Johnston Quotes

Professor Johnston often said that if you didn't know history, you didn't know anything. You were a leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree.

Vogon poetry is of course, the third worst in the universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their poet master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos was reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his 12-book epic entitled "My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles" when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save humanity, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain. The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paul Neil Milne Johnstone of Redbridge, in the destruction of the planet Earth. Vogon poetry is mild by comparison.

An apology is the superglue of life! It can repair just about anything!!

I do know this. It's the things we run from that hurt us the most." –Brad Sturdevant

Remember,” Mr. Johnston says, “nothing is exactly as it appears. The closer you look, the more you see.

My sister burns, and she does not burn for you.

That was where he was wrong. She wasn't weaponless. No Jedi ever was.

I do fear him,” I said, which was close to the truth. “I fear him as I fear the desert sun and poisonous snakes. They are all part of the life I live. But the sun gives light, and snakes will feed a caravan if they are caught and cooked.

If you listen long enough to the whispers, you will hear the truth. Until then, I will tell you this: the world is made safe by a woman. She bound the monster up and cast him out, and the man who was left was saved.

There are people who prefer to say 'yes' and there are people who prefer to say 'no'. Those who say 'yes' are rewarded by the adventures they have. Those who say 'no' are rewarded by the safety they attain.

File under "Hard Truths": the creative muse is fiction. If you sit around waiting for the right moment to create, you will die waiting.

If you think I'm going to apologize for being drugged and raped, you have another thing coming.

As well, they used their B-52 bombers to drop thousands of tons of bombs which included napalm and cluster bombs. In a particularly vile attack, they used poisonous chemicals on our base regions of Xuyen Moc, the Minh Dam and the Nui Thi Vai mountains. They sprayed their defoliants over jungle, and productive farmland alike. They even bull-dozed bare, both sides along the communication routes and more than a kilometre into the jungle adjacent to our base areas. This caused the Ba Ria-Long Khanh Province Unit to send out a directive to D445 and D440 Battalions that as of 01/November/1969, the rations of both battalions would be set at 27 litres of rice per man per month when on operations. And 25 litres when in base or training. So it was that as the American forces withdrew, their arms and lavish base facilities were transferred across to the RVN. The the forces of the South Vietnamese Government were with thereby more resources but this also created any severe maintenance, logistic and training problems. The Australian Army felt that a complete Australian withdrawal was desirable with the departure of the Task Force (1ATF), but the conservative government of Australia thought that there were political advantages in keeping a small force in south Vietnam. Before his election, in 1964, Johnston used a line which promised peace, but also had a policy of war. The very same tactic was used by Nixon. Nixon had as early as 1950 called for direction intervention by American Forces which were to be on the side of the French colonialists. The defoliants were sprayed upon several millions of hectares, and it can best be described as virtual biocide. According to the figure from the Americans themselves, between the years of 1965 to 1973, ten million Vietnamese people were forced to leave their villages ad move to cities because of what the Americans and their allies had done. The Americans intensified the bombing of whole regions of Laos which were controlled by Lao patriotic forces. They used up to six hundred sorties per day with many types of aircraft including B52s. On 07/January/1979, the Vietnamese Army using Russian built T-54 and T-59 tanks, assisted by some Cambodian patriots liberated Phnom Penh while the Pol Pot Government and its agencies fled into the jungle. A new government under Hun Sen was installed and the Khmer Rouge’s navy was sunk nine days later in a battle with the Vietnamese Navy which resulted in twenty-two Kampuchean ships being sunk.

Good men fall to monsters every day.

The mermaid is an archetypal image that represents a woman who is at ease in the great waters of life, the waters of emotion and sexuality. She shows us how to embrace our instinctive sexuality and sensuality so that we can affirm the essence of our feminine nature, the wisdom of our bodies, and the playfulness of our spirits. She symbolizes our connection with our deepest instinctive feelings, our wild and untamed animal nature that exists below the surface of outward personalities. She is able to respond to her mysterious sexual impulses without abandoning her more human, conscious side. What happened to the girls who dreamed of being mermaids?

You have to remember every piece that's been played, even the ones removed from the board, because some of them might count against you in the end.

My sister is no fool and she is not tender-hearted,” I said. “My sister fights for her home, and takes what risks she must. That is why I put myself before her today—why I would not let you have her. My sister burns, and she does not burn for you.

There is life, and there is living.

What’s wrong with being naked?” --Zeena Schreck on AMLA to Christian Minister Jerry Johnston

We are brave, your highness.

They'll stall you," Organa said. "I know it's a horrifying situation, but you can't fight every evil in the galaxy." "Evil? " Padmé said. "I've fought evil and it was easy: I shot it. It's apathy I can't stand.

I've fought evil, and it was easy: I shot it. It's apathy I can't stand.

Let me get this straight...You are sending me out in a minivan whose date of manufacture predates the year of my birth, so that I can watch two dragon slayers track down enormous fire-breathing animals, in an effort to prevent me from spending time in the library?

Part of the urge to explore is a desire to become lost.

You’ll never regret being kind even when people aren’t kind to you.

Maybe he is starting to understand. I don't really care, though. I do not want to be anyone's model for becoming a better person.

By refreshing our sense of belonging in the world, we widen the web of relationships that nourishes us and protects us from burnout.

If you cannot say what you mean, your majesty, you will never mean what you say and a gentleman should always mean what he says.

It has been said that it's hard to stop a man who knows he's in the right and just keeps on coming. Smoke knew he was right - and he kept on coming.

No, Mr. Johnston doesn't have a horse, nor has he ever ridden one. What kind of a cowboy is he?

When Ahsoka opened her hands, she was not surprised to find that two lightsabers, rough and unfinished, were waiting. They would need more work, but they were hers. When she turned them on, they shone the brightest white.

