Jonah Quotes

Fiction was invented the day Jonah arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale..

I feel sorry for anyone who is in a place where he feels strange and stupid.

These people have history and I crave history. I crave someone knowing me so well that they can tell what I'm thinking. Jonah Griggs takes my hand under the table and links my fingers with his and I know that I would sacrifice almost anything just to keep this state of mind, for the rest of the week at least.

I don't want to let go, because tonight I'm not looking for anything more than being part of him. Because being part of him isn't just anything. It's kind of everything.

If there is ever a fascist takeover in America, it will come not in the form of storm troopers kicking down doors but with lawyers and social workers saying. "I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

Girls under the age of fourteen are the most frightening creatures I have ever come across.

Jonah and Catcher shared one of those manly, “It’s nice to meet you, but I’m going to barely acknowledge your existence with a small nod because that’s the manly thing to do” gestures.

Adam hid in the Garden of Eden. Moses tried to substitute his brother. Jonah jumped a boat and was swallowed by a whale...Man likes to run from God. It's a tradition.

He’s looking at me like he was in that picture. Full of heartache. Or maybe this is what Jonah looks like when he loves something so much it hurts.

Jonah Griggs. Not just a name but a state of mind I never want to revisit, although I do keep him at the back of my mind for those times I get me hopes raised about something. So then I can slap myself into reality and remind myself of what happens when you let someone into your sacred space. Jonah Griggs is my second reminder to never ever trust another human being. My mother was first.

Explore me,' you said and I collected my ropes, flasks and maps, expecting to be back home soon. I dropped into the mass of you and I cannot find the way out. Sometimes I think I’m free, coughed up like Jonah from the whale, but then I turn a corner and recognise myself again. Myself in your skin, myself lodged in your bones, myself floating in the cavities that decorate every surgeon’s wall. That is how I know you. You are what I know.

Oh, no-" They weren't even on the runway, and Jonah's father was already immersed in his BlackBerry. "Remember those 'Live Large with the Wiz Generation' posters? Well, guess how that translates into Chinese- 'Jonah Wizard Makes Your Ancestors Fat'.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Ian put in. "Just fridge yourselves, as Jonah says." "Dude," Dan said. "Do you mean chill?" "Precisely. Just what I said.

I am just mystified by these people telling me I would think Obama was doing a great job if his skin contained less melanin.

Amy gritted her teeth. "King Louis XVI even put Franklin's picture on a chamber pot!" Jonah looked at his dad. "Do we have souvenir chamber pots?" "No." His dad whipped out his phone. "I'll make the call.

Solitary. But not in the sense of being alone. Not solitary in the way Thoreau was, for example, exiling himself in order to find out where he was; not solitary in the way Jonah was, praying for deliverance in the belly of the whale. Solitary in the sense of retreat. In the sense of not having to see himself, of not having to see himself being seen by anyone else.

But you pashed Jonah Griggs and he's the leader of the enemy.

I'm working from the assumption it's going to go horribly wrong. If we get out of here with limbs intact and no aspen slivers in uncomfortable places, we're calling it a win." Merit/Jonah

there simply is no way to describe the past without lying. Our memories are not like fiction. They are fiction.

You are a universe, Kacey. I kept waiting to find the end of your love and beauty, the end of your generous heart. I never did. I never will.

Jonah squealed, jumping up and down and shaking his pom-poms. His skirt swished around his scrawny yellow knees. “Jonah, can I give you a piece of sisterly advice?” “Yeah.” “If you ever want to lose your virginity, don’t do that again. Ever.

We need to be willing to risk embarrassment, ask silly questions, surround ourselves with people who don't know what we're talking about. We need to leave behind the safety of our expertise.

Maybe we were dying planets, Jonah, being drawn into the darkness.” I hold my right palm against his cheek, and I wish I could touch him with both my hands. “When we collided, we bounced each other back into orbit. And now we have to do that—we have to return to our own paths because that’s what we gave each other.

The government cannot love you, and any politics that works on a different assumption is destined for no good.

Jonah peered critically up at the Renaissance masterpiece. "Man, those copies don't due it justice. This one's the truth!" "Only a Janus," groaned Hamilton.

