Ks Quotes

He f**ks even better than he looks”, I settled on saying. Several heads turned. I didn’t care; I was pissed. “And that beautiful face is going to be clamped between my legs as soon as we get home, don’t you worry.

Motherf**ker. Bastard ass motherf**ker. C**ks**king rat-bitch bastard motherf**ker!” – Blay

Do not start me on The Da Vinci Code ... a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name." (Discussion at Woodruff Auditorium in Lawrence, KS; October 7, 2005.)

Vengeance is one of life's great motivators.

Hey, I could be your assistant! I'd be an Assistant Serial Killer Serial Killer. I'd be an Ass. Or do I need the Ks in there? Because that wouldn't sound nearly as cool.

I figure if Doc is right about the time I have left,I should wrap up my adolescence in the next few days, get into my early productive stages about the third week of school, go through my midlife crisis during Martin Luther King Jr's birthday, redouble my efforts at productivity and think about my legacy, say, Easter, and start cashing in my 401(k)s a couple weeks before Memorial Day.

Hunter could only groan. “What are you doing, Kristen?” “Bringing breakfast.” She replied innocently. “Think of it as thanks for saving my life.” Hunter sat up in bed, looking his usual ruffled morning mess, with extra dark circles under the eyes today. “Technically, I didn’t save your life, Mel did.” “Ok, then think of it as punishment for putting my life at risk.” Kristen shrugged, and helped herself to a piece of toast. “It’s all a ruse, anyway.

I'm enjoying two beautiful visions tonight. Watching you stand there against a marvelous background has to be the most intriguing sunset I have ever experienced.

Slowly he f**ks my arse, pushing himself in and out of me. The sensation is so intense. I feel like my inner slut has finally been freed, and I revel in her carnal abandonment; throwing my head back while Mike rides me like an animal.

The personality of Muhammad, it is most difficult to get into the whole truth of it. Only a glimpse of it I can catch. What a dramatic succession of picturesque scenes! There is Muhammad, the Prophet; there is Muhammad, the Warrior; Muhammad, the Businessman; Muhammad, the Statesman; Muhammad, the Orator; Muhammad, the Reformer; Muhammad, the Refuge of Orphans; Muhammad, the Protector of Slaves; Muhammad, the Emancipator of Women; Muhammad, the Judge; Muhammad, the Saint. All in all these magnificent roles, in all these departments of human activities, he is like a hero.

I thought you guys could detect witches." Jonathan muttered as soon as he got over his shock at seeing two people materialise in front of him. The wiccan sat on the floor, his shoulder being strapped with a makeshift bandage, by the ever-practical Ian. "We detect magic, not witches." Hunter clarified. "We can't feel anything out of the ordinary, unless they start casting." "Oh fantastic!" Jonathan groaned. "I'll remember that excuse later.

Looks like Madison Estates isn't going to get built; my husband and I bought property there, but someone called this week to say they're refunding us our deposit because they didn't presell enough houses to finance the project. Another paper town for KS!- Marge in Cawker, KS

-I’m looking for a man—
 -There are several suspects in Topeka, Ks. that match that description. Why don’t you try there first?

Instead, the three Ks were drummed into girls from an early age: Kinder (children), Kirche (church), and Küche (kitchen).

Our special for today is pork bone stew,” the manager said. “Pork bone stew sounds excellent,” I said. “Rayyel could use a spine.” “Is heartless shrew on the menu?” Rai asked without batting an eye.

Knowing Love I will allow all things to come and go. To be as supple as the wind and take all things in great courage.

K.S., baby. Lesion number one. Lookit. The wine-dark kiss of the angel of death.

It is through that brokenness that we find courage and strength. It is what empowers us to do great things.

Ollie's got a nice trumpet." "Ollie plays the trumpet?" "No. He stuffs it with old rags and f**ks it like a Fleshlight. It's a very specific fetish. Yes, he plays the trumpet.

Just imagine if police enforced their zero-tolerance strategy in finance. They would arrest people for even the slightest infraction, whether it was chiseling investors on 401ks, providing misleading guidance, or committing petty frauds. Perhaps SWAT teams would descend on Greenwich, Connecticut. They’d go undercover in the taverns around Chicago’s Mercantile Exchange.

