Linden Quotes

The music in his laughter had a way of rounding off the missing notes in her soul.

She was so delicate that, while we sat beneath the linden branches, a leaf would fall and drift down and touch her skin, and it would leave a bruise. So as we sat in the afternoon hour, beneath that fragrant linden bower, I had to chase all of the leafs that fell away.

I wonder if she has figured out that I'll never love Linden, especially not in the way she does, and that he'll never love anyone the way he loves her. I wonder if she realizes, despite all her efforts to train me, that I can never take her place.

A party in the orange grove. The pain on Linden's face is immediate. I am unwavering. He has cost me more pain than I will ever be able to repay.

Von Linden really should know me well enough by now to realise that I am not going to face my execution without a fight. Or with anything remotely resembling dignity.

Design is an opportunity to continue telling the story, not just to sum everything up.

The Greeks had a word, xenia—guest friendship—a command to take care of traveling strangers, to open your door to whoever is out there, because anyone passing by, far from home, might be God. Ovid tells the story of two immortals who came to Earth in disguise to cleanse the sickened world. No one would let them in but one old couple, Baucis and Philemon. And their reward for opening their door to strangers was to live on after death as trees—an oak and a linden—huge and gracious and intertwined. What we care for, we will grow to resemble. And what we resemble will hold us, when we are us no longer. . . .

The leaves were long, the grass was green, The hemlock-umbels tall and fair, And in the glade a light was seen Of stars in shadow shimmering. Tinuviel was dancing there To music of a pipe unseen, And light of stars was in her hair, And in her raiment glimmering. There Beren came from mountains cold, And lost he wandered under leaves, And where the Elven-river rolled. He walked along and sorrowing. He peered between the hemlock-leaves And saw in wonder flowers of gold Upon her mantle and her sleeves, And her hair like shadow following. Enchantment healed his weary feet That over hills were doomed to roam; And forth he hastened, strong and fleet, And grasped at moonbeams glistening. Through woven woods in Elvenhome She lightly fled on dancing feet, And left him lonely still to roam In the silent forest listening. He heard there oft the flying sound Of feet as light as linden-leaves, Or music welling underground, In hidden hollows quavering. Now withered lay the hemlock-sheaves, And one by one with sighing sound Whispering fell the beechen leaves In the wintry woodland wavering. He sought her ever, wandering far Where leaves of years were thickly strewn, By light of moon and ray of star In frosty heavens shivering. Her mantle glinted in the moon, As on a hill-top high and far She danced, and at her feet was strewn A mist of silver quivering. When winter passed, she came again, And her song released the sudden spring, Like rising lark, and falling rain, And melting water bubbling. He saw the elven-flowers spring About her feet, and healed again He longed by her to dance and sing Upon the grass untroubling. Again she fled, but swift he came. Tinuviel! Tinuviel! He called her by her elvish name; And there she halted listening. One moment stood she, and a spell His voice laid on her: Beren came, And doom fell on Tinuviel That in his arms lay glistening. As Beren looked into her eyes Within the shadows of her hair, The trembling starlight of the skies He saw there mirrored shimmering. Tinuviel the elven-fair, Immortal maiden elven-wise, About him cast her shadowy hair And arms like silver glimmering. Long was the way that fate them bore, O'er stony mountains cold and grey, Through halls of iron and darkling door, And woods of nightshade morrowless. The Sundering Seas between them lay, And yet at last they met once more, And long ago they passed away In the forest singing sorrowless.

Look at me!’ I screeched. ‘Look at me, Amadeus von Linden, you sadistic hypocrite, and watch this time! You’re not questioning me now, this isn’t your work, I’m not an enemy agent spewing wireless code! I’m just a minging Scots slag screaming insults at your daughter! So enjoy yourself and watch! Think of Isolde! Think of Isolde and watch!

The most important distinction anyone can ever make in their life is between who they are as an individual and their connection with others.

Coda Perhaps to love is to learn to walk through this world. To learn to be silent like the oak and the linden of the fable. To learn to see. Your glance scattered seeds. It planted a tree. I talk because you shake its leaves.

You have a way of looking at things. You make it seem as though everything's going to be okay. I can't imagine a more dangerous thing to have than hope like yours.

Linden just wants to protect her, is what I want to say. She's all he has. I left him. I'm at arms reach, but I've left him.

They all trying to say something with music that you can't say with plain talk. There ain't really no words for love or pain. And the way I see it, only fools go around trying to talk their love or talk their pain. So the smart people make music and you can kinda hear about it without them saying anything.