What you have learned is that the capacity of the plant is equal to the capacity of its bottlenecks,” says Jonah.

...new ideas are merely several old thoughts that occur at the exact same time.

Television screens saturated with commercials promote the utopian and childish idea that all problems have fast, simple, and technological solutions. You must banish from your mind the naive but commonplace notion that commercials are about products. They are about products in the same sense that the story of Jonah is about the anatomy of whales.

Nobody got me out," Nellie replied. "They just let me go. They think I'm a deranged Jonah Wizard fan. Apparently, the hotel's full of them. A couple of idiots actually jumped off the front balcony. Can you picture that?" "In Technicolor," Amy said bitterly. "That low-down KGB reject!" Dan fumed. "I can't believe she cheated me–right when I was in the middle of cheating her!

Dan inched closer. "Are her eyelids moving?" Jonah was on his feet now, cheerleading. "Get up, babysitter! Up! Up!

And so we keep on thinking, because the next thought might be the answer.

Yeah!" shouted Jonah, twirling the much larger Hamilton around the restaurant in a victory dance. The other diners watched in amazement. This wild display was hardly the public image of the too-cool-for-school Jonah Wizard. "What's the matter?" Hamilton challenged. "Haven't you ever seen a happy rapper before?

Jonah McAllister regarded me with cold eyes. "Oh, yes. That's her. The lovely Ms.Gin Blanco. The bitch who was giving my boy a hard time. A hard time? I supposed so, if you thought turning him in to the cops for attempted robbery, breaking a plate full of food in his face, and ultimately stabbing Jake McAllister to death was a hard time.

What happens when she's not my memory anymore? What happens when she's not around to tell me about his belt leaving scars across my two-year-old brother's face or when he whacked her so hard that she lost her hearing for a week? Who'll be my memory?" Santangelo doesn't miss a beat. "I will. Ring me." "Same," Raffy says. I look at him. I can't even speak because if I do I know I'll cry but I smile and he knows what I'm thinking.

There's something wrong with the brakes." He didn't recognize his shaky, weak voice. He pumped them again. Nothing.  "There's something wrong with the BRAKES?" "I don't think we have any." "We don't have any BRAKES?" "Bro, it doesn't help to repeat everything I say!" Jonah yelled.

Jonah spoke what everyone was thinking. "Wouldn't it be Twilight Zone if the door was open, too?" Hamilton tried the knob. It didn't budge. Ian stepped forward and examined the lock. "Natalie's diary has better security than this." He produced a credit card and slipped it between the latch and the jamb. There was a click, and the door swung wide.

Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean it's true.

Precision of language, Jonah.

I’ll have the bison burger and the pale ale on tap.” Jonah folds the lodge’s menu and hands it back to Chris. “And Calla will have a steak knife to drag across my jugular.

The key to the city of Florence was about two feet long, and painted a garish gold. Hamilton was fascinated by it. "Wow! How big is the lock?" Jonah laughed. "There is no lock, cuz. It's an honorary gig. Back in my crib in LA, I've got a whole shed full of keys from different cities. Want to know the kicker? I can't get at them. The gardener lost the key to the shed.

People don't think in terms of information. They think in terms of narratives. But while people focus on the story itself, information comes along for the ride.

Keep the change, Gin," McCallister said in a smarmy, mocking voice. "Consider it an early Christmas present." "Aw," I drawled. "A whopping thirteen cents. You're too kind, Jonah. Why, you'd put Ebezener Scrooge to shame with your bighearted generosity.

Here's some more stuff we're going to need." 1 pair coveralls 1 extension ladder (30 foot) 1 glass cutter 1 artist's portfolio (large) 1 water pistol 1 bottle india ink 1 portable trampoline (collapsible) 1 bicycle w/basket 4 pizza boxes Jonah whistled. "I hope you've got some crazy evil-genius strategy, 'cause–straight up–I don't get it.

You can call me Jonah," I said. "If you were my submissive, you would call me Master. If you were a submissive, but not under my care and protection, you would call me Sir.