Just you wait, Abby Johnston. My coolness will hit you like a tsunami. You will be carried along by its raging power. You will be turned into a freaking icicle by the frostiness of my cool.

I didn't used to overthink my choices quite so much. Then someone made what I've always been told is a very important choice for me, and now I tend to overthink everything else.

He that lies with the dogs, riseth with the fleas.

The past was a bridge that looked solid and sturdy, but once you were on it, you saw that it extended only far enough to strand you, to suspend you between loss and longing with nowhere to go at all.

Nothing so reminds you like the sea that the enemy of life is not death but loneliness.

You are an idealist," Bonteri said. "That's not a bad thing." "I know," Padmé said. "I have worked very hard at it.

Of course, if I were dead, they could just bury me, and move on. Broken is harder to deal with.

We are all the product of things we've never seen and people we never met. In fact, if just one little detail had been changed in their lives, we may not even exist!

I am yours to command, husband,” I said to him, and met his eyes. When my mother spoke to our father, she often said that. He liked it, the way she put herself in his hands. Until just now, I had not realized that since my mother was the one who allowed it, she had more power than even he might have realized. Lo-Melkhiin thought I was less than him; but his was not the only tally.

And if someone does figure it out and starts a rumour, we'll just deal with it," Polly says. "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger, and all that crap." "Do you ever dream of the day when your life can no longer be adequately summarized by Kelly Clarkson songs?" I ask. "All the time," Polly says.

She went through her days trying not to think about her loss, lest her grief incapacitate her, but that just meant that every time it came up, it hurt like new.

As I grew up, everything started getting grey and dull. I could still remember the amazing intensity of the world I'd lived in as a child, but I thought the dulling of perception was an inevitable consequence of age - just as a lens of the eye is bound gradually to dim. I didn't understand that clarity is in the mind.

There’s two kinds of family,” Miara said after a moment. “There’s the kind like me and Kaeden, where you get born in the right place to the right people and you’re stuck with one another. If you’re lucky, it turns out okay. The other kind of family is the kind you find.

Everyone gets to the stage, or should get to it, where it's more important to stop doing things than to keep on trying to do them.

Mum had always told her that forgiveness had to be complete: “You can remember, but you can’t forgive halfway, Hannah darling.

Always, it seemed, men would overlook unpleasant things for the sake of those that went well. The statues’ eyes for the melodious sounds of the fountain. The deaths of their daughters for the bounty of their trade. There was great beauty in this qasr, but there was also great ugliness and fear. I would not be like those men who turned their eyes from one to see the other. I would remember what those things cost.

There is life, and there is living—and that is what she learned.

There was, apparently, no honor in driver's ed.

Love is . . . about picking someone up and never, ever putting them down again, no matter how heavy things become.

Watch your world burn, light of my heart. Tomorrow we will find another one and burn that too.

Any path can be a poor one if it goes blindly in one direction.

Elijah Snow: 'Who have you pissed off this time, John?' John Stone: 'Sumatran robot death sluts -- Dammit, ONE of these buttons fires the atomic death biter --

In a normal education everything is designed to suppress spontaneity, but I wanted to develop it.

Well, I guess you can’t always rely on feeling in love. That comes and goes. It’s a decision, too, you know. You have to look after it. The more you can make the other person feel loved, fill their tank as it were, the more they have in their reserve to make you feel loved.

But I have faith in you. You seem like the type who eats fear for breakfast.

What you believe you deserve is what you get in life. Change your beliefs and your life transforms.

Corporations have grown so powerful that they have inverted the Roman equation: rather than corporations existing to serve the state, the state serves them.

She chose to fight men everyday, and then fight their sons, who thought they knew better than their fathers.

A man who don't know history, he don't know anything.

Missing Padmé was like missing the sun, and she was currently on a planet with two of them.

My hands are yours,” she said. “Please don’t ask me for them again.

On a dusty world with two bright suns, a little boy looked up from his work and saw an angel.

There's a moment when I know that I should scream. But screaming would be hard. And blackness would be easy. Black picks me.

You’d be surprised how people treat you differently when you’re older. You don’t feel any different, but it’s as though you fade away, like a Polaroid picture in reverse.

Grief is often invisible to the outside world—

Promise me you will not spend so much time treading water and trying to keep your head above the waves that you forget, truly forget, how much you have always loved to swim.” -Tyler Knott Gregson

If you are clever and you are good, the monster will not have you. You should not believe everything you hear. Good men fall to monsters everyday. Clever men are tricked by their own pride or by pretty words.

The world looks very different to me now at twenty. I have outgrown my early opinions and ideals with my short dresses, just as Mrs. Walton said we would. Now the critics can say 'Thou waitest till thy woman's fingers wrought the best that lay within thy woman's heart.

The sword fighting turned out to be quite a bit of fun, once the agony of muscle development produced actual muscles.

Being strong was hard work, and I was ready to let someone else be strong for a little bit. Not forever, but for a little while.

Cordé was dead. Versé was dead. Obi-Wan was dead. Master Billaba was dead. Anakin Skywalker was dead. Padmé Amidala Naberrie was dead, her dreams with her.

Many teachers think of children as immature adults. It might lead to better and more ‘respectful’ teaching, if we thought of adults as atrophied children.

If you don’t know history, you don’t know anything.” Edward Johnston

When he had the dream on Alderaan, he would get Leia out of her bed, hold her close to his chest, and hope against hope that she exhibited only her mother's gifts, not her father's.

...sometimes offering a quality daily opinion about what’s going on in American politics feels like trying to compose a beautiful symphony using only the recorded screams of psychiatric patients.

You are, Devlin, too young to understand how rare a thing true love is, how unlikely in this world to happen, and when it does, how unlikely to endure. And once it is lost, how hard to live without.

People will say you’re coping wrong, but really there’s no wrong way. Anything that lets you keep going is the right thing, as long as it’s not damaging. You need to find the way that works for you.

