Keith The Office Quotes

The people who lead us are of us. We put them in office and we can take them out. America proves that the people can govern themselves.

From the earliest writings of the apostles, through the second and third centuries, the Church resisted military involvement and refused engagement at the political level—even requiring new disciples to the faith who already served in public office to resign or else be turned away at the Lord’s Table and disqualified from baptism.1

Underlying all this activity—in the customhouses, on the wharves, in every place of business—were numbers. Merchants measured out their wares and negotiated prices; customs officers calculated taxes to be levied on imports; scribes and stewards prepared ships’ manifests, recording the values in long columns using Roman numerals. They would have put their writing implements to one side and used either their fingers or a physical abacus to perform the additions, then picked up pen and parchment once again to enter the subtotals from each page on a final page at the end. With no record of the computation itself, if anyone questioned the answer, the entire process would have to be repeated.

A later age would conflate them into a single, featureless demigod, possessed of mythical courage and fortitude, and animated by a determination to rebalance a wobbling world. Keith Douglas, a British officer who had fought in North Africa and would die at Normandy, described “a gentle obsolescent breed of heroes…. Unicorns, almost.” Yet it does them no disservice to recall their profound diversity in provenance and in character, or their feet of clay, or the mortality that would make them compelling long after their passing.

March 28, 1987: Today I read in the New York Times that all of the officers who killed Michael Stewart were again dismissed of charges. Continually dismissed, but in their minds they will never forget. They know they killed him. They will never forget his screams, his face, his blood. The must live with that forever. I hope in their next life they are tortured like they tortured him. They should be birds captured early in life, put in cages, purchased by a fat, smelly, ugly lady who keeps them in a small dirty cage up near the ceiling while all day she cooks bloody sausages and the blood spatters their cage and the frying fat burns their matted feathers and they can nerf escape the horrible fumes of her burnt meat. One day the cage will fall to the ground and a big fat ugly cat will kick them about, play with them like a toy, and slowly kill them and leave their remains to be accidentally stepped on by the big fat pig lady who can’t see her own feet because of her huge sagging tits. An eye for an eye … I’m not afraid of anything I’d ever done. Not ashamed of anything.

The poet Keith Douglas, a twenty-four-year-old captain in the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, wrote to Edmund Blunden, that poet of the previous war, ‘I’ve been fattened up for the slaughter and am simply waiting for it to start.’ Douglas was one of a number of men who harboured a strong sense of imminent death and spoke to their closest friends about it. It is striking how many turned out to have been right, and yet perhaps such a belief somehow turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Douglas went to church parade on the last Sunday. He walked afterwards with the regimental padre, who recorded that Douglas was reconciled to his approaching death and not morbid about it. In the view of a fellow officer, he was fatalistic because he felt that he had used up his ration of luck in the desert war. Almost

People you’re contacting to create a new relationship need to see or hear your name in at least three modes of communication—by, say, an e-mail, a phone call, and a face-to-face encounter—before there is substantive recognition. • Once you have gained some early recognition, you need to nurture a developing relationship with a phone call or e-mail at least once a month. • If you want to transform a contact into a friend, you need a minimum of two face-to-face meetings out of the office. • Maintaining a secondary relationship requires two to three pings a year. • Social media pings (status updates, retweets, comments, etc.) are terrific for ongoing relationship maintenance, especially for the fringe of your network, but they don’t replace the need for one-to-one pinging with the people in your highest-priority network, those people connected to your current goals.