Betrayal has a funny way of turning your world upside-down. As familiar as I had already been with it by that point, it still amazed me how far I could stretch that moment of denial. The thought of what had been—of what could yet be—persisted. Perhaps it is not the same for most people. Perhaps, when you love less, it is easier not to let the emptiness become a cavern from which you could no longer see the sun.

When you work for someone else, it's called an "attitude problem"; when you work for yourself, it's called integrity.

Imperialism, in other words, was destructive only when Europeans did it. When Asians did it, it was a cultural exchange programme.

Next time the devil reminds you of your past, remind him of his future.

A wiccan?" Ian's deep voice rang out. Hunter did not have to look to know that his friend was tense with the idea of the unknown. "Relax." James answered. "It's like a witch without powers... or a human with magic. Something like that." Jonathan looked as confused by James' description as the rest of those present.

What’s your name?” The creature practically purred the question at her. His voice was low and smooth, completely unaccented. His nostrils flared slightly, as though inhaling her scent. “Um . . .” Mia swallowed nervously. “M-Mia.” “Mia,” he repeated slowly, seemingly savoring her name. “Mia what?” “Mia Stalis.” Oh crap, why did he want to know her name? Why was he here, talking to her? In general, what was he doing in Central Park, so far away from any of the K Centers? Breathe, Mia, breathe. “Relax, Mia Stalis.” His smile got wider, exposing a dimple in his left cheek. A dimple? Ks had dimples? “Have you never encountered one of us before?

Remember the plan?” Hunter asked as they drew closer to their target. Kristen looked at him sceptically. "'Keep quiet and don’t get seen’ is not a very professional plan. Did you have anything else to add?

Finally she spoke with a forced scepticism, “So… if those girls are witches, and I was the sacrifice - what does that make you?” “A witch-hunter.” She raised a brow, “A witch-hunter named ‘Hunter’? How very original.” Hunter sighed, “You’re a very pleasant , friendly character, aren’t you?

But the hands of one of the gentleman were laid on K.’s throat, while the other pushed the knife deep into his heart and twisted it there, twice. As his eyesight failed, K. saw the two gentlemen cheek by cheek, close in front of his face, watching the result. “Like a dog!” he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.".

I've been known to dual wield a time or two.

Somewhere in my memories, I remembered my father telling me that life wasn’t fair; that for everything you were ever given, somebody paid a price.

I found it hard to believe that Rai used his charm to pull off such a feat—the man was about as charismatic as the bottom of a chamber pot.

It's not who you are in your life, it's who you have by your side that matters...’ ~ Ritu Ghatourey

They called me “bitch”, the she-wolf, because I murdered a man and made my husband leave the night before they crowned me.

Time had taken those children and left behind these aging vessels, doomed to continue down the path of yesterday’s mistakes.

You showed me what love was, and I saw "My Forever " in your eyes .

Pensions and 401(k)s are just illusions, like Social Security. You're better off investing in Bigfoot Fur Coats—and I'm now selling all the newest interdimensional flavors.

Pray, O tell me, For what is meaning without its counterpart?

401(k)s were part of a larger cultural drift in America away from shared responsibilities toward a more precarious individualism.

History cannot be revenged. The best we can do is strive to emancipate ourselves from its punishing torments by being honest about it.

It was K’s idea that faces were a roadway between men.

A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.’ ~ Walter Winchell

None of it mattered. My duties were far from over. A wolf of Oren-yaro fights to make it right, down to the last breath. A wolf of Oren-yaro does not beg. A wolf of Oren-yaro suffers in silence

Look, daddy, Mel gave me a pet!” The boy said excitedly. “He’s called Incy.” Hunter looked down and inhaled sharply at the sight of a large spider in Adam’s little hand. His eyes snapped up to Mel, who was sitting silent and serene in the middle of the floor, obviously pleased with her present. “A spider?” Hunter asked with exasperation. “Fine. Why don’t you get Mel to teach it tricks.

Some memories come at you like a wave. You're not quite sure when the swell starts, but you know before it hits how it all ends; that after the rise and fall you will still be engulfed by the sea.

I have come to realize that true fulfillment lies not in flaunting the splendor of my life with loved ones, but rather in cultivating a profound connection founded upon love, honesty, and unwavering transparency.

Girls are given the weight of the world but nowhere to put it down. The power and the magic born in that struggle? It's so terrifying to men that we invented reasons to burn y'all at the stake just to keep our d**ks hard.

