Loose Character Quotes

Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing 1. Never open a book with weather. 2. Avoid prologues. 3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. 4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely. 5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. 6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose." 7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. 8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters. 9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things. 10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. My most important rule is one that sums up the 10. If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.

Listen: you are not yourself, you are crowds of others, you are as leaky a vessel as was ever made, you have spent vast amounts of your life as someone else, as people who died long ago, as people who never lived, as strangers you never met. The usual I we are given has all the tidy containment of the kind of character the realist novel specializes in and none of the porousness of our every waking moment, the loose threads, the strange dreams, the forgettings and misrememberings, the portions of a life lived through others’ stories, the incoherence and inconsistency, the pantheon of dei ex machina and the companionability of ghosts. There are other ways of telling.

Hinduism comes closest to being a nature religion. Rivers, rocks, trees, plants, animals, and birds all play their part, both in mythology and everyday worship. This harmony is most evident in remote places like this, and I hope it does not loose its unique character in the ruthless urban advance.

Ka'b ibn Malik reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Two hungry wolves loose among sheep do not cause as much damage as that caused to a man's deen by his greed for money and reputation.

Character isn't what we think it is or, rather, what we want it to be. It isn't a stable, easily identifiable set of closely related traits, and it only seems that way because of a glitch in the way our brains are organized. Character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context.

In a book, even the real bastards can't hurt you. And you can never loose a friend you make in a book. When you get to a sad part, no one's there to see you cry. Or wonder why you don't cry when you should.

The good characters in my book are loosely based on folks I know. All the bad stuff is made up.

Her own hair was a glory of copper fire that morning, shining like a whisky still, long and loose in gentle flames down her back.

We've written the rough draft of our love together, the draft with loose ends, unfinished edges, mistakes every other page. But every writer knows there's magic in revision, where your work changes from a manuscript into a book. Where intentions, emotions, missed connections coalesce into something complete. It's where what you mean to say becomes what you have said. The characters deepen, the details shine, the prose sparkles. Suddenly, from nothing, you find your story.

I promptly said that life was a random series of beautifully composed vignettes, loosely tied together by a string of characters and time.

Character is what you have when you've lost everything you can loose.

Genius' was a word loosely used by expatriot Americans in Paris and Rome, between the Versailles Peace treaty and the Depression, to cover all varieties of artistic, literary and musical experimentalism. A useful and readable history of the literary Thirties is Geniuses Together by Kay Boyle-Joyce, Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Pound, Eliot and the rest. They all became famous figures but too many of them developed defects of character-ambition, meanness, boastfulness, cowardice or inhumanity-that defrauded their early genius. Experimentalism is a quality alien to genius. It implies doubt, hope, uncertainty, the need for group reassurance; whereas genius works alone, in confidence of a foreknown result. Experiments are useful as a demonstration of how not to write, paint or compose if one's interest lies in durable rather than fashionable results; but since far more self-styled artists are interested in frissons á la mode rather than in truth, it is foolish to protest. Experimentalism means variation on the theme of other people's uncertainties.

I love the library. My own personal book church. Safety. But I'm losing patience with fiction. The challenges and triumphs of fictional characters only make me feel worse about myself. Novels end nicely and neatly with all obstacles overcome. Loose ends tied up. My own story just keeps unraveling with depressing predictability.

The child of nature, when he breaks loose, becomes a madman; but the art scholar, when he breaks loose, becomes a debased character.

BLOODCLAN Clan character: Not so much a Clan as a loosely organized group

[l]ove of kindness, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by foolishness. Love of knowledge, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by loose speculation. Love of honesty, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by harmful candour. Love of straightforwardness, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by misdirected judgment. Love of daring, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by insubordination. And love for strength of character, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by intractability

The best thing to do is create a lagom number of processes. Erlang comes from Sweden, and the word lagom loosely translated means “not too few, not too many, just about right.” Some say that this summarizes the Swedish character.

You can't cure people of their character,' she read. After this he had crossed something out then gone on, 'You can't even change yourself. Experiments in that direction soon deteriorate into bitter, infuriated struggles. You haul yourself over the wall and glimpse new country. Good! You can never again be what you were! But even as you are congratulating yourself you discover tied to one leg the string of Christmas cards, gas bills, air letters and family snaps which will never allow you to be anyone else. A forty-year-old woman holds up a doll she has kept in a cardboard box under a bed since she was a child. She touches its clothes, which are falling to pieces; works tenderly its loose arm. The expression that trembles on the edge of realizing itself in the slackening muscles of her lips and jaw is indescribably sad. How are you to explain to her that she has lost nothing by living the intervening years of her life? How is she to explain that to you?