American DEWAR FAMILY Cameron Dewar Ursula “Beep” Dewar, his sister Woody Dewar, his father Bella Dewar, his mother PESHKOV-JAKES FAMILY George Jakes Jacky Jakes, his mother Greg Peshkov, his father Lev Peshkov, his grandfather Marga, his grandmother MARQUAND FAMILY Verena Marquand Percy Marquand, her father Babe Lee, her mother CIA Florence Geary Tony Savino Tim Tedder, semiretired Keith Dorset OTHERS Maria Summers Joseph Hugo, FBI Larry Mawhinney, Pentagon Nelly Fordham, old flame of Greg Peshkov Dennis Wilson, aide to Bobby Kennedy Skip Dickerson, aide to Lyndon Johnson Leopold “Lee” Montgomery, reporter Herb Gould, television journalist on This Day Suzy Cannon, gossip reporter Frank Lindeman, television network owner REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS John F. Kennedy, thirty-fifth U.S. president Jackie, his wife Bobby Kennedy, his brother Dave Powers, assistant to President Kennedy Pierre Salinger, President Kennedy’s press officer Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Lyndon B. Johnson, thirty-sixth U.S. president Richard Nixon, thirty-seventh U.S. president Jimmy Carter, thirty-ninth U.S. president Ronald Reagan, fortieth U.S. president George H. W. Bush, forty-first U.S. president British LECKWITH-WILLIAMS FAMILY Dave Williams Evie Williams, his sister Daisy Williams, his mother Lloyd Williams, M.P., his father Eth Leckwith, Dave’s grandmother MURRAY FAMILY Jasper Murray Anna Murray, his sister Eva Murray, his mother MUSICIANS IN THE GUARDSMEN AND PLUM NELLIE Lenny, Dave Williams’s cousin Lew, drummer Buzz, bass player Geoffrey, lead guitarist OTHERS Earl Fitzherbert, called Fitz Sam Cakebread, friend of Jasper Murray Byron Chesterfield (real name Brian Chesnowitz), music agent Hank Remington (real name Harry Riley), pop star Eric Chapman, record company executive German FRANCK FAMILY Rebecca Hoffmann Carla Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive mother Werner Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive father Walli Franck, son of Carla Lili Franck, daughter of Werner and Carla Maud von Ulrich, née Fitzherbert, Carla’s mother Hans Hoffmann, Rebecca’s husband OTHERS Bernd Held, schoolteacher Karolin Koontz, folksinger Odo Vossler, clergyman REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Walter Ulbricht, first secretary of the Socialist Unity Party (Communist) Erich Honecker, Ulbricht’s successor Egon Krenz, successor to Honecker Polish Stanislaw “Staz” Pawlak, army officer Lidka, girlfriend of Cam Dewar Danuta Gorski, Solidarity activist REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Anna Walentynowicz, crane driver Lech Wałesa, leader of the trade union Solidarity General Jaruzelski, prime minister Russian DVORKIN-PESHKOV FAMILY Tanya Dvorkin, journalist Dimka Dvorkin, Kremlin aide, Tanya’s twin brother Anya Dvorkin, their mother Grigori Peshkov, their grandfather Katerina Peshkov, their grandmother Vladimir, always called Volodya, their uncle Zoya, Volodya’s wife Nina, Dimka’s girlfriend OTHERS Daniil Antonov, features editor at TASS Pyotr Opotkin, features editor in chief Vasili Yenkov, dissident Natalya Smotrov, official in the Foreign Ministry

the autonomous-driving side of things, Alphabet (formerly Google), which has logged several million self-driving-car test miles, continues to lead the pack. At the end of 2016, it created a new business division, called Waymo, for its autonomous driving technology. In May 2017, Waymo and Lyft announced that they would work together on developing the technology, and later in the year, Alphabet invested $1 billion in the start-up. Others, like Cruise Automation (which GM acquired for $1 billion) and Comma.ai, which offers open-source autonomous driving technology in the same vein as Google’s Android mobile operating system, are chasing hard. Baidu, China’s leading Internet search company, has an autonomous-driving research center in Sunnyvale. Byton—backed by China’s Tencent, Foxconn, and the China Harmony New Energy auto retailer group—has an office in Mountain View, as does Didi Chuxing, the Chinese ride-sharing company in which Apple invested $1 billion. Many of these companies have taken not just inspiration but also talent from Tesla. Part of the value of an innovation cluster like Silicon Valley lies in the dispersal of intellectual labor from one node to the next. For instance, PayPal is well known in the Valley for producing a number of high performers who left the company to start, join, or invest in others. The so-called PayPal Mafia includes Reid Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn; Max Levchin, whose most recent of several start-ups is the financial services company Affirm; Peter Thiel, a Facebook board member and President Trump–supporting venture capitalist who cofounded “big data” company Palantir; Jeremy Stoppelman, who started reviews site Yelp; Keith Rabois, who was chief operating officer at Square and then joined Khosla Ventures; David Sacks, who sold Yammer to Microsoft for $1.2 billion and later became CEO at Zenefits; Jawed Karim, who cofounded YouTube; and one Elon Musk.