TRUTH: Worry has little to do with waking up. It has little to do with anything of value. Yes, entire industries have been created in homage to worry: auto insurance, health insurance, life insurance, 401(k)s, retirement accounts. But do you not see what all of this is? It is making yourself sick in order to lay up something for a sick day. It is you, Fear, trying to control what cannot be controlled. And what is it you want to control so desperately?

I followed him into the kitchen but stopped abruptly. Kadyn was cooking bacon in loose fitting sweats and a ribbed tank top that fit snugly across his chest. His biceps flexed when he flipped the bacon. Holy Mary, mother of God. It should be a crime for that man to stand in front of a stove.

Hey, maybe you could invite the new guy to your party." Sarah suggested. Mark rolled his eyes. "Sure, I'll just ask the good-looking stranger if he wants to come round to my Nanna'a and dance naked around a fire." Mark was suddenly aware of the engulfing silence. "Who'll be naked doing what now?

For one thing, most available jobs for undocumented immigrants are jobs Americans will not do, which takes healthy young migrants and makes them age terribly. At a certain point, manual labor is no longer possible. Aging undocumented people have no safety net. Even though half of undocumented people pay into Social Security, none are eligible for the benefits. They are unable to purchase health insurance. They probably don’t own their own homes. They don’t have 401(k)s or retirement plans of any kind. Meager savings, if any. Elderly people in general are susceptible to unscrupulous individuals taking advantage of them, and the undocumented community draws even more vultures. According to the Migration Policy Institute, around 10 percent of undocumented people are over fifty-five years old. This country takes their youth, their dreams, their labor, and spits them out with nothing to show for it.

why I was here, or even where here was for that matter. Moreover, why was there a woman telling a doctor that they were losing someone. It couldn't be me… could it? "Shit! Come on, Kendra. You are not dying on my operating table," a male voice said, clearly ignoring the woman. Obviously, the very insistent doctor, who

So as we buried Warlord Tal in silence while the rest of the nation celebrated the Dragonlord's ascent, let them bury me in scandal; let them carry the sound of my name with distaste. Let them speak ill of the bitch queen who brought ruin to the land with the same gilded tongue they praised the uncrowned king who was just as responsible.

The closest that most of us come to a direct experience of the centerlessness of capitalism is an encounter with the call center. As a consumer in late capitalism, you increasingly exist in two, distinct realities: the one in which the services are provided without hitch, and another reality entirely, the crazed Kafkaesque labyrinth of call centers, a world without memory, where cause and effect connect together in mysterious, unfathomable ways, where it is a miracle that anything ever happens, and you lose hope of ever passing back over to the other side, where things seem to function smoothly. What exemplifies the failure of the neoliberal world to live up to its own PR better than the call center? Even so, the universality of bad experiences with call centers does nothing to unsettle the operating assumption that capitalism is inherently efficient, as if the problems with call centers weren’t the systemic consequences of a logic of Capital which means organizations are so fixated on making profits that they can’t actually sell you anything. The call center experience distils the political phenomenology of late capitalism: the boredom and frustration punctuated by cheerily piped PR, the repeating of the same dreary details many times to different poorly trained and badly informed operatives, the building rage that must remain impotent because it can have no legitimate object, since – as is very quickly clear to the caller –there is no-one who knows, and no-one who could do anything even if they could. Anger can only be a matter of venting; it is aggression in a vacuum, directed at someone who is a fellow victim of the system but with whom there is no possibility of communality. Just as the anger has no proper object, it will have no effect. In this experience of a system that is unresponsive, impersonal, centerless, abstract and fragmentary, you are as close as you can be to confronting the artificial stupidity of Capital in itself. Call center angst is one more illustration of the way that Kafka is poorly understood as exclusively a writer on totalitarianism; a decentralized, market Stalinist bureaucracy is far more Kafkaesque than one in which there is a central authority. Read, for instance, the bleak farce of K’s encounter with the telephone system in the Castle, and it is hard not to see it as uncannily prophetic of the call center experience.

The new battalion commander had used his eyes but not his head: he’d seen overfamiliarity, but had not taken time to think, to realize that Barney K.’s easygoing attitude with his guys came from the platoon’s and its leader’s mutual understanding, respect, and trust. With one order, the CO had destroyed it all, and my friend was heartbroken.

[In answer to Glenn Cook] My favourite sport is men, and my favourite food is whisky.

