“
A student once asked anthropologist Margaret Mead, “What is the earliest sign of civilization?” The student expected her to say a clay pot, a grinding stone, or maybe a weapon.
Margaret Mead thought for a moment, then she said, “A healed femur.”
A femur is the longest bone in the body, linking hip to knee. In societies without the benefits of modern medicine, it takes about six weeks of rest for a fractured femur to heal. A healed femur shows that someone cared for the injured person, did their hunting and gathering, stayed with them, and offered physical protection and human companionship until the injury could mend.
Mead explained that where the law of the jungle—the survival of the fittest—rules, no healed femurs are found. The first sign of civilization is compassion, seen in a healed femur.
”
”
Ira Byock
“
Who should be held accountable for a shared history of violence? It was a question that was dogging Northern Ireland as a whole.
”
”
Patrick Radden Keefe (Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland)
“
...the Statue of Liberty's got this invitation: 'Give me your tired, your poor, your reeking homeless--'
'Huddled masses,' said Ira. 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.'
...
Okay, fine. So like everybody in the old countries says, 'Hey, I'm a huddled mass,' and they all wanna come over.
”
”
Neal Shusterman (The Schwa Was Here (Antsy Bonano, #1))
“
Lik the tree falling in the forest," says Ira.
"Huh?"
"You know, the old question - if a tree falls in a forest and no one's there to hear it, does it really make a sound?"
Howie considers this. "Is it a pine forest, or oak?"
"What's the difference?"
"Oak is a much denser wood; it's more likely to be heard by someone on the freeway next to the forest where no one is.
”
”
Neal Shusterman (The Schwa Was Here (Antsy Bonano, #1))
“
No," I mumble. I try to shake my head but can't, the agony making it impossible. "I want to stay awake. I want to be with you."
"Do not worry. I will be here when you wake."
"But you were gone before."
"I was not gone. I was here and I will always be here."
"How can you be so sure?"
She kissed me again before answering. "Because," she says, her voice tender, "I am always with you, Ira.
”
”
Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
“
The body is a fantastic machine,’ Hughes told Mackers in one of his Boston College interviews, recounting the grueling sequence of a hunger strike. ‘It’ll eat off all the fat tissue first, then it starts eating away at the muscle, to keep your brain alive.’ Long after Hughes and Price called an end to their strikes and attempted to reintegrate into society, the nursed old grudges and endlessly replayed their worst wartime abominations. In a sense, they never stopped devouring themselves.
”
”
Patrick Radden Keefe (Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland)
“
But is life really worth so much? Let us examine this; it's a different inquiry. We will offer no solace for so desolate a prison house; we will encourage no one to endure the overlordship of butchers. We shall rather show that in every kind of slavery, the road of freedom lies open. I will say to the man to whom it befell to have a king shoot arrows at his dear ones [Prexaspes], and to him whose master makes fathers banquet on their sons' guts [Harpagus]: 'What are you groaning for, fool?... Everywhere you look you find an end to your sufferings. You see that steep drop-off? It leads down to freedom. You see that ocean, that river, that well? Freedom lies at its bottom. You see that short, shriveled, bare tree? Freedom hangs from it.... You ask, what is the path to freedom? Any vein in your body.
”
”
Seneca (Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero)
“
Once, in the summer of 1995, Adams gave a speech at a rally in Belfast. He looked like a politician, in a crisp summer suit, consulting his cue cards. But during a pause in his prepared remarks, someone in the crowd shouted, "Bring back the IRA!" As the audience cheered, Adams chuckled and smiled. Then he leaned into the microphone and said, "They haven't gone away, you know.
”
”
Patrick Radden Keefe (Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland)
“
Could you try not aiming so much?" he asked me, still standing there. "If you hit him when you aim, it'll just be luck." He was speaking, communicating, and yet not breaking the spell. I then broke it. Quite deliberately. "How can it be luck if I aim?" I said back to him, not loud (despite the italics) but with rather more irritation in my voice than I was actually feeling. He didn't say anything for a moment but simply stood balanced on the curb, looking at me, I knew imperfectly, with love. "Because it will be," he said. "You'll be glad if you hit his marble — Ira's marble — won't you? Won't you be glad? And if you're glad when you hit somebody's marble, then you sort of secretly didn't expect too much to do it. So there'd have to be some luck in it, there'd have to be slightly quite a lot of accident in it.
”
”
J.D. Salinger
“
The bomb exploded, killing five people, but not Thatcher. The IRA issued a statement, eloquently capturing the strategic advantage of terrorism: ‘Today we were unlucky, but remember, we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always.
”
”
Patrick Radden Keefe (Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland)
“
Indeed, it could occasionally seem that support for the armed struggle was more fervent in Boston or Chicago than it was in Belfast or Derry. The romantic idyll of a revolutionary movement is easier to sustain when there is no danger that one's own family members might get blown to pieces on a trip to the grocery store. Some people in Ireland looked askance at the "plastic Paddies" who urged bloody war in Ulster from the safe distance of America.
”
”
Patrick Radden Keefe (Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland)
“
I say in my talks it takes two things to make it happen again, a new Hitler and social conditions like in the thirties. But that's not true. It takes three things: the Hitler, the conditions, and the people to follow the Hitler.
And don't you think he'd find them?
No, not enough of them. I really think people are better and smarter now, not so much thinking their leaders are God. The television makes a big difference.
”
”
Ira Levin (The Boys from Brazil)
“
But even if your parents were ardent supporters of the IRA, there were reasons not to tell them that you had joined. If the police or the army broke down the door to interrogate them, the less they knew, the better.
”
”
Patrick Radden Keefe (Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland)
“
After lunch, he rose and gave me the tips of his fingers, saying he would like to show me over his flat; but I snatched away my hand and gave a cry. What I had touched was cold and, at the same time, bony; and I remembered that his hands smelt of death. ‘Oh, forgive me!’ he moaned. And he opened a door before me. ‘This is my bedroom, if you care to see it. It is rather curious.’ His manners, his words, his attitude gave me confidence and I went in without hesitation. I felt as if I were entering the room of a dead person. The walls were all hung with black, but, instead of the white trimmings that usually set off that funereal upholstery, there was an enormous stave of music with the notes of the DIES IRAE, many times repeated. In the middle of the room was a canopy, from which hung curtains of red brocaded stuff, and, under the canopy, an open coffin. 'That is where I sleep,’ said Erik. 'One has to get used to everything in life, even to eternity.’ The sight upset me so much that I turned away my head”
- Chapter 12: Apollo’s Lyre
”
”
Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
“
Amantium irae amoris integratio est
A Latin saying that means
Lovers’ quarrels are the renewal of love
”
”
Janet Aylmer (Sophie's Salvation)
“
He must have known, or at least suspected, that she was herself a member of the IRA, but they would argue, amiably, about politics as if they were a couple of graduate students, rather than adversaries in a bloody guerrilla war. At one point, Corden-Lloyd told her that he would love to come back and see her in ten years' time, 'and we could all tell each other the whole truth.
