, The brave Tigress looked them in the eye, She was the fire and she was the sky, Indomitable force, invincible power, She was the Tigress, The Queen in her Empire None of the bullets could break her Spirit, Only one could graze her right leg a bit, She roared with all her heart's might, For she was the Queen for all to sight! The guns emptied and no more bullets to shoot, The cowardly men jumped from the trees and ran away in two hoots! The Tigress laughed and loudly roared, For she was the power and her Spirit soared She is the Tigress inside every Woman, She has the Power to defeat any Man, Love her and she would love you back, Respect her and she would respect you back, Dare to harm her and she would defeat you till the Last!

the greatest inspiration for institutional change in American law enforcement came on an airport tarmac in Jacksonville, Florida, on October 4, 1971. The United States was experiencing an epidemic of airline hijackings at the time; there were five in one three-day period in 1970. It was in that charged atmosphere that an unhinged man named George Giffe Jr. hijacked a chartered plane out of Nashville, Tennessee, planning to head to the Bahamas. By the time the incident was over, Giffe had murdered two hostages—his estranged wife and the pilot—and killed himself to boot. But this time the blame didn’t fall on the hijacker; instead, it fell squarely on the FBI. Two hostages had managed to convince Giffe to let them go on the tarmac in Jacksonville, where they’d stopped to refuel. But the agents had gotten impatient and shot out the engine. And that had pushed Giffe to the nuclear option. In fact, the blame placed on the FBI was so strong that when the pilot’s wife and Giffe’s daughter filed a wrongful death suit alleging FBI negligence, the courts agreed. In the landmark Downs v. United States decision of 1975, the U.S. Court of Appeals wrote that “there was a better suited alternative to protecting the hostages’ well-being,” and said that the FBI had turned “what had been a successful ‘waiting game,’ during which two persons safely left the plane, into a ‘shooting match’ that left three persons dead.” The court concluded that “a reasonable attempt at negotiations must be made prior to a tactical intervention.” The Downs hijacking case came to epitomize everything not to do in a crisis situation, and inspired the development of today’s theories, training, and techniques for hostage negotiations. Soon after the Giffe tragedy, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) became the first police force in the country to put together a dedicated team of specialists to design a process and handle crisis negotiations. The FBI and others followed. A new era of negotiation had begun. HEART

After we finished the interview Paul thanked me for my time and told me he thought I was great on the radio. He suggested I think about it as a career. I thanked him and said I’d consider it. But really all I was thinking about was Jamie. As soon as I got in my car I looked on my phone and saw I had a Facebook friend request from her. I felt schoolgirl giddy. I accepted the request and immediately called my Army buddy Max. Max is one of the guys who came with me on that first Tough Mudder. We are really close friends, and he’s someone I’ve always confided in. Just a few weeks before I had called and told him, “You know what? I’m done with women for the time being, but the next time I talk to a girl, I’m shooting out of my league.” So now I called Max and said, “I’ve met a girl way out of my league and I’m gonna take a shot.” I wasn’t good at asking women out and felt really nervous. I told Max she had sent me a friend request and he urged me to send her a private message on Facebook. I typed out a pretty long message and hit SEND. Then I finally put the keys in the ignition and left the radio station parking lot. Every red light I hit, I checked my phone to see if she had responded. She hadn’t. Why wasn’t she responding? Finally, I pulled over and looked again. The message hadn’t gone through! I panicked and called Max back. “What am I gonna do? What if I send another one and the first one is just floating through the Internet and it eventually goes through? Do I send another one? Do I make it sound exactly the same? I’m gonna look like a crazy person! What do I do? I don’t know what to do!” Max calmed me down again and I rewrote my original message. This time she responded. “Jamie, it was great meeting you and Paul today. Sorry you got stuck with a used bracelet. If I run into you again I will hook you up with a new one. You’ll just have to give that one back. They aren’t free. LOL. Take care.” She responded: “Ha ha. Actually, Noah Galloway, I got the one I wanted ;). Great to meet you, too. Love your story. Tragedy to triumph. I can’t imagine the number of people you inspire every day. Hope to run into you sooner rather than later.