Family ties become stronger because they are invested in rather than by making demands out of a sense of entitlement.

...and yet here you are, Kefier, traipsing along the woods like some Agartes-be-damned fairy nymph...

We could own nothing and still have everything.

Courage is overrated, or so cowards like me say. Courage implies choice.

Don't worry, I didn't take a hit off Rupert K.'s inhaler. I wasn't that sick. I only pressed the mouthpiece against my lips.

Like a pendulum my life swung between fairytales and nightmares.

They know the words, but not the music.

The true story, as always, is in the details.

I was a different man, then…one full of anger and regrets. Now, only the regrets remain.

How do you leave someone who has been such an important part of your life for twenty-eight years, someone you love more than life itself?

Do not let your ideas on limits limit your ideas.

The balance of greatness can be tipped either way.

[Stice's] parents had met and fallen in love in a Country/Western bar in Partridge KS — just outside Liberal KS on the Oklahoma border — met and fallen in star-crossed love in a bar playing this popular Kansas C/W-bar-game where they put their bare forearms together and laid a lit cigarette in the little valley between the two forearms' flesh and kept it there till one of them finally jerked their arm away and reeled away holding their arm. Mr. and Mrs. Stice each discovered somebody else that wouldn't jerk away and reel away, Stice explained. Their forearms were still to this day covered with little white slugs of burn-scar. They'd toppled like pines for each other from the git-go, Stice explained. They'd been divorced and remarried four or five times, depending on how you defined certain jurisprudential precepts. When they were on good domestic terms they stayed in their bedroom for days of squeaking springs with the door locked except for brief sallies out for Beefeater gin and Chinese take-out in little white cardboard pails with wire handles, with the Stice children wandering ghostlike through the clapboard house in sagging diapers or woolen underwear subsisting on potato chips out of econobags bigger than most of them were, the Stice kids. The kids did somewhat physically better during periods of nuptial strife, when a stony-faced Mr. Stice slammed the kitchen door and went off daily to sell crop insurance while Mrs. Stice —whom both Mr. Stice and The Darkness called 'The Bride' —while The Bride spent all day and evening cooking intricate multicourse meals she'd feed bits of to The Brood (Stice refers to both himself and his six siblings as 'The Brood') and then keep warm in quietly rattling-lidded pots and then hurl at the kitchen walls when Mr. Stice came home smelling of gin and of cigarette-brands and toilet-eau not The Bride's own. Ortho Stice loves his folks to distraction, but not blindly, and every holiday home to Partridge KS he memorizes highlights of their connubial battles so he can regale the E.T.A. upperclass-men with them, mostly at meals, after the initial forkwork and gasping have died down and people have returned to sufficient levels of blood-sugar and awareness of their surroundings to be regaled.

Live in the present, seize each passing day, Glean wisdom from the past, but don't let it sway, For to embark on new beginnings, we must let go, Release the old chapters, embrace what's yet to grow.

You don’t know if you’re allowed to, you said. But you are allowed, you’re allowed to be happy. What unseen deity stands over us, forcing us not to take what we can out of the mess we’ve been given?

What this feeling produced was, quite simply, a keen awareness of the nature of human sin. That is what sent me back each month to K’s grave. It is also what lay behind the nursing of my dying mother-in-law, and what bade me treat my wife so tenderly. There were even times when I longed for some stranger to come along and flog me as I deserved. At some stage this feeling transformed into a conviction that it should be I who hurt myself. And then the thought struck me that I should not just hurt myself but kill myself. At all events, I resolved that I must live my life as if I were already dead.

I sat on one of the sofas, pretending I wasn’t disconcerted by the music, which paused long enough for a new, more sorrowful tune to play out. I twiddled my thumbs. I stared at the fish and named it “Sparky.

The conclusion to be drawn from this was that this was in its way a quite different sort of fatigue from K.'s. Here it was doubtless fatigue amid happy work, something that outwardly looked like fatigue and was actually indestructible repose, indestructible peace. If one is a little tired at noon, that is part of the happy natural course of the day. 'For the gentlemen here it is always noon,' K. said to himself.

Kadyn was tearing down walls faster than I could build them. I knew what to expect from men who hit… men who threatened, manipulated, demanded, and controlled. Sadly, I had no clue what to do with a man like Kadyn.

