Kneecap Quotes

Nobody calls me 'blondie' and keeps their kneecaps.

I was literally seeing stars, and every ragged breath I took felt like I was trying to breathe through broken glass. On the upside, my crush on Archer was totally gone. Over. Once a boy has slammed his kneecap into your rib cage, I think any romantic feeling should naturally go the way of the ghost.

Scratch her eyes out,” Andarna suggests. “Really. The eyes are the softest tissue. Just jab your thumbs in there—” “Andarna! Use some common sense,” Tairn snaps. “The kneecaps are a much easier target.

THAT crazed girl improvising her music. Her poetry, dancing upon the shore, Her soul in division from itself Climbing, falling She knew not where, Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship, Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing Heroically lost, heroically found. No matter what disaster occurred She stood in desperate music wound, Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph Where the bales and the baskets lay No common intelligible sound But sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea

Journalism is just a gun. It’s only got one bullet in it, but if you aim right, that’s all you need. Aim it right, and you can blow a kneecap off the world.

Every vertebra, every knuckle, both kneecaps, both hips. I am a pile of bones on the floor and no one knows it but me. I am a broken skeleton with a beating heart.

Kneecaps only exist to get hit with claw-hammers; grace only exists to be fallen from.

I’m just trying to do the right thing. I’m a vampire.” “Duh.” “And you’re not.” “Again: duh.” “I could hurt you. I could lose control.” “If you were anyone else, I’d have kneecapped you by now.

Pip knew a great many things; she knew that hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia was the technical term for the fear of long words, she knew that babies were born without kneecaps,

Gravity breaking our kneecaps just to show us the sky.

What I needed was a connection with someone. Someone real. I felt that need in the marrow of my bones, in my pancreas, in my kneecaps. I did not need an endless sea of flesh. What I needed was to be loved.

What do you want me to call them? Shits and Giggles? Fists and Kneecap? Nah, I don't like that one. Hammer and Nails? Dude, these kids are hard-core gangster. They need kick-A names, not that blah, blah sh-crap you gave them." - William

Alexia blinked stupidly at the Beta from around the earl’s upper arm. Her heart was doing crazy things, and she still could not locate her kneecaps. She took a deep breath and put some serious attention into tracking them down.

I’ve played bingo with these senior citizens. They take that shit seriously. They might be old, but if you get I-22 when they were waiting for B-6? They’ll bust your fucking kneecaps as quick as any backstreet bookie, without an ounce of remorse.

The point of war is to rig the deck, drug the opponent, and threaten to kneecap their family if they don't fold.

On the upside,my crush on Archer was totally gone. Over. Once a boy has slammed his kneecap into your rib cage, I think any romantic feelings should naturally go the way of the ghost.

Do I need to remind you of the fact I will take you out at the kneecaps if you fuck with her, man? Seriously.

Babies are born without knee-caps.

You aren't going to shoot me. You're just a Love Interest." "No, I'm not." I lower the gun and aim it at his right kneecap. Even though I've been through hell, even though I've been told I'm worthless my whole life, even though I'm gay, even though the world wants me to bow down and accept that who I am makes me insignificant, the following is true: "I'm the protagonist, fucker!" I pull the trigger.

But weren't done, not by a long shot. his great hands lifted me under my ass and my thighs, urging me to get on the table and lie on my side. His arm hooked under my leg right under the kneecap, and now everyone had a spectacular view of my dripping for him.

Love is love. If anybody tells you that your love's not worth having, shoot them in the kneecaps a couple of times. It won't change their minds, but it'll make you feel better.

All right, all right for you, you pretentious kneecap! How would you like a punch in the eye?

Aim for the kneecaps." "Ah, yes." Bastian tied off the linen on her hands. "The kneecaps are the eyes of the legs." They both started at him. Then Gabe shrugged. "That's actually pretty good advice." "Excellent help, the both of you." Lore said.

A moment, then Gabe sighed, as if finally resigning himself to what was about to happen. "Aim for the kneecaps." "Ah, yes." Bastian tied off the linen on her hands. "The kneecaps are the eyes of the legs.

And then he heard Mad-Eye Moody’s voice, echoing in some distant chamber of his empty brain: Jump onto the desk . . . jump onto the desk. . . . Harry bent his knees obediently, preparing to spring. Jump onto the desk. . . . Why, though? Another voice had awoken in the back of his brain. Stupid thing to do, really, said the voice. Jump onto the desk. . . . No, I don’t think I will, thanks, said the other voice, a little more firmly . . . no, I don’t really want to . . . Jump! NOW! The next thing Harry felt was considerable pain. He had both jumped and tried to prevent himself from jumping — the result was that he’d smashed headlong into the desk, knocking it over, and, by the feeling in his legs, fractured both his kneecaps.

Loan sharks don’t negotiate, Finn. They break kneecaps and chop off fingers.

I try taking a step. Reed drops my hands so that I can move freely. My knee is a bit stiff, but otherwise, it feels fine. Examining the surface of my knee, I see a slight discoloration over the kneecap, but other than that, it’s nearly as good as new. Feeling myself panicking I cover my hands over my face as I think, I’m a monster! Don’t fall apart here—you can fall apart later… Plastering a fake smile on my face, I bring my hands down to see Reed standing just a few feet away, watching me closely. I try to think of something offhand to say, but all I can come up with is, “Amazing…I can’t wait until that third eye grows out of my forehead.

To argue against an ideology, you have to acknowledge and articulate it. In the process, you might inadvertently ventriloquize your opposition. This is a problem that kneecaps me constantly, a problem that might define journalism in the Trump era: when you write against something, you lend it strength and space and time.

Scratch her eyes out,” Andarna suggests. “Really. The eyes are the softest tissue. Just jab your thumbs in there—” “Andarna! Use some common sense,” Tairn snaps. “The kneecaps are a much easier target.

We will make a rattle for our child from your teeth and phalanges, and stacking toys from your vertebrae. She will teethe on your kneecaps and we will rock her to sleep whispering tales of your bloody demise.