I'll never forget Jonah's face. A light poured out of him and became the spirit of the room, like a genie released from a bottle after centuries of darkness.

Santo Rita Meata Mater Ringo Jonah Tito Marlin Jack Latoya Janet Michael Dumbledora the Explorer! Santo Rita Meata Mater Ringo Jonah Tito Marlin Jack Latoya Janet Michael Dumbledora the Explorer! I've summoned you from the depths of Hell. Show yourself!" (Britain) "You kolled?" (Russia) "I wasn't calling you!" (Britain) -Britain and Russia

And then you came along and you spoke to me and nobody had looked me in the eye for years. (...) But I remember you that day and you looked at peace with yourself and it made me reconsider everything I had planned to do. Because I thought to myself, you can't do this to her, not after the Hermit thing." "Do what to me? I don't think leaving me on that platform would have changed my life, Griggs," I lie. "You being on that platform changed mine.

Free food!" mumbled Hamilton, his mouth full. "No wonder you're rich. You don't have to pay for anything." "Since when is it free?" Jonah demanded. "If I don't leave a big tip, it'll be all over Europe that the Wiz is a cheapskate! They'll seat me behind the sound-man from the penguin movie at the Oscars!

America's political system used to be about the pursuit of happiness. Now More and more of us want to stop chasing it and have it delivered.

Miles: Well, things are kind of complicated right now. When you’re a grown-up, you’ll understand. Jonah: I don’t want to be a grown-up. Miles: Why not? Jonah: Because grown-ups always say that things are complicated.

With all the planning she’d done, she must have known she was leaving, and even she couldn’t have been totally immune to the feeling. She’d had good days here. And on the last day, the bad days become so difficult to recall, because one way or another, she made a life here, just as I had. The town was paper, but the memories were not. All the things I’d done here, all the love and pity and compassion and violence and spite, kept welling up inside me. These whitewashed cinder-block walls. My white walls. Margo’s white walls. We’d been captive in them for so long, stuck in their belly like Jonah.

He grinned. "And you've got yourself a nickname. I'm thinking 'Shorty'" "I'm five eight without heels." "It's not a description. It's a nickname. Get used to it, Shorty." We stood there for a moment, waiting for the tension to evaporate. When it did, we smiled at each other. "Don't call me Shorty," I told him. "Okay, Shorty." "Seriously, that's very immature." "Whatever you say, Shorty. Let's call it a night." "Fine by me." I'd worry about the humiliation in the morning. Merit/Jonah

I almost lost you." "No, never. I would've fought. However long it took. I'd never give up until I was free. You're my life, Jonah. My family, my love, my best friend. Nothing, not even destiny, could keep me from you." He leans forward and brushes his lips against mine. "Okay.

A lie told well is just as good as the truth.

Change of plan–," she called to Jonah. "Can you drop us off in Rome?" "Yo, am I a movie star or a taxi service?" Jonah grumbled from the depths of the script pile. "Technically, your neither," Hamilton puffed, lifting weights again. "I mean, you're a star and you've made movies...

What do you think would happen if we kissed right here, right now?" he asks, digging his hands into the pockets of his khaki pants, grinning right back at me. "I think it would cause a riot." "Well, you know me," he says, lowering his head towards me. "Causing a riot is what I do best." Santangelo approaches before Griggs gets any closer and pulls him away. "Are you guys insane?" he says, irritated. "It's called peaceful coexistence, Santangelo. You should try it and if it works we may sell the idea to the Israelis and Palestinians," I say, throwing his own words back at him.

And then Jonah heard God’s voice. “Jonah, do you know what the difference is between you and the trees?” He was confident it was God because God usually asked questions but gave no answers. Jonah didn’t need a divine answer to this question, he knew it. “Yes,” he said. “The difference between me and the trees is that the trees let go of their leaves. I keep holding onto mine. The trees make room for new life. I don’t.

Hell. Six other pilots available and I had to be the one to get you,” Jonah mutters to himself. … “ ‘Don't worry, Calla.' 'It's no big deal, Calla.' That's what a decent person would say,” I mumble. “I'm here to get your high-maintenance little ass to Bangor, not soothe your ego.