Ancient oak, actually, is what the boy used to call her, back when he was still a boy. Like all men, he had aged too fast. She still remembers long, summer nights back in Hafod, when she would bake bread with the windows open while he would take his crutches to read his books on the kitchen table. He used to tell her how much he loved her bread, that he thinks it is the most wonderful thing in the world. He was always a flatterer, that one.

K.’s uncle, who had already been made very angry by the long wait, turned abruptly round and retorted, “Ill? You say he’s ill?” and strode towards the gentleman in a way that seemed almost threatening, as if he were the illness himself.

It is a curious fact, and one to which no one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85% of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonnyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian 'chinanto/mnigs' which is ordinary water served at slightly above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan 'tzjin-anthony-ks' which kill cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds. What can be made of this fact? It exists in total isolation. As far as any theory of structural linguistics is concerned it is right off the graph, and yet it persists. Old structural linguists get very angry when young structural linguists go on about it. Young structural linguists get deeply excited about it and stay up late at night convinced that they are very close to something of profound importance, and end up becoming old structural linguists before their time, getting very angry with the young ones. Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy discipline, and a large number of its practitioners spend too many nights drowning their problems in Ouisghian Zodahs.

You no longer speak of your old friends, your Council, your home. I fear that you are forgetting them, and forgetting your reason for coming here.” Hunter sighed. “It’s difficult to talk about them, they don’t belong here. Anyway, I thought you wanted me to give up my old life. Congratulations, you’ve won.” The Abate smiled sadly. “Perhaps I did, I wanted you to abandon your violent past and adopt our ways. But I see that you are giving up everything and taking on nothing. What are you afraid of George?

After the New Deal, economists began referring to America’s retirement-finance model as a “three-legged stool.” This sturdy tripod was composed of Social Security, private pensions, and combined investments and savings. In recent years, of course, two of those legs have been kicked out. Many Americans saw their assets destroyed by the Great Recession; even before the economic collapse, many had been saving less and less. And since the 1980s, employers have been replacing defined-benefit pensions that are funded by employers and guarantee a monthly sum in perpetuity with 401(k) plans, which often rely on employee contributions and can run dry before death. Marketed as instruments of financial liberation that would allow workers to make their own investment choices, 401(k)s were part of a larger cultural drift in America away from shared responsibilities toward a more precarious individualism. Translation: 401(k)s are vastly cheaper for companies than pension plans. “Over the last generation, we have witnessed a massive transfer of economic risk from broad structures of insurance, including those sponsored by the corporate sector as well as by government, onto the fragile balance sheets of American families,” Yale political scientist Jacob S. Hacker writes in his book The Great Risk Shift. The overarching message: “You are on your own.

I started reading the works of Pandurang Vaman Kane, Jadunath Sarkar, Radhakumud Mookerji, R.C. Majumdar, K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, K.S. Ramaswami Sastri, S.L. Bhyrappa, R. Nagaswamy, Ram Swarup, Sitaram Goel, Dharampal, Kapil Kapoor, Koenraad Elst, Michel Danino, Shrikant G. Talageri, Meenakshi Jain and Sandeep Balakrishna, apart from the publications of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture and Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. This was, of course, in addition to the writings of Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo and other civilisational icons.

Duty? Don’t tell me I don’t know duty. I know it like the back of my hand, like the breath of air from my lungs. I know it better than my own mother, and in the thick uncertainty of that dark room, I held on to it like a sharpened blade. The blood running through my fingers? Inconsequential.

Through weeks of symptoms and months of tests, they didn’t want to believe it was what it was. But once they accepted, deeper was their only way forward too. They stayed up all night doing advanced medical research they couldn’t begin to understand. They joined support groups and read books and bought T-shirts and ran 5Ks. They rededicated their lives to what they’d rejected utterly only days before. And then when their story strayed from that path – the cure didn’t work, the cure worked too well, the indicators indicated something else instead – they found themselves more lost than ever.

One time, over half of my warlords refused to attend a summit because I had failed to properly address them by the decorative titles my father had doled out like candy after the war: Minister of Horses, Master of Archery, Commissioner of Arts. Titles that had no weight in the council, because to be part of the council one actually needed to do some work. The warlords didn’t even have the decency to inform me they felt slighted. If I had known they would throw such massive sulks beforehand, I would’ve gone and made up extra titles just to please them. I’ve always wanted to use Secretary of the Dung Heap.