No one's serious at seventeen, When lindens line the promenades

Good night, sweetheart," he says. "Good bye, sweetheart," I say. And it's so casual, so innocent that he doesn't suspect a thing.

It was need, Linden. I don’t want to need anything. I can make. I can destroy. Need implies something controls me and nothing controls me.

Before I can process what’s happening, Deirdre has opened her hands and Linden has taken the ring from her and slipped it onto my finger. “Rhine Ashby,” he says. “My wife.

Holder: "You live over on Conroe, that's over two miles away." Sky: "You know what street I live on?" Holder: "Yeah. Linden Sky Davis, born September 29th. 1455 Conroe Street. Five feet three inches. Donor." Sky: [take a step backward and confused] Holder: "Your ID. You showed me your ID earlier. At the store." Sky: "You look at it for two seconds." Holder: "I have a good memory." Sky: "You stalk." Holder: "I stalk? You're the one standing in front of my house.

Maybe it is desperation," I say. "Maybe we can't let things fall apart without trying. We can't let go of the people we love." He looks at me, and in the sunlight his eyes come alive with greens and golds. "Sometimes we can," he says.

I wonder… because that’s all I can do. Silently wonder about the hopeless boy who somehow burrowed himself into the forefront of my thoughts and won’t go the hell away.

Give me time" "For you, always.

... But I won't be your prey. There's only one hunter here." His grin sent a shiver down my spine. "I want something more from you, Sorcha Linden. More than your body.

Book lovers love books!" her mother announced. "There's romance about the books- even having them seems to have a kind of excitement." from Mr. Linden's Library by Walter Dean Myers

It’s okay to want me, you know,” Linden says thickly. My stomach quivers. I manage to shake my head and now his fingers are trailing behind my neck, running into the base of my hair and another shiver escapes down my back. “Since when is it ever okay to want your best friend?” I say softly, nearly choking on the words. Because that’s what he is, that’s what he’s always been. He smiled gently, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Isn’t that the best person to want? The person that knows you inside and out. The person who has seen you at your ugliest and most beautiful and still wants to be with you. The person who believes in you and has your back, no matter what.

You can lose a lot when you travel too much.

We all don't have to see eye to eye in order to see our way to the Kingdom. It's the heart condition of each man that the Lord will judge.

Forty is a most beautiful age for both men and women. Did you know that in mystic thought forty symbolizes the ascent from one level to a higher one and spiritual awakening? When we mourn we mourn for forty days. When a baby is born it takes forty days for him to get ready to start life on earth. And when we are in love we need to wait for forty days to be sure of our feelings. The Flood of Noah lasted forty days, and while the waters destroyed life, they also washed all impurity away and enabled human beings to make a new, fresh start. In Islamic mysticism there are forty degrees between man and God. Likewise, there are four basic stages of consciousness and ten degrees in each, making forty levels in total. Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days and nights. Muhammad was forty years old when he received the call to become a prophet. Buddha meditated under a linden tree for forty days. Not to mention the forty rules of Shams. You receive a new mission at forty, a new lease on life! You have reached a most auspicious number. Congratulations! And don’t worry about getting old. There are no wrinkles or gray hair strong enough to defy the power of forty!

And at midnight there came an apparition in hell. A handsome dark-eyed man with a dagger-like beard, in a tailcoat, stepped onto the veranda and cast a regal glance over his domain. They used to say, the mystics used to say, that there was a time when the handsome man wore not a tailcoat but a wide leather belt with pistol butts sticking out from it, and his raven hair was tied with scarlet silk, and under his command a brig sailed the Caribbean under a black death flag with a skull and crossbones. But no, no! The seductive mystics are lying, there are no Caribbean Seas in the world, no desperate freebooters to sail them, no corvette chases after them, no cannon smoke drifts across the waves. There is nothing, and there was nothing! There is that sickly linden over there, there is the cast-iron fence, and the boulevard beyond it…And the ice is melting in the bowl, and at the next table you see someone’s bloodshot, bovine eyes, and you’re afraid, afraid…Oh, gods, my gods, poison, bring me poison!...

I think he's beginning to understand, and understanding is a horrible thing.

Look," Linden says. " Look how beautiful it is." "The sunrise?" I ask. "The start of a new day," Linden says. "Being healthy enough to witness it.

Mrs. Linden was beautiful in spirit and in fact. Her wish, she told her daughter, was to be a beautiful woman and surprise people because she was a beautiful woman who was kind.

Books have always been among my most trusted of friends, Mr. Linden replied. The best of them allow the mind to wander wherever the author's musings lead.