In his memoirs of the late 1940s and 50s, published after his death following the famous ‘umbrella assassination’ in London in 1978, the Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov told a story that is emblematic of the postwar period – not only in his own country, but in Europe as a whole. It involved a conversation between one of his friends, who had been arrested for challenging a Communist official who had jumped the bread queue, and an officer of the Bulgarian Communist militia: ‘And now tell me who your enemies are?’ the militia chief demanded. K. thought for a while and replied: ‘I don’t really know, I don’t think I have any enemies.’ ‘No enemies!’ The chief raised his voice. ‘Do you mean to say that you hate nobody and nobody hates you?’ ‘As far as I know, nobody.’ ‘You are lying,’ shouted the Lieutenant-Colonel suddenly, rising from his chair. ‘What kind of a man are you not to have any enemies? You clearly do not belong to our youth, you cannot be one of our citizens, if you have no enemies! … And if you really do not know how to hate, we shall teach you! We shall teach you very quickly!’1 In a sense, the militia chief in this story is right – it was virtually impossible to emerge from the Second World War without enemies. There can hardly be a better demonstration than this of the moral and human legacy of the war. After the desolation of entire regions; after the butchery of over 35 million people; after countless massacres in the name of nationality, race, religion, class or personal prejudice, virtually every person on the continent had suffered some kind of loss or injustice. Even countries which had seen little direct fighting, such as Bulgaria, had been subject to political turmoil, violent squabbles with their neighbours, coercion from the Nazis and eventually invasion by one of the world’s new superpowers. Amidst all these events, to hate one’s rivals had become entirely natural. Indeed, the leaders and propagandists of all sides had spent six long years promoting hatred as an essential weapon in the quest for victory. By the time this Bulgarian militia chief was terrorizing young students at Sofia University, hatred was no longer a mere by-product of the war – in the Communist mindset it had been elevated to a duty.

I’d wake up feeling good, but this part would overpower me with negative thoughts, certain that trouble lay in wait. It was as though none of the good things I did existed or mattered; it was all about the one wrong thing I did. In my next therapy session, as I walked up the stairs to Keith’s office, I organized my thoughts. When I settled into the love seat, I explained what I thought was a new part I discovered, and detailed the characteristics. Upon further discussion, Keith said, “The part you’re actually describing is the shameful feelings that were conceived from the abuse and the ensuing conditioned reprehensible actions that followed. It was the feeling of shame that brought on the anxiety and all its feelings of guilt.” Following my understanding and ability to distinguish the shame versus the anxiety and the shameful part’s origin and roots, I went back to identifying its physical symptoms. “I get overtaken with restlessness and remorse. It paralyzes me with fear. There's tightness in my chest. My breathing becomes heavy, sometimes to the point of hyperventilating. When I get a feeling of unrest I’ll pace, fidget my leg up and down, sometimes my face will twitch.” As

