Ling Quotes

Ting-a-ling mother fucker.

There’s so much gray to every story—nothing is so black and white.

Greed (as Ling): You humans always get all "holier-than-thou" when it comes to this stuff... I really don't get you. Edward: It's called having integrity. You should try it sometime

Wei WuXian, “Yep. Congratulations. You’re under corpse poisoning.” Jin Ling, “How is this something to congratulate someone for?!

The past is a black hole, cut into the present day like a wound, and if you come too close, you can get sucked in. You have to keep moving.

The first place you live alone, away from your family, he said, is the first place you become a person, the first place you become yourself.

If the Beast gave me a library like he gave to Belle, I’d marry him too.

A second chance doesn't mean you're in the clear. In many ways, it is the more difficult thing. Because a second chance means that you have to try harder. You must rise to the challenge without the blind optimism of ignorance.

We are made by what we are asked to bear, Ling Chan,” he’d said.

If you're trapped in a room, and nobody is coming to save you, what can you do? You have to bang on the walls and break the windows. You have to climb out and save yourself. It's obvious, Li-ling, that crying doesn't help a person live.

Aku benci pada diriku karena tidak bisa melupakan A Ling. Tapi aku juga benci pada diriku sendiri karena membenci diriku sendiri yang tak bisa melupakan A Ling.

Charlie Asher: Mrs. Ling, is that duck wearing trousers? Mrs. Ling: Could be . . . . You hear of paper-wrap chicken? This duck in pants.

Young man, sometimes in life there are a few sappy things one must say.” “What?” Jin Ling asked. ”’Thank you’ and ‘I’m sorry’,” Wei Wuxian replied “there’ll come a day when you’ll say them through tears.

You see something you like?" I asked, echoing something I'd said to him ling ago, when he'd caught me in a compromising position at school. "Lots," he said. -Rose (Roza) to Dimitri

The ‘Three Tumors’ is the nickname given to the three heavenly officials who don’t have a good rep but have a good relationship with each other, and they are Ming Guan, Ling Wen, and my brother. ‘I can’t believe it’s not Xie Lian, Xie Lian, and Xie Lian.’ Xie Lian thought.

A talent for following the ways of yesterday’, declared King Wu-ling in 307 BC, ‘is not sufficient to improve the world of today.

It was the anonymity. He wanted to be unknown, unpossessed by others' knowledge of him. That was freedom.

I have always lived in the myth of New York more than in its reality.

To live in a city is to live the life that it was built for, to adapt to its schedule and rhythms, to move within the transit layout made for you during the morning and evening rush, winding through the crowds of fellow commuters. To live in a city is to consume its offerings. To eat at its restaurants. To drink at its bars. To shop at its stores. To pay its sales taxes. To give a dollar to its homeless. To live in a city is to take part in and to propagate its impossible systems. To wake up. To go to work in the morning. It is also to take pleasure in those systems because, otherwise, who could repeat the same routines, year in, year out?

Memories beget memories. Shen fever being a disease of remembering, the fevered are trapped indefinitely in their memories. But what is the difference between the fevered and us? Because I remember too, I remember perfectly. My memories replay, unprompted, on repeat. And our days, like theirs, continue in an infinite loop.

yeah, i'm a rocket ship on my way to mars on a collision course i am a satellite i'm out of control i am a sex machine ready to reload like an atom bomb about to oh oh oh oh oh explode i'm burnin' through the sky yeah two hundred degrees that's why they call me mister fahrenheit i'm trav'ling at the speed of light i wanna make a supersonic woman of you

I mean that she was complicated. Everybody is,” Ling said quietly. “Don’t erase her like that. She deserves better.

Let us return, then, as we do in times of grief, for the sake of pleasure but mostly for the need for relief, to art.

Because people change. Feelings can be temporary and fickle. That’s why it’s important to anchor intent to something serious, extravagant.

Upon seeing Utah for the first time, Tarkovsky remarked that now he knew Americans were vulgar because they filmed westerns in a place that should only serve as backdrop to films about God.

A boy, at best, can adore his mother, but a girl can understand her. When the doctor told me it was a girl, I thought, Now I will be understood.

It doesn’t take much to come into your own; all it takes is someone’s gaze. It’s not totally accurate to say that I felt seen. It was more that: Beheld by her, I learned how to become myself. Her interest actualized me.

Leisure, the problem with the modern condition was the dearth of leisure. And finally, it took a force of nature to interrupt our routines. We just wanted to hit the reset button. We just wanted to feel flush with time to do things of no quantifiable value, our hopeful side pursuits like writing or drawing or something, something other than what we did for money.

It is too depressing, too soul-crushingly sad, to reminisce. The past is a black hole, cut into the present day like a wound, and if you come too close, you can get sucked in. You have to keep moving.

The End begins before you are ever aware of it. It passes as ordinary.

Beauty has always been one of the only ways women have been able to access power, and I can’t fault any of them for wanting more of it.

This is how it is now. There is strength in acceptance, Ling. Your legs have been taken from you. But how you choose to live with that has not.

Now, there is a tendency at a point like this to look over one’s shoulder at the cover artist and start going on at length about leather, tightboots and naked blades. Words like ‘full’, ‘round’ and even ‘pert’ creep into the narrative, until the writer has to go and have a cold shower and a lie down. Which is all rather silly, because any woman setting out to make a living by the sword isn’t about to go around looking like something off the cover of the more advanced kind of lingerie catalogue for the specialized buyer. Oh well, all right. The point that must be made is that although Herrena the Henna-Haired Harridan would look quite stunning after a good bath, a heavy-duty manicure, and the pick of the leather racks in Woo Hun Ling’s Oriental Exotica and Martial Aids on Heroes Street, she was currently quite sensibly dressed in light chain mail, soft boots, and a short sword. All right, maybe the boots were leather. But not black.

When other people are happy, I don't have to worry about them. There is room for my happiness.

Books open new worlds to me.

To live is to exist within time. To remember is to negate time.

It is in the most surreal situations that a person feels the most present, the closest to reality.

It was funny how their odd little family of friends had changed him. Made him feel safe. Theta, Memphis, Henry, Jericho, Mabel, Ling, Isaiah, and especially Evie. They’d been there for him. Opened the parts of him he was afraid would be closed off forever. Why had he wasted so much time bottling up his feelings? What did that ever get anybody but dumb fights? He had friends. He had a home in them. And Evie was home, too.

Sering aku disiksa oleh pertanyaan: mengapa A Ling bisa begitu? Apa salahku sehingga ia begitu? Apa yang ada di kepala seorang perempuan? Apakah pertimbangan yang bijak? Kecemasan? Atau sekadar dengungan? Sungguh aku tak mengerti. NAmun, perlukah aku mengerti? Kurasa tidak. Yang kuperlukan hanyalah menghormati keputusannya, dan karena Tuhan telah menciptakan manusia dengan hati dan pikiran yang boleh punya jalan masing-masing, penghormatan seharusnya tidak memerlukan pengertian. (hlm. 237)

There is mystery to how faith takes root and flourishes, how need transforms into belief.

Help the others believe, Serafina. Help Ling believe she can break through the silences. Help Neela believe her greatest power comes from within, not without. Help Becca believe the warmest fire is the one that's shared. Help Ava believe the gods did know what they were doing. That's what a leader does—she inspires other to believe in themselves.

The Dying Christian to His Soul (1712) -Vital spark of heav'nly flame! Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame: Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying, Oh the pain, the bliss of dying! Stanza 1.

It doesn't take much to convince yourself that you're doing okay, just some discretionary income and a regularity to your days.