Dante Russo, perfect?” Her brow arched higher. “His security team once hospitalized someone who tried to break into his house. The guy wound up in a months-long coma with broken ribs and a shattered kneecap. It’s impressive, but I wouldn’t say he’s perfect.” Only Sloane would think putting a guy in a coma was impressive.

this was the final weight that broke my mind’s kneecaps.

This is supposed to be a surprise—a huge, life-changing surprise that could make or break our future.  Or my kneecaps if George decides he really does hate me.

But I've said it before and I'll say it again: kneecaps only exist to get hit with claw-hammers; grace only exists to be fallen from.

Once a boy has slammed his kneecap into your rib cage, I think any romantic feeling should naturally go the way of the ghost.

Get the door." "What's the magic word?" She jangled the keys. "Professor, kneecap her.

Samarkar wondered at what point in a relationship it was appropriate to threaten to break a suitor’s kneecaps if he should prove insufficiently respectful of one’s friend. The

You’re just mad my metaphorical dick is bigger than yours.” She rolls her eyes. “Have fun. Don’t break the rules or I start breaking kneecaps

Anger is a kind of fear. And fear saved you. When the world was all kneecaps and coffee tables, fear kept you safe.

One time on an island I swam in a green lagoon and saw through the clearness of the water the simple fact of my limbs. I watched the purple, red, and blue fish moving around my body and I paddled to keep myself afloat for a long time. Afterward, I lay down on the sand and concentrated on the warming my kneecaps and my shoulders. I can count moments like that on my hands. My dream is for you to have many such moments, so many that you notice only the times you slip into your own brain and recognize those instances for the traps that they are.

What?” Patricia looked at her knees, through the thready holes in her denim overalls, and thought her kneecaps looked like weird eggs. “What?” She looked over at the sparrow in the bucket, who was in turn studying her with one eye, as if trying to decide whether to trust her.

I worry I broke your kneecaps when I cut you down. I keep hearing that sound. We fly from the world, right, like shrapnel angels, but why is everything so laden around here? Your legs were elegant, and you crossed them elegantly, not like a boy pretending his jewels were too big.

My right fist connects firmly with his nose. I hear a nasty pop and blood flows. I twist so that my legs are free of the booth and place a well-aimed kick at his kneecaps. He goes down hard.

Eurydice" It’s more like the sound a doe makes when the arrowhead replaces the day with an answer to the rib’s hollowed hum. We saw it coming but kept walking through the hole in the garden. Because the leaves were bright green & the fire only a pink brushstroke in the distance. It’s not about the light—but how dark it makes you depending on where you stand. Depending on where you stand his name can appear like moonlight shredded in a dead dog’s fur. His name changed when touched by gravity. Gravity breaking our kneecaps just to show us the sky. We kept saying Yes— even with all those birds. Who would believe us now? My voice cracking like bones inside the radio. Silly me. I thought love was real & the body imaginary. But here we are—standing in the cold field, him calling for the girl. The girl beside him. Frosted grass snapping beneath her hooves.

Your name is Do Kyungsoo. You have short-term memory loss, antesomething amnesia, so you won’t remember what happened last night. But let me help you out. Last night I put my head on this pillow and my arms around your waist. My name’s Kim Jongin. I call you hyung. Yesterday you loved me. Today you’ll love me again. This is where you undressed me. This is where I undressed you. And here I pushed you up against the wall and kissed you really hard (approximately, it was kind of dark) and we thought we should have sex. Here you sat, dangling your legs. I put my palm on your kneecap and you bent forward and kissed me first. We talked about ballet. You hummed a tune and my fingers did an arabresque here, grand jeté onto the floor, fouetté en tourant and then sissonne on the back of your hand. Pas de valse fast up your arm and you smiled. I leaned on this and read your green sticky notes while you went around cleaning up invisible messes. It came to me that all the green looks like grass, and grass is boring without daisies. So I hope you like yellow? And here’s Kim Jongin. Say hello to me?

This tub is for washing your courage...When you are born your courage is new and clean. You are brave enough for anything: crawling off of staircases, saying your first words without fearing that someone will think you are foolish, putting strange things in your mouth. But as you get older, your courage attracts gunk and crusty things and dirt and fear and knowing how bad things can get and what pain feels like. By the time you're half-grown, your courage barely moves at all, it's so grunged up with living. So every once in awhile, you have to scrub it up and get the works going or else you'll never be brave again. Unfortunately, there are not many facilities in your world that provide the kind of services we do. So most people go around with grimy machinery, when all it would take is a bit of a spit and polish to make them paladins once more, bold knights and true. ... This tub is for washing your wishes...For the wishes of one's old life wither and shrivel like old leaves if they are not replaced with new wishes when the world changes. And the world always changes. Wishes get slimy, and their colors fade, and soon they are just mud, like all the rest of the mud, and not wishes at all, but regrets. The trouble is, not everyone can tell when they ought to launder their wishes. Even when one finds oneself in Fairyland and not at home at all, it is not always so easy to catch the world in its changing and change with it. ... Lastly, we must wash your luck. When souls queue up to be born, they all leap up at just the last moment, touching the lintel of the world for luck. Some jump high and can seize a great measure of luck; some jump only a bit and snatch a few loose strands. Everyone manages to catch some. If one did not have at least a little luck, one would never survive childhood. But luck can be spent, like money, and lost, like a memory; and wasted, like a life. If you know how to look, you can examine the kneecaps of a human and tell how much luck they have left. No bath can replenish luck that has been spent on avoiding an early death by automobile accident or winning too many raffles in a row. No bath can restore luck lost through absentmindedness and overconfidence. But luck withered by conservative, tired, riskless living can be pumped up again--after all, it is only a bit thirsty for something to do.