Perhaps to love is to learn to walk through this world. To learn to be silent Like the oak and linden of fable. To learn to see

But beneath it all, there's the Prince of England kissing him under a linden tree in the garden, moonlight in his hair, and Alex's insides feel positively molten, and he wants to throw himself down the presidential stairs.

It taught that there are three versions of things: the one I see in my mind, and the one that carries onto the paper, and then what it ultimately becomes.

The place you are to occupy in the universe is the space where your greatest passion meets the world's great pain.

Choosing to let a good thing go in order to make room for something better is harder than I anticipated. And scary. So very scary.

Thus it transpired that even Berlin could be mysterious. Within the linden's bloom the streetlight winks. A dark and honeyed hush envelops us. Across the curb one's passing shadow slinks: across a stump a sable ripples thus. The night sky melts to peach beyond that gate. There water gleams, there Venice vaguely shows. Look at that street--it runs to China straight, and yonder star above the Volga glows! Oh, swear to me to put in dreams your trust, and to believe in fantasy alone, and never let your soul in prison rust, nor stretch your arm and say: a wall of stone.

Being stress and anxiety free is a human preset, I just show you how to 'flick the switch' to off. Permanent stress and anxiety recovery is possible quickly and simply despite what many are told.

When we were first married, I thought he must have been the most heartless, hateful man I'd ever known, but he was just as much a prisonor as I was. Where Vaughn imprisoned me with walls, he imprisoned his son with ignorance.

Bram, Linden, and Lachlan McGregor. The Scottish trifecta of hot guys.

Traveling can never be taken for granted, no matter how meticulous the preparations.

We can’t just stand here in the rain with our backs to the town,’ said Baucis. ‘I’ll look if you will.’ ‘I love you Philemon, my husband.’ ‘I love you Baucis, my wife.’ They turned and looked down. They were just in time to see the great flood inundating Eumeneia before Philemon was turned into an oak tree and Baucis into a linden. For hundreds of years the two trees stood side by side, symbols of eternal love and humble kindness, their intertwining branches hung with the tokens left by admiring pilgrims.

Surely the Germans must be the ugliest-looking people in Europe, individually. Not a decent-looking woman in the whole Linden. Their awful clothes probably contribute to one’s impression.

See that little stream — we could walk to it in two minutes. It took the British a month to walk to it — a whole empire walking very slowly, dying in front and pushing forward behind. And another empire walked very slowly backward a few inches a day, leaving the dead like a million bloody rugs. No Europeans will ever do that again in this generation.” “Why, they’ve only just quit over in Turkey,” said Abe. “And in Morocco —” “That’s different. This western-front business couldn’t be done again, not for a long time. The young men think they could do it but they couldn’t. They could fight the first Marne again but not this. This took religion and years of plenty and tremendous sureties and the exact relation that existed between the classes. The Russians and Italians weren’t any good on this front. You had to have a whole-souled sentimental equipment going back further than you could remember. You had to remember Christmas, and postcards of the Crown Prince and his fiancée, and little cafés in Valence and beer gardens in Unter den Linden and weddings at the mairie, and going to the Derby, and your grandfather’s whiskers.” “General Grant invented this kind of battle at Petersburg in sixty- five.” “No, he didn’t — he just invented mass butchery. This kind of battle was invented by Lewis Carroll and Jules Verne and whoever wrote Undine, and country deacons bowling and marraines in Marseilles and girls seduced in the back lanes of Wurtemburg and Westphalia. Why, this was a love battle — there was a century of middle-class love spent here. This was the last love battle.

My life might have been so different, had I not been known as the girl whose grandmother exploded.

Contempt mates well with pity.

I nod like I'm not at all unnerved by this new cold side to him. Not cruel like his father. Not warm like the husband who sought me out on quiet nights. Something in between. This Linden has never woven his fingers through mine, never chosen me from a line of weary Gathered girls, never said he loved me in a myriad of coloured lights. We are nothing to each other.

True insanity, as frightening as it might be, gives a sort of obliviousness to the chaos in a life. People who commit suicide are struggling to order their existence, and when they see it's a losing battle, they will finalize it rather than have it wrenched from them. Insanity wouldn't permit that type of clarity.

This western-front business couldn’t be done again, not for a long time. The young men think they could do it but they couldn’t. They could fight the first Marne again but not this. This took religion and years of plenty and tremendous sureties and the exact relation that existed between the classes. The Russians and Italians weren’t any good on this front. You had to have a whole-souled sentimental equipment going back further than you could remember. You had to remember Christmas, and postcards of the Crown Prince and his fiancée, and little cafés in Valence and beer gardens in Unter den Linden and weddings at the mairie, and going to the Derby, and your grandfather’s whiskers.