”
”
Patrick Radden Keefe (Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland)
“
If you want to be original, “the most important possible thing you could do,” says Ira Glass, the producer of This American Life and the podcast Serial, “is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work.
”
”
Adam M. Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World)
“
Their voices echoed over the stream and along the edge of the trees. She saw the tail end of a smile on Oscar’s lips.
“I thought you didn’t like to sing,” she said. He’d always remained silent while the crew sang their sea chanteys.
“I don’t,” Oscar said. “But you have a pretty voice.”
His compliment shaped a bashful smile onto her lips. She was glad for the firelight, already casting a reddish glow to her skin.
“And what ‘bout me, mate?” Ira asked.
“Couldn’t say. I was trying to block it out,” Oscar replied.
”
”
Angie Frazier (Everlasting (Everlasting, #1))
“
This book is, in a way, a scrapbook of my writing life. From shopping the cathedral flea market in Barcelona with David Sedaris to having drinks at Cognac with Nora Ephron just months before she died. To the years of sporadic correspondence I had with Thom Jones and Ira Levin. I’ve stalked my share of mentors, asking for advice.
Therefore, if you came back another day and asked me to teach you, I’d tell you that becoming an author involves more than talent and skill. I’ve known fantastic writers who never finished a project. And writers who launched incredible ideas, then never fully executed them. And I’ve seen writers who sold a single book and became so disillusioned by the process that they never wrote another. I’d paraphrase the writer Joy Williams, who says that writers must be smart enough to hatch a brilliant idea—but dull enough to research it, keyboard it, edit and re-edit it, market the manuscript, revise it, revise it, re-revise it, review the copy edit, proofread the typeset galleys, slog through the interviews and write the essays to promote it, and finally to show up in a dozen cities and autograph copies for thousands or tens of thousands of people…
And then I’d tell you, “Now get off my porch.”
But if you came back to me a third time, I’d say, “Kid…” I’d say, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different)
“
don’t let me hear you say again ‘Fuck orders’! You’re a corporal who’s been assigned a duty, and if your superiors have chosen not to tell you the reason for it, then they have a reason for that too. Good Christ, you’re an SS man; behave like one! ‘My Honor Is Loyalty.’ Those words were supposed to be engraved on your soul!
”
”
Ira Levin (The Boys from Brazil)
“
Yakov, if one becomes Hitler, just one - my God, you know what we've got!'
'No,' Liebermann said. 'No, I've been thinking about this for weeks. I say in my talks it takes two things to make it happen again, a new Hitler and social conditions like in the thirties. But that's not true. It takes three things: the Hitler, the conditions... and the people to follow the Hitler.'
'And don't you think he'd find them?'
'No, not enough of them. I really think people are better and smarter now, not so much thinking their leaders are God. The television makes a big difference. And history, knowing... Some he'd find, yes; but no more, I think- I hope- than the pretend Hitlers we have now...
”
”
Ira Levin
“
Nobody tells people who are beginners. I really wish someone had told this to me. Is that [if you are watching this video, you are somebody who wants o make videos right?] all of us who do creative work, we get into it. we get into it because we have good taste. you know what I mean? like you want to make TV, because you love TV. there is stuff you just like, love. ok so you got really good taste. you get into this thing … that i don’t even know how to describe it, but there is a gap. for the first couple of years you are making stuff, what you are making isn’t so good... ok, its not that great. it's really not that great. its trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but not quite that good. but your taste, the thing get you into the game, your taste is still killer. your taste is good enough that you can tell what you are making is a kind of disappointment to you, you know what i mean? you can tell it is still sort of crappy. a lot of people never get past that phase. a lot of people at that point, they quit. the thing i would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know, who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste, they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. they knew it felt short. [some of us can admit that to ourselves, some of us less able to admit that to ourselves] we knew like, it didn’t have that special thing that we wanted it to have. [...] everybody goes through that. for you to go through it, if you are going through right now, just getting out of that phase, if you are just starting out and entering into that phase, you gotta know it is totally normal and the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. do a huge volume of work. put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re gonna finish one story. you know what i mean? whatever its gonna be. you create the deadline. it is best if have somebody who is waiting work from you, expecting work from you. even if not somebody who pays you, but that you are in a situation where you have to turn out the work. because it is only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap and the work you are making will be as good as your ambitions.
”
”
Ira Glass
“
Nearly everyone who is asked where they want to spend their final days says at home, surrounded by people they love and who love them. That's the consistent finding of surveys and, in my experience as a doctor, remains true when people become patients. Unfortunately, it's not the way things turn out. At present, just over one-fifth of Americans are at home when they die. Over 30 percent die in nursing homes, where, according to polls, virtually no one says they want to be. Hospitals remain the site of over 50 percent of deaths in most parts of the country, and nearly 40 percent of people who die in a hospital spend their last days in ICU, where they will likely be sedated or have their arms tied down so they will not pull out breathing tubes, intravenous lines, or catheters. Dying is hard, but it doesn't have to be this hard.
”
”
Ira Byock
“
Hessen? Dr. Mengele. Everything’s fine, there’s nothing to worry about. Exactly the amateur I expected. I don’t think he even understood German. Send the boys home to practice their signatures; it was just an excitement to round off the evening. No, not till 1977, I’m afraid; I fly back to the compound as soon as we clean up. So go with God, Horst. And say it for me to the others: ‘Go with God.’” He hung up and said, “Heil Hitler.
”
”
Ira Levin (The Boys from Brazil)
“
Indeed, it could occasionally seem that support for the armed struggle was more fervent in Boston or Chicago than it was in Belfast or Derry. The romantic idyll of a revolutionary movement is easier to sustain when there is no danger that one's own family members might get blown to pieces on a trip to the grocery store.. Some people in Ireland looked askance at the "plastic Paddies" who urged bloody war in Ulster from the safe distance of America.
”
”
Patrick Radden Keefe (Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland)
“
You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders as you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus is it not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.
”
”
Ira Katznelson (When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America)
“
No. I’ve been thinking about this for weeks. I say in my talks it takes two things to make it happen again, a new Hitler and social conditions like in the thirties. But that’s not true. It takes three things: the Hitler, the conditions…and the people to follow the Hitler.” “And don’t you think he’d find them?” “No, not enough of them. I really think people are better and smarter now, not so much thinking their leaders are God. The television makes a big difference. And history, knowing…Some he’d find, yes; but no more, I think—I hope—than the pretend-Hitlers we have now, in Germany and South America.
”
”
Ira Levin (The Boys from Brazil)
“
The New York Times wrote in 1955 about the growing desire, but continued inability, to retire: “To rephrase an old saying: everyone talks about retirement, but apparently very few do anything about it.”6 It was not until the 1980s that the idea that everyone deserves, and should have, a dignified retirement took hold. And the way to get that dignified retirement ever since has been an expectation that everyone will save and invest their own money. Let me reiterate how new this idea is: The 401(k)—the backbone savings vehicle of American retirement—did not exist until 1978. The Roth IRA was not born until 1998.