New York is possibly the only place in which most people have already lived, in some sense, in the public imagination, before they ever arrive.

TING-A-LING, YOU SON OF A BITCH!

Having destroyed countless sects, nobody would listen to his explanation, especially when Jin GuangYao would be there fanning the flames. Lan WangJi, though, was different from him. He wouldn’t even have to explain, and people would explain for him, such as how HanGuang-Jun had been deceived by the YiLing Patriarch. Wei WuXian, 'HanGuang-Jun, you don’t have to follow me!' Lan WangJi looked straight in front of him, saying nothing in reply.

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief, More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring. Comforter, where, where is your comforting? Mary, mother of us, where is your relief? My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief- woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing — Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling- ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief'. O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep, Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.

Whatever I felt, whatever this feeling was inside of me, there is no place for it. There is no place for it to go, and I would have to carry it around inside of me for a long time, so long that it would fossilize and become a part of me.

A plate of roast duck, steamed dumplings, spicy noodles with beef gravy, pickled cucumbers, stewed tongue and eggs if you have them, cold please, and sticky rice pearls, too,' Ai Ling said, before the server girl could open her mouth. "I don't know what he wants." Ai Ling nodded toward Chen Yong. 'I'm not sure I have enough coins to order anything more,' he said, laughing.

To despise someone is intimate by default.

You judge the gods by who bows down at their altars?" Ai Ling asked.

Just because you're adequately good at something doesn't mean that's what you should do.

What I didn’t say was: I know you too well. You live your life idealistically. You think it’s possible to opt out of the system. No regular income, no health insurance. You quit jobs on a dime. You think this is freedom but I still see the bare, painstakingly cheap way you live, the scrimping and saving, and that is not freedom either. You move in circumscribed circles. You move peripherally, on the margins of everything, pirating movies and eating dollar slices. I used to admire this about you, how fervently you clung to your beliefs—I called it integrity—but five years of watching you live this way has changed me. In this world, money is freedom. Opting out is not a real choice.

The room was filled with Hundreds of devotees When Chow Ling asked: Why are you worshipping the teapot Instead of drinking the tea?

We Googled is there a god, clicked I’m Feeling Lucky, and were directed to a suicide hotline site.

Society wants us to look for the approval of men in everything we do. Self-care is the radical act of dressing and living for ourselves.

A part of me wanted to remonstrate with her, to list out all her infractions in a final accounting, but the last days are for relief, not for truth.

Henry looked from Ling to Alma and back again. His mouth slid into a sly smile. “Oh my.

There has ling been a happy symbiotic relationship between kitchen and bar. Simply put, the kitchen wants booze, and the bartender wants food.

A woman sat alone at her dining table, reading and drinking a cocktail. It’d be such a relief to be older already, unburdened by the pressure to leverage your ever-fleeting beauty for whatever.

All the lights were off, and I just lay there, trying to pass the hours before I had to get up and go to work, which was impossible when the night was so loud. My neighbor’s electric air conditioner, the bass pumping from other people’s cars. They were all converging together to say one thing: You are alone. You are alone. You are alone. You are truly and really alone.

Thus a translation of a translation brought us together, but I can see now that we were still very far apart, farther apart indeed than languages, even though we had laughed together, for our laugher was cruel, as laughter often is. I was laughing at the awkwardness of a Chinese mind, the translator's; Su-ling at the awkwardness of a Western mind, mine.

Hadist riwayat Abu Bakar menyatakan bahwa Nabi bersabda, “Allah mengangkat derajatmu bukan melalui banyaknya salat dan berpuasa, namun berdasarkan kebaikan hatimu.

I didn’t want the same things that they wanted, and they should know this. They should know my difference, they should sense my unfathomable fucking depths.

A woman is like fine whisky. Deep and subtle, smooth but strong, warm yet lingering.

We are made by what we are asked to bear, Ling Chan,

Alma Rene LaVoy was the most alive person Ling Chan has ever met. The pretty chorus girl was the light in the sky over Chinatown during a New Years celebration.

There are moments you wait for. And then there are moments you wait for. Moments you spend every other moment preparing for. Points of your life that click and turn. Push you in a completely new direction.

Mengenai kebutaan hati dan cara penyembuhannya, Nabi berkata, “segala sesuatu yang berkarat ada pengkilapnya, dan pengkilap hati adalah mengingat Allah.

It's hard to know what's right when everyone thinks you're wrong.

In the classical music field, it’s still more permissible for women to be mediocre than it is for them to be fat.

I remember one time I looked for the stone for almost an hour before I consented to ask the other half (of my mind) where I'd hidden it only to find out I hadn't hidden it at all. I'd merely been waiting to see how ling I'd look before giving up. Have you ever been annoyed and amused at yourself at the same time? It's an interesting feeling to say the least.

I was enjoying myself, but it was an insulated enjoyment. I was alone inside of it.

Speaking of which, I also met a teenager that could command silver butterflies around on Mount Yu Jun. Does anyone know who that was?” The lively, bustling chaotic spirit communication array suddenly fell silent the moment those words were out. This kind of reaction, Xie Lian had seen it coming and so he just waited patiently. After a while, Ling Wen finally asked, “Your Highness Crown Prince, what did you just say?” Mu Qing coldly answered for him, “He just said, he met Hua Cheng.” Finally obtaining the name of that red-clothed young man, Xie Lian was ineffably in a good mood. He smiled and said, “So his name is Hua Cheng? Hm, this name suits him quite well.

What if I dissected my feelings, pulled them apart and brutalized them so that he would know they were true? Is this enough? I'd ask. How about this? They would explode and drip over everything like bodily fluids and finally he'd be forced to look away.

MUCKY drawing I AM FeeLing completely mucky today too. everyone at school seems so much tougher + pulled together and not so emotionally involved. I get so mad at MYSELF FOR 'caring so deeply' AND 'MAINTAINING' all this stuff in me that FEELS SO PATHectic. I want to put my tHINKing in HYBernation FOR A WHile.

I had always assumed love carried itself easily through various permutations and disintegrations. Now I find myself disassociating them from the people I had known my parents to be. I can't decide which is worse, coming up against the limitations of their souls or the limitations of my love.

Pada titik tertentu dalam hidupmu kau pasti merindukan banyak hal di masa lalu, termasuk rindu bertemu sahabat yang dulu selalu bersamamu.

Another self was needed to move into the future.

It doesn't take much to come into your own; all it takes is someone's gaze.

Her family would only wound her, nothing more, so that she went through this life maimed, but still she went through life.

The first to express support of Tang San was unexpectedly Ma Hongjun. Fatty’s hands supported Huang Yuan and Jing Ling, “Third brother, I support you, mercy to the enemy is cruelty to oneself.

Seeing moonlight here at my bed and thinking it’s frost on the ground, I look up, gaze at the mountain moon, then back, dreaming of my old home.

I study her the way an overeager student studies a poem, committing it to memory because comprehension is out of reach.

What an unbelievable scam it is to get everything you've been told to want.

I was like everyone else. We all hoped the storm would knock things over, fuck things up enough but not too much. We hoped the damage was bad enough to cancel work the next morning but not so bad that we couldn’t go to brunch instead.

I read a lot.' 'Me, too. One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street Library,' Memphis said, a little cocky. 'Seward Park Library,' Ling answered in kind. 'It's like you're picking baseball teams for books,' Sam said.

Well, now, you see, I have a firm policy that I never drink hot cocoa by myself. It's against my religion." "You have a religion?" Ling sniffled. "Well, no. Not really. But if I did, that would be the first commandment.