It’s exhausting,” I said. “I have to battle this part along with the sense of frustration and hopelessness it creates. It’s so tough and strong that it seems undefeatable.” “What does the overburdened restless part want?” “It wants someone to bring it under control to rest and have peace. It’s like a hyperactive fidgety child, pacing back and forth, crying for someone to make it stop.” I was having trouble connecting my inner true self to the stressed part because of the intense energy it was creating. Keith guided me by helping me communicate with the stressed part. I needed to make it understand that by stepping aside it would allow the healing process of unburdening the emotional component that was holding in the shame. Without the burden of the disgrace, the anxious, stressed-out, perfectionist, striver part would not have to work so hard to compensate for its self-perceived shortcomings. Furthermore, relieving the humiliating burdens would bring rest, tranquility, and peace. The intense energy could then be orchestrated in better ways. At this point, we ended our session. I left his office once again annoyed and uncertain, wondering if I was ever going to be able to live a normal peaceful life. As I meditated on the session during the week, I understood what my therapist was explaining. I visualized fast-forwarding directly to the ultimate goal of un-blending the various multiple defender traits from the abuse. Getting to the root of the therapy and healing process of dealing with the disgraceful iniquity was my goal. I had trouble believing whether or not my logic in understanding the process was correct. It seemed too simplistic to me at first. I envisioned confessing all my scandalous deeds and desires for the world to know. I imagined no more secrets or lies and eliminating the need to masquerade with a phony façade to hide the atrocious creature I thought I was. Instantly, I was buoyant as helium. The crushing weight from the wicked acts was lifted from my shoulders. The mortifying and disgusting impressions I had were no longer there. I was able to get a brief glimpse of the divine true self. For a moment, I physically felt what life could be like while at peace with myself. Happiness and comfort engulfed me at the possibility of living a life free of judgment, low selfesteem, anxiety and paranoia. While in this good frame of mind, I became aware of all the goodness inside of me and the decent things I was doing in life. My human flaws appeared to be minor bumps in the road rather than being amplified into major roadblocks. I began to see how I pulled myself out of mental illness, addiction, and sexual perversion. I became conscious that I survived sexual abuse at an early age and persevered by holding it together. I was imbued with a sense of accomplishment. I now comprehended and conquered the difficult therapeutic work of dealing with the harmful emotions associated with bringing the misconduct to the surface.

Over the coming days, one of the things that shocked the British most was the nonchalant way that the surviving prisoners lived their lives amongst the corpses, as if such sights were perfectly normal. One horrified medical officer described several such vignettes: a woman too weak to stand propping herself against a pile of corpses, as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching just anywhere in the open relieving themselves of the dysentery which was scouring their bowels; a woman standing stark naked washing herself with some issue soap in water from a tank in which the remains of a child floated.36

The prisoner, impersonating a peer of the Lily and an officer of an ancient and honored Corps, had flaunted the law of Northroyal and the authority of the Emperor,

What I learned at the end of my first week back at work after the holiday break was how rough at least some of that road would be. Keith Fu, my department chair, dropped by my office. He brought me a latte. I'd just found a fortune cookie in my pocket and I showed it to Keith. It said, I cannot help you. I am only a cookie.

Take as little time as possible in your cold call to ensure that the next time you speak to them it’s in their office, or better yet, over some linguine and wine.

Keith Klouda, an ex-police officer and thriving construction business owner, aspires to become the Treasure of Costa Linda. His journey from law enforcement to construction management equips him with a unique skill set. Keith's passion for ice hockey, family dinners, and cigars adds a personal touch to his commitment to ensuring the resort's financial prosperity.

It was here that Lieutenant Thomas Kettle fell, leading a company of the 9th Royal Dublin Fusiliers just ahead of Lieutenant Emmet Dalton – who won a Military Cross in the engagement, acquired the nickname ‘Ginchy’, later became IRA Director of Munitions, and was to reach the rank of general in the army of independent Ireland. Kettle was a former Irish nationalist MP and Professor of National Economics at University College Dublin, who had been in Belgium at the beginning of the war buying guns for the nationalist Irish Volunteers. He joined up believing that the war had a just cause, being fought on behalf of small nations such as Belgium, Serbia and Ireland too. But he had been dispirited by the Easter Rising in Dublin. While he had no sympathy with the rebels, he correctly predicted how posterity might view him vis-à-vis the 1916 leaders. ‘These men,’ he wrote, ‘will go down in history as heroes and martyrs, and I will go down – if I go down at all – as a bloody British officer.