”
”
Morgan Housel (The Psychology of Money)
“
The Tao of Dying: In letting go There is gain. In giving up, There is advancement. Letting go of control makes room for the gift of interdependence. Letting go of dreams makes room for ordinary moments of grace. Letting go of replicating past experiences makes room for tomorrow’s surprises. Letting go of self-sufficiency makes room for discovering vulnerabilities previously unknown. Ira Byock says he’s learned through his patients’ dying stories “that people can become stronger and more whole as physical weakness becomes overwhelming and life itself wanes.” Letting go makes room for something new.
”
”
Karen Speerstra (The Divine Art of Dying: How to Live Well While Dying)
“
It was one of those things that get torn out of you and thrust into oblivion just because they didn’t matter enough. And yet what I had missed completely took root in Ira and changed his life. So you don’t have to look much further than Ira and me to see why we go through life with a generalized sense that everybody is wrong except us. And since we don’t just forget things because they don’t matter but also forget things because they matter too much—because each of us remembers and forgets in a pattern whose labyrinthine windings are an identification mark no less distinctive than a fingerprint—it’s no wonder that the shards of reality one person will cherish as a biography can seem to someone else who, say, happened to have eaten some ten thousand dinners at the very same kitchen table, to be a willful excursion into mythomania.
”
”
Philip Roth (American Pastoral (The American Trilogy, #1))
“
QUOTES & SAYINGS OF RYAN MORAN- THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL MAN
Favorite Sayings of Ryan Moran: The World's Most Powerful Man
“Sometimes the withholding of a small part of the truth is not only wise, but prudent.”
“There is one principle that bars all other principles, and that is contempt prior to investigation.” (Ryan was fond of paraphrasing Herbert Spencer)
“What do you mean?”, “How do you know?”, “So what?”
“I don’t need much, just one meal a day, a pack of cigarettes and a roof over my head.”
“Well…, we must have different data bases, mustn’t we?”
“This guy is more squirrely than a shithouse rat”
The CIA—you know, the ‘Catholic Irish Alcoholics’
“That dumb fuck.”
“Oye! A Jew and an Irishman—what a team!”
“Okay, everybody, up and to the right ten thousand feet,” ( If things in general were not going
well. Refers to his jet flying days)
“Is that what you want to do?.....Are you sure?"
“Curiosity is self serving,”
“If you don’t know where you’re going, you will end up somewhere else.”
“So…, what are you thinking?”
“I can do anything that I want, as long as I have the desire and I am willing to pay the price.”
(His working definition of honesty)
“Well, what did you learn tonight?”
“Don’t let your emotions get the best of you, and don’t get too far out into your future.”
“If you meet someone in the middle of the desert and he asks you where the next water hole is, you had better tell him the truth. If you don’t, then the next time you meet, he will kill you.”
“Damn it!”
“And remember to watch your mirrors!” (Refers to the fact someone may be following us in the car)
“A person either gets humble or gets humiliated.”
“That’s right.”
“Oye, Sheldon, a Jew and an Irishman—talk about guilt and suffering!”
“Pigs grow fat, but hogs get slaughtered.”
“A friend is someone who is coming in, when everyone else is going out.
”
”
Ira Teller (Control Switch On: A True Story—The Untold Story of the Most Powerful Man in the World—Ryan Moran—Who Shaped the Planet for Peace)
“
You weren’t supposed to choose me,” he said.
Behind them, Ira approached, stunned and speechless for what must have been the first time in his life. He helped lift Samuel, whose cheeks had blanched as well. Camille prodded Oscar’s arms and stomach and face. It was truly him. The unbearable grief over losing him flipped inside out. Her joy ran so deep and strong she thought she might burst from it.
“The night the Christina went down, you rowed to me,” she answered, her throat knotted as she thought of her father. She forced it down. “This time, I must have needed to row to you.”
Oscar kissed her, his lips still cold but filled with life. She leaned into him and hung on as though he might disappear. Ira let out a playful high-pitched whistle. Samuel coughed. Oscar and Camille reluctantly pulled apart and blushed.
“Holy gallnipper,” Ira said. Camille grinned, not minding in the least that he was using that annoying turn of phrase again. “I can’t believe that little rock…I mean you were dead, mate. Dead as this bloke right here.” Ira kicked McGreenery in the leg. Oscar nodded, rubbing his hand over the fading red mark, as if to feel for himself that the deadly wound was gone.
“I was in the dory,” he whispered. Ira cocked his head.
“Say again?”
Camille lifted her ear from his chest, where she’d wanted to listen to the smooth rhythm of his heart. She looked up at him before hearing its strong beat.
“The dory?”
Oscar nodded again, eyebrows creased.
“I heard your voice. At the cave,” he said to Camille. “This force kept pulling me backward, away from you, like I was being sucked into the ground.”
So this was how it had felt for him to die. She remembered the way he’d looked right through her and how it had chilled her to the marrow. Her own brush with death had been different, and somehow better, if death could even be measured in levels of bad or good. The image of her father had drawn her to safety, making her forget her yearning for air. He had been there for her, but she hadn’t been able to do the same for him. All this time, all this trouble, and all she’d wanted was to bring him back, make him proud of the lengths to which she’d gone for him. In the end, she’d failed him miserably.
“And then you were gone. Your voice faded, and I was in the dory, adrift in the Tasman, the dawn after the Christina went down,” Oscar continued.
Samuel and Ira glanced at each other with marked expressions of doubt and confusion.
“But I wasn’t alone.” He gently pulled Camille away from him and gripped her arms. “Your father was with me. He was sitting there, smiling. It all seemed so real. I could taste the salt air, and…and I remember touching the water, and it was cold. It wasn’t like in a dream, when you can’t do those things.”
Camille sucked in a deep breath, trying to inflate her crushing lungs. Oscar had seen him, too. She’d give anything to see her father again, to hear his voice, to feel at home by just being in his presence. At least, that’s what she’d once believed. But Camille hadn’t been willing to give up Oscar. Did that mean she loved her father less? Never. She could never love her fatherless. So then why hadn’t her heart chosen him?
"Did he say anything?" she asked, anxious to know yet afraid to hear.
"It's all jumbled," Oscar said, again shaking his head and rubbing his chest. "I remember him saying a few things. Bits and pieces."
Camille looked to Ira and Samuel. Their parted mouths and bugged eyes hung on Oscar's every word. Oscar squinted at the ground and seemed to be working hard to piece together what her father had said on the other side.
"I'm still here to guide her?" he said, questioning his own memory. "It doesn't make any sense, I'm sorry."
She shook her head, eyes tearing up again. It had been real. He really had come to her in the black water of the underground pool.
"No, don't be sorry," she said, tears spilling. "It does make sense. It makes sense to me.