You’re not doing too well. You barely eat. You don’t sleep enough. You don’t do things to keep your mind active. You don’t read. She says, Only in America do you have the luxury of being depressed. She says, Change your clothes. Brush your teeth. Wash your face. Moisturize. Exercise. Get yourself together. She says, Now is not the time to give up. It’s only going to get harder. You need to figure this out. And sometimes I say things back. Figure what out? I ask, but she doesn’t answer. Figure what out? I repeat, and the sound of my own voice jars me awake. I have been talking in my sleep.

I wanted to tell them that they had made a mistake. I wasn’t like them. I didn’t want the same things that they wanted, and they should know this. They should know my difference, they should sense my unfathomable fucking depths.

If Fuzhou Nighttime Feeling were a sound, it would be early/mid-nineties R&B. If it were a flavor, it would be the ice-cold Pepsi we drink as we turn down tiny alleyways where little kids defecate wildly. It is the feeling of drowning in a big hot open gutter, of crawling inside an undressed, unstanched wound that has never been cauterized.

Precious Auntie, what is our name? I always meant to claim it as my own. Come help me remember. I'm not a little girl anymore. I'm not afraid of ghosts. Are you still mad at me? Don't you recognize me? I am LuLing, your daughter.

[I] threw open the door to find Rob sit­ting on the low stool in front of my book­case, sur­round­ed by card­board box­es. He was seal­ing the last one up with tape and string. There were eight box­es - eight box­es of my books bound up and ready for the base­ment! "He looked up and said, 'Hel­lo, dar­ling. Don't mind the mess, the care­tak­er said he'd help me car­ry these down to the base­ment.' He nod­ded to­wards my book­shelves and said, 'Don't they look won­der­ful?' "Well, there were no words! I was too ap­palled to speak. Sid­ney, ev­ery sin­gle shelf - where my books had stood - was filled with ath­let­ic tro­phies: sil­ver cups, gold cups, blue rosettes, red rib­bons. There were awards for ev­ery game that could pos­si­bly be played with a wood­en ob­ject: crick­et bats, squash rac­quets, ten­nis rac­quets, oars, golf clubs, ping-​pong bats, bows and ar­rows, snook­er cues, lacrosse sticks, hock­ey sticks and po­lo mal­lets. There were stat­ues for ev­ery­thing a man could jump over, ei­ther by him­self or on a horse. Next came the framed cer­tificates - for shoot­ing the most birds on such and such a date, for First Place in run­ning races, for Last Man Stand­ing in some filthy tug of war against Scot­land. "All I could do was scream, 'How dare you! What have you DONE?! Put my books back!' "Well, that's how it start­ed. Even­tu­al­ly, I said some­thing to the ef­fect that I could nev­er mar­ry a man whose idea of bliss was to strike out at lit­tle balls and lit­tle birds. Rob coun­tered with re­marks about damned blue­stock­ings and shrews. And it all de­gen­er­at­ed from there - the on­ly thought we prob­ably had in com­mon was, What the hell have we talked about for the last four months? What, in­deed? He huffed and puffed and snort­ed and left. And I un­packed my books.

This whole thing happened because I got up last night, because my cat got hungry and I had to go find a fork, and I stumbled into that conference room and saw Will and Ling and their cop friend messing with a severed hand.” Budd said, “A severed what?” and Andre said, “Your cat eats with a fork?

It was a time when the future could have been anything, been anywhere. It was so open that it could actually crush her.

I wake up. It is so silent. I could fall through the cracks of such silence.

New York has a way of forgetting you.

have always lived in the myth of New York more than in its reality. It is what enabled me to live there for so long, loving the idea of something more than the thing itself.

Do not tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done.” —James J. Ling

I found her. There was blood everywhere. I slipped and fell in it.' 'That's awful,' Ling said when she found her voice again. 'It was awful. I loved those pants.

They’ve created a very stif ling, unhealthy environment.

What if I dissected my feelings, pulled them apart and brutalized them so that he would know they were true? Is this enough? I’d ask. How about this?

He was aware, suddenly, of the chill condensing clammily on his skin, the smell of damp cobblestones, of the very air flowing in and out of his lings. But most of all he was aware of the woman, this woman, his woman, standing so proudly, waiting patiently for him, only him. He walked toward her and knew with every fiber of his being that he walked to life itself.

To live in a city is to live the life that it was built for, to adapt to its schedule and rhythms, to move within the transit layout made for you during the morning and evening rush, winding through the crowds of fellow commuters. To live in a city is to consume its offerings. To eat at its restaurants. To drink at its bars. To shop at its stores. To pay its sales taxes. To give a dollar to its homeless. To live in a city is to take part in and to propagate its impossible systems. To wake up. To go to work in the morning. It is also to take pleasure in those systems because, otherwise, who could repeat the same routines, year in, year out?

I’d taken everyone I loved and killed them off in my heart, one by one. I’d long been tending their graves—secretly visiting and mourning during the day, going out and erecting a cross on starry nights, lying inside and awaiting my own death on starless nights. That was my Atlantis, the kingdom I’d built in the name of separation. I’d never before unearthed so much of myself, and so suddenly at that. Inside the world of my tomb, everyone else was dead, I alone survived, and that was the reason for my sorrow. It didn’t take long to spot the largest sarcophagus. It was the one in which Shui Ling had been entombed, and across the front, it read: This woman is madly in love with me. And then reality finally hit me. I had my old schema (which offered a peephole, really) to blame for my decision to leave this woman, to kill her and preserve her body in this sarcophagus, where she’d stay mine forever. I’d evaded the perils of real relationships and robbed her of the ability to change with time. These two prospects had given rise to “my deep-rooted fear of a real separation, which in turn yielded the avoidant mentality that had only hastened it.

Jonathan had become increasingly disillusioned with living in New York. Something along the lines of: the city, New York fucking City, tedious and boring, its charms as illusory as its facade of authenticity. Its lines were too long. Everything was a status symbol and everything cost too much. There were so many on-trend consumers, standing in lines for blocks to experience a fad dessert, gimmicky art exhibits, a new retail concept store. We were all making such uninspired lifestyle choices. We, including me.

The public needs to be shocked and reminded of their own feelings, which everything else in the world seeks to numb. Whatever the purpose of art is, it isn’t to be original for originality’s sake.

Oh my god, Mei Ling is funny. Mei Ling is funny and depressed. My two favourite things in a potential friend. I am beaming. I am floating. Mei Ling, you saucy devil, you sly dog, you also hate this!

The city was so big. It lulled you into thinking that there were so many options, but most of the options had to do with buying things: dinner entrées, cocktails, the cover charge to a nightclub. Then there was the shopping, big chain stores open late, up and down the streets, throbbing with bass-heavy music and lighting. In the Garment District, diminished to a limited span of blocks after apparel manufacture moved overseas, wholesale shops sold fabrics and trinkets imported from China, India, Pakistan. In Jonathan’s apartment, we used to

Not gonna lie, Your Highness. Every time I see you now, I feel anxious and my body tenses, like whoever walks next to you will have something happen to them. So when I see you walking with Ling Wen, my heartbeat quickened. Ling Wen, you best be careful for the next little while.

The seriousness of the epidemic varied depending on which news source you trusted.

What is the internet but collective memory? Anything that had been done before we could do better.

Sometimes, the most graceful way to handle something is to be decidedly ungraceful.

We were brand strategists and property lawyers and human resources specialists and personal finance consultants. We didn't know how to do anything so we Googled everything.