To disagree with Trump is to be wrong. To portray Trump in a way that does not fit with his image of himself is to be a loser. It is an approach to life that may work in business (where Trump can walk out and not deal with people who displease him), but government leaders do not enjoy that luxury, especially the president of the United States. If

Reading is fuel for the brain. Writing is fuel for the spirit...

The strange and scattered pieces of ourselves we leave behind,

Whenever you ask questions with curiosity instead of judgment, you are invoking guidance.

My hands are yours for as long as you need them.

Grief was love with nowhere to go.

It said a lot about a person, the way they treated someone with dementia. A little bit of kindness and patience spread further than butter on a hot crumpet.

By strengthening our compassion, we give fuel to our courage and determination.

He'd gone to Shmi Skywalker's grave to apologize for losing her son.

She gave him a smile. It felt absurdly nice to be taken care of. Maybe that was what she needed, even if she didn’t need it very often.

There are lots of people who rewrite their past and, what’s more, believe it themselves. Now that is odd.

The mime must first of all be aware of this boundless contact with things. There is no insulating layer of air between the man and the outside world. Any man who moves causes ripples in the ambient word in the same way a fish does when it moves in the water.

We all have a story. The difference is: do you use the story to empower yourself? Or do you use your story to keep yourself a victim? The question itself empowers you to change your life.

Sanity is actually a pretence, a way we learn to behave. We keep this pretence up because we don't want to be rejected by other people - and being classified insane is to be shut out of the group in a very complete way. Most people I meet are secretly convinced that they're a little crazier than the average person. People understand the energy necessary to maintain their own shields, but not the energy expended by other people. They understand that their own sanity is a performance, but when confronted by other people they confuse the person with the role. Sanity has nothing directly to do with the way you think. Its a matter of presenting yourself as safe.

There are corners in the world that are too dark to see, and there are edges that are sharper than they appear, ready to snag the unwary. There are those who do not fear the things they should, and there are those who would bargain with the devil herself for the sake of their greed.The world is made safe by a woman, yes, but it is a very big world.

I had tasted power and I had used it up, but now I would get more of another kind. We would share it, and keep each other from the dark.

He has robbed none except officials who have stolen from the missions and the poor, and punished none except brutes who mistreat natives.

Counting calories is not the answer, because eating is not the problem.

Saoud, who wanted to belong. Arwa, who wanted her mother. Tariq, who wanted to do his work. And me…who wanted more than I could name.

Go ahead, say whatever you want about me, because you could never come close to what I've said about myself.

Good improvisers seem telepathic; everything looks pre-arranged, This is because they accept all offers made—which is something no ‘normal’ person would do.

A smile is the lighting system of the face and the heating system of the heart

Dear Amy, It must really suck to know you peaked at twelve. Love, Kristen

I never met a girl I didn't meet

Your work - in even the smallest things - it is a mirror of you.

Long after everyone else has given up and gone home and gotten on with their lives, he would keep on believing because, without evidence, you could never kill his belief.

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

What a person is afraid to do, he does while possessed.

And at the end of the day, funny and interesting will always kick pretty and perfect’s ass.

I try to point my finger,/ but the wind keeps// spinning me around

If nаturе іntеndеd uѕ to tаlk mоrе than lіѕtеn, ѕhе would have gіvеn us twо mоuthѕ and оnе еаr.

Love when lost left pain that could kill a man.

I tried to drown my sorrows, but the bastards learned how to swim.’ ” “She said you were funny.

espionage with Anakin Skywalker always ended with explosions,

[T]hat little voice shut up the instant I did something. And not just something: the exact thing I knew to be right. Because if the system was broken, if Carrie Johnstone wasn’t going to ever pay consequences for her action, it wasn’t because “the system” failed to get her. It was because people like me chose not to act when we could. The system was people, and I was part of it, part of its problems, and I was going to be part of the solution from now on.

Sometimes when you think you need space to sort out how you feel, you really don't. You're just scared, so you ran. Running is never the answer. Make yourself stay and work through it.

...the teacher picked a flower and said: ‘Look at the pretty flower, Betty.’ Betty, filled with spiritual radiance, said, ‘All the flowers are beautiful.’ ‘Ah,’ said the teacher, blocking her, ‘but this flower is especially beautiful.’ Betty rolled on the ground screaming, and it took a while to calm her. Nobody seemed to notice that she was screaming ‘Can’t you see? Can’t you see!’ In the gentlest possible way, this teacher had been very violent. She was insisting on categorising, and on selecting.

Once upon a time, my government turned my city into a police state, kidnapped me, and tortured me. When I got free, I decided that the problem wasn’t the system, but who was running it. Bad guys had gotten into places of high office. We needed good apples. I worked my butt off to get people to vote for good apples. We had elections. We installed the kind of apples everyone agreed would be the kind of apples we could be proud of. They said good things. A few real dirtbags like Carrie Johnstone lost their jobs. And then, well, the good apples turned out to act pretty much exactly like the bad apples. Oh, they had reasons. There were emergencies. Circumstances. It was all really regrettable. But there were always emergencies, weren’t there?

These ‘offer-block-accept’ games have a use quite apart from actor training. People with dull lives often think that their lives are dull by chance. In reality everyone chooses more or less what kind of events will happen to them by their conscious patterns of blocking and yielding.

My feeling is that sanity is actually a pretence, a way we learn to behave. We keep this pretence up because we don't want to be rejected by other people—and being classified insane is to be shut out of the group in a very complete way.

In the Hellenistic period, Hekate was given titles which included megistē (greatest), epiphanestatē thea (most manifest goddess) and saviour (Soteira) in Caria. This according to Johnston suggests that she was the leading goddess of her own city and also that Hekate played the same roles in Caria as Kybele did for Phrygia, taking the part of a city goddess and benefactress[93].