Whatever criticism we may have for Jonah, at least it can be said that Jonah was consistent. This legalistic, over-judgmental, young prophet will consistently proscribe the most severe form of punishment for the guilty--even when the guilty party is himself. The young Jonah hijacks written Torah to condemn everyone--even himself.

Making things more observable makes them easier to imitate, which makes them more likely to become popular.

That emptiness is being replaced with heat and flutters and heartbeats, and I hate it because it feels like I’ve just pinpointed what has caused me to feel so empty these past few weeks. Jonah. Sometimes when we’re alone, he looks at me in a way that makes me feel empty when he looks away. It’s a feeling I’ve never gotten when Chris looks at me. This realization scares me to death.

Don't you ever touch my car again," Santangelo says with the same fury he had on his face when Jonah Griggs made comments about his mother. Raffy touches the car with her finger in a very dramatic way. "You've just made our hit list," he says, getting a hanky out of his pocket and cleaning off some imaginary mark.

The head nerd of the Cadets is my partner and when it's over he asks me for my number. I'm very flattered and he looks a bit crestfallen when I say no. "It's because they don't have coverage out here," Griggs tells him. "No," I say, looking up at Griggs. "It's actually because my heart belongs to someone else." And if I could bottle the look on his face, I'd keep it by my bedside for the rest of my life.

My world had been fading to gray until she burst in like a bombshell of color and light...

I met this boy here who I knew as a kid and his mum left him with a pedophile for two weeks when he was eight years old and I'm presuming you know everything there is to know about Jonah's father, and that my father is dead, and my mother hasn't been around for years, and God knows Jessa's real story. So what I'm saying here, Sergeant, is that we're just a tad low on the reliable adult quota so you have no right to be all self-righteous about what Chaz did and if you're going to go around not talking to him when his only crime was wanting me to have what he has, then I think you're going to turn out to be a bit of a dud and you know something? I'm just a bit over life's little disappointments right now. Do you understand what I'm saying?

Dan moved forward and replaced Jonah at the helm. "I've got a plan!" "That's my man!" The famous grin disappeared as Jonah took in the grim determination in Dan's features. His expression was as flat and expressionless as a naked skull. Dan steered the hurtling boat directly toward the rocky shore. "Amy, hang onto that painting!" "That's not a plan!" Jonah shouted. "That's suicide!

Amy bit her lip. "I was so scared, Dan. I couldn't think. She shook her head. "I feel so ashamed of myself. If it wasn't for you, we would have been toast." "Whoa," Dan said. "If you're throwing a pity party for yourself, don't invite me." He poked her. "You were the one who got Jonah to find us. Awesome lung power. I thought you only used that volume to get me out of the bathroom.

...the imagination is unleashed by constraints. You break out of the box by stepping into shackles.

I don't think twice about picking up my dog's poop, but if another dog's poop is next to it, I think, 'Eww, dog poop!

Virality isn’t born, it’s made.

Jonah's breath came fast and shallow. I reached for his hand. He turned his face to me, his eyes wide with panic. Two frozen ponds. A boy screamed and pounded on the surface, trapped under the ice. Panicking. Trying to break through. But his screams faded, his fists flailed, and he slipped away into the dark. The boy was gone. Nothing left but the ice, clear and smooth enough to skate on.

And suddenly I know I have to go. But this time without being chased by the Brigadier, without experiencing the kindness of a postman from Yass, and without taking along a Cadet who will change the way I breath for the rest of my life.

I love you,” I said. “God, I never thought this would happen to me.” “But it did,” she whispered. “It happened and all we can do now is take care of each other. Live in the little moments, right? Just like we promised. The little moments. We have so many. Thousands upon thousands.