Rhine: It's okay that you miss her. She was the love of your life. Linden: Not the only love. It feels wrong to think about her as often as I do. Rhine: You should think about her everyday. You shouldn't try to look for her anywhere else, because you'll never find her. You'll see her walking away in a crowded street, and when you reach for her, she'll turn around and be somebody else. Just keep her here (on your heart), okay? It's the only place you'll always be able to find her.

Experiements that have been devised to inflict even mild social pain (like exclusion form a group task or betrayal by a partner in a gambling game) have demonstrated significant activation of the sinula and the anterior cingulate cortex. Emotional pain isn't just a metaphor: In terms of brain activation, it partially overlaps with physical pain.

Clearly, Siberian reindeer are not fighting over drugged urine for its nutrative value.

You don't repay kindness with needless cruelty.

I keep staggering forward because I have to, but what Linden said last night is true: It’s not much of a plan.

I want a second serving of you. I’m hard just thinking of your perfect breasts and hard nipples.” —Bryce Van Der Linden (Never Say Never, Unbearable Passion, #1)

His father had never planted an orchard. No growing thing was graceless, but that scowling, snarling man, Hiram Linden, had seemed purposely to avoid all crops that flowered in beauty. All were utilitarian, sown with surliness and harvested with oaths. Ase was the first Linden of three generations to consider the earth and its bounty with reverence and affection, to long to adorn it as best he might during his tenure.

She was right. There is no finality to a funeral. Linden is gone and I saw him go, but there’s still the sense that he’s somewhere. Everything in me is telling me to go outside and find him, bring him back.

Having passion for work alone might be the ultimate goal of all, because the work is the only thing that is really, truly yours. You’re entitled only to your labor. You’re not entitled to the fruit of your labor. The universe guarantees no results.

Every word out of your mouth," he pants, "has been a lie, hasn't it?" "No," I say softly. "Not everything." "What about your name?" he says. "Is your name even Rhine?

My uncle used to let me pretend they were bricks," Linden says, startling me. He eases a thick hardcover from the shelf, hefts it in either hand, and then places it back. "I like to build houses out of them. They never came out exactly like I'd planned, but that's good. It taught me that there are three versions of things: the one I see in my mind, and the one that carries onto the paper, and then what it ultimately becomes." For some reason I'm finding it difficult to meet his eyes. I nod at one of the lower shelves and say, "Maybe it's because in your mind you don't have to worry about building materials. So you're not as limited." "That's astute," he says. He pauses. "You've always been astute about things.

love might or might not promote kindness, gratify vanity, and clear the skin, but it did not lead to happiness; there was always an inequality of feeling or intention present. such was love's nature. of course, it 'worked' in the sense that it caused life's profoundest emotions, made him fresh as a spring's linden-blossom and broke him like a traitor on the wheel.

There’s this anomaly that happens sometimes with twins. It occurs in the womb when the fetuses are growing too closely to each other. The stronger twin develops normally, while the weaker twin crumples and is encased by the body of the stronger twin, where it becomes a parasite. The result is a single child, plagued by a twin-shaped fossil inside. Like a tumor. In death Rose became Linden’s parasitic twin. They were two separate organisms once, growing steadily beside each other. Two pulses. Two brains. But she has crumpled and died, and still he carries her inside himself. She goes where he goes, feeling nothing, seeing nothing, a shadow behind his ribs.

It’s the cracks in us that make us who we are, Zus had said, and perhaps he’d been right. When a linden tree broke, it often grew back, stronger and more beautiful in its damaged places. What if the same was true for man?

How your heart can possibly find a way to love and trust a man again proves that I've fallen in love with the bravest woman I've ever known. I know how much courage it took for you to allow me in after what your father did to you. And I swear I will spend every last breath thanking you for allowing yourself to love me. Thank you so much for loving me, Linden Sky Hope.

How Miserable this God smelled! How ridiculously bad the scent that this God let spill from Him. It was not even genuine frankincense fuming out of those thuribles. A bad substitute, adulterated with linden and cinnamon dust and saltpeter. God stank. God was a poor little stinker. He had been swindled, this God had, or was Himself a swindler, no different from Grenouille-only a considerably worse one!

Time and again our best and brightest have alerted society to looming problems, but our persistent pattern has been to ignore the warnings and suffer the consequences. The pathetic refrain of recent years --'Nobody saw this coming'--is always a self-serving lie.