I've never met any of these women before, and I will never see any of them after today. I don't know their names and they don't know mine. I've been on teams and in clubs my whole life, surrounded by people who are united by a common purpose, and I have never felt anything like this. Maybe it's the gas, but until this moment, I have never felt such a kinship with a person who was not actually family. I love every person in this room, and I'm pretty sure that if they asked, I'd do anything for them. Anything, except have a baby.

Padmé Amidala was completely still. The brown halo of her hair spread out around her, softened here and there by white blossoms that had blown through the air to find their rest amongst her curls. Her skin was pale and perfect. Her face was peaceful. Her eyes were closed and her hands were clasped across her stomach as she floated. Naboo carried on without her. Even now, at the end, she was watched.

The monster tested her, pulling at her soul and rending her spirit. She clung to life, and in the clinging she might have become a monster too, except she chose the path her story would take. She chose white stone walls and a golden crown. She chose to debate words of law, and to never grind her own grain. She chose to fight men every day, and then fight their sons, who thought they knew better than their fathers.<...> If you listen long enough to the whispers, you will hear the truth. Until then, I will tell you this: the world is made safe by a woman.

Father Divine said to always establish a ‘we/they’: an ‘us,’ and an enemy on the outside,” explained Laura Johnston Kohl, our Jonestown vet. The goal is to make your people feel like they have all the answers, while the rest of the world is not just foolish, but inferior. When you convince someone that they’re above everyone else, it helps you both distance them from outsiders and also abuse them, because you can paint

On a lazy Saturday morning when you're lying in bed, drifting in and out of sleep, there is a space where fantasy and reality become one. Are you awake, or are you dreaming? You see people and things; some are familiar; some are strange. You talk, you feel, but you move without walking; you fly without wings. Your mind and your body exist, but on separate planes. Time stands still. For me, this is the feeling I have when ideas come.

My ‘failure’ was a survival tactic, and without it I would probably never have worked my way out of the trap that my education had set for me. I would have ended up with a lot more of my consciousness blocked off from me than now.

One day, when I was eighteen, I was reading a book and I began to weep. I was astounded. I'd had no idea that literature could affect me in such a way. If I'd have wept over a poem in class the teacher would have been appalled. I realised that my school had been teaching me not to respond.

Jenneth turned a blind eye to his part in their incipient suffering, a privilege that came with never really having suffered.

If someone starts throwing around stupid words like 'its a gift' or 'its in God's plan', you come right here, and i'll find you ten ways in which it isn't.

We are only moments away from the past. But it only takes a moment for everything to change, for the world to wobble on its axis and make the familiar strange.

Anglo-Saxon barbarians. Arthur should have been made a Knight

A dragon eating a bear?” Emily said. “Why are there no Internet videos of that?

Donald Trump’s mottos, “Always get even” and “Hit back harder than you were hit,

If you tell the story you will live the story. If you live the story you have to own the story. If you dont like the story your living, stop telling it.

Then my abuelita booms out words, loud and clear. She always says the words should be round as dimes and as wild as blossoms blooming.

There’s a lot to be said for being yourself. Not everyone is meant to be a shadow.

Anakin was going to be hers, and she was going to be his, and almost no one in the whole galaxy would share that with them.

People are listening,” Bonteri said. “They’re just not paying attention.

Padmé resolved to pay attention, not just listen, and not just look but see.

You, my darling, are the froth on my cappuccino.

Feelings are like flatulence: better out than in,

It was strange, to love two people so much, so differently. She didn’t quite understand it, and she wasn’t sure how to make it work.

For ten years, Padmé had been the center of her galaxy, the lodestar by which she made all of her decisions. She’d never imagined outgrowing that. But life had other ideas.

Let your voice be heard, whether or not it is to the taste of every jack-in-office who may be obstructing the traffic. By all means, render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's -- but this does not necessarily include everything that he says is his.

If so, why has a naturally masculine shape (broad shoulders, no waist, narrow hips, flat belly) become the ideal for the female body? Why is it that those aspects of a woman’s body that are most closely related to her innate female power, the capacity of her belly, hips, and thighs to carry and sustain life, are diminished in our society’s version of a beautiful woman?

The most repressed, and damaged, and ‘unteachable’ students that I have to deal with are those who were the star performers at bad high schools. Instead of learning how to be warm and spontaneous and giving, they’ve become armoured and superficial, calculating and self-obsessed. I could show you many many examples where education has clearly been a destructive process.

What are you doing tonight?" he asked, as soon as I was sitting down. "Nothing," I said. I had what most people would call a boring social life, a classical holdout in a punk rock world.

In the American oligarchy, the President is a temporary chairman of the board who is there to take responsibility for actions decided in private sessions. He is there to sell policy more than to make it.

Anita Johnston, Ph.D., author of Eating in the Light of the Moon, taught me to look in the mirror with curiosity rather than fear. So I may look at my reflection and think, ‘That’s interesting. I wonder why my body seems bigger today than it did yesterday. Maybe it’s water weight. Maybe it’s my outfit. Or maybe my eyes are just playing tricks on me.’ I know it’s not possible for me to gain a noticeable amount of weight overnight, so I will go no further than that. I move on with my day without skipping a beat—and definitely without missing a meal.

Almost all were total failures-they couldn't have been put on in the village hall for the author's friends. It wasn't a matter of lack of talent, but of miseducation. The authors of the pseudo-plays assumed that writing should be based on other writing, not on life. My play had been influenced by Beckett, but at least the content had been mine.

You will even read about an insurance company owned by one of America’s most admired billionaires that asked a paralyzed man to die because the cost of keeping him alive was cutting into the insurer’s profits.

Rinnen scowled. “I didn’t come here after thirteen days to practice solo drills I could do at home.” “You didn’t come here to cry, either,” Linazon said mildly, “but some things aren’t for you to decide.” “I’m not crying,” Rinnen growled. Linazon nodded. “You might consider it.