Like a work of art, we exceed our materials. Science needs art to frame the mystery, but art needs science so that not everything is a mystery. Neither truth alone is our solution, for our reality exists in plural

Life, he realized, was much like a song. In the beginning there is mystery, in the end there is confirmation, but it's in the middle where all the emotion resides to make the whole thing worthwhile. For the first time in months, he felt no pain at all; for the first time in years, he knew his questions had answers. As he listened to the song that Ronnie had finished, the song that Ronnie had perfected, he closed his eyes in the knowledge that his search for God's presence had been fulfilled. He finally understood that God's presence was everywhere, at all times, and was experienced by everyone at one time or another. It had been with him in the workshop as he'd labored over the window with Jonah; it had been present in the weeks he'd spent with Ronnie. It was present here and now as his daughter played their song, the last song they would ever share. In retrospect, he wondered how he could have missed something so incredibly obvious. God, he suddenly understood, was love in its purest form, and in these last months with his children, he had felt His touch as surely as he had heard the music spilling from Ronnie's hands.

Hamilton awkwardly folded himself into the passenger seat. "Couldn't you get something bigger?" he asked as he banged his knee against the dashboard. "We're supposed to be a diversion," Jonah said. "Got to make an entrance. Can't do that in a minivan, Giganto Boy. Can't do much in a minivan except look about as uncool as it gets." "Hey! My dad drives a minivan." "Snap.

Nellie's brow furrowed. "The great Mr. Hip-Hop Mogul standing in line with the common peasants? How do you figure that?" Dan grinned. "I'm starting to dig this 'no cars' thing. It's a great equalizer.

Mattie once asked me ... she'd just come home flush from a crush on Jonah Sweeten and asked me how you know when you like someone, and if I liked any boys like she did, and I didn't know what tot tell her. That I tried not to think about that kind of stuff, because it was painful, because I thought I could ever have it, but when I did end up liking someone, it always made me ache right down to my core. I realized pretty early on that the who didn't really matter so much. That anybody who listens to me, I end up loving them just a little.

You know how to steer a yacht?" Mr. McIntyre asked Ian worriedly. "I was born knowing how to steer a yacht," Ian said. Then a stricken look came over his face. "But–do you suppose Jonah prepaid the full amount for renting this? Once my dad hears what Natalie and I did, he'll cancel our credit cards." "You mean we're...we're poor now?" Natalie gasped. "Penniless," Ian said grimly. "Actually," Mr. McIntyre said, "I should have mentioned this before the others left. Grace had an addendum to her will regarding everyone who made it through the gauntlet. There were eight of you–you will all receive double the amount you turned down to get the first clue." "It was a million dollars originally," Ian said. "So Natalie and I each get two million dollars? I suppose we could live on that." Natalie beamed. "That is such a relief!" she said. "Being poor wasn't quite as bad as I thought it would be, but still–" "You were only poor for about two seconds!" Dan protested, rolling his eyes.

Harlow would later write, "If monkeys have taught us anything, it's that you've got to learn how to love before you learn how to live.

A large section of the idling classes of England get their incomes by believing that Jesus was born of a virgin and that Jonah swallowed a whale; and with the progress of science they were naturally finding this more and more difficult. A school of ingenious Bible-twisters arose, to invent symbolical and literary meanings for fairy tales, in order that people who no longer believed could continue with good conscience to collect the salaries of belief.

Hamilton dabbed a tissue at the cut under his eye. "Except for the time I met the Great Khali, that was the coolest thing I've ever done!" The foursome, only slightly the worse for wear, stood on the tarmac of the small airfield outside Milan, transferring their luggage from the limo to Jonah's jet for the flight back to Florence. "You didn't do anything, yo," Jonah seethed. "It was done to all of us by the freak show with the nerve to complain that the family branches are too violent!

I trace his face with my fingers, 'Let me see. A guy tells me that he would have thrown himself in front of a train if it wasn't for me and then drives seven hours straight, without whingeing once, on a wild-goose chase in search of my mother with absolutely no clue where to start. He is, in all probability, going to get court-martialled because of me, has put up with my moodiness all day long, and knows exactly what to order me for breakfast. It doesn't get any more romantic than that, Jonah.

If I had to wish for something, just one thing, it would be that Hannah would never see Tate the way I did. Never see Tate's beautiful, lush hair turn brittle, her skin sallow, her teeth ruined by anything she could get her hands on that would make her forget. That Hannah would never count how many men there were, or how vile humans can be to one another. That she would never see the moments in my life that were full of neglect, and fear, and revulsion, moments I can never go back to because I know they will slow me down for the rest of my life if I let myself remember them for one moment. Tate, who had kept Hannah alive that night, reading her the story of Jem Finch and Mrs. Dubose. And suddenly I know I have to go. But this time without being chased by the Brigadier, without experiencing the kindness of a postman from Yass, and without taking along a Cadet who will change the way I breath for the rest of my life.