It’s not the drug that causes the junkie it’s the laws that causes the junkie because of course the drug laws means that he can’t go and get help because he is afraid of being arrested. He also can’t have a normal life because the war on drugs has made drugs so expensive and has made drug contracts unenforceable which means they can only be enforced through criminal violence. It becomes so profitable to sell drugs to addicts that the drug dealers have every incentive to get people addicted by offering free samples and to concentrate their drug to the highest possible dose to provoke the greatest amount of addiction as possible. Overall it is a completely staggering and completely satanic human calamity. It is the new gulag and in some ways much more brutal than the soviet gulag. In the soviet gulags there was not a huge prison rape problem and in this situation your life could be destroyed through no fault of your own through sometimes, no involvement of your own and the people who end up in the drug culture are walled off and separated as a whole and thrown into this demonic, incredibly dangerous, underworld were the quality of the drugs can’t be verified. Were contracts can’t be enforced except through breaking peoples kneecaps and the price of drugs would often led them to a life of crime. People say “well, I became a drug addict and I lost my house, family, and my job and all that.” It’s not because you became a drug addict but, because there is a war on drugs which meant that you had to pay so much for the drugs that you lost your house because you couldn't go and find help or substitutes and ended up losing your job. It’s all nonsense. The government can’t keep drugs out of prisons for heaven’s sakes. The war on drugs is not designed to be won. Its designed to continue so that the government can get the profits of drug running both directly through the CIA and other drug runners that are affiliated or through bribes and having the power of terrorizing the population. To frame someone for murder is pretty hard but to palm a packet of cocaine and say that you found it in their car is pretty damn easy and the government loves having that power." -Stefan Molyneux

I’ll kill them all,” he growled, his eyes glowing with inner fire. “Why?” “Because they hurt you. I’ll shoot them in the kneecaps and make them crawl. Hook them to some booster cables and clip them to a power line. Inject poison into their veins.” “And then?” “I’ll kill them.” She sighed. “That is so romantic.

One pit held the tangled severed legs of men, blood caked over kneecaps or shredded thigh muscle. Another pit held a confusion of forearms and hands. They were the graves of amputations – he’d seen them in the field, behind the surgical tent where the screams echoed long after their issuing mouths had closed unconscious.

Her heart was doing crazy things, and she still could not locate her kneecaps. She took a deep breath and put some serious attention into tracking them down.

Do not think to swim below. The ocean is already pushing into ears, sinuses, temples, the softness of eyes, and the harpsichord strings behind the kneecaps.

Selling out had never been a problem before because no one had wanted to buy. Why are we kneecapping ourselves with artistic principles when we are yet to produce any art?

He had, in fact, cracked his knee-cap. But refusing to have a doctor

Be sure to separate the kneecap from the tendon and ligament and grind it to dust in a mortar and pestle. Do not let them beg. Do not let them kneel at the door.

You pull on dat ’gator’s tail, he gonna clean your kneecaps, him.

Lastly,” Lye said,”we must wash your luck. When souls queue up to be born, they all leap up at just the last moment, touching the lintel of the world for luck. Some jump high and can seize a great measure of luck; some jump only a bit and snatch a few loose strands. Everyone manages to catch some. If one did not have at least a little luck, one would never survive childhood. But luck can be spent, like money; and lost, like memory; and wasted, like life. If you know how to look, you can examine the kneecaps of a human and tell how much luck they have left. No bath can replenish luck that has been spent on avoiding an early death by automobile accident or winning too many raffles in a row. No bath can restore luck lost through absentmindedness and overconfidence. But luck withered by conservative, tired,riskless living can be plumped up again—after all, it was only a bit thirsty for something to do.

Later that evening I lay down in Min's empty bed upstairs and pulled her white sheet up over my head. I felt for my kneecaps and hip bones. I lay perfectly still, arms down, palms up. I closed my eyes and pretended I was floating in space, then at sea, then not floating at all.I hummed an old Beach Boys tune. In my room... Min had taught me how to play it on her guitar when we were kids.

There is a saying of my adoptive ancestors. Though he performs a miracle, or two miracles, if he refuses the third miracle, it is not as profit to him. I shall dine at the Court of France tonight, and in the course of that evening, acquire the royal consent for O'LiamRoe and myself to stay as long as we please. For, to be perfectly frank," said Lymond, gently reflective, "to be perfectly frank, I can't wait to sink my teeth into the most magnificent, the most scholarly and the most dissolute Court in Europe, which so lightly slid out The O'LiamRoe, Chief of the Name, on his kneecaps and whiskers.

The moment I fire these guns, your kneecaps will shatter like glass and your career will be over. Your future will be over.” “Alina is my future.” “You won’t be able to walk.” “I can still crawl to her.

It was true; books had saved me in my home remodeling projects, but they fell short in teaching me how to trust my instincts, and how to stop thinking with my educated brain and more with my kneecaps and butt cheeks.

He decided that, despite the swelling and purple bruises, neither my ribs nor my kneecap were broken. Fractured, maybe, but there was no way of telling without an X-ray. ‘Feel like a drive to the hospital in Milas?’ he

I fell off a dogsled down a frozen waterfall and landed on sharp ice on a kneecap. It was so agonizing, I thought, seriously, that my heart would stop. But I found that my whole dog team loved and worried about me so much, they curved downstream and worked back up to me to surround me as I lay clutching my lacerated knee, whimpering and pushing their warm bodies against me. I remember the love, the dog love, much more than the shattered knee. . . .

Aim for the kneecaps." "Ah, yes." Bastian tied off the linen on her hands. "The kneecaps are the eyes of the legs." They both stared at him. Then Gabe shrugged. "That's actually pretty good advice." "Excellent help, the both of you." Lore said.

Nightclub wars were the worst kind of trouble: back in the day, when rival establishments and their gangs declared war on each other, they would kidnap each other’s singers and belly dancers and hold them hostage, shooting them in the kneecaps eventually

Did I ever tell you I went to school in America?" "What? No." "It's true,for a year. Eighth grade. It was terrible." "Eighth grade is terrible for everyone," I say. "Well,it was worse for me. My parents had just seperated,and my mum moved back to California.I hadn't been since I was an infant,but I went with her,and I was put in this horrid public school-" "Oh,no. Public school." He nudges me with his shoulder. "The other kids were ruthless. They made fun of everything about me-my height,my accent, the way I dressed.I vowed I'd never go back." "But American girls love English accents." I blurt this without thinking, and then pray he doesn't notice my blush. St. Clair picks up a pebble and tosses it into the river. "Not in middle school, they don't.Especially when it's attached to a bloke who comes up to their kneecaps." I laugh. "So when the year was over,my parents found a new school for me. I wanted to go back to London,where my mates were, but my father insisted on Paris so he could keep an eye on me. And that's how I would up at the School of America.