American DEWAR FAMILY Cameron Dewar Ursula “Beep” Dewar, his sister Woody Dewar, his father Bella Dewar, his mother PESHKOV-JAKES FAMILY George Jakes Jacky Jakes, his mother Greg Peshkov, his father Lev Peshkov, his grandfather Marga, his grandmother MARQUAND FAMILY Verena Marquand Percy Marquand, her father Babe Lee, her mother CIA Florence Geary Tony Savino Tim Tedder, semiretired Keith Dorset OTHERS Maria Summers Joseph Hugo, FBI Larry Mawhinney, Pentagon Nelly Fordham, old flame of Greg Peshkov Dennis Wilson, aide to Bobby Kennedy Skip Dickerson, aide to Lyndon Johnson Leopold “Lee” Montgomery, reporter Herb Gould, television journalist on This Day Suzy Cannon, gossip reporter Frank Lindeman, television network owner REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS John F. Kennedy, thirty-fifth U.S. president Jackie, his wife Bobby Kennedy, his brother Dave Powers, assistant to President Kennedy Pierre Salinger, President Kennedy’s press officer Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Lyndon B. Johnson, thirty-sixth U.S. president Richard Nixon, thirty-seventh U.S. president Jimmy Carter, thirty-ninth U.S. president Ronald Reagan, fortieth U.S. president George H. W. Bush, forty-first U.S. president British LECKWITH-WILLIAMS FAMILY Dave Williams Evie Williams, his sister Daisy Williams, his mother Lloyd Williams, M.P., his father Eth Leckwith, Dave’s grandmother MURRAY FAMILY Jasper Murray Anna Murray, his sister Eva Murray, his mother MUSICIANS IN THE GUARDSMEN AND PLUM NELLIE Lenny, Dave Williams’s cousin Lew, drummer Buzz, bass player Geoffrey, lead guitarist OTHERS Earl Fitzherbert, called Fitz Sam Cakebread, friend of Jasper Murray Byron Chesterfield (real name Brian Chesnowitz), music agent Hank Remington (real name Harry Riley), pop star Eric Chapman, record company executive German FRANCK FAMILY Rebecca Hoffmann Carla Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive mother Werner Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive father Walli Franck, son of Carla Lili Franck, daughter of Werner and Carla Maud von Ulrich, née Fitzherbert, Carla’s mother Hans Hoffmann, Rebecca’s husband OTHERS Bernd Held, schoolteacher Karolin Koontz, folksinger Odo Vossler, clergyman REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Walter Ulbricht, first secretary of the Socialist Unity Party (Communist) Erich Honecker, Ulbricht’s successor Egon Krenz, successor to Honecker Polish Stanislaw “Staz” Pawlak, army officer Lidka, girlfriend of Cam Dewar Danuta Gorski, Solidarity activist REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Anna Walentynowicz, crane driver Lech Wałesa, leader of the trade union Solidarity General Jaruzelski, prime minister Russian DVORKIN-PESHKOV FAMILY Tanya Dvorkin, journalist Dimka Dvorkin, Kremlin aide, Tanya’s twin brother Anya Dvorkin, their mother Grigori Peshkov, their grandfather Katerina Peshkov, their grandmother Vladimir, always called Volodya, their uncle Zoya, Volodya’s wife Nina, Dimka’s girlfriend OTHERS Daniil Antonov, features editor at TASS Pyotr Opotkin, features editor in chief Vasili Yenkov, dissident Natalya Smotrov, official in the Foreign Ministry Nik Smotrov, Natalya’s husband Yevgeny Filipov, aide to Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky Vera Pletner, Dimka’s secretary Valentin, Dimka’s friend Marshal Mikhail Pushnoy REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS Nikita Sergeyevitch Khrushchev, first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Andrei Gromyko, foreign minister under Khrushchev Rodion Malinovsky, defense minister under Khrushchev Alexei Kosygin, chairman of the Council of Ministers Leonid Brezhnev, Khrushchev’s successor Yuri Andropov, successor to Brezhnev Konstantin Chernenko, successor to Andropov Mikhail Gorbachev, successor to Chernenko Other Nations Paz Oliva, Cuban general Frederik Bíró, Hungarian politician Enok Andersen, Danish accountant