That was when General Johnston rode up. He came right past where I was standing, a fine big man on a bay stallion. He had on a broad-brim hat and a cape and thigh boots with gold spurs that twinkled like sparks of fire. I watched him ride by, his mustache flaring out from his mouth and his eyes set deep under his forehead. He was certainly the handsomest man I ever saw, bar none; he made the other officers on his staff look small.

It’s a constant question for me every time I’m entranced by the beauty of this world: what does it mean to love this place? What does it mean to love anyone or anything in a world whose vanishing is accelerating, perhaps beyond our capacity to save the things that we love most? We still have the chance to make the space for hope- to act in such a way that hope might exist for others who come after us. Not everyone can focus on this work- many people are too full up with the difficulties of their daily lives...But if you can, then the world needs you, and it needs you right now, because anything that we do this year or next is worth ten of the same thing ten years from now. LOVING A VANISHING WORLD by Emily N. Johnston

At some point it dawned on me that I might actually be in big, big trouble. The thought was immediately followed by the staggering realization that despite years of slowly killing myself, all I wanted, with more passion and ferocity than I’d ever wanted anything else in my entire life, was to live.

Well, I guess you can’t always rely on feeling in love. That comes and goes. It’s a decision, too, you know. You have to look after it. The more you can make the other person feel loved, fill their tank as it were, the more they have in their reserve to make you feel loved. It’s a cycle. I used to try and plan little surprises when I could if ever things were getting stale.

Sixteen pages of Think Big are devoted to revenge. All of them run directly contrary to this basic biblical teaching. Trump leaves no room for doubt that revenge is a guiding principle of his life—“My motto is: Always get even.

Trump often threatens to sue journalists, ensuring caution from publishers and broadcasters who want to avoid a costly lawsuit—even one Trump cannot win. This tends to discourage investigation beyond the official talking points.

Have you seen burning bone, my wife? It starts like a roasted goat, but then the meat strips away to feed the fire, and the bone is left naked and alone. It twists and shatters, marrow leaking into the flames, until only the dust is left." "That is what happens to everything, my lord," I said to him. "If only the fire can be made hot enough." "Would you like to see it?" he asked.

It's not the same." She holds the stack of cones in her hand and leans back against the stage looking at me with a serious face. "You and i, we're not the same. Not even close. I said yes, and you didn't even get asked the question.

She had not answered my question. She had not told me that she loved his eyes or the sound of his voice. She had not said that his touch lit a fire on her skin. Then it came to me: she loved him because he did not seek to change her. If I had made him, or if my father had found him, it did not matter. My sister would have a husband who would not make her sit, veiled and weaving, in his tent. He would not take another wife, as my father had done. She would be his, and he would be hers, alone. This was why she loved him, and it made my heart glad to hear it.

Trump distorts information, contradicts himself, and blocks inquiries into his conduct by journalists, law enforcement, business regulators, and other people’s lawyers. Again, the record shows decades of Trump’s skill in pursuing this strategy successfully.

What I learned was that I'd rather be second to you than first to anyone else.'' Confessing her feelings was like a weight lifting off of Sabe's chest. It had taken her so long to figure it out, to put words to what she knew in her heart. And now she had done it. She wanted to fly. 'I can order you to your death,' Padme said. Her voice was so quiet that Sabe barely heard her. She reached out and took Padme's hands. 'And I would go,' she said. 'I can't be that dedicated to you,' Padme said. 'I know,' Sabe said.

No person, I think, ever saw a herd of buffalo, of which a few were fat and the great majority lean. No person ever saw a flock of birds, of which two or three were swimming in grease, and the others all skin and bone.” —Henry George, American reformer, 1839–1897

Let the grief of what we have unknowingly done send you crashing to your knees in sorrow. And when you're ready, stand up. We have much work to do.

If you’re not a Jedi, then what are you, Ahsoka Tano?” Bail asked. “Because to be honest, you still sound and act like a Jedi to me.” “I’ll let you know when I figure it out,

I’ve got something so lovely to think about that I’d like to go back and sit down in the garden, and just think and think until dark without being interrupted by anybody.

There were tightly wound strings shivering in the air as the overture began in full.

When you compare the sorrows of real life to the pleasures of the imaginary one, you will never want to live again, only to dream for ever. The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas

It’s what I signed up for,” Anakin said. He put his hands behind his back and grinned at her, unabashed and honest. The truth of everything hit Sabé all at once. “She married you,” she said. “It’s not an affair. It’s a permanent relationship.” Instantly, Anakin was on the defensive again, their truce evaporating at the first test. “She makes her own choices,” Anakin said. “You know that.

What troubled her was that she had always thought of herself as a straightforward and honest person. Yes, she kept secrets, but they were for the sake of her planet, her people. And there were always some who knew the whole story. Now her truths were split, divided amongst those she cared about, and none of them had the whole picture. Only she did, alone and at the center of her own life.

(They) have killed off that part of themselves which feels, Which cannot look away, which brings them trembling to their knees, at the wet-faced beauty of each instant,,, They deftly slip the punches that life throws at their head as it screams "Look at me! Feel me! Why did you even come here?

Why had it been her? She’d had that thought a hundred times since Order 66. Why had she survived? She wasn’t the most powerful; she wasn’t even a Jedi Knight, and yet she was still alive when so many others had died. She asked the question so often because she knew the answer. She just hated facing it, as painful as it was. She’d survived because she had left. She had walked away. She’d walked away from the Jedi and she’d walked away from Thabeska, and because of that she was alive, whether she deserved to be or not.

People think loneliness is absence. It isn't. It's a filling up, a rising, spilling tide that crashes into every gully and chasm of your mind and soul until you're choked with emptiness, awash with desolation, thrashing in the foam of it, reaching for a hand to hold and yet finding no hand, no refuge, no comfort.