What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go f--- themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.

Scratch her eyes out,” Andarna suggests. “Really. The eyes are the softest tissue. Just jab your thumbs in there—” “Andarna! Use some common sense,” Tairn snaps. “The kneecaps are a much easier target.” “Quiet time, now.” I slam my shields up, muting Tairn and Andarna as much as possible.

You chopped off your own foot when I tried to teach you to use a sword, Violet. You lost an arm learning to swing an axe, for Pete’s sake. Don’t even get me started on archery; I’ve never seen a person shoot their own kneecap. It’s not something that should be possible,” Marta says as she glares back over at Zuela.

It's like art, you know? Picasso had to prove to the world he can paint the right way, before he goes putting both eyes on one side of a face, and noses stickin' outta kneecaps and stuff. See, if you paint wrong because that's the best you can do, you just a chump. But you do it because you want to? Then you're an artist.

Both The Lancet and NEJM finally withdrew their studies in shame. Somebody at the very pinnacle of the medical cartel had twisted arms, kicked groins, and stoved in kneecaps to force these periodicals to abandon their policies, shred their ethics, and spend down their centuries of hard-won credibility in a desperate bid to torpedo HCQ.

Yep, twisting Miles’s perfectly coiffed head off his body with his bare hands and then playing around in his blood would very likely get him in some trouble with the owners. Jumping him later in the parking lot was a better idea. He wouldn’t kill him. Just break his kneecaps so he would remember to keep his fucking hands off Ryan’s sub.

Shockingly, he’s still silent. Calm as a weed smoking cow. I still don’t get it.

But mostly it was pills. I wasn't strong enough to get through life without being able to go to sleep on command. Maybe you won't need to take pills. I dream that you'll be so much stronger. One time on an island I swam in a green lagoon and saw through the clearness of the water the simple fact of my limbs. I watched the purple, red, and blue fish moving around my body and I paddled to keep myself afloat for a long time. Afterward, I lay down on the sand and concentrated on the warming my kneecaps and my shoulders. I can count moments like that on my hands. My dream is for you to have many such moments, so many that you notice only the times you slip into your own brain and recognize those instances for the traps that they are

Sonny's lips twisted in a way I'd only seen once before. Barely restrained anger hid beneath the thick layer of his red-brown beard. "That f**king dumbass," he ground out. He cocked his head to one side, and then the other. A deep breath blew out from between his lips. "I'm gonna knock his teeth in." He was being completely serious. So, so serious about defending my honor, I couldn't help it. I started laughing. "It's fine." I snorted. "Son, it's really fine. Knock his teeth in another day." I laughed again. "Or maybe once I find another job, okay? Then you can bust all his teeth and his kneecaps for all I care." Those hazel eyes that were an exact replica of mine, narrowed. And then he quirked a little smile. "His kneecaps too?" I shrugged. "Why not? Call him a friggin' idiot while you do it." Sonny shook his head, full out grinning by that point. "To think I used to call you a good girl. My little sis telling me to break someone's kneecaps. You might make me cry, Ris." He leaned forward across the armchair I was sitting in and ruffled my hair. "Thatta girl." I snorted and batted his hand away.

This essay was originally going to be nothing but a series of photos of me kneeling before a Solange Knowles shrine I built for her (which is just images of all her various hairstyles, Lawry’s seasoning salt, shea butter lotion, a piece of weave I found off the street because Solange likes “found art,” and flakes from my ashy kneecap as a sacrifice), but then my editor was like, “That’s ignorant.” To which I responded, “Good. Point.

The things about you I appreciate May seem indelicate: I'd like to find you in the shower And chase the soap for half an hour. I'd like to have you in my power And see your eyes dilate. I'd like to have your back to scour And other parts to lubricate. Sometimes I feel it is my fate To chase you screaming up a tower Or make you cower By asking you to differentiate Nietzsche from Schopenhauer. I'd like successfully to guess your weight And win you at a fête. I'd like to offer you a flower. I like the hair upon your shoulders, Falling like water over boulders. I like the shoulders too: they are essential. Your collar-bones have great potential (I'd like your particulars in folders Marked Confidential). I like your cheeks, I like your nose, I like the way your lips disclose The neat arrangement of your teeth (Half above and half beneath) In rows. I like your eyes, I like their fringes. The way they focus on me gives me twinges. Your upper arms drive me berserk. I like the way your elbows work. On hinges … I like your wrists, I like your glands, I like the fingers on your hands. I'd like to teach them how to count, And certain things we might exchange, Something familiar for something strange. I'd like to give you just the right amount And get some change. I like it when you tilt your cheek up. I like the way you not and hold a teacup. I like your legs when you unwind them. Even in trousers I don't mind them. I like each softly-moulded kneecap. I like the little crease behind them. I'd always know, without a recap, Where to find them. I like the sculpture of your ears. I like the way your profile disappears Whenever you decide to turn and face me. I'd like to cross two hemispheres And have you chase me. I'd like to smuggle you across frontiers Or sail with you at night into Tangiers. I'd like you to embrace me. I'd like to see you ironing your skirt And cancelling other dates. I'd like to button up your shirt. I like the way your chest inflates. I'd like to soothe you when you're hurt Or frightened senseless by invertebrates. I'd like you even if you were malign And had a yen for sudden homicide. I'd let you put insecticide Into my wine. I'd even like you if you were Bride Of Frankenstein Or something ghoulish out of Mamoulian's Jekyll and Hyde. I'd even like you as my Julian Or Norwich or Cathleen ni Houlihan. How melodramatic If you were something muttering in attics Like Mrs Rochester or a student of Boolean Mathematics. You are the end of self-abuse. You are the eternal feminine. I'd like to find a good excuse To call on you and find you in. I'd like to put my hand beneath your chin, And see you grin. I'd like to taste your Charlotte Russe, I'd like to feel my lips upon your skin I'd like to make you reproduce. I'd like you in my confidence. I'd like to be your second look. I'd like to let you try the French Defence And mate you with my rook. I'd like to be your preference And hence I'd like to be around when you unhook. I'd like to be your only audience, The final name in your appointment book, Your future tense.