Instead, he put himself on the couch in full view of the office, where Keith and Reed had been holed up all day, and stripped. Spread his legs and began to stroke himself, head back, a long sigh escaping his throat. It

Ned Sherrin Ned Sherrin is a satirist, novelist, anthologist, film producer, and celebrated theater director who has been at the heart of British broadcasting and the arts for more than fifty years. I had met Diana, Princess of Wales--perhaps “I had been presented to” is more accurate--in lineups after charity shows that I had been compering and at which she was the royal guest of honor. There were the usual polite exchanges. On royal visits backstage, Princess Alexandra was the most relaxed, on occasion wickedly suggesting that she caught a glimpse of romantic chemistry between two performers and setting off giggles. Princess Margaret was the most artistically acute, the Queen the most conscientious; although she did once sweep past me to get to Bill Haley, of whom she was a fan. Prince Edward could, at one time, be persuaded to do an irreverent impression of his older brother, Prince Charles. Princess Diana seemed to enjoy herself, but she was still new to the job and did not linger down the line. Around this time, a friend of mine opened a restaurant in London. From one conversation, I gathered that although it was packed in the evenings, business was slow at lunchtime. Soon afterward, I got a very “cloak-and-dagger” phone call from him. He spoke in hushed tones, muttering something like “Lunch next Wednesday, small party, royal person, hush-hush.” From this, I inferred that he wanted me and, I had no doubt, other friends to bring a small party to dress the restaurant, to which he was bringing the “royal person” in a bid to up its fashionable appeal during the day. When Wednesday dawned, the luncheon clashed with a couple of meetings, and although feeling disloyal, I did not see how I was going to be able to round up three or four people--even for a free lunch. Guiltily, I rang his office and apologized profusely to his secretary for not being able to make it. The next morning, he telephoned, puzzled and aggrieved. “There were only going to be the four of us,” he said. “Princess Diana had been looking forward to meeting you properly. She was very disappointed that you couldn’t make it.” I felt suitably stupid--but, as luck had it, a few weeks later I found myself sitting next to her at a charity dinner at the Garrick Club. I explained the whole disastrous misunderstanding, and we had a very jolly time laughing at the coincidence that she was dining at this exclusive club before her husband, who had just been elected a member with some publicity. Prince Charles was in the hospital at the time recuperating from a polo injury. Although hindsight tells us that the marriage was already in difficulties, that was not generally known, so in answer to my inquiries, she replied sympathetically that he was recovering well. We talked a lot about the theater and her faux pas some years before when she had been to Noel Coward’s Hay Fever and confessed to the star, Penelope Keith, that it was the first Coward play that she had seen. “The first,” said Penelope, shocked. “Well,” Diana said to me, “I was only eighteen!” Our meeting was at the height of the AIDS crisis, and as we were both working a lot for AIDS charities, we had many notes to compare and friends to mourn. The evening ended with a dance--but being no Travolta myself, I doubt that my partnering was the high point for her.