This was no coincidence. The best short stories and the most successful jokes have a lot in common. Each form relies on suggestion and economy. Characters have to be drawn in a few deft strokes. There's generally a setup, a reveal, a reversal, and a release. The structure is delicate. If one element fails, the edifice crumbles. In a novel you might get away with a loose line or two, a saggy paragraph, even a limp chapter. But in the joke and in the short story, the beginning and end are precisely anchored tent poles, and what lies between must pull so taut it twangs.

loosing character is not easy, behind lots of hard work

Voice is really about letting your characters loose.

In any game, the game itself is the prize, no matter who wins, ultimately both lose the game.

Colored like a sunset tide is a gaze sharply slicing through the reflective glass. A furrowed brow is set much too seriously, as if trying to unfold the pieces of the face that stared back at it. One eyebrow is raised skeptically, always calculating and analyzing its surroundings. I tilt my head trying to see the deeper meaning in my features, trying to imagine the connection between my looks and my character as I stare in the mirror for the required five minutes. From the dark brown hair fastened tightly in a bun, a curl as bright as woven gold comes loose. A flash of unruly hair prominent through the typical browns is like my temper; always there, but not always visible. I begin to grow frustrated with the girl in the mirror, and she cocks her hip as if mocking me. In a moment, her lips curve in a half smile, not quite detectable in sight but rather in feeling, like the sensation of something good just around the corner. A chin was set high in a stubborn fashion, symbolizing either persistence or complete adamancy. Shoulders are held stiff like ancient mountains, proud but slightly arrogant. The image watches with the misty eyes of a daydreamer, glazed over with a sort of trance as if in the middle of a reverie, or a vision. Every once and a while, her true fears surface in those eyes, terror that her life would amount to nothing, that her work would have no impact. Words written are meant to be read, and sometimes I worry that my thoughts and ideas will be lost with time. My dream is to be an author, to be immortalized in print and live forever in the minds of avid readers. I want to access the power in being able to shape the minds of the young and open, and alter the minds of the old and resolute. Imagine the power in living forever, and passing on your ideas through generations. With each new reader, a new layer of meaning is uncovered in writing, meaning that even the author may not have seen. In the mirror, I see a girl that wants to change the world, and change the way people think and reason. Reflection and image mean nothing, for the girl in the mirror is more than a one dimensional picture. She is someone who has followed my footsteps with every lesson learned, and every mistake made. She has been there to help me find a foothold in the world, and to catch me when I fall. As the lights blink out, obscuring her face, I realize that although that image is one that will puzzle me in years to come, she and I aren’t so different after all.

Religion, then, is far from "useless." It humanizes violence; it protects man from his own violence by taking it out of his hands, transforming it into a transcendent and ever-present danger to be kept in check by the appropriate rites appropriately observed and by a modest and prudent demeanor. Religious misinterpretation is a truly constructive force, for it purges man of the suspicions that would poison his existence if he were to remain conscious of the crisis as it actually took place. To think religiously is to envision the city's destiny in terms of that violence whose mastery over man increases as man believes he has gained mastery over it. To think religiously (in the primitive sense) is to see violence as something superhuman, to be kept always at a distance and ultimately renounced. When the fearful adoration of this power begins to diminish and all distinctions begin to disappear, the ritual sacrifices lose their force; their potency is not longer recognized by the entire community. Each member tries to correct the situation individually, and none succeeds. The withering away of the transcendental influence means that there is no longer the slightest difference between a desire to save the city and unbridled ambition, between genuine piety and the desire to claim divine status for oneself. Everyone looks on a rival enterprise as evidence of blasphemous designs. Men set to quarreling about the gods, and their skepticism leads to a new sacrificial crisis that will appear - retrospectively, in the light of a new manifestation of unanimous violence - as a new act of divine intervention and divine revenge. Men would not be able to shake loose the violence between them, to make of it a separate entity both sovereign and redemptory, without the surrogate victim. Also, violence itself offers a sort of respite, the fresh beginning of a cycle of ritual after a cycle of violence. Violence will come to an end only after it has had the last word and that word has been accepted as divine. The meaning of this word must remain hidden, the mechanism of unanimity remain concealed. For religion protects man as long as its ultimate foundations are not revealed. To drive the monster from its secret lair is to risk loosing it on mankind. To remove men's ignorance is only to risk exposing them to an even greater peril. The only barrier against human violence is raised on misconception. In fact, the sacrificial crisis is simply another form of that knowledge which grows grater as the reciprocal violence grows more intense but which never leads to the whole truth. It is the knowledge of violence, along with the violence itself, that the act of expulsion succeeds in shunting outside the realm of consciousness. From the very fact that it belies the overt mythological messages, tragic drama opens a vast abyss before the poet; but he always draws back at the last moment. He is exposed to a form of hubris more dangerous than any contracted by his characters; it has to do with a truth that is felt to be infinitely destructive, even if it is not fully understood - and its destructiveness is as obvious to ancient religious thought as it is to modern philosophers. Thus we are dealing with an interdiction that still applies to ourselves and that modern thought has not yet invalidated. The fact that this secret has been subjected to exceptional pressure in the play [Bacchae] must prompt the following lines: May our thoughts never aspire to anything higher than laws! What does it cost man to acknowledge the full sovereignty of the gods? That which has always been held as true owes its strength to Nature.