Everything is cursed in one form or another,” Enosh said, snorting. He didn’t even glance up. “The mages of Enji have kept invaders at bay for centuries by inventing these stories. I walked barefoot around the lake when we first arrived. You don’t see eyes growing out of my legs.” “Well,” Kefier said. “Not yet.

Someone who had been a slave should have known better—you didn’t own people, you didn’t lay claim to their hearts. For that moment in time, she was with him, and he should’ve found a way to be happy with that. And perhaps he had been—perhaps he had simply forgotten. A moment of love, like a single coin, was too easily spent. You go through your whole life wanting more.

She lives in a town of sorry history, indifferent to ethical perspectives, apathetic to female attributes, cargo and trunk liners, spilled oil in the garage, telephone poles shaped like liquor bottles, sustaining burly weather, cardiac distressing cold, tobacco and mortality, lying face-up on the bar’s concrete floor, no one can waste a life faster than a Montana redneck.

The even newer new guy now that's come in to take Chandler Foss's spot's name is Dave K. and is one grim story to behold, Thrust assures him, a junior executive guy at ATHSCME Air Displacement, an upscale guy with a picket house and kids and a worried wife with tall hair, who this Dave K.'s bottom was he drank half a liter of Cuerva at some ATHSCME Interdependence Day office party and everything like that and got in some insane drunken limbo-dance challenge with a rival executive and tried to like limbo under a desk or a chair or something insanely low, and got his spine all fucked up in a limbolock, maybe permanently: so the newest new guy scuttles around the Ennet House living room like a crab, his scalp brushing the floor and his knees trembling with effort.

Moon had this notion that life is not a random occurrence, or at least that even if it were, we owed it to ourselves to make something more from it. It is not just about waking up to go through the motions and then die. She talked about purpose, about changing the world beyond ourselves. How else do we give meaning to the mundane, and make sense out of needless suffering and the transience of this all?

You will have noticed that my interpretation of The Trial as the account of a man who, at a certain point in his life, suddenly asks himself why he exists, and then considers various possible justifications for his existence until he is finally obliged to admit honestly to himself that there is no justification, corresponds to what I have said in the Preface to the Notes: Every man, at every moment of his life, is engaged in a perfectly definite concrete situation in a world that he normally takes for granted. But it occasionally happens that he starts to think. He becomes aware, obscurely, that he is in perpetual contradiction with himself and with the world in which he exists. The Trial describes what happens to a man when he starts to think: sooner or later he condemns himself as unjustified, and then despair begins (K.'s execution, the execution of hope, is the beginning of despair—henceforth he is a dead man, like Connolly and Camus and so many other intelligent Europeans, and do what he may he can never quite forget it). It is only at this point that the Buddha's Teaching begins to be intelligible. But it must be remembered that for Connolly and the others, death at the end of this life is the final death, and the hell of despair in which they live will come to an end in a few years' time—why, then, should they give up their distractions, when, if things get too bad, a bullet through their brain is enough? It is only when one understands that death at the end of this life is not the final end, that to follow the Buddha's Teaching is seen to be not a mere matter of choice but a matter of necessity. Europe does not know what it really means to despair.

Tears pricked at my eyes. “You were still a child when your parents died. Besides, I think that’s what gives you those dark edges. Your wings have beat against the darkest side of life.” He shook his head. “I don’t have wings.” I rubbed between his shoulder blades. “I think maybe you do. Maybe they were broken somewhere along the way or maybe you just forgot how to use them…” A smile teased at the corner of his lips. “I’m no angel.” “You’re my angel,” I insisted.

Do mages land on their feet, like cats? Because I swear to Sakku if you don’t shut up and leave right now I’m going to push you through that window.” The tone of her voice must have got to him, then, because he finally got up. He sulked along the wall for a few moments, hoping perhaps that she would change her mind, which made her start thinking that strangling was so unsophisticated; it was probably easier to cut him with a knife and drop all the bits in the lake for the fish to feed on.