There was more to it than that—my mother's face had feminine gentleness. Mine didn't, at least not when compared to hers. If we were to stand side by side in a room full of people, I wouldn't get a single glance. And if someone had stopped to chat me up, she could've stolen him with a single smile. Pretty . . . Yeah. Nice understatement, Dad. On the other hand, if the same people had to pick one of us to kick a bad guy in the kneecap, I'd get the vote, no problem.

Jakub, darling, Welton has set out breakfast, it isn’t polite to keep him waiting.” Millie hated the breathless note in her voice. “But we were in the middle of a lesson.” Jakub reared back, settling into some kind of fighting stance. “I have a center line, and no one can push me off it. Well, Mr. Argent can, but no one else. I can punch anyone who tries to touch me in the throat, or thrust the heel of my hand into his nose. Also, I can pry off a kneecap with a knife, even a jam knife, Mama. And—” “Jakub,” she said more firmly, realizing Argent had taught her son the same things he’d shown her only yesterday. He hid his mulish frown by looking at the floor. “Yes, Mama.” He slunk past her, his shoulders so dramatically slumped that she wondered if she’d also let him spend too much time in the company of actors. “I’ll be along, kochanie,” she said more gently. “I need to discuss something with Mr. Argent.” As he plodded down the hall she heard him mutter to himself, “I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned the kneecaps.

You know those tragic stories where two kids from feuding families fall in love? Okay, flip that inside out and turn it on its head and you’ve got our story, Ryder’s and mine. It all began like this: On April 6, 1862, at the Battle of Shiloh, Captain Jeremiah D. Marsden--that’s Ryder’s ancestor--took a minié ball in the left kneecap. Corporal Lewiston G. Cafferty--that’s mine--picked up Captain Marsden and carried him off the field of battle to safety. On his back. More than a mile. Barefoot. At least, that’s how the story goes. Frankly, I’m a little skeptical, but whatever. The point is, the Marsdens and the Caffertys have been like this ever since.

The agricultural and pastoral character of the people upon whom the town depended for its existence was shown by the class of objects displayed in the shop windows. Scythes, reap-hooks, sheep-shears, bill-hooks, spades, mattocks, and hoes at the iron-monger’s; bee-hives, butter-firkins, churns, milking stools and pails, hay-rakes, field-flagons, and seed-lips at the cooper’s; cart-ropes and plough-harness at the saddler’s; carts, wheel-barrows, and mill-gear at the wheelwright’s and machinist’s, horse-embrocations at the chemist’s; at the glover’s and leather-cutter’s, hedging-gloves, thatchers’ knee-caps, ploughmen’s leggings, villagers’ pattens and clogs.

None of us know exactly who we are, and guess what? It doesn’t fucking matter. God knows I don’t, but I’ll find my way to it.” She rubs her thumb over August’s kneecap, poking gently into the soft part below her thigh. “Like—okay, I dated this girl who was an artist, right? And she’d do figure drawing, where she’d draw the negative space around a person first, and then fill in the person. And that’s how I’m trying to look at it. Maybe I don’t know what fills it in yet, but I can look at the space around where I sit in the world, what creates that shape, and I can care about what it’s made of, if it’s good, if it hurts anyone, it makes people happy, if it makes me happy. And that can be enough for now.

SHE TOLD THE TRUSTEES, who had surely vacationed in the Caribbean, about the Carib Indian chief who was about to be burned at the stake by Spaniards. His crime was his failure to see the beauty of his people's becoming slaves in their own country. This chief was offered a cross to kiss before a professional soldier or maybe a priest set fire to the kindling and logs piled up above his kneecaps. He asked why he should kiss it, and he was told that the kiss would get him into Paradise, where he would meet God and so on. He asked if there were more people like the Spaniards up there. He was told that of course there were. In that case, he said, he would leave the cross unkissed. He said he didn't want to go to yet another place where people were so cruel.

When we talk about shootings in this country, we invariably fix our thoughts on the dead, but seldom do we discuss the wounded, the ones who survive the bullets and go on living, often with devastating permanent injuries: a shattered elbow that renders an arm useless, a pulverized kneecap that turns a normal stride into a painful limp, or a blown-apart face patched together with plastic surgery and a prosthetic jaw. Then there are the victims whose bodies were never touched by gunfire but who go on suffering from the inner wounds of loss—a maimed sister, a brain-injured brother, a dead father. And if your father is dead because your mother shot and killed him, and if you go on loving your mother in spite of that, it is almost certain that you will gradually succumb to living in a state of so many crossed mental wires that a part of you will begin to shut down.

How’s the kid?” asked Ailes, referring to Trump’s son-in-law and paramount political adviser, thirty-six-year-old Jared Kushner. “He’s my partner,” said Bannon, his tone suggesting that if he felt otherwise, he was nevertheless determined to stay on message. “Really?” said a dubious Ailes. “He’s on the team.” “He’s had lot of lunches with Rupert.” “In fact,” said Bannon, “I could use your help here.” Bannon then spent several minutes trying to recruit Ailes to help kneecap Murdoch. Ailes, since his ouster from Fox, had become only more bitter towards Murdoch. Now Murdoch was frequently jawboning the president-elect and encouraging him toward establishment moderation—all a strange inversion in the ever-stranger currents of American conservatism. Bannon wanted Ailes to suggest to Trump, a man whose many neuroses included a horror of forgetfulness or senility, that Murdoch might be losing it.

Lastly,” Lye said, “we must wash your luck. When souls queue up to be born, they all leap up at just the last moment, touching the lintel of the world for luck. Some jump high and can seize a great measure of luck; some jump only a bit and snatch a few loose strands. Everyone manages to catch some. If one did not have at least a little luck, one would never survive childhood. But luck can be spent, like money; and lost, like a memory; and wasted, like a life. If you know how to look, you can examine the kneecaps of a human and tell how much luck they have left. No bath can replenish luck that has been spent on avoiding an early death by automobile accident or winning too many raffles in a row. No bath can restore luck lost through absentmindedness and overconfidence. But luck withered by conservative, tired, riskless living can be plumped up again—after all, it was only a bit thirsty for something to do.