I don’t know what I’d do,” Padmé said. “I’ve guarded my heart against everything for so long, always aware of the dynamics and the flow of power. I’ve been lucky to find so many people who understand that and give me that space. I’m afraid that if someone breaks through, I’ll let them, and it would be catastrophic.

For the weeping warriors, for the savage saints, for the bleeding mothers with fire in their eyes, for the hidden mystics whose prayers keep the earth spinning, for the buddhas who'll use their teeth when their blades are broken and let their evolutionary ancestors howl through them, this one is for you, my lovelies.

Late-stage dementia was like an empty house that the tenant had checked out of. It was the same distant stare his mother had had in the years before she passed away from complications related to early-onset dementia, the very cruelest of diseases that stole the mind and soul without mercifully taking the body as well.

Having to amuse myself during those earlier years, I read voraciously and widely. Mythic matter and folklore made up much of that reading—retellings of the old stories (Mallory, White, Briggs), anecdotal collections and historical investigations of the stories' backgrounds—and then I stumbled upon the Tolkien books which took me back to Lord Dunsany, William Morris, James Branch Cabell, E.R. Eddison, Mervyn Peake and the like. I was in heaven when Lin Carter began the Unicorn imprint for Ballantine and scoured the other publishers for similar good finds, delighting when I discovered someone like Thomas Burnett Swann, who still remains a favourite. This was before there was such a thing as a fantasy genre, when you'd be lucky to have one fantasy book published in a month, little say the hundreds per year we have now. I also found myself reading Robert E. Howard (the Cormac and Bran mac Morn books were my favourites), Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and finally started reading science fiction after coming across Andre Norton's Huon of the Horn. That book wasn't sf, but when I went to read more by her, I discovered everything else was. So I tried a few and that led me to Clifford Simak, Roger Zelazny and any number of other fine sf writers. These days my reading tastes remain eclectic, as you might know if you've been following my monthly book review column in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I'm as likely to read Basil Johnston as Stephen King, Jeanette Winterson as Harlan Ellison, Barbara Kingsolver as Patricia McKillip, Andrew Vachss as Parke Godwin—in short, my criteria is that the book must be good; what publisher's slot it fits into makes absolutely no difference to me.

With all respect, Senator,” Padmé said, “that is exactly why you sent someone like me on this mission. You don’t approve of violence, and you never will. I admire that, and I have accepted it. All I ask in return is that you accept that I am the person you send when there’s the possibility of . . . aggressive negotiations.

Ye dunnae ken a thing about how I feel for her,” he ground out. “Listen carefully to me, Fiona. Even if I had never married Marion, I would nae have married ye. I did nae wish to marry again at all, until her. Now, go fetch yer sister and get her to help ye pack. John MacDonald has asked to marry ye, and I’m going to let him.

But it will be an even stronger love, strengthened by the daily exercise of choosing each other. Not just a love that loves when things are easy, when you’re feeling happy. No, it will be an unbreakable love that continues loving when things are hard. One that loves through bad times, through loss, in health, and in sickness.

Sabé turned, taking both of Padmé’s hands in hers. Their lives had been linked in a way that was hard to explain, their identities entwined for the good of Naboo. And now that was over. They would have separate paths. Sabé would learn to cast her own shadow. She faced her queen, her senator, her friend, and gave her a sad smile.

Let me get this straight,” I said, having swallowed. “You are sending me out in a minivan whose date of manufacture predates the year of my birth, so that I can watch two dragon slayers track down enormous fire-breathing animals, in an effort to prevent me from spending time in the library?” “There’s no supervision in the library,” Dad said.

Much of the oxygen we breathe comes from plants that died long ago. We can give thanks to these ancestors of our present-pay foliage, but we can't give back to them. We can, however, give forward. When we are unable to return the favor, we can pay it forward to someone or something else. Using this approach, we can see ourselves as part of a larger flow of giving and receiving throughout time. Receiving from the past, we can give to the future. When tackling issues such as climate change, the stance of gratitude is a refreshing alternative to guilt or fear as a source of motivation.

I had spent all the years I had been in Lo-Melkhiin’s body giving power to men who I thought would use it in ways that might serve me. I had given them great art and great thoughts, and they never guessed that they fed a terrible hunger in me that would require feeding until they died trying to sate it. They had done great things and made great tales, but I had been blind. All of this time, I had had access to more power than I had imagined, and I had missed it because I saw with men’s eyes. I had forgotten the girls who scrubbed the floors and spun the yarn. I had forgotten the women who dyed the cloth and worked with henna. I had married three hundred girls, and as much as eaten them all before they were done cooking.

This...is for the ones who look with both eyes. It is for the ones who see the bombs and the bastards and stand shaking with the breath of the beast on their skin. When you look with both eyes, you feel it all, but you don't flee or freeze. You fight. You Swing your sword with both hands, tears pouring from both eyes, and when they try to drive you back, you advance.

The sudden silence was the first thing many survivors of the Hoel, the Gambier Bay, the Samuel B. Roberts, and the Johnston noticed after their ships had been smashed and swallowed. To many, the quiet was unwelcome. The noise of battle--the roar of machinery, the shrieks and blasts of shells incoming and outbound, the shouts and screams of their buddies--had anesthetized fear. Now the noise lifted like a curtain, unveiling the hidden inner vistas of their grief and shock. When their ships sank, their duties went down with them.

I want ye,” Lachlan choked out, surprised at his words and the desperate sound of his own voice. He did not look at Bridgette as he spoke but kept his gaze down to the ground as a war between honor and desire raged within him. “I want ye more than I want air to breathe.

Thad asked, "Why does she keep calling you Kid, Mr.Morgan? Something about that sounds mite familiar." "Son of a gun!" Bill suddenly exclaimed. "He's Kid Morgan, the gunfighter! I've read about him! Lace glanced at The Kid and smiled. "Looks like your secret's out." "It was never that much of a secret." The Kid shrugged. "Well, I'm glad I don't have to keep it anymore," Nick said. The Gustaffson brothers looked at him. Bill said, "You knew about this?" "Yeah," Nick replied, looking a little ashamed. "I'm sorry, fellas. Mr.Morgan asked me to keep quiet about it, and I promised him I would.