”
”
Angie Frazier (Everlasting (Everlasting, #1))
“
Sylvia called to apologize - she had been passed up for a promotion she damn well knew she deserved - and Charmaine called to say they'd had a great time and to postpone a tentative Tuesday tennis date. "Ed's got a bee in his bonnet," she said. "He's taking a few days off, we're putting Merrill with the DaCostas - you don't know them, lucky you - and he and I are going to 'rediscover each other.' That means he chases me around the bed. And my period's not till next week, God damn it.
"Why not let him catch you?" Joanna said.
"Oh God," Charmaine said. "Look, I just don't enjoy having a big cock shoved into me, that's all. Never have and never will. And I'm not a lez either, because I tried it and that's no big deal. I'm just not interested in sex. I don't think any woman is, really, not even Pisces women. Are you?"
"Well I'm not a nympho," Joanna said, "but I'm interested in it, sure I am."
"Really, or do you just feel you're supposed to be?"
"Really.
"Well, to each his own," Charmaine said.
”
”
Ira Levin
“
Sylvia called to apologize - she had been passed up for a promotion she damn well knew she deserved - and Charmaine called to say they'd had a great time and to postpone a tentative Tuesday tennis date. "Ed's got a bee in his bonnet," she said. "He's taking a few days off, we're putting Merrill with the DaCostas - you don't know them, lucky you - and he and I are going to 'rediscover each other.' That means he chases me around the bed. And my period's not till next week, God damn it."
"Why not let him catch you?" Joanna said.
"Oh God," Charmaine said. "Look, I just don't enjoy having a big cock shoved into me, that's all. Never have and never will. And I'm not a lez either, because I tried it and that's no big deal. I'm just not interested in sex. I don't think any woman is, really, not even Pisces women. Are you?"
"Well I'm not a nympho," Joanna said, "but I'm interested in it, sure I am."
"Really, or do you just feel you're supposed to be?"
"Really."
"Well, to each his own," Charmaine said.
”
”
Ira Levin
“
Basic elements of human care underpin how we regard and respond to others—our ethics as people become sicker and more physically dependent: Shelter from the elements. A caring society metaphorically says to the frail or dying person, “We will keep you warm and dry.” Help with personal hygiene. The community reassures the person who is too frail to care for himself or herself, “We will keep you clean.” Assistance with elimination. Family or, on behalf of society, clinicians (typically nurses or nurse aides), say, “We will help you with your bowels and bladder function.” Provision of food and drink. We can say, “We will always offer you something to eat and drink—and help you to do it.” Keeping company. Society can say to people who are dying, especially those who are “unbefriended,” “We will be with you. You will not have to go through this time in your life entirely alone.” Alleviating suffering. Certainly today, society can say, “We will do whatever we can, with as much skill and expertise as available, to lessen your discomfort.” Yet it is only this final element that is dependent on clinical expertise.
”
”
Ira Byock (The Best Care Possible: A Physician's Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life)
“
Is it Randall?” Oscar sounded out the name with care, as if testing dangerous waters. Camille closed her eyes and turned her face away from him, not wanting to have to see him when she said what she needed to say.
“I have a duty, Oscar, just like my mother did. She failed at hers and look what happened; she destroyed so much. My father asked me not to say anything, but if I don’t marry Randall…I’m sorry, Oscar, I just have to.”
Camille tried to edge by him, but Oscar held her back with his arm.
“Do you think I’m a fool, Camille? Don’t try to blame marrying Randall on some duty you think you have.”
She parted her lips to insist he was wrong. He cut her off.
“If this is how you really feel, then you had no right to ask me to stay with you that night. You gave me a taste of what being with you might be like, and now you’re asking me to walk away. Who do you think you are?”
Camille shook her head. He wasn’t listening. He had no idea how difficult it was for her, too, to have that one taste, that single moment of pure bliss to feed off of for the rest of her life.
“I don’t have a choice-“
He slammed his fist against the pantry shelf behind her.
“I don’t have a bank vault filled with money, or ten suits hanging in my closet to choose from each morning. I know I couldn’t give you all the things he could, but I can give you something he’ll never be able to. I love you, Camille,” he said, his mouth so close to hers his breath moistened her lips. “I love you. Not your last name or your pretty face or all the business opportunities you could bring me.” He laid his palm just beneath her neck, his thumb caressing the skin above where her heart lay. “Just you.”
She stared at him, unblinking, unable to breathe, let alone speak. Oscar’s arm fell away.
“You do have a choice, Camille. Or should I already be calling you Mrs. Jackson?”
He stormed from the pantry, Camille on his heels. Promise or no promise to her father, she had to tell Oscar everything.
“Please, Oscar, wait, if you’ll just listen-“
The companionway steps rattled, and Ira bounded into the galley. Oscar scooped up his shirt and shoved his arms inside the sleeves as Ira kicked out a bench at the table and sat down.
“I’ve never been so friggin’ tried in my life,” Ira said, grabbing a mug for coffee. “And I once played a game of poker that lasted two days.
Camille ignored him, Oscar’s anger still stinging. She’d created a massive mass. Ira peered at her, then at Oscar.
“Why’re you two all red in the face?” he asked. Then his cheeks drew up and his teeth glistened. Oscar caught him before he could speak.
“Save it, Ira,” he said, quickly glancing at Camille. She couldn’t plead with him to listen to her explain with Ira there. Oscar buttoned his shirt and left the galley. Ira directed his wily grin toward her.
“Save it, Ira,” she echoed, and resumed scrubbing the floor.
”
”
Angie Frazier (Everlasting (Everlasting, #1))
“
So you want to turn around? Give up on the chance of having him back?”
Oscar took a swig of his canteen, then capped it. He held her stare. “I just want you alive.”
Camille glanced toward Ira. He sat far enough away to hear just the murmur of their voices. This was her only opportunity to clean up after the messy scene in the pantry. Where to begin baffled her. The cold manner in which they were now acting made it difficult to believe Oscar had held her so lovingly, her body curled into his. She’d felt his hot breath on her shoulder as he dipped into sleep and out again to bury his nose in her hair or race her scar from the Christina with his finger. Camille had never wanted to leave that bed.
“I don’t love him,” she said with little fanfare. Plain. Simple. The truth. “He’s a decent man, and things would be easier if I did love him. But I want what only you can give me, Oscar.”
She couldn’t imagine feeling warm and safe and loved in Randall’s arms the way she had in Oscar’s. She didn’t know what would happen once her father returned to them or how he’d react. Right then, it didn’t matter.
“Good night, then,” she said when he remained quiet. Camille turned onto her other side, away from the fire. The immediate cold lashed at her. A moment passed before she heard the scrape of his boots on the ground. His footsteps rounded the fire. Without saying a word, he lay down beside her. Oscar pulled her close to him without checking to see if Ira was watching.
He kissed the crown of her head. “Good night, then.