How do we regulate our emotions? The answer is surprisingly simple: by thinking about them. The prefrontal cortex allows each of us to contemplate his or her own mind, a talent psychologists call metacognition. We know when we are angry; every emotional state comes with self-awareness attached, so that an individual can try to figure out why he's feeling what he's feeling. If the particular feeling makes no sense—if the amygdala is simply responding to a loss frame, for example—then it can be discounted. The prefrontal cortex can deliberately choose to ignore the emotional brain.

You're a model? Never would have guessed," Jonah said in a lazy, teasing voice that caused Hamilton's head to swivel. He'd never seen Jonah flirt before. The girl tilted her head. The glossy hair spilled down one bare shoulder. "Un moment...you look familiar." Jonah grinned. "Yeah?" "'Ave we met? Are you an 'airdresser?" "A hairdresser?" Jonah choked out. "Guys, we'd better get going," Hamilton said. "The name is Jonah," Jonah said, pronuncing his name carefully. He waited for a sign of recognition. "Nicole." "Jonah Wizard." Nicole squinted at him. "You are a wee-zhard? Like the Harry Potter, non?" "I'm Hamilton," Hamilton said, even though nobody asked.

Even when alternative views are clearly wrong, being exposed to them still expands our creative potential. In a way, the power of dissent is the power of surprise. After hearing someone shout out an errant answer, we work to understand it, which causes us to reassess our initial assumptions and try out new perspectives. “Authentic dissent can be difficult, but it’s always invigorating,” [Charlan] Nemeth [a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley] says. “It wakes us right up.

The Nazis played the same games against Jews that today’s left plays against 'Eurocentrism,' 'whiteness,' and 'logocentrism.' When you hear a campus radical denounce 'white logic' or 'male logic,' she is standing on the shoulders of a Nazi who denounced 'Jewish logic' and the 'Hebrew disease'...The white man is the Jew of liberal fascism.

When God interrupts your life, He is calling you to follow Him in a new way. By breaking into your settled pattern, He is moving you to a new place where you can make fresh discoveries of His grace. Embracing God’s call is never easy, but this is where the pursuit of a God-centered life begins, and where the shame of a self-centered life is exposed.

Life up here may be simple but it’s not easy, and it’s not for everyone. Water runs out; pipes freeze; engines won’t start; it’s dark for eighteen, nineteen hours a day, for months. Even longer in the far north. Up here it’s about having enough food to eat, and enough heat to stay alive through the winter. It’s about survival, and enjoying the company of the people that surround us. It’s not about whose house is the biggest, or who has the nicest clothes, or the most money. We support each other because we’re all in this together. “And people either like that way of life or they don’t; there’s no real in-between. People like Wren and Jonah, they find they can’t stay away from it for too long. And people like Susan, well . . . they never warm up to it. They fight the challenges instead of embracing them, or at least learning to adapt to them.” Agnes pauses, her mouth open as if weighing whether she should continue. “I don’t agree with the choices Wren made where you’re concerned, but I know it was never a matter of him not caring about you. And if you want to blame people for not trying, there’s plenty of it to go around.” Agnes turns to smile at me then. “Or you could focus on the here-and-now, and not on what you can’t change.

The only way to maximize group creativity—to make the whole more than the sum of its parts—is to encourage a candid discussion of mistakes. In part, this is because the acceptance of error reduces cost. When you believe your flaws will be quickly corrected by the group, you're less worried about perfecting your contribution, which leads to a more candid conversation. We can only get it right when we talk about what we got wrong.

Why is music capable of inflicting such pain? Because it works on our feelings directly. No ideas interfere with its emotions. This is why "all art aspires to the condition of music." The symphony gives us the thrill of uncertainty--the pleasurable anxiety of searching for a pattern--but without the risks of real life. When we listen to music, we are moved by an abstraction. We feel, but we don't know why.