Just because you’re adequately good at something doesn’t mean that’s what you should do.

Ling offered him the last slice of melon. “Sorry. I ate everything. I’m starving. I could eat a horse. And I love horses. Beautiful creatures. But I’d eat one whole. Raw.” “I’d settle for eggs and bacon,” Gabriel said.

We spoke until our voices grew hoarse, deepening and breaking and fissuring. It lasted early into morning. Our bodies curled inward, away from each other, dry leaves at the end of summer.

Ce sper eu e sa fac de ras lumea literara. Sa rad pe cat pot de netrebnicii astia lingusitori, adunati ca intr-un musuroi, care se pupa-n fund unul pe altul si isi ling ranile in timp ce, de fapt, isi pun bete roate reciproc.

She spoke throught her teeth. "Almost, dear. What were the real words you used? The bad words. It's okay to say them again, just this once." I shrugged, "fine. I said'. . . just 'cause Daddy wants you to suck on his ding-a-ling.

In after-years he would tell of an incident that took place at one of their encampments: "We were with the Prophet when a Companion brought in a fledgling that he had caught, and one of the parent birds came and threw itself into the hands of him who had taken its young. I saw men's faces full of wonderment, and the Prophet said: 'Do ye wonder at this bird? Ye have taken its young, and it hath thrown itself down in merciful tenderness unto its young. Yet I swear by God, Your Lord is more merciful unto you than is this bird unto its fledgling. And he told the man to put back the young bird where he had found it. He also said: "God hath a hundred mercies,and one of them hath He sent down amongst jinn and men and cattle and beasts of prey. Thereby they are kind and merciful unto one another, and thereby the wild creature inclineth in tenderness unto her offspring. And ninety-nine mercies hath God reserved unto Himself, that therewith He may show mercy unto His slaves on the day of the Resurrection.

But in Yan Wushi’s eyes, whether it was Xie Ling or Yan Wushi didn’t matter. Good or evil, painful or wonderful—he alone should be special to Shen Qiao. There was no need for some other random person to partake in that special regard.

I can see him now in his cart pulled by two deer, followed by a couple of servants. Once carried enough wine to kill Liu Ling, and the other carried a spade to bury him on the spot – so much for Confucian ceremony. When I came to call, he’d greet me stark naked and I can still hear him scream, “The universe is my dwelling place and my house is my only clothes! Why are you entering into my pants?

And what happens to daughters whose mothers betray them? They don’t become huggable like Sadie, Taiwo thinks. They don’t become giggly, adorable like Ling. They grow shells. Become hardened. They stop being girls. Though they look like girls and act like girls and flirt like girls and kiss like girls—really, they’re generals, commandos at war, riding out at first light to preempt further strikes. With an army behind them, their talents their horsemen, their brilliance and beauty and anything else they may have at their disposal dispatched into battle to capture the castle, to bring back the Honor. Of course it doesn’t work. For they burn down the village in search of the safety they lost, every time, Taiwo knows.

On the other side of graduation was her actual life, the slow narrowing of possibilities that would catch her and freeze her in a vocation, a relationship, a life. She intended to avoid that slow calcification for as long as possible—if only by refraining from making any crucial choices. In other words, she was moving back home.

A qui écris-tu? -A toi. En fait, je ne t'écris pas vraiment, j'écris ce que j'ai envie de faire avec toi... Il y avait des feuilles partout. Autour d'elle, à ses pieds, sur le lit. J'en ai pris une au hasard: "...Pique-niquer, faire la sieste au bord d'une rivière, manger des pêches, des crevettes, des croissants, du riz gluant, nager, danser, m'acheter des chaussures, de la lingerie, du parfum, lire le journal, lécher les vitrines, prendre le métro, surveiller l'heure, te pousser quand tu prends toute la place, étendre le linge, aller à l'Opéra, faire des barbecues, râler parce que tu as oublié le charbon, me laver les dents en même temps que toi, t'acheter des caleçons, tondre la pelouse, lire le journal par-dessus ton épaule, t'empêcher de manger trop de cacahuètes, visiter les caves de la Loire, et celles de la Hunter Valley, faire l'idiote, jacasser, cueillir des mûres, cuisiner, jardiner, te réveiller encore parce que tu ronfles, aller au zoo, aux puces, à Paris, à Londres, te chanter des chansons, arrêter de fumer, te demander de me couper les ongles, acheter de la vaisselle, des bêtises, des choses qui ne servent à rien, manger des glaces, regarder les gens, te battre aux échecs, écouter du jazz, du reggae, danser le mambo et le cha-cha-cha, m'ennuyer, faire des caprices, bouder, rire, t'entortiller autour de mon petit doigt, chercher une maison avec vue sur les vaches, remplir d'indécents Caddie, repeindre un plafond, coudre des rideaux, rester des heures à table à discuter avec des gens intéressants, te tenir par la barbichette, te couper les cheveux, enlever les mauvaises herbes, laver la voiture, voir la mer, t'appeler encore, te dire des mots crus, apprendre à tricoter, te tricoter une écharpe, défaire cette horreur, recueillir des chats, des chiens, des perroquets, des éléphants, louer des bicyclettes, ne pas s'en servir, rester dans un hamac, boire des margaritas à l'ombre, tricher, apprendre à me servir d'un fer à repasser, jeter le fer à repasser par la fenêtre, chanter sous la pluie, fuire les touristes, m'enivrer, te dire toute la vérité, me souvenir que toute vérité n'est pas bonne à dire, t'écouter, te donner la main, récupérer mon fer à repasser, écouter les paroles des chansons, mettre le réveil, oublier nos valises, m'arrêter de courir, descendre les poubelles, te demander si tu m'aimes toujours, discuter avec la voisine, te raconter mon enfance, faire des mouillettes, des étiquettes pour les pots de confiture..." Et ça continuais comme ça pendant des pages et des pages...

The internet is the flattening of time. It is the place where the past and the present exist on one single plane. But proportionally, because the present calcifies into the past, even now, even as we speak, perhaps it is more accurate to say that the internet almost wholly consists of the past. It is the place we go to commune with the past.

I really, really want to catch him. I want to masticate him with my teeth. I want to barf on him and coat him in my stinging acids. I want to unleash a million babies inside him and burden him with their upbringing.

[C]ling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, never to trust prosperity, and always take full not of fortune's habit of behaving just as she pleases, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything it is in her power to do.

All, right then." Henry raised his hand like a sorcerer. "Oh, Ling Chan, Madame Curie of the dream world," he intoned dramatically, barely keeping a straight face. "Sleep hath released thee! Now is the time thou must waketh!" Ling rolled her eyes. "You're an idiot.

I can’t decide which is worse, coming up against the limitations of their souls or the limitations of my love.

His whole business model privileges the already privileged. Those who can spend exorbitant amounts of time and money on self-care and making themselves beautiful.

She says affection is all very well being imagined, like a romantic fancy, but marriage should be based on practical purposes in order to last longer.

I have always lived in the myth of New York more than in its reality. It is what enabled me to live there for so long, loving the idea of something more than the thing itself.

Maybe you don't know that you're wounded until you receive the salve. The salve that makes everything come back.

If you’re lucky enough to find something you’re good at, where people appreciate you, don’t thumb your nose at it. If it’s an issue of salary or benefits, I’m open to discussing it.