I always hated loose ends. Dangling phrases, unopened packages, or a character that inexplicably disappears, like a lone sheet on a clothesline before a vague storm, left to flap in the wind until that same wind carries it away to become the skin of a ghost or a child's tent.

Character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context. The reason that most of us seem to have a consistent character is that most of us are really good at controlling our environment.

Aggressive characters don’t just disregard the truth, they’re at war with it. Truth is the great equalizer, and aggressive personalities always want to maintain a position of advantage. So, they deliberately play very fast and loose with the truth when they’re not flat out lying. They don’t want you to “have their number.” That upsets the balance of power. So, they’re usually about the business of conning and duping you. And because they want to have advantage over you, they often lie in subtle and sophisticated ways, carefully managing your impression of them and manipulating you through deception. Their lying is so pervasive and automatic, they will lie even when the truth would do just fine; except lying keeps the con game going, which they perceive as maintaining the position of advantage. Also, the lying takes so many forms it’s almost impossible to count them all.

When white people envision their perfect home, it always has hardwood floors. In fact, most white people would prefer a dirt floor over wall-to-wall carpeting, because to them it would have the same level of cleanliness and probably fewer germs. White people are petrified of germs, and when they look at a carpet all they can see is everything that has ever been spilled, tracked in, or shaken loose into the carpet fibers. But more disgusting to white people is that wall-to-wall carpeting reminds them of suburban homes, motel rooms, and the horrible apartments that they have visited or lived in over the years. It has no soul. Only germs. Hardwood floors, on the other hand, are easily cleaned and give a sense of character to a place, since they are often the original flooring in older buildings. It is a well-known white fantasy to purchase a home or apartment that has disgusting carpet and then to pull it up to reveal a beautiful hardwood floor underneath.

The kid looked at me as if I’d just told a joke about his mother. ‘I don’t know, Mr Dunne, I’m sure they’re getting the details right now. The point is, your wife is safe.’ Hurray. Kid stole my line. I spotted Rand and Marybeth through the doorway of the room where we’d given our first press conference six weeks ago. They were leaning in to each other, as always, Rand kissing the top of Marybeth’s head, Marybeth nuzzling him back, and I felt such a keen sense of outrage that I almost threw a stapler at them. You two worshipful, adoring assholes created that thing down the hall and set her loose on the world. Lo, how jolly, what a perfect monster! And do they get punished? No, not a single person had come forth to question their characters; they’d experienced nothing but an outpouring of love and support, and Amy would be restored to them and everyone would love her more. My wife was an insatiable sociopath before. What would she become now? Step carefully, Nick, step very carefully.

Loving him with the love of God Affirming him daily, believing in who he will become Understanding his limitations and learning to be patient with his disability Never passing on guilt to him for being limited Changing his heart gradually through training in character and inner strength Holding expectations loosely and leaving him in the hands of God

In your reading, find books to improve your color sense, your sense of shape and size in the world. Why not learn about the senses of smell and hearing? Your characters must sometimes use their noses and ears or they may miss half the smells and sounds of the city, and all of the sounds of the wilderness still loose in the trees and on the lawns of the city.

Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion. PROVERBS 11:22 Heavenly Father, I fear I haven’t been representing the dignity that You’ve given me. You have called me to be a woman of noble character who is respected. You have instructed me to present myself with beautiful modesty and a wise spirit. Lord, forgive me for trading in Your admirable qualities for worldly trends. My culture has glamorized provocative women with loose morals. I know You have higher standards for us because You cherish us more than we can understand. You’ve placed Your beauty inside of me, that I wouldn’t allow it to be slandered or trampled on. It breaks Your heart to see Your precious daughters throwing themselves at guys, accepting crude comments as compliments, and drawing inappropriate attention to their bodies. You created me for more than that, Lord. Remind me of my worth. Make my heart feel instantly sick the moment I present myself with less value than You’ve given me. You have crowned me as Your daughter and princess; You have inscribed Your royalty on my heart.

The Germans have a word for this condition: Zerrissenheit—loosely, “falling-to-pieces-ness.” This is the loss of internal coherence that can come from living a multitasking, pulled-in-a-hundred-directions existence. This is what Kierkegaard called “the dizziness of freedom.” When the external constraints are loosened, when a person can do what he wants, when there are a thousand choices and distractions, then life can lose coherence and direction if there isn’t a strong internal structure.

In interviews with riders that I've read and in conversations that I've had with them, the same thing always comes up: the best part was the suffering. In Amsterdam I once trained with a Canadian rider who was living in Holland. A notorious creampuff: in the sterile art of track racing he was Canadian champion in at least six disciplines, but when it came to toughing it out on the road he didn't have the character. The sky turned black, the water in the ditch rippled, a heavy storm broke loose. The Canadian sat up straight, raised his arms to heaven and shouted: 'Rain! Soak me! Ooh, rain, soak me, make me wet!' How can that be: suffering is suffering, isn't it? In 1910, Milan—San Remo was won by a rider who spent half an hour in a mountain hut, hiding from a snowstorm. Man, did he suffer! In 1919, Brussels—Amiens was won by a rider who rode the last forty kilometers with a flat front tire. Talk about suffering! He arrived at 11.30 at night, with a ninety-minute lead on the only other two riders who finished the race. The day had been like night, trees had whipped back and forth, farmers were blown back into their barns, there were hailstones, bomb craters from the war, crossroads where the gendarmes had run away, and riders had to climb onto one another's shoulders to wipe clean the muddied road signs. Oh, to have been a rider then. Because after the finish all the suffering turns into memories of pleasure, and the greater the suffering, the greater the pleasure. That is Nature's payback to riders for the homage they pay her by suffering. Velvet pillows, safari parks, sunglasses: people have become woolly mice. They still have bodies that can walk for five days and four nights through a desert of snow, without food, but they accept praise for having taken a one-hour bicycle ride. 'Good for you.' Instead of expressing their gratitude for the rain by getting wet, people walk around with umbrellas. Nature is an old lay with few suitors these days, and those who wish to make use of her charms she rewards passionately. That's why there are riders. Suffering you need; literature is baloney.

Sometimes I think it’s my fate to meet more and more people and that if it weren’t, my life would be less chaotic. Virginia Woolf wrote that books continue each other and it seems to me that people continue each other too, spring ungodlike out of the heads and bodies of others, not clones but continuities, with ties that bind, loosely or closely. Some characters seem to fit better in some scenes than in others, have more to do with the space around them and the actors who preceded their appearance. Of course then there are the discontinuities…