George B. Johnston of Enid, Oklahoma, is the safety coordinator for an engineering company. One of his responsibilities is to see that employees wear their hard hats whenever they are on the job in the field. He reported that whenever he came across workers who were not wearing hard hats, he would tell them with a lot of authority of the regulation and that they must comply. As a result he would get sullen acceptance, and often after he left, the workers would remove the hats. He decided to try a different approach. The next time he found some of the workers not wearing their hard hat, he asked if the hats were uncomfortable or did not fit properly. Then he reminded the men in a pleasant tone of voice that the hat was designed to protect them from injury and suggested that it always be worn on the job. The result was increased compliance with the regulation with no resentment or emotional upset.

Trump spent two years suing author Tim O’Brien and his publisher for writing that his net worth was probably not in the billions, but rather the hundreds of millions. After a court dismissed the case, Trump made it clear that he merely wanted to harass O’Brien, not necessarily win damages. “I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees and they spent a whole lot more. I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about,” Trump bragged. It was a comment that fit cozily within his philosophy of revenge. In

I don't trust you to go alone," Charlotte said. "You'll end up getting killed in a duel with Braddock." "If I do, it won't happen before dawn at the least. There are still several hours during which you will have to obey me." "What happens to me if you're killed?" Charlotte asked. "Will I be free to do as I wish then?" "Remove that bloodthirsty look from your eye, baggage. If anything happens to me, you will be passed along with the furniture and the paintings to the next Earl of Denbigh, whoever he may be." Charlotte pursed her lips. "I think I would prefer to deal with you. At least we have reached a sort of understanding. So, if you please, I would rather you did not let the duke kill you." "I'll do my best to avoid it," he assured her.

The problem was that politicians wrote so many things down, and then Obi-Wan had to read them, because his master had a feeling that something was coming. Qui-Gon had a deeply annoying habit of bein correct about this sort of thing, which was one of the reasons Obi-Wan hadn't mutinied. Well, that and because he'd tried something very like mutiny once, and it hadn't gone well.

The Temple of Hekate at Lagina, Caria, Anatolia was the last major temple built during the Hellenistic period. The temple was constructed on the site of an older settlement, which may have included an earlier temple. Lagina is the largest known temple which was dedicated entirely to Hekate and is famous for being the site of a key-bearing procession. In this procession, a key was carried by a young girl along the Sacred Way, an 11km road which connected the temple at Lagina to the nearby city of Stratonicea. Unfortunately, we don’t have reliable information on the purpose of the ceremony. Johnston writes that: "None of our sources explain what it was supposed to accomplish, but if it took its name from a key that was carried, then that key must have been of central importance - it must have been used to lock or unlock something significant." [89] Johnston further explains that although we don’t know what the key opened, the number of inscriptions naming the festival indicates that it was a significant festival. We can speculate that it was the key to the city, the key to the temple at Lagina, or the key to another (unknown) precinct. Considering Hekate’s ability to traverse between the worlds of the living and the dead, it is conceivable that the key opened the way to some form of ritual katabasis. At Lagina, the goddess Hekate was given the epithet Kleidouchos (key-bearer), so it is also possible that the young girl who carried the keys in the procession represented the goddess in the ceremony.

New Rule: Americans must realize what makes NFL football so great: socialism. That's right, the NFL takes money from the rich teams and gives it to the poorer one...just like President Obama wants to do with his secret army of ACORN volunteers. Green Bay, Wisconsin, has a population of one hundred thousand. Yet this sleepy little town on the banks of the Fuck-if-I-know River has just as much of a chance of making it to the Super Bowl as the New York Jets--who next year need to just shut the hell up and play. Now, me personally, I haven't watched a Super Bowl since 2004, when Janet Jackson's nipple popped out during halftime. and that split-second glimpse of an unrestrained black titty burned by eyes and offended me as a Christian. But I get it--who doesn't love the spectacle of juiced-up millionaires giving one another brain damage on a giant flatscreen TV with a picture so real it feels like Ben Roethlisberger is in your living room, grabbing your sister? It's no surprise that some one hundred million Americans will watch the Super Bowl--that's forty million more than go to church on Christmas--suck on that, Jesus! It's also eighty-five million more than watched the last game of the World Series, and in that is an economic lesson for America. Because football is built on an economic model of fairness and opportunity, and baseball is built on a model where the rich almost always win and the poor usually have no chance. The World Series is like The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. You have to be a rich bitch just to play. The Super Bowl is like Tila Tequila. Anyone can get in. Or to put it another way, football is more like the Democratic philosophy. Democrats don't want to eliminate capitalism or competition, but they'd like it if some kids didn't have to go to a crummy school in a rotten neighborhood while others get to go to a great school and their dad gets them into Harvard. Because when that happens, "achieving the American dream" is easy for some and just a fantasy for others. That's why the NFL literally shares the wealth--TV is their biggest source of revenue, and they put all of it in a big commie pot and split it thirty-two ways. Because they don't want anyone to fall too far behind. That's why the team that wins the Super Bowl picks last in the next draft. Or what the Republicans would call "punishing success." Baseball, on the other hand, is exactly like the Republicans, and I don't just mean it's incredibly boring. I mean their economic theory is every man for himself. The small-market Pittsburgh Steelers go to the Super Bowl more than anybody--but the Pittsburgh Pirates? Levi Johnston has sperm that will not grow and live long enough to see the Pirates in a World Series. Their payroll is $40 million; the Yankees' is $206 million. The Pirates have about as much chance as getting in the playoffs as a poor black teenager from Newark has of becoming the CEO of Halliburton. So you kind of have to laugh--the same angry white males who hate Obama because he's "redistributing wealth" just love football, a sport that succeeds economically because it does just that. To them, the NFL is as American as hot dogs, Chevrolet, apple pie, and a second, giant helping of apple pie.