As a journalist, I have seen things that have scarred me. I have interacted with people who have haunted me. I have heard things that have pained me. As a result, I have long struggled with the notion of faith. I have said more times than I can count, "If there is a God, how can he allow this to happen? How can he let so many people suffer?" Several years ago, I married a man of strong faith. One day he sent an email to me that said this: "On a street corner I saw a cold, shivering girl in a thin dress, with no hope of a decent meal. I got angry and said to God, 'Why did you permit this? Why don't you do something about it?' God replied, 'I certainly did something about it. I made you." Whenever I start to blame God for what I encounter in the world, I stop and remind myself that maybe it is I who should be doing more. We get so hung up on the notion of success that we can easily forget about being of service to others. I have actually found that giving of oneself is far more fulfilling than gifting oneself.

... but then I was so utterly entranced by our discussion of Einstein's relative theory -" "Relativity," Ling corrected quickly under her breath. "- that I completely lost track of the time. "Funny," Ling whispered. "What?" Henry said. "Lost track of..." Ling shook her head, "never mind.

I tried to observe this feeling of shock, to observe its difference, but in fact I couldn’t detect any difference from all the other days that blurred together on this road trip. I couldn’t point to any deviation from the routine, everyday feeling, which was nothing. I didn’t feel anything.

Children of the Law,’ I said, ‘he is not dead.’ M’ling turned his sharp eyes on me. ‘He has changed his shape - he has changed his body,’ I went on. ‘For a time you will not see him. He is.. there’ - I pointed upward - ‘where he can watch you. You cannot see him. But he can see you. Fear the Law.

Equipped as he is by his very nature for worship, man cannot not worship ; and if his outlook is cut off from the spiritual plane, he will find a “god” to worship at some lower level, thus endowing something relative with what belongs only to the Absolute. Hence the existence today of so many “words to conjure with” like “freedom”, “equality”, “literacy”, “science”, “civilization”, words at the utterance of which a multitude of souls fall prostrate in sub-mental adoration.

Humans are animals too, are they not? When an animal is sick, it goes alone by itself to find a quiet place in the woods and rests, for days, for weeks. Sometimes it cannot overcome its illness, but many times it can. The resting, the quiet, and being alone is enough. This is the way of nature. Nature corrects itself.

Your Highness truly thinks outside the box. There is no one like you in all of history. I am steeped in deep respect.” “Please, that’s too much praise,” Xie Lian said. “It’s not,” Ling Wen said. “At least, I certainly do believe there will never be another person in history able to create a dish called ‘Incorruptible Chastity Meatballs.

A day off meant we could do things we’d always meant to do. Like go to the Botanical Garden, the Frick Collection, or something. Read some fiction. Leisure, the problem with the modern condition was the dearth of leisure. And finally, it took a force of nature to interrupt our routines. We just wanted to hit the reset button. We just wanted to feel flush with time to do things of no quantifiable value, our hopeful side pursuits like writing or drawing or something, something other than what we did for money. Like learn to be a better photographer. And even if we didn’t get around to it on that day, our free day, maybe it was enough just to feel the possibility that we could if we wanted to, which is another way of saying that we wanted to feel young, though many of us were that if nothing else.

Let us return, then, as we do in times of grief, for the sake of pleasure but mostly for the need for relief, to art. Or whatever. To music, to poetry, to paintings and installations, to TV and the movies. But mostly TV and the movies.

Active and Passive Perfection are the Taoist equivalent of the sufi terms Majesty and Beauty.

Enough of this soul-searching. What would be, would be. She could only do what she thought was right.

When you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.

God and the bodhisattvas are useless,” she said. “They only control good people, not bad people.

In this dream, I can’t speak. I try to open my lips, but I have none. I have no mouth, and even if I did, I have no language.

making jokes about “epidemic fashion.

I try not to laugh out loud. What could the girl in front of me possibly know about wanting to be beautiful?

In God’s eyes, a thousand years was like a day, and a day was like a thousand years. In the same way, one person was a universe, and perhaps the universe was a single person

It is that quick, it is that strong, it is that beautiful. And it is also totally impossible.

If jealousy was like a well, I’d never reached the bottom, hadn’t realized the well was a tunnel to the mother of envy, which is awe.

The internet stopped being a place to connect with others or to exchange knowledge, and became a way to perform belonging in the world you had inherited.

I would choose her over any world or life where she didn’t exist.

Ling's smile was big and goofy. Henry whistled. "That smile of yours is a real beauty." Ling shook her head, letting her hair cover her face. "It's stupid." "Right. What I meant to say is, that stupid smile of yours is a real beauty." This time, Ling actually giggled. "The creature laughs!" Henry said. "I'm not such a killjoy!" "Actually, you are. A bit. Hey!

whereas the Arabs were in favour of the man but against the message, the Jews were in favour of the message but against the man. For how could God send a Prophet who was not one of the chosen people? None the less, when the pilgrims brought news of the Prophet to Yathrib, the Jews were interested despite themselves and eagerly questioned them for more details; and when the Arabs of the oasis sensed this eagerness, and when they saw how the monotheistic nature of the message increased the interest of the rabbis tenfold, they could not fail to be impressed, as were the bearers of the tidings themselves.

- The Azan story - The five daily ritual prayers were regularly performed in congregation, and when the time for each prayer came the people would assemble at the site where the Mosque was being built. Everyone judged of the time by the position of the sun in the sky, or by the first signs of its light on the eastern horizon or by the dimming of its glow in the west after sunset; but opinions could differ, and the Prophet felt the need for a means of summoning the people to prayer when the right time had come. At first he thought of appointing a man to blow a horn like that of the Jews, but later he decided on a wooden clapper, ndqiis, such as the Oriental Christians used at that time, and two pieces of wood were fashioned together for that purpose. But they were never destined to be used; for one night a man of Khazraj, 'Abd Allah ibn Zayd, who had been at the Second 'Aqabah, had a dream whieh the next day he recounted to the Prophet: "There passed by me a man wearing two green garments and he carried in his hand a ndqiis, so I said unto him: "0 slave of God, wilt thou sell me that naqusi" "What wilt thou do with it?" he said. "We will summon the people to prayer with it," I answered. "Shall I not show thee a better way?" he said. "What way is that?" I asked, and he answered: "That thou shouldst say: God is most Great, Alldhu Akbar." The man in green repeated this magnification four times, then each of the following twice: I testify that there is no god but God; I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God; come unto the prayer; come unto salvation; God is most Great; and then once again there is no god but God. The Prophet said that this was a true vision, and he told him to go to Bilal, who had an excellent voice, and teach him the words exactly as he had heard them in his sleep. The highest house in the neighbourhood of the Mosque belonged to a woman of the clan of Najjar, and Bilal would come there before every dawn and would sit on the roof waiting for the daybreak. When he saw the first faint light in the east he would stretch out his arms and say in supplication: "0 God I praise Thee, and I ask Thy Help for Quraysh, that they may accept Thy religion." Then he would stand and utter the call to prayer.

if you are an individual employed by a corporation or an institution, he said, then the odds are leveraged against you. The larger party always wins. It can't see you, but it can crush you. And if that's the working world, then I don't want to be a part of it.

If our lives were to be defined by inaccessibility, we could recontextualize that definition as a choice. A distaste for the interests of those who could afford to have interests. Art, which had never been truly democratic to begin with, was now an unattainable interest.

People respond to jealousy in so many different ways. Some people use it as fuel or ammunition. They get more competitive, and they can become very successful with the engine that jealousy gives them. Others aren’t so lucky, and they get mired in pettiness and toxicity. These are often people who feel a good amount of entitlement. There are also those who can’t handle it at all. They withdraw slowly, depressed, unwilling or unable to find a space for themselves. In actuality, there is room for everyone, but the market benefits from an illusion of scarcity.