Every brilliant experiment, like every great work of art, starts with an act of imagination. Unfortunately, our current culture subscribes to a very narrow definition of truth. If something can’t be quantified and calculated, then it can’t be true. Because this strict scientific approach has explained so much, we assume that it can explain everything. But every method, even the experimental method, has limits. Take the human mind. Scientists describe our brain in terms of its physical details; they say we are nothing but a loom of electrical cells and synaptic spaces. What science forgets is that this isn’t how we experience the world. (We feel like the ghost, not like the machine.) It is ironic but true: the one reality science cannot reduce is the only reality we will ever know. This is why we need art. By expressing our actual experience, the artist reminds us that our science is incomplete, that no map of matter will ever explain the immateriality of our consciousness.

It has always been difficult for Jews to take Christians serious, mostly because Christians lack the fundamentals that religious Jews learn in their youth. It remains an embarrassing fact, that modern Jews can comprehend the New Testament better than modern Christians. There is no excuse for this. Christians have dropped the ball and should be anxious to remedy that neglect. Not only would they benefit themselves, but their community too.

Repotting a plant gives it space to grow. Repotting ourselves means taking leave of our everyday environments and walking into unfamiliar territory—of the heart, of the mind and of the spirit. It isn’t easy. The older we get, the more likely we are to have remained in the same place for some time. We stay because it’s secure. We know the boundaries and, inside of them, we feel safe. Our roots cling to the walls we have long known. But remaining inside can keep us from thriving. Indeed, without new experiences or ideas, we slowly grow more and more tightly bound, eventually turning into less vibrant versions of who we might have been. Repotting means accepting that the way is forward, not back. It means realizing that we won’t again fit into our old shells. But that’s not failure. That’s living.

Check it out." Jonah removed the bubble wrap and held up the picture for his three cousins. Dan took a step backward. The shock was almost as powerful as it had been the day before at the Uffizi. "It's perfect! It's every bit as disgusting as the real one!" Amy nodded. "And so fast. We only called you yesterday." Jonah shrugged. "Even the Janus take a short cut every now and then. You can do a lot with digitization these days. You break the picture down to squares and reproduce them one at a time. The other two are just as fly." "You mean, hog ugly," Hamilton amended. "The serpents don't help," Dan put in critically. "Live fat spaghetti. Lady, if you're thinking of a modeling career, forget it!" The rapper clucked sympathetically. "You guys just don't appreciate the power of the visual image. The Wiz used to be like that–until Gangsta Kronikles. When you're in film industry, you understand the whole picture's-worth-a-thousand-words deal." Hamilton rolled his eyes. "Here we go again.

The fatal misconception behind brainstorming is that there is a particular script we should all follow in group interactions.... [W]hen the composition of the group is right—enough people with different perspectives running into one another in unpredictable ways—the group dynamic will take care of itself. All these errant discussions add up. In fact, they may even be the most essential part of the creative process. Although such conversations will occasionally be unpleasant—not everyone is always in the mood for small talk or criticism—that doesn’t mean that they can be avoided. The most creative spaces are those which hurl us together. It is the human friction that makes the sparks.

The nature of a letter can also be revealed within its numeric value. All letters and numbers behave in a certain but recognizable way, from which we can deduce its nature. The number two is the only even prime. There is an inherent mathematical dilemma with, “one.” No matter how many times you multiply it, by itself, you still can’t get past “one” (1 x 1 x 1 x 1 = 1). So, how does “one” move beyond itself? How does the same, produce the different? Mathematically, “one” is forced to divide itself and work from that duality. Therein, hides the divine puzzle of bet (b). To become “two,” the second must revolt from wholeness—a separation. Yet, the second could not have existed without the benefit of the original wholeness. Also, the first wanted the second to exist, but the first doesn’t know what the second will become. Again, two contains potential badness, to a Hebrew. (Ge 25:24)