Because I am an officer and a gentleman they have given me my notebooks, pen, ink and paper. So I write and wait. I am committed to no cause, I love no living person. The fact that I have no future except what you can count in hours doesn't seem to disturb me unduly. After all, the future whether here or there is equally unknown. So for the waiting days I have only the past to play about with. I can juggle with a series of possibly inaccurate memories, my own interpretation, for what is worth, of events. There is no place for speculation or hope, or even dreams. Strangely enough I think I like it like that.

I exhausted myself trying to take it all in, noting every little variation and departure from how things were supposed to be. My notion of home and everything in it as ideal, archetypal, was being overthrown. It was as though the definitions of all the words in my vocabulary were expanding at once. Cape Breton was much like Newfoundland, yet everything seemed slightly off. Light, colours, surface textures, dimensions – objects like telegraph poles, fence posts, mail boxes, which you would think would be the same everywhere, were bigger or smaller or wider by a hair than they were back home. That I was able to detect such subtle differences made me realize how circumscribed my life had been, how little of the world I had seen.

If a member of this tribe did something wrong, got caught doing something wrong, or even just thought they’d done something—anything, you know, from telling a lie to committing a murder—this tribe, this entire tribe, would take them into the center of their village, and they would form this circle around them, so tight they couldn’t escape, couldn’t hide. And then they would tell that person everything that was good about them. Every good thing they’d ever done. Every good thing they’d ever been. Over and over. And they wouldn’t stop. Not until that person heard them. Believed them.

EVERY WEDNESDAY, I teach an introductory fiction workshop at Harvard University, and on the first day of class I pass out a bullet-pointed list of things the students should try hard to avoid. Don’t start a story with an alarm clock going off. Don’t end a story with the whole shebang having been a suicide note. Don’t use flashy dialogue tags like intoned or queried or, God forbid, ejaculated. Twelve unbearably gifted students are sitting around the table, and they appreciate having such perimeters established. With each variable the list isolates, their imaginations soar higher. They smile and nod. The mood in the room is congenial, almost festive with learning. I feel like a very effective teacher; I can practically hear my course-evaluation scores hitting the roof. Then, when the students reach the last point on the list, the mood shifts. Some of them squint at the words as if their vision has gone blurry; others ask their neighbors for clarification. The neighbor will shake her head, looking pale and dejected, as if the last point confirms that she should have opted for that aseptic-surgery class where you operate on a fetal pig. The last point is: Don’t Write What You Know. The idea panics them for two reasons. First, like all writers, the students have been encouraged, explicitly or implicitly, for as long as they can remember, to write what they know, so the prospect of abandoning that approach now is disorienting. Second, they know an awful lot. In recent workshops, my students have included Iraq War veterans, professional athletes, a minister, a circus clown, a woman with a pet miniature elephant, and gobs of certified geniuses. They are endlessly interesting people, their lives brimming with uniquely compelling experiences, and too often they believe those experiences are what equip them to be writers. Encouraging them not to write what they know sounds as wrongheaded as a football coach telling a quarterback with a bazooka of a right arm to ride the bench. For them, the advice is confusing and heartbreaking, maybe even insulting. For me, it’s the difference between fiction that matters only to those who know the author and fiction that, well, matters.

Future generations will look back at the time we are living in now. The kind of future they look from, and the story they tell about our period, will be shaped by choices we make in our lifetimes. The most telling choice of all may well be the story we live from and see ourselves participating in. It sets the context of our lives in a way that influences all our other decisions. In choosing our story, we not only cast our vote of influence over the kind of world future generations inherit, but we also affect our own lives in the here and now. When we find a good story and fully give ourselves to it, that story can act through us, breathing new life into everything we do. When we move in a direction that touches our heart, we add to the momentum of deeper purpose that makes us feel more alive. A great story and a satisfying life share a vital element: a compelling plot that moves toward meaningful goals, where what is at stake is far larger than our personal gains and losses. The Great Turning is such a story.

I never got to take you to the prom. You went with Henry Featherstone. And you wore a peach-colored dress.” “How could you possibly know that?” Callie asked. “Because I saw you walk in with him.” “You didn’t know I was alive in high school,” Callie scoffed. “You had algebra first period, across the hall from my trig class. You ate a sack lunch with the same three girls every day, Lou Ann, Becky and Robbie Sue. You spent your free period in the library reading Hemingway and Steinbeck. And you went straight home after school without doing any extracurricular activities, except on Thursdays. For some reason, on Thursdays you showed up at football practice. Why was that, Callie?” Callie was confused. How could Trace possibly know so much about her activities in high school? They hadn’t even met until she showed up at the University of Texas campus. “I don’t understand,” she said. “You haven’t answered my question. Why did you come to football practice on Thursdays?” “Because that was the day I did the grocery shopping, and I didn’t have to be home until later.” “Why were you there, Calllie?” Callie stared into his eyes, afraid to admit the truth. But what difference could it possibly make now? She swallowed hard and said, “I was there to see you.” He gave a sigh of satisfaction. “I hoped that was it. But I never knew for sure.” Callie’s brow furrowed. “You wanted me to notice you?” “I noticed you. Couldn’t you feel my eyes on you? Didn’t you ever sense the force of my boyish lust? I had it bad for you my senior year. I couldn’t walk past you in the hall without needing to hold my books in my lap when I saw down in the next class.” “You’re kidding, right?” Trace chuckled. “I wish I were.” “Then it wasn’t an accident, our meeting like that at UT?” “That’s the miracle of it,” Trace said. “It was entirely by accident. Fate. Kisma. Karma. Whatever you want to call it.