The future is more exponentially exploding rents. The future is more condo buildings, more luxury housing bought by shell companies of the global wealthy elite. The future is more Whole Foods, aisles of refrigerated cut fruit packaged in plastic containers. The future is more Urban Outfitters, more Sephoras, more Chipotles. The future just wants more consumers.

Serafina, Ava, Ling, and Becca swam inside. Neela followed them, but at the very last second, shield. “I can’t,” she said. “Once I go in, there’s no way out again. This is real. You’re real. All this time, a part of me was hoping you were only a dream.” The witch cocked her head. “Only a dream?” she said mockingly. “Long ago, a great mage dreamed of stealing the gods’ powers. Abbadon was born of that dream. Atlantis died because of it. Now, because of a new dreamer, all the waters of the world may fall. There is nothing more real than a dream.” She nodded at the waters behind Neela. Silt was rising in the distance, a great deal of it. “The merman Traho knows this. He’s coming. If you do not believe me, perhaps he can convince you.

As her aunt stroked her forehead, she thought that, yes, finally she understood what a homecoming was supposed to be. It was to be comfortable in a way you couldn't be elsewhere. It was to be mothered into an oblivious ooze.

It is the thing I have been most afraid of happening, my strictness toward myself calcifying into a lifestyle, my traits ingrown so deeply that my oddness surfaces, apparent to all. What I was afraid of in myself, I liked in Y.

Frau Freud Ladies, for argument’s sake, let us say that I’ve seen my fair share of ding-a-ling, member and jock, of todger and nudger and percy and cock, of tackle, of three-for-a-bob, of willy and winky; in fact, you could say, I’m as au fait with Hunt-the-Salami as Ms M. Lewinsky – equally sick up to here with the beef bayonet, the pork sword, the saveloy, love-muscle, night-crawler, dong, the dick, prick, dipstick and wick, the rammer, the slammer, the rupert, the shlong. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve no axe to grind with the snake in the trousers, the wife’s best friend, the weapon, the python – I suppose what I mean is, ladies, dear ladies, the average penis – not pretty . . . the squint of its envious solitary eye . . . one’s feeling of pity . . .

Écoutant, en effet, les cris d'allégresse qui montaient de la ville, Rieux se souvenait que cette allégresse était toujours menacée. Car il savait ce que cette foule en joie ignorait, et qu'on peut lire dans les livres, que le bacille de la peste ne meurt ni ne disparaît jamais, qu'il peut rester pendant des dizaines d'années endormi dans les meubles et le linge, qu'il attend patiemment dans les chambres, les caves, les malles, les mouchoirs et les paperasses, et que, peut-être, le jour viendrait, où, pour le malheur et l'enseignement des hommes, la peste réveillerait ses rats et les enverrait mourir dans une cité heureuse.

At last, the land of opportunity has stretched an exclusive hand toward me. Is this how my parents felt, landing on the tarmac of a new and unfamiliar country, trying to twist their tongues in a new language? Afraid and lonely, yet powerful?

How about other books, Mrs. McCullough? Any other books with Chinese characters?" Mrs. McCullough bit her lip. "I haven't really looked for them," she admitted. "I hadn't thought about it." "I can save you some time," said Ed Lim. "There really aren't very many. So May Ling has no dolls that look like her, and no books with pictures of people that look like her." Ed Lim paced a few more steps. Nearly two decades later, others would raise these questions, would talk about books as mirrors and windows, and Ed Lim, tired by then, would find himself as frustrated as he was grateful. We've always known, he would think; what took you so long?

Right before sleep when the brain is at its most porous and absorbs everything and weeps chemicals indiscriminately, I must have been deep in his reminiscing, his intricate, lacelike memories inlaid in me. I have been here in another lifetime.

I feel a stab of resentment before reason kicks in. I work to rid myself of the envy I so often felt in grade school and at the Conservatory for those who are half Asian, reminding myself that it doesn’t necessarily guarantee more assimilation.

In sex, in towel wringing, in dishwashing, as in everything else, he was exactly himself. If being exactly yourself meant you had to suffer the loneliness of being unlike anyone else, he seemed not to mind. The insularity of his lifestyle cradled him.

Especially the deep, post-holiday extremes of January and February, when, no longer buoyed by festivities and merriments, you’re confronted with the empty expanse of a new year, discarded resolutions in your wake, resigned to your own inability to change.

The two women did more than resolve a major problem, they went on to form a political alliance and launch a coup. Cixi was twenty-five years old and Empress Zhen a year younger. Facing them were eight powerful men in control of the state machine. The women were well aware of the risk they were taking. A coup was treason, and if it failed the punishment would be the most painful ling-chi, death by a thousand cuts. But they were willing to take the risk. Not only were they determined to save their son and the dynasty, but they also rejected the prescribed life of imperial widows – essentially living out their future years as virtual prisoners in the harem. Choosing to change their own destiny as well as that of the empire, the two women plotted, often with their heads together leaning over a large glazed earthenware water tank, pretending to be appraising their reflections or just talking girls’ talk.

She was a widow, and he stripped himself naked while she went to fetch some of her husband's clothes. But before he could put them on, the police were hammering on the front door with their billy clubs. So the fugitive hid on top of a rafter. When the woman let in the police, though, his oversize testicles hung down in full view." Trout paused again. The police asked the woman where the guy was. The woman said she didn't know what guy they were talking about," said Trout. "One of the cops saw the testicles hanging down from a rafter and asked what they were. She said they were Chinese temple bells. He believed her. He said he 'd always wanted to hear Chinese temple bells. "He gave them a whack with his billy club, but there was no sound. So he hit them again, a lot harder, a whole lot harder. Do you know what the guy on the rafter shrieked?" Trout asked me. I said I didn't. "He shrieked, 'TING-A-LING, YOU SON OF A BITCH!

And I suppose the saddest thing for me, thinking about Oranges, is that I wrote a story I could live with. The other one was too painful. I could not survive it...I can say that there is a character in Oranges who...looks after the little Jeanette and acts like a soft wall against the hurt(ling) force of Mother...I wrote her in because I couldn't bear to leave her out. I wrote her in because I really wished it had been that way. When you are a solitary child you find an imaginary friend. There was no Elsie. There was no one like Elsie. Things were much lonelier than that.

What's so bad about derivation? Isn't everything derived? We just usually call it "in conversation with". Is it even possible to really copy someone? If someone tried their hardest to mimic another person, their unique life experiences and skills would still yield completely different results.

According to an ancient Chinese legend, one day in the year 240 B.C., Princess Si Ling-chi was sitting under a mulberry tree when a silkworm cocoon fell into her teacup. When she tried to remove it, she noticed that the cocoon had begun to unravel in the hot liquid. She handed the loose end to her maidservant and told her to walk. The servant went out of the princess's chamber, and into the palace courtyard, and through the palace gates, and out of the Forbidden City, and into the countryside a half mile away before the cocoon ran out. (In the West, this legend would slowly mutate over three millennia, until it became the story of a physicist and an apple. Either way, the meanings are the same: great discoveries, whether of silk or of gravity, are always windfalls. They happen to people loafing under trees.)

Everyone is jealous, but they find a way through it. Not you. You nursed your envy. Used it to punish yourself. I saw how that toxicity bled into our relationship and made it one of comparison. And because you placed me so high, you could necessarily only be low and constantly wanting. Desperate enough to betray me again and again.

The internet is the flattening of time. It is the place where the last and the present exist on one single plane. But proportionally, because the present calcifies into the past, even now, as we speak, perhaps it is more accurate to say that the internet almost wholly consists of the past. It is the place we go to commune with the past.