That's the real distinction between people: not between those who have secrets and those who don't, but between those who want to know everything and those who don't. This search is a sign of love, I maintain. It's similar with books. Not quite the same, of course (it never is); but similar. If you quite enjoy a writer's work, if you turn the page approvingly yet don't mind being interrupted, then you tend to like that author unthinkingly. Good chap, you assume. Sound fellow. They say he strangled an entire pack of Wolf Cubs and fed their bodies to a school of carp? Oh no, I'm sure he didn't; sound fellow, good chap. But if you love a writer, if you depend upon the drip-feed of his intelligence, if you want to pursue him and find him -- despite edicts to the contrary -- then it's impossible to know too much. You seek the vice as well. A pack of Wolf Cubs, eh? Was that twenty-seven or twenty-eight? And did he have their little scarves sewn up into a patchwork quilt? And is it true that as he ascended the scaffold he quoted from the Book of Jonah? And that he bequeathed his carp pond to the local Boy Scouts? But here's the difference. With a lover, a wife, when you find the worst -- be it infidelity or lack of love, madness or the suicidal spark -- you are almost relieved. Life is as I thought it was; shall we now celebrate this disappointment? With a writer you love, the instinct is to defend. This is what I meant earlier: perhaps love for a writer is the purest, the steadiest form of love. And so your defense comes the more easily. The fact of the matter is, carp are an endangered species, and everyone knows that the only diet they will accept if the winter has been especially harsh and the spring turns wet before St Oursin's Day is that of young minced Wolf Cub. Of course he knew he would hang for the offense, but he also knew that humanity is not an endangered species, and reckoned therefore that twenty-seven (did you say twenty-eight?) Wolf Cubs plus one middle-ranking author (he was always ridiculously modest about his talents) were a trivial price to pay for the survival of an entire breed of fish. Take the long view: did we need so many Wolf Cubs? They would only have grown up and become Boy Scouts. And if you're still so mired in sentimentality, look at it this way: the admission fees so far received from visitors to the carp pond have already enabled the Boy Scouts to build and maintain several church halls in the area.

[The Devil] "This legend is about paradise. There was, they say, a certain thinker and philospher here on your earth, who 'rejected all--laws, conscience faith, and, above all, the future life. He died and thought he'd go straight into darkness and death, but no--there was the future life before him. He was amazed and indignant. 'This,' he said, 'goes against my convictions.' So for that he was sentenced...I mean, you see, I beg your pardon, I'm repeating what I heard, it's just a legend...you see, he was sentenced to walk in darkness a quadrillion kilometers (we also use kilometers now), and once he finished that quadrillion, the doors of paradise would be open to him and he would be forgiven everything...Well, so this man sentenced to the quadrillion stood a while, looked, and then lay down across the road: 'I dont want to go, I refuse to go on principle!' Take the soul of an enlightened Russian atheist and mix it with the soul of the prophet Jonah, who sulked in the belly of a whale for three days and three nights--you'll get the character of this thinker lying in the road...He lay there for nearly a thousand years, and then got up and started walking." "What an ass!" Ivan exclaimed, bursting into nervous laughter, still apparently trying hard to figure something out. "isn't it all the same whether he lies there forever or walks a quadrillion kilometers? It must be about a billion years' walk!" "Much more, even. If we had a pencil and paper, we could work it out. But he arrived long ago, and this is where the anecdote begins." "Arrived! But where did he get a billion years?" "You keep thinking about our present earth! But our present earth may have repeated itself a billion times; it died out, lets say, got covered with ice, cracked, fell to pieces, broke down into its original components, again there were the waters above the firmament, then again a comet, again the sun, again the earth from the sun--all this development may already have been repeated an infinite number of times, and always in the same way, to the last detail. A most unspeakable bore... "Go on, what happened when he arrived?" "The moment the doors of paradise were opened and he went in, before he had even been there two seconds--and that by the watch--before he had been there two seconds, he exclaimed that for those two seconds it would be worth walking not just a quadrillion kilometers, but a quadrillion quadrillion, even raised to the quadrillionth power! In short, he sang 'Hosannah' and oversweetened it so much that some persons there, of a nobler cast of mind, did not even want to shake hands with him at first: he jumped over to the conservatives a bit too precipitously. The Russian character. I repeat: it's a legend.