We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe- some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they're born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others- some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of men. But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal- there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man th

I’m the Captain, which means I can sanction a team,” he starts. “This team will be off the books, so to speak.” “The four of us make up this team?” I ask. “Correct, kind of,” he says. “I realize you and Macy aren’t law enforcement, but no one needs to know that. The four of you will be a team that takes the cases we haven’t had the means to close. The cases no one will miss.” “You mean, the cases no one wants,” says Rafe. “Yes,” says the Cap. “But the law, as Venessa well knows, in many cases doesn’t help, but hinders. I’m giving you four the authority to use the law when needed, and bend it when necessary.” “By any means necessary?” asks Macy. “The women will have more ‘liberties’, we’ll call them, because they aren’t in law enforcement,” he says. “You two, of course, know the law and I expect you to use it when it’s called for.” “And when it isn’t?” asks Rogue. “That’s your call,” he says. “You’ll have my support and report only to me, other than that…” “You’re giving us permission to be lawless?” I ask, getting extremely excited. Granted, I’ll still do it anyway but it’s like I just got the green light to be naughty. “I suppose I am,” he says. Brutal-K.S. Adkins

And it is only in its early stage. All those who believe they will remain untouched by its wrath are delusional. If Ehsan Jafri, a former member of parliament with a line to the deputy prime minister’s office, could be dragged out of his home and gashed and burned alive, what makes anyone think he or she will remain unharmed? If Aamir Khan, one of India’s biggest film stars, can be unpersoned; if Gauri Lankesh, one of its boldest journalists, can be shot dead; if Ramachandra Guha, one of its greatest historians, can be stopped from lecturing; if Naseeruddin Shah, among its finest actors, can be branded a traitor; if Manmohan Singh, the former prime minister, can be labelled an agent of Pakistan by his successor; if B.H. Loya, a perfectly healthy judge, can abruptly drop dead; if a young woman can be stalked by the police machinery of the state because Modi has displayed an interest in her—what makes the rest of us think we will remain untouched and unharmed? Unless the republic is reclaimed, the time will come when all of us will be one incorrect meal, one interfaith romance, one unfortunate misstep away from being extinguished. The mobs that slaughtered ‘bad’ Muslims will eventually come for Hindus who are not ‘good’.

The Oren-yaro do not lack for courage, it is true. We know how to face battles when the odds are stacked against us. We know how to give our lives for our lords and believe we know sacrifice like no other. But I did not face that dragon as an Oren-yaro. Our tenets may run deep, but they do not make us. I decided that if I ever get out of this alive, I would tell Rayyel that. We are flesh and blood, not words; we bend, we break, but our failings need not be etched in stone. I faced the dragon as someone willing to give her life for another not because of some deep-seated arrogance that I was better but because it was the right thing to do.

Here’s a Reader’s Digest version of my approach. I select mutual funds that have had a good track record of winning for more than five years, preferably for more than ten years. I don’t look at their one-year or three-year track records because I think long term. I spread my retirement, investing evenly across four types of funds. Growth and Income funds get 25 percent of my investment. (They are sometimes called Large Cap or Blue Chip funds.) Growth funds get 25 percent of my investment. (They are sometimes called Mid Cap or Equity funds; an S&P Index fund would also qualify.) International funds get 25 percent of my investment. (They are sometimes called Foreign or Overseas funds.) Aggressive Growth funds get the last 25 percent of my investment. (They are sometimes called Small Cap or Emerging Market funds.) For a full discussion of what mutual funds are and why I use this mix, go to daveramsey.com and visit MyTotalMoneyMakeover.com. The invested 15 percent of your income should take advantage of all the matching and tax advantages available to you. Again, our purpose here is not to teach the detailed differences in every retirement plan out there (see my other materials for that), but let me give you some guidelines on where to invest first. Always start where you have a match. When your company will give you free money, take it. If your 401(k) matches the first 3 percent, the 3 percent you put in will be the first 3 percent of your 15 percent invested. If you don’t have a match, or after you have invested through the match, you should next fund Roth IRAs. The Roth IRA will allow you to invest up to $5,000 per year, per person. There are some limitations as to income and situation, but most people can invest in a Roth IRA. The Roth grows tax-FREE. If you invest $3,000 per year from age thirty-five to age sixty-five, and your mutual funds average 12 percent, you will have $873,000 tax-FREE at age sixty-five. You have invested only $90,000 (30 years x 3,000); the rest is growth, and you pay no taxes. The Roth IRA is a very important tool in virtually anyone’s Total Money Makeover. Start with any match you can get, and then fully fund Roth IRAs. Be sure the total you are putting in is 15 percent of your total household gross income. If not, go back to 401(k)s, 403(b)s, 457s, or SEPPs (for the self-employed), and invest enough so that the total invested is 15 percent of your gross annual pay. Example: Household Income $81,000 Husband $45,000 Wife $36,000 Husband’s 401(k) matches first 3%. 3% of 45,000 ($1,350) goes into the 401(k). Two Roth IRAs are next, totaling $10,000. The goal is 15% of 81,000, which is $12,150. You have $11,350 going in. So you bump the husband’s 401(k) to 5%, making the total invested $12,250.