All winter long, I had glimpsed his deeply set habits, his regimented schedule. When I left, he would eat a dinner of leftovers, then continue to work until sleep. Everything revolved, to a fault, around work, around his next book project. If I had lived alone, I would have turned out the same way. It is the thing I have been most afraid of happening, my strictness toward myself calcifying into a lifestyle, my traits ingrown so deeply that my oddness surfaces, apparent to all.

I’m repulsed by his display, yet jealous that he’s able to feel so deeply and so publicly. I’ve always wondered if my aversion to this kind of performance is why I’ve never been a good enough artist. I hold back, possessed by self-consciousness, which erects a barrier between me and my audience. But when have women been allowed to be hysterical? Especially in public?

Customers who are fully satisfied require no further satisfaction. They must be sold a version of themselves that is constantly just out of reach. I believe in the same approach for music. Too harmonious, and everyone falls asleep. It’s the sheer grip, that bit of nail, that has always made my playing what it is. That fine line between beauty and ugliness, ripeness and rot, is what keeps an audience listening with held breath.

1. What do you want? This is a deceptively simple question. It can be much more difficult than we realize to give ourselves permission to know and listen to ourselves, to align ourselves with our desires. How often when we answer this question do we say what we want for someone else? I reminded Ling and Jun that they needed to answer this question for themselves. To say I want Jun to stop drinking or I want Ling to stop nagging was to avoid the question. 2. Who wants it? This is our charge and our struggle: to understand our own expectations for ourselves versus trying to live up to others’ expectations of us. My father became a tailor because his father wouldn’t allow him to become a doctor. My father was good at his profession, he was commended and awarded for it—but he was never the one who wanted it, and he always regretted his unlived dream. It’s our responsibility to act in service of our authentic selves. Sometimes this means giving up the need to please others, giving up our need for others’ approval. 3. What are you going to do about it? I believe in the power of positive thinking—but change and freedom also require positive action. Anything we practice, we become better at. If we practice anger, we’ll have more anger. If we practice fear, we’ll have more fear. In many cases, we actually work very hard to ensure that we go nowhere. Change is about noticing what’s no longer working and stepping out of the familiar, imprisoning patterns. 4. When? In Gone with the Wind, my mother’s favorite book, Scarlett O’Hara, when confronted with a difficulty, says, “I’ll think about it tomorrow. … After all, tomorrow is another day.” If we are to evolve instead of revolve, it’s time to take action now.

You were smart, but there were plenty of people in the world who were smarter than you, and cleverness is sometimes the biggest obstacle. Fortunately, you were also diligent and persistent. Diligence clips the wings of cleverness, allowing it to stay firmly on the ground. Persistence grinds away the sharp edges of cleverness, not allowing it to take shortcuts through things. Cleverness thus clipped can more fully penetrate the nature of things.

I told my version – faithful and invented, accurate and misremembered, shuffled in time. I told myself as hero like any shipwreck story. It was a shipwreck, and me thrown on the coastline of humankind, and finding it not altogether human, and rarely kind. And I suppose that the saddest thing for me, thinking about the cover version that is Oranges, is that I wrote a story I could live with. The other one was too painful. I could not survive it. I am often asked, in a tick-box kind of way, what is 'true' and what is not 'true' in Oranges. Did I work in a funeral parlour? Did I drive an ice-cream van? Did we have a Gospel Tent? Did Mrs. Winterson build her own CB radio? Did she really stun tomcats with a catapult? I can't answer these questions. I can say that there is a character in Oranges called Testifying Elsie who looks after the little Jeanette and acts as a soft wall against the hurt(ling) force of Mother. I wrote her in because I couldn't bear to leave her out. I wrote her in because I really wished it had been that way. When you are a solitary child you find an imaginary friend. There was no Elsie. There was no one like Elsie. Things were much lonelier than that.

My screen, that shiny black pool I longed to escape into again and again, even though it filled my mind with the black bile of jealousy and bitterness. The shrinkage. The side-by-side comparison. There was a cultural obsession with the possibility of multiverses, but to me, social media was proof enough of their existence. With a flick of a finger, you could see every life you could have had if only you’d been born smarter or luckier, or made better choices.

He dictates and enforces the rules, rules that only he fully knows and understands. He sees us as subjects, to reward or to punish. He complements you when he wants to control you. He doesn't see you. It doesn't mean he's not a person. It doesn't mean he's not vulnerable. In certain moments, he's just vulnerable enough that you feel sympathy for him. You make excuses for him, often to yourself. You think that if you just work with him a little, that eventually things will get better.

You think this is freedom but I still see the bare, painstakingly cheap way you live, the scrimping and saving, and that is not freedom either. You move in circumscribed circles. You move peripherally, on the margins of everything, pirating movies and eating dollar slices. I used to admire this about you, how fervently you clung to your beliefs—I called it integrity—but five years of watching you live this way has changed me. In this world, money is freedom. Opting out is not a real choice.

Exoterism is a precarious thing by reason of its limits or its exclusions; there comes a moment in history when all kinds of experiences oblige it to modify its claims to exclusiveness, and it is then driven to a choice: escape from these limitations by the upward path, in esoterism, or by the downward path, in a worldly and suicidal liberalism. As one might have expected, the civilizationist exoterism of the West has chosen the downward path, while combining this incidentally with a few esoteric notions which in such conditions remain inoperative.4

So spake our mother Eve, and Adam heard Well pleased, but answered not; for now too nigh Th' Archangel stood, and from the other hill To their fixed station, all in bright array The Cherubim descended; on the ground Gliding meteorous, as ev'ning mist Ris'n from a river o'er the marish glides, And gathers ground fast at the labourer's heel Homeward returning. High in front advanced, The brandished sword of God before them blazed Fierce as a comet; which with torrid heat, And vapour as the Libyan air adust, Began to parch that temperate clime; whereat In either and the hast'ning angel caught Our ling'ring parents, and to th' eastern gate Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast To the subjected plain; then disappeared. They looking back, all th' eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, Waved over by that flaming brand, the gate With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms: Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide: They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way.

I was like everyone else. We all hoped the storm would knock things over, fuck things up enough but not too much. We hoped the damage was bad enough to cancel work the next morning but not so bad that we couldn’t go to brunch instead. Brunch? he echoed skeptically. Okay, maybe not brunch, I conceded. If not brunch, then something else. A day off meant we could do things we’d always meant to do. Like go to the Botanical Garden, the Frick Collection, or something. Read some fiction. Leisure, the problem with the modern condition was the dearth of leisure. And finally, it took a force of nature to interrupt our routines. We just wanted to hit the reset button. We just wanted to feel flush with time to do things of no quantifiable value, our hopeful side pursuits like writing or drawing or something, something other than what we did for money. Like learn to be a better photographer. And even if we didn’t get around to it on that day, our free day, maybe it was enough just to feel the possibility that we could if we wanted to, which is another way of saying that we wanted to feel young, though many of us were that if nothing else.