Find a patch of sunshine or a place where it is warm and still; sit or stand, whichever is most comfortable. You’ll need to put the book down in a moment because I want you to shut your eyes and imagine what it will be like after civilization has gone. If you have ever been somewhere truly wild, even just for a camping trip or a long walk, then that will help your imagination. If you already live somewhere truly wild, then this will be an easy exercise; if you are dependent upon Industrial Civilization to provide you with everything, then it will be hard, maybe impossible. Imagine no cities, no paved roads, no pylons, no offices or factories – imagine having to grow everything, make everything, do everything for yourself. Now close your eyes and go there for a while . . .

The response in the office was predictable, though it wasn't Mac who cooed the loudest; it was her dad. "Who's a big fierce monster dog? Who's a bloodthirsty hound from Hell? It's you. Yes it is." Keith knelt to the floor and tickled the puppy's pudgy stomach. Veronica and Logan watched, amused. "I didn't know he was this anxious for grandchildren," Veronica said.

Keith Fu, my department chair, dropped by my office. he brought me a latte. I'd just found a fortune cooking in my pocked and I showed it to Keith. Its said, I cannot help you, I am only a cookie.

the health care profession. In the far corner of the commissioner’s office against a blank wall was a gray elevator door. Keith, perhaps noticing her puzzled expression, said, “This elevator

The role of executive officer (XO) is unique. He can often be the loneliest person on the ship. If something happens to the captain, the “exec” needs to be trained, prepared, and ready to take over. The XO is also the chief morale officer, executor of the captain’s orders, head of discipline, and the meanest “badass” on the ship (when required). The captain has total control and the final say, but the XO must make it all happen and pull everything together the way the captain wants it done while at the same time making the crew do it right. The best XOs eventually become captains. The bad XOs reveal themselves quickly and the navy has a chance to pull them out of line before they become captains and make mistakes that could be fatal to the ship or crew. (Little has changed since 1848.)

Keith Klouda embodies versatility and mastery in both law enforcement and construction. His retired status as an NYPD Police Officer evolved into owning Pristine Construction & Contracting Inc., where his 32-year journey enriches every project. A certified lead paint remover and skilled framer, Keith's expertise stems from a vocational carpentry education.

Maybe we should talk to Dr. Kelsey," Bradley chimed in. "He's not so mad about the heist anymore." He crinkeled his nose. "Well, except when Keith's father calls. Or Gaby enters the office. Or --

Contradicting the officers’ assumption that combat bred hatred and hatred fueled combat, Stouffer found that it was easier to hate from a safe distance than from within the intimate terror of battle.

Whenever there has been a secret police, not just in Germany, people often protest that their files are wholly unreliable, full of distortions and fabrications. How better to test that claim than to see what they had on me? After all, I should know what I was really up to. And what did my officers and informers think they were doing? Can the files, and the men and women behind them, tell us anything more about communism, the Cold War and the sense or nonsense of spying? This systematic opening of secret-police records to every citizen who is in them and wants to know, is without precedent. There has been nothing like it, anywhere, ever. Was it right? What has it done to those involved? The experience may even teach us something about history and memory, about ourselves, about human nature. So if the form of this book seems self-indulgent, the purpose is not. I am but a window, a sample, a means to an end, the object in this experiment. To do this, I must explore not just a file but a life: the life of the person I was then. This is not the same things as 'my life.' What we usually call 'my life' is a constantly rewritten version of our own past. 'My life' is the mental autobiography with which and by which we all live. What really happened is quite another matter. Searching for a lost self, I am also searching for a lost time. And for answers to the question How did the one shape the other? Historical time and personal time, the public and private, great events and our own lives. Writing about the large areas of human experience ignored by conventional political history, the historian Keith Thomas quotes Samuel Johnson: How small, of all that human hearts endure That part which laws or kings can cause or cure. But looking back I see how much the experience of my own heart, at least, was caused by our modern 'laws and kings': by the different regimes of East and West, and the conflict between them. Perhaps, after all, Johnson was expressing not a universal but a purely local truth. Happy the country where that was ever true.