”
”
Angie Frazier (Everlasting (Everlasting, #1))
“
Simonton finds that on average, creative geniuses weren’t qualitatively better in their fields than their peers. They simply produced a greater volume of work, which gave them more variation and a higher chance of originality. “The odds of producing an influential or successful idea,” Simonton notes, are “a positive function of the total number of ideas generated.” Consider Shakespeare: we’re most familiar with a small number of his classics, forgetting that in the span of two decades, he produced 37 plays and 154 sonnets. Simonton tracked the popularity of Shakespeare’s plays, measuring how often they’re performed and how widely they’re praised by experts and critics. In the same five-year window that Shakespeare produced three of his five most popular works—Macbeth, King Lear, and Othello—he also churned out the comparatively average Timon of Athens and All’s Well That Ends Well, both of which rank among the worst of his plays and have been consistently slammed for unpolished prose and incomplete plot and character development. In every field, even the most eminent creators typically produce a large quantity of work that’s technically sound but considered unremarkable by experts and audiences. When the London Philharmonic Orchestra chose the 50 greatest pieces of classical music, the list included six pieces by Mozart, five by Beethoven, and three by Bach. To generate a handful of masterworks, Mozart composed more than 600 pieces before his death at thirty-five, Beethoven produced 650 in his lifetime, and Bach wrote over a thousand. In a study of over 15,000 classical music compositions, the more pieces a composer produced in a given five-year window, the greater the spike in the odds of a hit. Picasso’s oeuvre includes more than 1,800 paintings, 1,200 sculptures, 2,800 ceramics, and 12,000 drawings, not to mention prints, rugs, and tapestries—only a fraction of which have garnered acclaim. In poetry, when we recite Maya Angelou’s classic poem “Still I Rise,” we tend to forget that she wrote 165 others; we remember her moving memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and pay less attention to her other 6 autobiographies. In science, Einstein wrote papers on general and special relativity that transformed physics, but many of his 248 publications had minimal impact. If you want to be original, “the most important possible thing you could do,” says Ira Glass, the producer of This American Life and the podcast Serial, “is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work.” Across fields, Simonton reports that the most prolific people not only have the highest originality; they also generate their most original output during the periods in which they produce the largest volume.* Between the ages of thirty and thirty-five, Edison pioneered the lightbulb, the phonograph, and the carbon telephone. But during that period, he filed well over one hundred patents for other inventions as diverse as stencil pens, a fruit preservation technique, and a way of using magnets to mine iron ore—and designed a creepy talking doll. “Those periods in which the most minor products appear tend to be the same periods in which the most major works appear,” Simonton notes. Edison’s “1,093 patents notwithstanding, the number of truly superlative creative achievements can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.
”
”
Adam M. Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World)
“
Non-Tenure Writing Jobs
The MLA session on the adjunct crisis indicates where higher education has come to in the Brave New World of the 21st century. Research by the MLA itself, by Gloria McMillan, by Eileen Schell and other colleagues, already confirm the deep replacement of tenure-track faculty with contingent adjuncts and others. This crisis is deepest in composition and in community colleges. Doug Hesse’s program at Denver Univ. is no solution; it will extend the subordination of composition through sub-faculty lines while rationalizing it as “good for students"(before research has even proved it so). But, sub-faculty writing lecturers will never be treated as “real” professors by their institutions and will never be accepted as colleagues by their tenure-track peers. Such sub-faculty plans will weaken the faculty as a whole in the academy by further dividing it into competing sub-groups. Neither will a sub-faculty plan benefit the 14 million undergraduates on campus, most who attend under-funded public colleges with no billion-dollar endowments or corporate angels to turn to. Community colleges, in particular, where about 6 million students are enrolled, can have up to 65% of classes taught by adjuncts. The sub-faculty plan is thus really a management tool available in the short-term to those colleges with deep pockets and deep readiness to entrench a lesser sub-faculty in their writing programs. Doug Hesse acknowledges such an outcome as a possibility. He is quoted in the IHE report saying he was disturbed by the degree of interest other WPAs took in DU’s new sub-faculty writing program, fearing that DU was installing a “Vichy"-type model(collaborating with the authorities desire to de-tenure faculty generally and to subordinate writing instructors particularly). But, Hesse is quoted as making peace with this because he feels that sub-faculty lines for writing teachers are at least good for writing students. Even if we knew for sure this was true, why must writing teachers be the only professionals in higher education called upon to make such sacrifices? A large private grant to finance Denver University’s program($10 million for Hesse’s project)is good fortune for one campus, but it offers no model for how we can solve the national disgrace of exploited adjuncts.
”
”
Ira Shor
“
Sylphid was beginning to play professionally, and she was subbing as second harpist in the orchestra at Radio City Music Hall. She was called pretty regularly, once or twice a week, and she’d also got a job playing at a fancy restaurant in the East Sixties on Friday night. Ira would drive her from the Village up to the restaurant with her harp and then go and pick her and the harp up when she finished. He had the station wagon, and he’d pull up in front of the house and go inside and have to carry it down the stairs. The harp is in its felt cover, and Ira puts one hand on the column and one hand in the sound hole at the back and he lifts it up, lays the harp on a mattress they keep in the station wagon, and drives Sylphid and the harp uptown to the restaurant. At the restaurant he takes the harp out of the car and, big radio star that he is, he carries it inside. At ten-thirty, when the restaurant is finished serving dinner and Sylphid’s ready to come back to the Village, he goes around to pick her up and the whole operation is repeated. Every Friday. He hated the physical imposition that it was—those things weigh about eighty pounds—but he did it. I remember that in the hospital, when he had cracked up, he said to me, ‘She married me to carry her daughter’s harp! That’s why the woman married me! To haul that fucking harp!’ “On those Friday night trips, Ira found he could talk to Sylphid in ways he couldn’t when Eve was around. He’d ask her about being a movie star’s child. He’d say to her, ‘When you were a little girl, when did it dawn on you that something was up, that this wasn’t the way everyone grew up?’ She told him it was when the tour buses went up and down their street in Beverly Hills. She said she never saw her parents’ movies until she was a teenager. Her parents were trying to keep her normal and so they downplayed those movies around the house. Even the rich kid’s life in Beverly Hills with the other movie stars’ kids seemed normal enough until the tour buses stopped in front of her house and she could hear the tour guide saying, ‘This is Carlton Pennington’s house, where he lives with his wife, Eve Frame.’ “She told him about the production that birthday parties were for the movie stars’ kids—clowns, magicians, ponies, puppet shows, and every child attended by a nanny in a white nurse’s uniform. At the dining table, behind every child would be a nanny. The Penningtons had their own screening room and they ran movies. Kids would come over. Fifteen, twenty kids.
”
”
Philip Roth (I Married a Communist (The American Trilogy, #2))
“
Holy gallnipper, how long till we hit the magic trail? It’s gloomier than my own funeral I here.”
Camille adjusted the bag’s rope and looked at Ira. “Don’t even joke about that.”
Since the moment they’d entered the forest, she’d felt like something was listening. Like they’d woken some sleeping creature, and now it followed them with silent cunning. The deafening chants had not returned to pierce her eardrums, but danger still felt close.