Go ahead, you guys. I'm not done with Kim yet." Braden made annoying kissing noises while Michelle giggled. "Fine with me," Kim said. He pulled his shirt over his head and threw it to the ground. Sweat glistened on the tight muscles of his chest. Standing under the orange glow of the setting sun, he looked like a golden statue brought to life. "That's not fair." I struggled to swallow past the sudden dryness of my tongue. "That's distracting." He flashed me a grin that ignited a fire low inside me. "That would be the point. Call it a tactical move." Braden used the tree to pull himself up. "Well, boys and girls, I think it's time we moved along. This fight is about to lose its PG-13 rating." Michelle nudged him in the side. "I think it's cute." Something prickled on the back of my neck and I turned to find Quentin staring at me with a look between confusion and pain. As I tried to decipher its meaning, Kim used that moment to snatch my wrist and twist it behind my back. He pulled me in, pinning me against his chest, and lowered his head to place a kiss just below my ear. "I may need to take notes." Braden pretended to open an invisible notebook. "So, what do you call this martial arts style, Kim? Kung fu-ling around? How about jujits-you-some?

In the midst of this imagining, I heard, out from nowhere, the distant sound of sleigh bells. I was going crazy. But there, right in front of me, across the street, was a horse – chestnut, with white spots – trotting down the street. It trotted long purposefully, cheerfully, unhurried, down Broadway. Holding my breath, I managed to find my phone and snap a photo before it disappeared from sight…. I uploaded the photo I just took. I added a caption: If a horse rides through Times Square and no one is there to see it, did it actually happen? If New York is breaking down and no one documents it, is it actually happening? I clicked Publish.

What I didn't say was: I know you too well. You live your life idealistically. You think it's possible to opt out of the system. No regular income, no health insurance. You quit jobs on a dime. You think this is freedom but I still see the bare, painstakingly cheap way you live, the scrimping and saving, and that is not freedom either. You move in circumscribed circles. You move peripherally, on the margins of everything, pirating movies and eating dollar slices. I used to admire this about you, how fervently you clung to your beliefs-- I called it integrity-- but five years of watching you live this way has changed me. In this world, money is freedom. Opting out is not a real choice.

A’ishah knew well that she could not have the Prophet for herself alone. She was one woman, and he was as twenty men. The revelation had said of him: ‘Verily of an immense magnitude is thy nature.’ It was as if he were a whole world in himself, comparable to the outer world and in some ways mysteriously one with it. She had often noticed that if there was a roll of thunder, even in the distance, his face would change colour; the sound of a powerful gust of wind would likewise visibly move him; and on at least one occasion when there was a downpour of rain he bared his head and shoulders and breast and went out into the open so that he might share the delight of the earth in receiving the bounty of heaven directly upon his skin.

In western societies, Asian men are considered the least attractive race of men, uniformly passed off as inadequate, unattractive sexual partners by women of all races. Scientific studies have been conducted in which women of every race identify Asian men as the least desirable, and not only that, on average Asian men need to make more than 75% than men of other races to attract white women which are the pickiest women of all races. Not only that, whereas all women of all races prefer men of their own race, that is, the vast majority of black women prefer black men, white women prefer white men, Mexican women prefer Mexican men, etc, this trend is only reversed in the case of Asian men. The vast majority of Asian women prefer non-Asian men as sexual partners; about 50% of Asian women marry non-Asian men and a whopping 80% of Asian women have had sexual intercourse or are currently cohabiting with non-Asian men, the vast majority of which are white men. Not only that, in many cases, Asian women tend to make more money than their non-Asian sexual partners, which is unheard of for women of other races, since in all other races women prefer to date men who make more money than themselves. Asian men are so inferior not only are non-Asian women rejecting them, even Asian women reject Asian men.

Those who, from the start, are the unfortunate, the downtrodden, the broken – these are the ones, the weakest, who most undermine life amongst men, who introduce the deadliest poison and scepticism into our trust in life, in man, in ourselves. Where can we escape the surreptitious glance imparting a deep sadness, the backward glance of the born misfit revealing how such a man communes with himself, – that glance which is a sigh. ‘If only I were some other person!’ is what this glance sighs: ‘but there’s no hope of that. I am who I am: how could I get away from myself ? And oh – I’m fed up with myself!’ . . . In such a soil of self-contempt, such a veritable swamp, every kind of weed and poisonous plant grows, all of them so small, hidden, dissembling and sugary. Here, the worms of revenge and rancour teem all round; here, the air stinks of things unrevealed and unconfessed; here, the web of the most wicked conspiracy is continually being spun, – the conspiracy of those who suffer against those who are successful and victorious, here, the sight of the victorious man is hated. And what mendacity to avoid admitting this hatred as hatred! What expenditure of big words and gestures, what an art of ‘righteous’ slander! These failures: what noble eloquence flows from their lips! How much sugared, slimy, humble humility swims in their eyes! What do they really want? At any rate, to represent justice, love, wisdom, superiority, that is the ambition of these who are ‘the lowest’, these sick people! And how skilful such an ambition makes them! In particular, we have to admire the counterfeiter’s skill with which the stamp of virtue, the ding-a-ling golden ring of virtue is now imitated. They have taken out a lease on virtue to keep it just for themselves, these weak and incurably sick people, there is no doubt about it: ‘Only we are good and just’ is what they say, ‘only we are the homines bonæ voluntatis’. They promenade in our midst like living reproaches, like warnings to us, – as though health, success, strength, pride and the feeling of power were in themselves depravities for which penance, bitter penance will one day be exacted: oh, how ready they themselves are, in the last resort, to make others penitent, how they thirst to be hangmen! Amongst them we find plenty of vengeance-seekers disguised as judges, with the word justice continually in their mouth like poisonous spittle, pursing their lips and always at the ready to spit at anybody who does not look discontented and who cheerfully goes his own way. Among their number there is no lack of that most disgusting type of dandy, the lying freaks who want to impersonate ‘beautiful souls’ and put their wrecked sensuality on the market, swaddled in verses and other nappies, as ‘purity of the heart’: the type of moral onanists and ‘self-gratifiers.’ The will of the sick to appear superior in any way, their instinct for secret paths, which lead to tyranny over the healthy, – where can it not be found, this will to power of precisely the weakest!

Sometimes a woman would tell me that the feeling gets so strong she runs out of the house and walks through the streets. Or she stays inside her house and cries. Or her children tell her a joke, and she doesn’t laugh because she doesn’t hear it. I talked to women who had spent years on the analyst’s couch, working out their “adjustment to the feminine role,” their blocks to “fulfillment as a wife and mother.” But the desperate tone in these women’s voices, and the look in their eyes, was the same as the tone and the look of other women, who were sure they had no problem, even though they did have a strange feeling of desperation. A mother of four who left college at nineteen to get married told me: I’ve tried everything women are supposed to do—hobbies, gardening, pick-ling, canning, being very social with my neighbors, joining committees, run-ning PTA teas. I can do it all, and I like it, but it doesn’t leave you anything to think about—any feeling of who you are. I never had any career ambitions. All I wanted was to get married and have four children. I love the kids and Bob and my home. There’s no problem you can even put a name to. But I’m desperate. I begin to feel I have no personality. I’m a server of food and a putter-on of pants and a bedmaker, somebody who can be called on when you want something. But who am I? A twenty-three-year-old mother in blue jeans said: I ask myself why I’m so dissatisfied. I’ve got my health, fine children, a lovely new home, enough money. My husband has a real future as an electron-ics engineer. He doesn’t have any of these feelings. He says maybe I need a vacation, let’s go to New York for a weekend. But that isn’t it. I always had this idea we should do everything together. I can’t sit down and read a book alone. If the children are napping and I have one hour to myself I just walk through the house waiting for them to wake up. I don’t make a move until I know where the rest of the crowd is going. It’s as if ever since you were a little girl, there’s always been somebody or something that will take care of your life: your parents, or college, or falling in love, or having a child, or moving to a new house. Then you wake up one morning and there’s nothing to look forward to.