Those things happened to you, not to someone else. They happened to the best friend that I loved all those years ago, and they happened to the best friend I love who’s looking back at me right now. You need to be proud of the fact that you survived everything you went through as a child. Don’t separate yourself from that life. Embrace it, because I’m so fucking proud of you. Every smile I see on your face just blows me away, because I know the courage and strength it took when you were just a little girl to ensure that part of you remained. And your laugh? My God, Sky. Think about how much courage it took you to laugh again after everything that happened to you. And your heart… How your heart can possibly find a way to love and trust a man again proves that I’ve fallen in love with the bravest woman I’ve ever known. I know how much courage it took for you to allow me in after what your father did to you. And I swear I will spend every last breath thanking you for allowing yourself to love me. Thank you so much for loving me, Linden Sky Hope.

I love Cecily", "whether or not you believe it. Not in the same way I loved Rose, or you. But what should that matter? I've loved all my wives differently.

Life is like a puzzle, when you find the heart of that puzzle the rest will complete it's self

Bloody noses had made them friends, but giving sound to the bruised places in their hearts made them brothers.

The history of Immanuel Kant's life is difficult to portray, for he had neither life nor history. He led a mechanical, regular, almost abstract bachelor existence in a little retired street of Königsberg, an old town on the north-eastern frontier of Germany. I do not believe that the great clock of the cathedral performed in a more passionless and methodical manner its daily routine than did its townsman, Immanuel Kant. Rising in the morning, coffee-drinking, writing, reading lectures, dining, walking, everything had its appointed time, and the neighbors knew that it was exactly half-past three o'clock when Kant stepped forth from his house in his grey, tight-fitting coat, with his Spanish cane in his hand, and betook himself to the little linden avenue called after him to this day the "Philosopher's Walk." Summer and winter he walked up and down it eight times, and when the weather was dull or heavy clouds prognosticated rain, the townspeople beheld his servant, the old Lampe, trudging anxiously behind Kant with a big umbrella under his arm, like an image of Providence. What a strange contrast did this man's outward life present to his destructive, world-annihilating thoughts! In sooth, had the citizens of Königsberg had the least presentiment of the full significance of his ideas, they would have felt far more awful dread at the presence of this man than at the sight of an executioner, who can but kill the body. But the worthy folk saw in him nothing more than a Professor of Philosophy, and as he passed at his customary hour, they greeted him in a friendly manner and set their watches by him.

The memories are always with us, but sometimes we can ease the way for others. That is what we must do, use our pain to build understanding and empathy, not to build walls. Then it is transformed into a thing of beauty, then our suffering has value.

The second reminder is this: while technological advancements can carry humankind to impossible heights, power must be exercised responsibly. After all, people tend to forget that Daedalus’s wings for his son did work; it was Icarus who used them incorrectly.

Men can bed any woman,” she said stiffly. “It means nothing.” He paused. “Nothing,” he repeated thoughtfully. “It rarely means nothing. And sometimes, in very particular circumstances, it means a great deal.

..but it's one of the reflections of our times. Young minds today are dulled by television and other visual sensations. When reading was one of the few pleasures available, we could recite whole passages to eachother.

The scent of linden blossoms hung heavy on the air. Dortchen made a sharp, jerking movement, as if to walk away. But she hesitated, then turned and went down the long, winding path, past the tangle of briar roses and into the secret grove of linden trees. She picked a blossom and held it to her nose, inhaling deeply. Then she sat on the grass, the blossom cupped in her hand, leant her head back against the tree and closed her eyes. All she could hear was the soft sough of the wind in the leaves, and the humming of innumerable bees as they gathered the nectar from the creamy-white flowers.

Familiarity is not the same as knowledge. But sometimes it's the best we can hope for. We can only love or hate what the other seems to be.

Some things aren’t meant to be mended,” she said finally, gently. “Sometimes it’s in the breaking that the light can finally shine through.

To the ends of the earth, madam, to say nothing of back and forth in this garden.

I am amazing.

Revered as God's servants, the bees they lure provide mead and honey for the table and beeswax candles for church services, which is why many churches planted linden trees in their courtyards. The bee-church connection became so strong that once, at the turn of the fifteenth century, the villagers of Mazowsze passed a law condemning honey thieves and hive vandals

My father warned me that you’re an interloper. He told me I should make you leave, since we’re no longer married and you’re not my concern,” he says. The thought gives me a chill. Yes, I’m sure Vaughn would love for his son to abandon me, so that Vaughn can swoop in and reclaim me the second I’m alone. But Linden adds, “I told him that wouldn’t be a good idea either.