The daily work you put into rearing your children is a kind of intimacy, tedious and invisible as mothering itself. There is another kind of intimacy in the conversations you may have with your children as they grow older, in which you confess to failings, reveal anxieties, share your bouts of creative struggle, regret, frustration. There is intimacy in your quarrels, your negotiations and running jokes. But above all, there is intimacy in your contact with their bodies, with their shit and piss, sweat and vomit, with their stubbled kneecaps and dimpled knuckles, with the rips in their underpants as you fold them, with their hair against your lips as you kiss the tops of their heads, with the bones of their shoulders and with the horror of their breath in the morning as they pursue the ancient art of forgetting to brush. Lucky me that I should be permitted the luxury of choosing to find the intimacy inherent in this work that is thrust upon so many women. Lucky me.

Spring Azures In spring the blue azures bow down at the edges of shallow puddles to drink the black rain water. Then they rise and float away into the fields. Sometimes the great bones of my life feel so heavy, and all the tricks my body knows-- the opposable thumbs, the kneecaps, and the mind clicking and clicking- don't seem enough te carry me thorugh this world and I think: how I would like to have wings- blue ones- ribbons of flame. How I would like to open them, and rise from the black rain water. And then I think of Blake, in the dirt and sweat of London- a boy staring through the window, when God came fluttering up. Of course, he screamed, seeing the bobbin of God's blue body leaning on the sill, and the thousand-faceted eyes. Well, who knows. Who knows what hung, fluttering, at the window between him and the darkness. Anyway, Blake the hosier's son stood up and turned away from the sooty sill and the dark city- turned away forever from the factories, the personal strivings, to a life of imagination.

You've circled the globe to find yourself in the Globe,milady." Bill sketched a little bow. "The Globe Theatre?" Luce ducked as the woman in front of her discarded a gnawed-on turkey leg by tossing it over her shoulder. "You mean, like, Shakespeare?" "Well, he claims to be retired. You know those artist types. So moody." Bill swooped down near the ground, tugging at the hem of her dress and humming to himself. "Othello happened here," Luce said, taking a moment to let it all sink in. "The Tempest. Romeo and Juliet. We're practically standing in the center of all the greatest love stories ever written." "Actually,you're standing in walnut shells." "Why do you have to be so glib about everything? This is amazing!" "Sorry,I didn't realize we'd need a moment of bardolatry." His words came out lisped because of the needle clipped between his jagged teeth. "Now stand still." "Ouch!" Luce yelped as he jabbed sharply into her kneecap. "What are you doing?" "Un-Anachronizing you.These folks'll pay good money for a freak show, but they're expecting it to stay onstage.

KNEE SURGERY I’D FIRST HURT MY KNEES IN FALLUJAH WHEN THE WALL FELL on me. Cortisone shots helped for a while, but the pain kept coming back and getting worse. The docs told me I needed to have my legs operated on, but doing that would have meant I would have to take time off and miss the war. So I kept putting it off. I settled into a routine where I’d go to the doc, get a shot, go back to work. The time between shots became shorter and shorter. It got down to every two months, then every month. I made it through Ramadi, but just barely. My knees started locking and it was difficult to get down the stairs. I no longer had a choice, so, soon after I got home in 2007, I went under the knife. The surgeons cut my tendons to relieve pressure so my kneecaps would slide back over. They had to shave down my kneecaps because I had worn grooves in them. They injected synthetic cartilage material and shaved the meniscus. Somewhere along the way they also repaired an ACL. I was like a racing car, being repaired from the ground up. When they were done, they sent me to see Jason, a physical therapist who specializes in working with SEALs. He’d been a trainer for the Pittsburgh Pirates. After 9/11, he decided to devote himself to helping the country. He chose to do that by working with the military. He took a massive pay cut to help put us back together. I DIDN’T KNOW ALL THAT THE FIRST DAY WE MET. ALL I WANTED to hear was how long it was going to take to rehab. He gave me a pensive look. “This surgery—civilians need a year to get back,” he said finally. “Football players, they’re out eight months. SEALs—it’s hard to say. You hate being out of action and will punish yourselves to get back.” He finally predicted six months. I think we did it in five. But I thought I would surely die along the way. JASON PUT ME INTO A MACHINE THAT WOULD STRETCH MY knee. Every day I had to see how much further I could adjust it. I would sweat up a storm as it bent my knee. I finally got it to ninety degrees. “That’s outstanding,” he told me. “Now get more.” “More?” “More!” He also had a machine that sent a shock to my muscle through electrodes. Depending on the muscle, I would have to stretch and point my toes up and down. It doesn’t sound like much, but it is clearly a form of torture that should be outlawed by the Geneva Convention, even for use on SEALs. Naturally, Jason kept upping the voltage. But the worst of all was the simplest: the exercise. I had to do more, more, more. I remember calling Taya many times and telling her I was sure I was going to puke if not die before the day was out. She seemed sympathetic but, come to think of it in retrospect, she and Jason may have been in on it together. There was a stretch where Jason had me doing crazy amounts of ab exercises and other things to my core muscles. “Do you understand it’s my knees that were operated on?” I asked him one day when I thought I’d reached my limit. He just laughed. He had a scientific explanation about how everything in the body depends on strong core muscles, but I think he just liked kicking my ass around the gym. I swear I heard a bullwhip crack over my head any time I started to slack. I always thought the best shape I was ever in was straight out of BUD/S. But I was in far better shape after spending five months with him. Not only were my knees okay, the rest of me was in top condition. When I came back to my platoon, they all asked if I had been taking steroids.