Pokud jsem byl u toho (a jistěže jsem úplně u všeho nebyl), úplně první explicitní otázku, zda zamýšlíme zakázat KSČ, vyslovil nahlas - příznačně - cizinec, britský konzervativní filozof a publicista Roger Scruton, a to 6. ledna 1990 při besedě tehdy již prezidenta Václava Havla s brněnskými studenty v Moravském národním divadle. Havel a několik lidí z pražského a brněnského OF seděli na pódiu a Rogerův hlas se během diskuse ozval odněkud z výšin třetí galerie. Neviděl jsem ho, ale poznal okamžitě podle jeho ráčkování, ačkoli jsem se s ním nemohl setkat několik let - Československo měl od jisté doby, po mnoha návštěvách, ostatně také u nás doma, zakázané. Mezitím jsem já překládal jeho knihy o konzervativním názoru na svět, na politiku. Havel mlčel, zdál se mi poněkud zaskočen, potutelně se usmál, otočil se ke mně a tiše, i když srozumitelně pro celé napjaté divadlo řekl: To bude nejspíše otázka pro tebe Petře, že...Nebyl jsem na ni ani trochu připraven, nikdy nikde do té doby jsme o možnosti zákazu KSČ nemluvili. Nějakou chvíli, možná i předlouhých pět vteřin, jsem mlčel a přemýšlel. Pak jsem do hrobového ticha toho obrovského prostoru řekl, co mně přišlo naprosto spontánně na mysl jako sukus mé životní filosofie, jako extrakt mé disidentské zkušenosti, totiž že si myslím, že daleko lepší než je zakázat by bylo porážet je ve svobodných volbách...Ozval se mohutný potlesk divadla narvaného studenty od podlahy až ke stropu.

But there is also what people think you are and how the world bends itself around it. You turn your head and people follow your gaze. Who is she looking at? Why is she looking at them? And if you explain it, they will tear the words apart looking for a hidden meaning, and if you don’t, they will dig into the silence for something that may not be there.” “It’s silly.” “I didn’t say it wasn’t. But that is the tune the whole world dances to. Some are born with the power to turn the tide even before they realize what they are doing. Others…aren’t. Some of us have to fight to make a difference from the moment we are born. We try to crest along calm waters because we are helpless against the tide, and even then, a single wave might be enough to sweep us away.

Ben’s dead,” he says not moving or breaking his stare. “And?” “Just thought you should know,” he says, looking at me in the eyes like he’s waiting for me to confess. “Thanks for waking me up to share the information,” I tell him. “Where’s Venessa?” “At home,” he says. “Needed to see you first, alone.” “Quit looking at me like that, partner,” I tell him. “I ain’t left this floor all night.” Which isn’t a lie. Ben’s room is on this floor, but he doesn’t know I know that. “Even if you did, you know I wouldn’t —” “Partner,” I tell him straight, letting him figure it out. “I didn’t shut off his life support.” After he blinks several times he gives me that smirk. He looks around me to my sleeping wife and then back at me and tells me straight, too. “Go back to sleep partner. You look like shit.” With that he gets up and walks out. Staring at the door he walks out of, I smile. He gets it. Turns out the staff at that front desk got it, too. They didn’t stop my wife from doing what she needed to do; seems like they had other shit going at that time. Heard through the grapevine one of the women taken and held by Ben happened to work on this very floor. It also turns out the coffee pot wasn’t working and it was an all hands on deck kinda thing to get it fixed. I get it, the women need their coffee. They also didn’t run to his aid until I had my wife safe back in her bed. Those women have husbands and children of their own; I owe them a debt for letting my wife give Ben what he deserved. Those same women respect my wife and the women taken, and they ain’t got no respect for a man, any man, shooting another woman, a pregnant woman, one of theirs, in the stomach. You just don’t fuck with the female species. Brawler-K.S. Adkins