Each leaf on the maples and lindens was sharply outlined, as if chiselled from black stone. Taken as a whole, however, the great mass of trees seemed like a flat black pattern against the bright sky. The world’s beauty had surpassed itself. It was one of those moments when everyone stops to gaze in wonder—not only the idler with time on his hands but also the shift worker on his way home and the traveller half-dead on his feet. At times like this we cease to have distinct perceptions of light, space, silence, rustlings, warmth, sweet smells, the swaying of long grass or leaves—all the millions of ingredients that make up the world’s beauty. What we perceive then is true beauty, and it tells us only one thing: that life is a blessing.

Male Amazon river dolphins will even insert thier penises in each other's blowholes in the only known example of nasal sex.* *I refuse to make the obligatory "blowjob" joke here. Science writing is very serious business.

I stood back up and looked down at my feces. A lovely snail-shell architecture, still steaming. Borromini. My bowels must be in good shape, because everyone knows you have nothing to worry about unless your feces are to soft or downright liquid. I was seeing my shit for the first time (in the city you sit on the bowl, then flush right away, without looking). I was now calling it shit, which I think is what people call it. Shit is the most personal and private thing we have. Anyone can get to know the rest - your facial expression, your gaze, your gestures. Even your naked body: at the beach, at the doctor's, making love. Even your thoughts, since usually you express them, or else others guess them from the way you look at them or appear embarrassed. Of course, there are such things as secret thoughts... but in general thoughts too are revealed. Shit, however, is not. Except for an extremely brief period of your life, when your mother is still changing your diapers, it is all yours. And since my shit at that moment must not have been all that different from what I had produced over the course of my past life, I was in that instant reuniting with my old, forgotten self, undergoing the first experience capable of merging with countless previous experiences, even those from when I did my business in the vineyards as a boy. Perhaps if I took a god look around, I would find the remains of those shits past, and then, triangulating properly, Clarabelle's treasure. But I stopped there. Shit was not my linden-blossom tea, of course not, how could I have expected to conduct my recherche with my sphincter? In order to rediscover lost time, one should have not diarrhea but asthma. Asthma is pneumatic, it is the breath (however labored) of the spirit: it is for the rich, who can afford cork-lined rooms. The poor, in the fields, attend less to spiritual than to bodily functions. And yet I felt not disinherited but content, and I mean truly content, in a way I had not felt since reawakening. The ways of the Lord are infinite, I said to myself, they go even through the butthole.

Would you like me to court you?” the earl finally asked. YES. She smoothed her hands over her skirts to keep from confessing it aloud. “I would like to know if you are,” she replied. “Or what your intentions are, if you aren’t.” “My intentions . . .” His slow smile acted like a torch held to her skin. She felt prickly with heat and yet transfixed by the glowing allure of it. “I intend to have you, Maggie, in every way a man can have a woman. I want your hand in mine while we dance. I want you laughing beside me in the theater. I want you lying naked in my arms at night. And I want you standing beside me in church, saying ‘I will.’

Linden is immensely busy, and so I ask her why she gardens, given how much time it takes. She does it for the food and the satisfaction of hard work yielding something so prolific, she says. And it makes her feel at home in a place, to have her hands in the earth. I ask her, “Do you love your garden?” even though I already know the answer. But then I ask, tentatively, “Do you feel that your garden loves you back?” She’s quiet for a minute; she’s never glib about such things. “I’m certain of it,” she says. “My garden takes care of me like my own mama.” I can die happy.

But once upon a time a weakness was a challenge to be overcome or hidden.Now we deceive ourselves, thinking that our private weaknesses don't matter. We reveal them freely, sometimes unsolicited, hoping that our disclosure of vulnerability will be interpreted as a sign of trust and will warrant kindness, or tolerance at least, in return. So naive we are, our sad belief in sympathy.

What the devil was this story? Douglas pushed open the door to his sitting room, propped one shoulder against the window frame as he opened the plain, prudish cover, and began to read. By the end of the first page his eyebrows started to rise. By the end of the second, his mouth was hanging open. And when he reached the last page, he no longer cared about Spence's wager or the bounty on Lady Constance's head or what Burke was thinking to let Joan read this. If Madeline Wilde had written this--even if every word sprang solely out of her imagination and not from her experience--he wanted to get to know her much, much better.