A few paces ahead of her, Oscar peeled away another cobweb, the octagonal spinning so massive Camille didn’t even want to imagine the size of the spider that had created it.
“Mate, you got a stomach made of iron,” Ira said.
A flash of orange and black swept in front of Camille’s eyes and she felt an odd tug on her dress. She looked down and froze. A spider with a body the size of her first flexed its hairy legs on her skirt. It started to scuttle up. Her scream echoed through the forest as she swiped the spider off. It hit the marshy ground and scampered under a log. Oscar grabbed her arm and pulled her toward him.
“Did it bite you?”
She shook her head, arms and legs stiff with fear.
“I’ve never seen one so bloody big,” Ira said, running past the log as though the spider would leap out at him. Oscar started walking again, his hand on the small of her back. She exhaled with more than one kind of relief. He was at least still concerned for her.
As they started to pick up their pace, another black critter swung down from a nearby tree. Camille say it flying toward them, but her warning shout was too slow. The spider landed on Oscar’s shoulder, fat and furry and swift as its legs darted up his neck.
Oscar shouted an obscenity as he whacked the giant from his skin. Camille heard it thud against the leafy forest floor. Unfazed, the spider quickly sprang to its finger-length legs and darted toward her boot. Her shrieks echoed again as it leaped onto her hem. With his foot, Ira knocked the spider back to the ground, and before it could bounce back up, Oscar smashed it with a stick. The squashed giant oozed yellow-and-green blood onto the marshy ground. Camille gagged and tasted her breakfast oats in the back of her mouth.
“What in all wrath are those monsters?” Ira panted as he twisted around, looking for more.
Camille looked up to the trees to try and spot any others that might be descending from glossy webbing. Terror paralyzed her as her eyes landed on a colony of glistening webs in the treetops. An endless number of black dots massed above their heads, dangling from tree limbs. Oscar and Ira followed her horrified stare.
“Run,” Oscar whispered. Camille sprinted forward, her skin and scalp tingling with imaginary spider legs. The bag of provisions slammed against her back, tugging at her neck, but she didn’t care. They didn’t slow down until the gigantic spiderwebs grew sparse and the squawk of birds took over.
”
”
Angie Frazier (Everlasting (Everlasting, #1))
“
Too Soon to Say Goodbye, Buchwald writes about how he came to be admitted to a hospice facility in the Washington, D.C.,
”
”
Ira Byock (The Best Care Possible: A Physician's Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life)
“
If you want to be original, “the most important possible thing you could do,” says Ira Glass,
”
”
Adam M. Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World)
“
Cats continue to teach me a lot of what is important in my life, and also, how short it is, how we need to express our love to those for whom we feel it, daily, nightly, in every way we can. With everyone we love, we have only a limited time so we must learn to celebrate it body and soul. They have taught me how precious every moment we can enjoy can be with whatever we love, because it all passes and so do we. Writing is a futile attempt to preserve what disappears moment by moment. All that remains of my mother is what I remember and what I have written for and about her. Eventually that is all that will remain of Ira and of me. Writing sometimes feels frivolous and sometimes sacred, but memory is one of my strongest muses. I serve her with my words. So long as people read, those we loved survive however evanescently. As do we writers, saying with our life's work, Remember. Remember us. Remember me.
”
”
Marge Piercy (Sleeping with Cats)
“
Sometimes it felt as if they spent more nights on the floor than in their beds. Lying awake, staring at the ceiling, Michael would listen to the sounds of bullets ricocheting off the concrete outside. It was a mad life. But as the anarchy persisted from one month to the next, it became the only life he knew.
”
”
Patrick Radden Keefe (Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland)
“
The Dhammapada says losing what you love brings suffering. But harboring the pain of your loss only brings more pain.
”
”
B.V. Lawson (Dies Irae (Scott Drayco Mystery #3))
“
I’m not just any talking mirror,” Ira says. “I’m a cool talking mirror.
”
”
Melissa de la Cruz (Never After: The Broken Mirror (The Chronicles of Never After Book 3))
“
His job, he felt, was to speak for the victims - to represent the next person who might be killed in the conflict. He had no particular party; his only allegiance was to those who had been (and would be) cut down.
”
”
Patrick Radden Keefe (Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland)
“
If you have less than $100,000 in your traditional IRA: Keep investing in your IRA, but once you get within 10 years of retirement, consider reducing your IRA contribution by 50% and use that money to pay down your mortgage. For example, let’s say you are contributing $500 a month to your IRA. My advice is to reduce that to $250 a month and then put the remaining $250 into accelerating your mortgage payments.
”
”
Suze Orman (The Money Class: Learn to Create Your New American Dream)
“
Like an existentialist, I will infer my state from the actions I perform. Thought follows deed, as Mussolini taught. In Anfang war die Tat, as Goethe says in Faust. In the beginning was the deed, not the word.
”
”
Philip K. Dick (Deus Irae)
“
with the public radio host Ira Glass, for example, a group of three undergraduates press him for wisdom on how to “figure out what you want” and “know what you’ll be good at.” “In the movies there’s this idea that you should just go for your dream,” Glass tells them. “But I don’t believe that. Things happen in stages.” Glass emphasizes that it takes time to get good at anything, recounting the many years it took him to master radio to the point where he had interesting options. “The key thing is to force yourself through the work, force the skills to come; that’s the hardest phase,” he says. Noticing the stricken faces of his interviewers, who were perhaps hoping to hear something more uplifting than work is hard, so suck it up, Glass continues: “I feel like your problem is that you’re trying to judge all things in the abstract before you do them. That’s your tragic mistake.
”
”
Cal Newport (So Good They Can't Ignore You)
“
The following rules are the fundamental differentiators to keep in mind throughout this book. 1. Retirement Is Worst-Case-Scenario Insurance. Retirement planning is like life insurance. It should be viewed as nothing more than a hedge against the absolute worst-case scenario: in this case, becoming physically incapable of working and needing a reservoir of capital to survive. Retirement as a goal or final redemption is flawed for at least three solid reasons: a. It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life. This is a nonstarter—nothing can justify that sacrifice. b. Most people will never be able to retire and maintain even a hotdogs-for-dinner standard of living. Even one million is chump change in a world where traditional retirement could span 30 years and inflation lowers your purchasing power 2–4% per year. The math doesn’t work.3 The golden years become lower-middle-class life revisited. That’s a bittersweet ending. c. If the math does work, it means that you are one ambitious, hardworking machine. If that’s the case, guess what? One week into retirement, you’ll be so damn bored that you’ll want to stick bicycle spokes in your eyes. You’ll probably opt to look for a new job or start another company. Kinda defeats the purpose of waiting, doesn’t it? I’m not saying don’t plan for the worst case—I have maxed out 401(k)s and IRAs I use primarily for tax purposes—but don’t mistake retirement for the goal.
”
”
Timothy Ferriss (The 4-Hour Workweek)
“
Nothing says "revolution" like the sound of breaking glass.