In one sense we are all unique, absolutely one-of-a-kind individual creations; but in a much more profound way, each of us has come about as the result of a "long choosing." This is a phrase from writer Wendell Berry, whose book Remembering describes the main character, Andy Catlett’s, struggle with a sudden bout of amnesia. To those acquainted with Berry’s stories about Port William, Kentucky, Andy is a familiar figure, having grown up in the town’s rich web of family and neighborhood relationships. His disorientation begins during a cross-country plane trip to a scientific conference, where he is caught up in the security lines and body searches now a familiar part of the post-9/11 reality. In this world every stranger in an airport terminal is a potential enemy, someone to be kept at a safe distance. Somehow Andy makes it back to his home in rural Kentucky, but he is rough shape. He has literally forgotten who he is, and wanders about town looking for clues. His memories—and his sense of self—return only when in a confused dream state he sees his ancestors, walking together in an endless line. To Andy they are a "long dance of men and women behind, most of whom he never knew, . . . who, choosing one another, chose him.” In other words Andy Catlett is not a self-made man living in an isolated blip of a town, but he and his home are the sum of hundreds of courtships and conceptions, choices and chances, errors and hopes. We like to imagine that we are unique, absolutely unprecedented. But here is the truth: not just the tilt of our noses or the color of our bodies, but far more intimate characteristics–the shape of our feet or an inner tendency towards joy or sadness–have belonged to other people before we came along to inherit them. We came about because they decided to marry one person and not the other, to have six children instead of three, to move to a city instead of staying on the farm. It is remarkable to think of someone walking down the streets of sixteenth-century Amsterdam with my fingers and kneecaps, my tendency toward melancholy and my aptitude for music. We live within a web of holy obligation. We are connected to people of the world today, and to other invisible people: the unknown number of generations yet to be born. One of the most important things we can do, in the way we care for the earth and in the way we care for our local church life, is to recognize their potential presence. (pp.117-118)

At Prim’s side was a woman with a politician’s face (supercilious, sanctimonious, vacuous, terrified, smarmy, disingenuous, small-minded, vengeful, coldhearted, opportunistic, petty, deceitful, evidence-ignoring, bullying, arrogant, smug, obnoxious, contemptuous, ignorant, reactionary, condescending, patronizing, blinkered, vacillating, corrupt, morally bankrupt, blackmailing, blackmailable, dodgy, wavering, backstabbing, bought, sold, stinking rich, unqualified, sleazy, teeth-capped, kneecapping, corporate-owned, hate-mongering, fear-mongering, button-pushing, deflecting, evading, brazening, hit-song-stealing, nostalgia-worshipping, distorting, no-tax-returning, tax-evading, offshore-holding, shady-business-partnering, election-stealing, arms-dealing, collateral-damage signing-offing, hypocritically family-value bleating but sexually deviant-ing, honest-forthright-honorable—a paragon-of-integrity [lying], spiteful, unreliable, Teflon-coated, Saran-wrapped, white-breaded, xenophobic, cynical, uncomprehending of irony-ing, witless, thin-skinned, insecure, unfulfilled, blindly ambitious, power-hungry, sadistic, self-righteous, incapable of contemplation-ing, prevaricating, privileged, pampered, Ivy League–educated [in something useless like political science, economics, or law], pompous, ego-centered, centered, narcissistic, shallow, bullshitting, manipulative, backtracking, quote-denying, what-climate-changing?, alternate-truth-ing, prejudice-feeding, hate-inciting, racketeering, blame-shifting, warmongering, autocratic, megalomaniacal, possibly sociopathic, blathering, self-serving, unreliable, cliquey, cagey, crafty, cunning, daft, dull, ethically destitute, irredeemable, oil-burning, fracking [but NIMBY], self-pay-raising, self-congratulating, self-aggrandizing, but all that was just first impressions so who can say?).

You know those statistics people are always spouting off, about teenage boys thinking about sex every seven seconds? Is that really true?” “Nope. And I just want to point out that you’re the one who keeps bringing up sex. I think teenage girls might be more obsessed than boys.” “Maybe,” I say, and his eyes widen, all excited. Hastily I add, “I mean, I’m definitely curious about it. It’s definitely a thought. But I don’t see myself doing it anytime soon. With anybody. Including you.” I can tell Peter is embarrassed, the way he rushes to say, “Okay, okay, I got it. Let’s just change the subject.” Under his breath he mutters, “I didn’t even want to talk about it in the first place.” It’s sweet that he’s embarrassed. I didn’t think he would be, with all his experience. I tug on his sweater sleeve. “At some point, when I’m ready, if I’m ready, I’ll let you know.” And then I pull him toward me and press my lips against his softly. His mouth opens, and so does mine, and I think, I could kiss this boy for hours. Mid-kiss, he says, “Wait, so we’re never having sex? Like ever?” “I didn’t say never. But not now. I mean, not until I’m really, really sure. Okay?” He lets out a laugh. “Sure. You’re the one driving this bus. You have been from the start. I’m still catching up.” He snuggles closer and sniffs my hair. “What’s this new shampoo you’re wearing?” “I stole it from Margot. It’s juicy pear. Nice, right?” “It’s all right, I guess. But can you go back to the one you used to wear? The coconut one? I love the smell of that one.” A dreamy look crosses his face, like evening fog settling over a city. “If I feel like it,” I say, which makes him pout. I’m already thinking I should buy a bottle of the coconut hair mask, too, but I like to keep him on his toes. Like he said, “I’m the one driving this bus. Peter pulls me against him so he’s curved around my back like shelter. I let my head rest on his shoulder, rest my arms on his kneecaps. This is nice. This is cozy. Just me and him, just for a while, apart from the rest of the world.