The keepers would give the gorillas an assortment of fruits and vegetables each afternoon, and on this particular occasion, Judy Sievert tossed Nina an apple, which rolled away. Instead of going to get it, Nina just 'sat there sadly,' in Judy's words. Judy continued her rounds, handing out yams and apples to the other gorillas, but Nina sat there looking appleless and downtrodden. Taking pity, Judy tossed her another apple. As soon as Nina had it, she got up and went over to where the first apple had rolled away, taking it too.

Sometimes things don't work out the way we hoped, despite our best intentions. And when they go pear-shaped, you have to let them. You can't keep holding on, trying to redo the past and stop the bad things from happening. They happened, and you can't change that. You can't keep holding on to the vision of the future you imagined you'd have, the way you thought things would turn out. You have to let the present be what it is---broken, flawed, painful, but real.

The head/heart duality is a well-known cultural phenomenon. In everyday speech we use "heart" as a shorthand to refer to our emotional state or our faith and "head" to refer to cognition or reason. Should I follow my head or my heart? Both "head" and "heart," while they are literally the names of body parts, are commonly used to stand for nonbodily phenonmena, for mental processes. But what body part do we use when we want to refer explicitly to our coporeal self? Whe, the humble "ass," of course! Consider the seminal gangsta rappers Niggaz with Attitude, who in thier classic track "Straight Outta Compton" rhyme: "Niggaz start to mumble / They wanna rumble / Mix 'em and cook 'em in a pot like gumbo / Goin' off on a motherfucker like that / With a gat that's pointed at yo ass." Do the guys in NWA mean to say that a gun is literally pointed downward, at your tuchas? Of course not. We understand that in this context "ass" means "corporeal self.

Philemon counselled with old Baucis first; and then discovered to the listening Gods their hearts' desire, ‘We pray you let us have the care of your new temple; and since we have passed so many years in harmony, let us depart this life together— Let the same hour take us both—I would not see the tomb of my dear wife; and let me not be destined to be buried by her hands!’ At once their wishes were fulfilled. So long as life was granted they were known to be the temple's trusted keepers, and when age had enervated them with many years, as they were standing, by some chance, before the sacred steps, and were relating all these things as they had happened, Baucis saw Philemon, her old husband, and he, too, saw Baucis, as their bodies put forth leaves; and while the tops of trees grew over them, above their faces, — they spoke each to each; as long as they could speak they said, ‘Farewell, farewell, my own’—and while they said farewell; new leaves and branches covered both at once.

At first it had no name. It was the thing itself, the vivid thing. It was his friend. On windy days it danced, demented, waving wild arms, or in the silence of evening drowsed and dreamed, swaying in the blue, goldeny air. Even at night it did not go away. Wrapped in his truckle bed, he could hear it stirring darkly outside in the dark, all the long night long. There were others, nearer to him, more vivid still than this, that came and went, talking, but they were wholly familiar, almost a part of himself, while it, steadfast and aloof, belonged to the mysterious outside, to the wind and the weather and the goldeny blue air. It was a part of the world, and yet it was his friend. Look, Nicolas, look! See the big tree! Tree. That was its name. And also: the linden. They were nice words. He had known them a long time before he knew what they meant. They did not mean themselves, they were nothing in themselves, they meant the dancing singing thing outside. In wind, in silence, at night, in the changing air, it changed and yet it was changelessly the tree, the linden tree. That was strange. The wind blew on the day that he left, and everything waved and waved. The linden tree waved. Goodbye!

Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly. Gossip briefly wondered if gossip had invented the whole story, but gossip decided that the worst interpretation of events was usually the safest and, in the end, the truest. Like most of his life's writing, the play was concerned with love. and as in his life, so in his writing: love did not work. Love might or might not provoke kindness, gratify vanity and clear the skin, but it did not lead to happiness, there was always an inequality of feeling or intention present. Such was love's nature. Of course, it "worked" in the sense that it caused life's profoundest emotions, made him fresh as spring linden-blossom and broke him like a traitor on the wheel. It stirred him from well-mannered timidity to relative boldness, through a rather theoretical boldness, one tragi-comically incapable of action. It taught him the gulping folly of anticipation, the wretchedness of failure, the whine of regret and the silly fondness of remembrance. In my opinion, every love, happy or unhappy, is a real disaster when you give yourself over to it entirely. But all love needs a journey. all love symbolically is a journey and that journey needs bodying forth. Madame Amelie briefly wondered if this was a philosophical truth or an empty platitude.

Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht, Dann bin ich um den Schlaf gebracht, Ich kann nicht mehr die Augen schließen, Und meine heißen Tränen fließen. Die Jahre kommen und vergehn! Seit ich die Mutter nicht gesehn, Zwölf Jahre sind schon hingegangen; Es wächst mein Sehnen und Verlangen. Mein Sehnen und Verlangen wächst. Die alte Frau hat mich behext, Ich denke immer an die alte, Die alte Frau, die Gott erhalte! Die alte Frau hat mich so lieb, Und in den Briefen, die sie schrieb, Seh ich, wie ihre Hand gezittert, Wie tief das Mutterherz erschüttert. Die Mutter liegt mir stets im Sinn. Zwölf lange Jahre flossen hin, Zwölf lange Jahre sind verflossen, Seit ich sie nicht ans Herz geschlossen. Deutschland hat ewigen Bestand, Es ist ein kerngesundes Land, Mit seinen Eichen, seinen Linden, Werd' ich es immer wiederfinden. Nach Deutschland lechzt ich nicht so sehr, Wenn nicht die Mutter dorten wär; Das Vaterland wird nie verderben, Jedoch die alte Frau kann sterben. Seit ich das Land verlassen hab, So viele sanken dort ins Grab, Die ich geliebt -- wenn ich sie zähle, So will verbluten meine Seele. Und zählen muß ich -- Mit der Zahl Schwillt immer höher meine Qual; Mir ist, als wälzten sich die Leichen, Auf meine Brust -- Gottlob! Sie weichen! Gottlob! Durch meine Fenster bricht Französisch heitres Tageslicht; Es kommt mein Weib, schön wie der Morgen Und lächelt fort die deutschen Sorgen.

Three miles from my adopted city lies a village where I came to peace. The world there was a calm place, even the great Danube no more than a pale ribbon tossed onto the landscape by a girl’s careless hand. Into this stillness I had been ordered to recover. The hills were gold with late summer; my rooms were two, plus a small kitchen, situated upstairs in the back of a cottage at the end of the Herrengasse. From my window I could see onto the courtyard where a linden tree twined skyward — leafy umbilicus canted toward light, warped in the very act of yearning — and I would feed on the sun as if that alone would dismantle the silence around me. At first I raged. Then music raged in me, rising so swiftly I could not write quickly enough to ease the roiling. I would stop to light a lamp, and whatever I’d missed — larks flying to nest, church bells, the shepherd’s home-toward-evening song — rushed in, and I would rage again. I am by nature a conflagration; I would rather leap than sit and be looked at. So when my proud city spread her gypsy skirts, I reentered, burning towards her greater, constant light. Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly— I tell you, every tenderness I have ever known has been nothing but thwarted violence, an ache so permanent and deep, the lightest touch awakens it. . . . It is impossible to care enough. I have returned with a second Symphony and 15 Piano Variations which I’ve named Prometheus, after the rogue Titan, the half-a-god who knew the worst sin is to take what cannot be given back. I smile and bow, and the world is loud. And though I dare not lean in to shout Can’t you see that I’m deaf? — I also cannot stop listening.

Runach took the book in hand and went to look for that Bruadarian lass, who was likely having a conversation with the flora and fauna of his grandfather's garden... He just hadn't expected her to be singing. It wasn't loud singing, though he could hear it once he'd wandered the garden long enough to catch sight of her, standing beneath a flowering linden tree, holding a blossom in her hand. Runach came to a skidding halt and gaped at her. Very well, so he had ceased to think of her as plain directly after Gobhann, and he had been struggling to come up with a worthy adjective ever since. He supposed he might spend the rest of his life trying, and never manage it. It was difficult to describe a dream. He had to sit down on the first bench he found, because he couldn't stand any longer. He wondered if the day would come where she ceased to surprise him with the things she did. Her song was nothing he had ever heard before, but for some reason it seemed familiar in a way he couldn't divine. It was enough for the moment to simply sit there and watch as she and the tree--and several of the flowers, it had to be said--engaged in an ethereal bit of music making. It was truthfully the most beautiful thing he had ever heard, and that was saying something, because the musicians who graced his grandfather's hall were unequalled in any Elvish hall he'd ever visited. And then Runach realized why what she was doing sounded so familiar. She was singing in Fadaire. He grasped for the rapidly disappearing shreds of anything resembling coherent thought, but it was useless. All he could do was sit on that very cold bench and listen to a woman who had hardly set foot past her place of incarceration, sing a song in his mother's native tongue, that would have brought any elf in the vicinity to tears if they had heard it. He knew because it was nigh onto bringing him to that place in spite of his sorry, jaded self.