”
”
Mark Bulik (Ambush at Central Park: When the IRA Came to New York)
“
Crazy for You opens backstage at the Zangler Theatre, New York, where Bobby, desperate to break into showbusiness, performs an impromptu audition for the great impresario Bella Zangler. This is not a ‘book number’ – that’s to say, the music is not an expression of character or plot point arising from the dialogue, the defining convention of musical theatre. Instead, more prosaically, it’s a real number, a ‘prop number’: Bobby is backstage and doing the song for Zangler. So it’s sparely orchestrated – little more than a rehearsal piano and some support; it’s one chorus; and its tap-break ends with Bobby stamping on Zangler’s foot. This is grim reality: Bobby is expelled from the theatre. Outside, he makes a decision, and sings ‘I Can’t Be Bothered Now’ – the second song, but the real opening number: the first ‘book number’ in the show. There is an automobile onstage (it’s the 1930s) and, as Bobby opens the door, one showgirl, pretty in pink, steps out, then another, and another, and more and more, far more than could fit in any motor car; finally, Bobby raises the hood of the vehicle and the last chorine emerges. The audience leans back, reassured and content: Susan Stroman’s fizzy, inventive choreography has told them that what’s about to follow is romantic fantasy. More to the point, it’s true to the character of the song, and the choice of song is true to Bobby’s character and the engine of the drama: My bonds and shares May fall downstairs Who cares? Who cares? I’m dancing and I Can’t Be Bothered Now … This lyric captures the philosophy of Ira Gershwin’s entire oeuvre – which is important: the show is a celebration of Gershwin. But it’s also an exact expression of Bobby’s feelings and the reason why he heads to Dead Rock, Arkansas. So the number does everything it should: it defines the principal’s motivation; it kick-starts the plot; and it communicates the spirit of the score and the staging. Audiences don’t reason it out like that; we just eat it up. But that’s why.
”
”
Mark Steyn (Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now)
“
Scappaticci would also be a dangerous man to prosecute, knowing what he knew about the extent to which the butchery of the Nutting Squad had been countenanced, or facilitated, by Her Majesty's Government. It would be exceedingly risky for the state to put Stakeknife into any position where he might feel the need to start talking. When it came to his former comrades in the IRA, Scappaticci may have enjoyed similar immunity. He knew too much about too many people.
”
”
Patrick Radden Keefe (Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland)
“
Traditional 401(K) or 403(B) Account Typically offered by your employer, a 401(k) account allows you to invest a percentage of your wages for retirement. A 403(b) is the public sector’s equivalent to a 401(k). Investing through a 401(k) or 403(b) is one of the most advantageous ways to invest, since the government is giving you tax breaks. Your employer will sometimes match what you contribute, up to a certain percent. (FreE mONaY!) Remember from our Financial Game Plan that this is the trump card: if you have an employer match, take advantage of it. Maximum yearly contribution: $20,500, which means you can contribute any amount up to that limit. This does not include any employer match, so go crazy. (This and all other retirement account maximums are current for the 2022 tax year.) Individual Retirement Account (IRA) This is an individual retirement account, meaning it’s not tied to your employer. You have to open it up on your own, and it’s yours forever. Good news: you can have both a 401(k) and an IRA! Maximum yearly contribution: $6,000. You technically have fifteen and a half months to contribute that $6,000. The government lets you put money in your IRA during the twelve months of that year, plus the first months of the following year leading up to the tax filing deadline. A little confusing, but stay with me: if you want to contribute to your IRA in 2023, you will have from January to December 2023, plus January to April 15, 2024, to hit that $6,000 max. So, let’s say that you’re rounding out the year of contributions at $4,500. That means you have another three-ish months to get the full $6,000! More time, yay! If we’re already in the new year, and you want the money to specifically go to the previous year’s IRA, you simply need to specify that when you contribute. It’s usually as easy as checking a “previous year” box. Let’s talk about the most common retirement accounts. In addition to the differences above, 401(k) and IRA accounts come in two flavors: traditional and Roth. The main difference between these accounts is in how they’re taxed. In traditional accounts, you won’t pay any taxes on this money until you withdraw it at retirement. You get the tax benefits now. Roth accounts require tax payments now, so you don’t have to pay them later. You get the tax benefits later. In some cases, you can make both traditional and Roth contributions into the same account.
”
”
Tori Dunlap (Financial Feminist: Overcome the Patriarchy's Bullsh*t to Master Your Money and Build a Life You Love)
“
What if, Elliott suggested, The Stepford Wives was more than just about housewifely ennui but also about the alienation and unending tedium of all modern work - of a moneymaking need that expands to fill the time available? Why else this constant repetition and reinforcement of a fiction that reality keeps refuting but that fiction keeps reimposing: the fiction of progress, the feeling that we are going somewhere, getting somewhere, that our lives have meaning, that we are not caught in a constant recursion, an infinite loop? Is there progress? What is progress? What if author Ira Levin was not ripping off Betty Friedan but was on her side? What if he was calling back to her, saying, 'I feel you, sister! Fuck the patriarchy!' What if, as Elliott suggested, The Stepford Wives was an allegory for the lives not just of suburban housewives but of global corporate capitalism? of working ceaselessly with nothing to show for it at the end? What if it represented anxieties about lives of pointless repetition with no progress, no end result, and no possibility of transformation? If it wasn't just the housewives' problem, or a problem caused by housewives who ceased to perform their housewifely duties, but everyone's problem? What if 'the problem that has no name turns out to be caused by the life that has no more plot?
”
”
Carina Chocano (You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages)
“
Every one of us has a hard time changing. It’s hard to think straight about anger. It grabs you and it’s got you. The ancient Romans had a saying, Ira furor brevis est, “Anger is a brief madness.” Anger makes us crazy, blind, confused, and confusing. The beams of sanity are rare. Have you ever noticed and marveled later at your irrationality? What came over me? How could I have thought that, said that, done that? Sometimes the insanity is not so brief. It settles in and stays a while. Sometimes the habit runs on for a lifetime—a hamster wheel you don’t ever get off.
”
”
David A. Powlison (Good and Angry: Redeeming Anger, Irritation, Complaining, and Bitterness)
“
As soon as Joe was done feeding Ira Kenby’s fucking dog, he was going to call social services again, and Casey would be taken to a home that would be more appropriate for a runaway. So really, Joe would say, they owed much of their lives together to a senile old man and a dog tortured by hunger to the point it didn’t know better. (Casey would always reply that they would have met again, because there was just no way they could have lived without each other, but Joe’s faith didn’t run that deep. Casey would say that was because Joe didn’t have a Josiah Daniels in his life, and Joe would shake his head and walk off, but that was later in their story.)