When Kestrel opened her eyes, she was lying in her bed. Someone had built a fire, which sent ripples of orange light over the ceiling. An oil lamp burned on the night table, casting her father’s face into extremes of shadow and bone. He had drawn a chair close and perhaps had been sleeping in it, but his eyes were alert. “Your knee needs to be tapped,” he said. She looked at it. Someone--her father?--had cut away the right legging at her thigh, and below the sheared black cloth her knee was swollen to twice its normal size. It felt tight and hot. “I don’t know what that means,” Kestrel said, “but it doesn’t sound very nice.” “Irex dislocated your kneecap. It slipped back into place, but the blow must have torn your muscle. Your knee’s filling with blood. That’s what’s causing you so much pain: the swelling.” He hesitated. “I have some experience with this kind of wound, on the battlefield. I can drain it. You’ll feel better. But I would have to use a knife.” Kestrel remembered him cutting her mother’s arm, blood weaving through his fingers as he tried to close the wound. He looked at her now, and she thought that he was seeing the same thing, or seeing Kestrel remember it, and that they were mirroring each other’s nightmare. His gaze fell to his scarred hands. “I’ve sent for a doctor. You can wait until she comes, if you prefer.” His voice was flat, yet there was a small, sad note that probably only she would have heard. “I wouldn’t suggest this if I didn’t feel myself capable and if I didn’t think it would be better to do it now. But it’s your choice.” His eyes met hers. Something in them made her think that he would never have let Irex kill her, that he would have pushed into the ring and planted a blade in Irex’s back if he had thought his daughter might die, that he would have thrown away his honor with hers. Of course, Kestrel couldn’t be sure. Yet she nodded. He sent a slave for clean rags, which he eased under her knee. Then he went to the fire and held a small knife in the flames to sterilize it. He returned to her side, the blackened knife in his hand. “I promise,” he said, but Kestrel didn’t know whether he meant to say that he promised this would help her, or that he knew what he was doing, or that he would have saved her from Irex if she had needed saving. He slid the knife in, and she fainted again.

Can we listen to some Rush?” he said without looking up. The Yes tape was Kimmy’s but she had all kinds of different music so she started digging through her gigantic purse to try to find something else to play. In her purse, tape shells clacked against one another while she dug; you could hear them scraping against each other, against keys, against pens and compacts, the sounds muffled in the purse’s puffy vinyl folds. To me it sounded like somebody shaking up dry bones. I closed my eyes and thought about those old bones in some girl’s purse and then I let my mind go: if you wanted to fit bones into your purse they’d have to be broken into pieces; you couldn’t fit a whole arm bone or a leg bone or a skull in there, just teeth, toes, and fingers; maybe kneecaps; but my imagination told me teeth would make a high sound, like pieces of glass, and toes would sound dull, like old crushed cans. That left fingers. I remembered biology class when we did anatomy. Distal phalanges, proximal phalanges, metacarpals. To walk around with a bag full of bones in the normal world would require a stone constitution. You could be a thief. You could be an actor, probably. Actors die young in ancient Rome, though. If it’s the present day and you’re Kimmy, and you’re carrying someone’s bones around in your purse, then I have a lot of questions for you, and I’ll probably never ask them, and you’ll have a secret that only I have guessed.

Witch," said Sarah Brown, "I have got to say something." "Oh, have you?" said the witch, a little disappointed at being interrupted. "Oh, well, I can sympathise, I know what that feels like. Get on and say it." The Dog David, who was really a good and attentive son to Sarah Brown, came and laid his chin, with an exaggerated look of interest, on her knee-cap. "Is it any use," said Sarah Brown, "fighting against the Habits in the world, there are so many. Who set these strange and senseless deceivers at large? Religion which has forgotten ecstasy.... Law which has forgotten justice.... Charity which has forgotten love.... Surely magic has suffered at the stake for saner ideals than these?" "Why, of course," said the witch impatiently. "Magic generally suffered because it was so sane. I thought everybody knew that." "All habits. All habits," chanted Sarah Brown. "What is this Charity, this clinking of money between strangers, and when did Charity cease to be a comforting and secret thing between one friend and another? Does Love make her voice heard through a committee, does Love employ an almoner to convey her message to her neighbour?" "Not that I know of," sighed the witch. "Sarah Brown, how long do you want me to keep quiet, while you say things that everybody surely knows?" ~ from Chapter IV 'The Forbidden Sandwich' of 'Living Alone' by Stella Benson, published 1919.

The simplest kind of control that is afforded by this feedback loop is the so-called stretch reflex, which is illustrated by the knee-jerk test which most of us have experienced in the doctor’s office. The common tendon of the quadriceps is tapped with a rubber mallet just below the knee-cap, and this tap has the effect of a sharp tug on the muscle fibers of the thigh. This sudden change in length of the thigh muscles is registered by the anulospiral receptors, which in turn stimulate in the spinal cord the motor neurons which power the thigh, causing a brief contraction of the thigh muscles which makes the foot jerk forward in a healthy reflex. This automatic contraction has the effect of keeping the thigh muscles at a constant length regardless of outside forces acting upon it, and makes it possible to maintain erect posture in spite of external disturbances. The components of this arc are like a miniature or primitive nervous system, a microcosm of our nervous system as a whole, a system which “in its simplest form is merely a mechanism by which a muscular movement can be initiated by some change in peri-ipheral sensation.” My spindles and their reflex arcs are tiny neural units that monitor and influence motor events that are so continuous and so numerous that they would totally overwhelm my conscious mind. Even if I could keep track of the changing lengths of every one of my millions of muscle cells, I certainly would have no room left to think about anything else.

The point of war is to rig the deck, drug the opponent, and threaten to kneecap their family if they don’t fold,

Also and an excuse is that someone is singing downstairs and the noise closely resembles that of a fly's kneecap rattled about in a bilious buttercup, both having kidney trouble and lumbago. Love from Roald

If your intent is to throw a barrage of dozens of strikes, thinking that an accumulation of tens of strikes will drop the opponent, you have the wrong mindset. GM Maranga is one of the few short stick fighters with the right mindset. He counters with a single strike, but most importantly, his intent is to drop you with that strike. And trust me, he hits very hard. I have a saying: “My goal is not to hit the opponent, but to drop him. Hitting him is a means of achieving that goal.” It's not enough to hit him. It's not enough to hurt him. Getting him to yell “Ouch!” is not going to stop a meth addict with a blade. My aim is to shut him down. So if I'm hitting him but not incapacitating him, my strikes are ineffective. In my mind I am crushing his kneecap. I am fracturing his skull. If he raises an arm or stick to block, I am committed to blasting through it like a runaway dump truck. In my mind I am breaking any upraised arm.

Libby,” I say. “I understand that you met the love of your life when you were twenty years old, and thus have never truly dated. But imagine for a moment, if you will, a world in which thirty percent of your dates end with the revelation that the man across the table from you has a foot, elbow, or kneecap fetish.