”
”
Amy Lane (Sidecar)
“
According to the FBI, Semtex has an indefinite half-life and is far stronger than traditional explosives such as TNT. It is also easily available on the black market. Semtex became infamous when just 12 ounces of the substance, molded inside a Toshiba cassette recorder, blasted Pan Am flight 103 out of the sky above Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988, killing 270 people. A year later, after the Czech Communist regime was toppled, the new president, Vaclav Havel, revealed that the Czechs had exported 900 tons of Semtex to Col. Moammar Qaddafi's Libya and another 1,000 tons to other unstable states such as Syria, North Korea, Iraq, and Iran. Some experts now put worldwide stockpiles of Semtex at 40,000 tons. Brebera says that with so much Semtex already in the hands of terrorists, and similar explosives being produced in other countries, the Czech Republic can no longer control it. "Semtex is no worse an explosive than any other," he says, defensive at the sight of accusatory headlines in Western newspapers. "The American explosive C4 is just as invisible to airport X-rays, but they don't like to mention that." After the Lockerbie tragedy, Brebera added metal components and a distinct odor to make Semtex easier to detect. But that did not stop terrorists from using it to bomb the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1998, or prevent the IRA, which received about 10 tons of Semtex from Libya, from continuing its attacks.
”
”
John Ellsworth (The Post Office (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thrillers #14))
“
The state prosecutor forced a smile, but it didn't extend to his eyes. Ira knew that the difference between an honest smile and the vacant facial expression of an artificial grin lay in the gaze. Faust may have been smiling, but the eyes behind his glasses were ice cold. And that could only mean one thing - that everything he was about to say was a lie
”
”
Sebastian Fitzek (Amokspiel)
“
Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction. Much in the same way that athletes must take care of their bodies outside of their training sessions, you’ll struggle to achieve the deepest levels of concentration if you spend the rest of your time fleeing the slightest hint of boredom. We can find evidence for this claim in the research of Clifford Nass, the late Stanford communications professor who was well known for his study of behavior in the digital age. Among other insights, Nass’s research revealed that constant attention switching online has a lasting negative effect on your brain. Here’s Nass summarizing these findings in a 2010 interview with NPR’s Ira Flatow: So we have scales that allow us to divide up people into people who multitask all the time and people who rarely do, and the differences are remarkable. People who multitask all the time can’t filter out irrelevancy. They can’t manage a working memory. They’re chronically distracted. They initiate much larger parts of their brain that are irrelevant to the task at hand … they’re pretty much mental wrecks. At this point Flatow asks Nass whether the chronically distracted recognize this rewiring of their brain: The people we talk with continually said, “look, when I really have to concentrate, I turn off everything and I am laser-focused.” And unfortunately, they’ve developed habits of mind that make it impossible for them to be laser-focused. They’re suckers for irrelevancy. They just can’t keep on task. [emphasis mine] Once your brain has become accustomed to on-demand distraction, Nass discovered, it’s hard to shake the addiction even when you want to concentrate. To put this more concretely: If every moment of potential boredom in your life—say, having to wait five minutes in line or sit alone in a restaurant until a friend arrives—is relieved with a quick glance at your smartphone, then your brain has likely been rewired to a point where, like the “mental wrecks” in Nass’s research, it’s not ready for deep work—even if you regularly schedule time to practice this concentration.
”
”
Cal Newport (Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)
“
Wisdom is understanding the fear of the Lord and finding the knowledge of God. Wisdom, in Proverbs, is always moral. The fool, the opposite of the wise person, is not a moron or an oaf. The fool is the person who does not live life God’s way. Wisdom is knowing God and doing as He commands. Foolishness, on the other hand, is turning from God and listening only to yourself. So when we talk about wisdom, we are talking about more than witty aphorisms and home-spun advice. We are talking about a profoundly God-centered approach to life. Biblical wisdom means living a disciplined and prudent life in the fear of the Lord.
Proverbs 2 not only tells us what wisdom is but what our attitude should be toward wisdom. Our attitude should be one of earnest longing. Wisdom, for the Christian, is more precious than silver or gold.
Imagine if someone came to you tonight and said, “I’ll pay off all your bills. I’ll pay off your mortgage. I’ll load up your Roth IRA. I’ll give you money for vacations. I’ll give you 20,000 square feet to live in, and any car you like, or I can make you wise.” What would you say to that person? If you fear the Lord, you’ll take wisdom in a heartbeat.
Isn’t it interesting that we are never told in Scripture to ask God to reveal the future or to show us His plan for our lives? But we are told—in no uncertain terms—to call out for insight and to cry aloud for understanding. In other words, God says, “Don’t ask to see all the plans I’ve made for you. Ask Me for wisdom so you’ll know how to live according to My Book.”
Wisdom is precious because it keeps us from foolishness. If you turn to Proverbs 2, you’ll notice the “if-then” construction of this chapter: If you do this, you get wisdom. Specifically, if you accept my words (v. 2), and if you call out for insight (3), and if you look for wisdom as for silver (4), then you will understand the fear of the Lord (5), and then you will understand what is right and just and fair (9). Verses 5-11 show you everything you have when you get wisdom. You have understanding and knowledge (5-6) and protecting (8) and a good path (9).
”
”
Kevin DeYoung (Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will)
“
If you want to be original, "the most important possible thing you could do," says Ira Glass, the producer of This American Life and the podcast Serial, "is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work.
”
”
Adam M. Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World)
“
Los momentos de oportunidades que se perdieron en el camino, los momentos de tiempo que simplemente se fueron volando, las estaciones que llegaron y se fueron en un abrir y cerrar de ojos, los colores del arco iris y los destellos en el cielo.
La lluvia que lavó las lágrimas de mis ojos, la luz del sol que llenó mi corazón, la brisa del mar que ayudó a aclarar mi mente y mis momentos mágicos solos que consolaron mi alma.
Los momentos para recordar que nunca se perderán.
Han habido momentos buenos y no tan buenos Como el sol y la luna
Llenos de momentos y sentimientos de dudas y miedos, comprensión de la frustración y la ira al ver la tristeza y la soledad experimentando las lágrimas y la risa
Todo en un día, todo en una noche , todo en un momento a medida que pasaron los días y las semanas antes de nuestras propias vidas.
Momentos en los que dos mundos diferentes se unieron, cada uno especial y único en su propia forma especial. Compartir, cuidar, enseñar, comprender. comportamiento.
¡Gente que toca nuestros corazones y siempre será recordada!
Agradeciendo y agradecido de que haya llegado un nuevo día
Nuevas lecciones, nueva vida, nuevos comienzos y viajes para seguir hasta el final de nuestros propios arcoíris especiales.
Sin arrepentimientos, sin tristeza, nunca estamos solos donde el sol siempre brilla al ritmo de un latido al baile del viento
Donde la felicidad nunca termina y la risa se desborda
Deja que la sonrisa siempre te siga a donde quiera que vayas.
Lo que se hizo, lo que se dijo, fue un paso del tiempo, se aprendieron lecciones difíciles, era parte de la obra y del gran plan maestro.
No se perdió nada, solo se conservan muchos tesoros. En un viaje de momentos que nunca volverán.
Por Natasha
”
”
Luisa Natasha Parker (Natasha a Journey to Freedom, Love and Happiness)
“
You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders as you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.
”
”
Ira Katznelson (When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America)