This was no coincidence. The best short stories and the most successful jokes have a lot in common. Each form relies on suggestion and economy. Characters have to be drawn in a few deft strokes. There's generally a setup, a reveal, a reversal, and a release. The structure is delicate. If one element fails, the edifice crumbles. In a novel you might get away with a loose line or two, a saggy paragraph, even a limp chapter. But in the joke and in the short story, the beginning and end are precisely anchored tent poles, and what lies between must pull so taut it twangs. I'm not sure if there is any pattern to these selections. I did not spend a lot of time with those that seemed afraid to tell stories, that handled plot as if it were a hair in the soup, unwelcome and embarrassing. I also tended not to revisit stories that seemed bleak without having earned it, where the emotional notes were false, or where the writing was tricked out or primped up with fashionable devices stressing form over content. I do know that the easiest and the first choices were the stories to which I had a physical response. I read Jennifer Egan's "Out of Body" clenched from head to toe by tension as her suicidal, drug-addled protagonist moves through the Manhattan night toward an unforgivable betrayal. I shed tears over two stories of childhood shadowed by unbearable memory: "The Hare's Mask," by Mark Slouka, with its piercing ending, and Claire Keegan's Irishinflected tale of neglect and rescue, "Foster." Elizabeth McCracken's "Property" also moved me, with its sudden perception shift along the wavering sightlines of loss and grief. Nathan Englander's "Free Fruit for Young Widows" opened with a gasp-inducing act of unexpected violence and evolved into an ethical Rubik's cube. A couple of stories made me laugh: Tom Bissell's "A Bridge Under Water," even as it foreshadows the dissolution of a marriage and probes what religion does for us, and to us; and Richard Powers's "To the Measures Fall," a deftly comic meditation on the uses of literature in the course of a life, and a lifetime. Some stories didn't call forth such a strong immediate response but had instead a lingering resonance. Of these, many dealt with love and its costs, leaving behind indelible images. In Megan Mayhew Bergman's "Housewifely Arts," a bereaved daughter drives miles to visit her dead mother's parrot because she yearns to hear the bird mimic her mother's voice. In Allegra Goodman's "La Vita Nuova," a jilted fiancée lets her art class paint all over her wedding dress. In Ehud Havazelet's spare and tender story, "Gurov in Manhattan," an ailing man and his aging dog must confront life's necessary losses. A complicated, only partly welcome romance blossoms between a Korean woman and her demented

Do you know that when one who has influence with youth- be he teacher, leader or parent- seriously weakens the foundations upon which a young person has built, by faith-destroying challenges the youngster is not yet equipped to meet, he fashions a disciple who has been effectively cut loose from fundamentals at a time when he needs most to rely on them? The challenger may himself be a moral, educated, well-meaning person of integrity, doing what he does in the name of honesty and truth. His own character may have been formed in an atmosphere of faith and conviction which, through his influence, he may now help to destroy in his young follower. "Disenchanted" himself in his mature years, he turns his powers on an immature mind and leaves it ready prey for nostrums and superstitions and behavior he himself would disdain.

Whether an activity is performed in private or in public is by no means a matter of indifference. Obviously, the character of the public realm must change in accordance with the activities admitted into it, but to a large extent the activity itself changes its own nature too. The laboring activity, though under all circumstances connected with the life process in its most elementary, biological sense, remained stationary for thousands of years, imprisoned in the eternal recurrence of the life process to which it was tied. The admission of labor to public stature, far from eliminating its character as a process—which one might have expected, remembering that bodies politic have always been designed for permanence and their laws always understood as limitations imposed upon movement—has, on the contrary, liberated this process from its circular, monotonous recurrence and transformed it into a swiftly progressing development whose results have in a few centuries totally changed the whole inhabited world. The moment laboring was liberated from the restrictions imposed by its banishment into the private realm—and this emancipation of labor was not a consequence of the emancipation of the working class, but preceded it—it was as though the growth element inherent in all organic life had completely overcome and overgrown the processes of decay by which organic life is checked and balanced in nature’s household. The social realm, where the life process has established its own public domain, has let loose an unnatural growth, so to speak, of the natural; and it is against this growth, not merely against society but against a constantly growing social realm, that the private and intimate, on the one hand, and the political (in the narrower sense of the word), on the other, have proved incapable of defending themselves. What

All stories come to an end. That moment when we sigh and close the book, perhaps sit back in our chair and rest our palm over the cover, is met with quixotic emotions. On the one hand, we're satisfied if the author successfully tied up loose ends, turned a memorable phrase and rewarded the hero's moral choice with his heart's desire. Yet we're also saddened that the adventure is over. Sometimes when we see that we only have a few pages left we slow down, savoring each word, staving off the inevitable. The characters we've come to know and love are no longer part of our lives. This can leave us with a certain longing. Perhaps we'll open the book again and skim through it, searching our favorite passages to kindle again those powerful emotions. But the passion is never stirred quite as strong the second time around. ...We stall, frantically savoring each moment. The sun shines brighter, the smiles appear more tender and we listen for words of love with an urgency that would be poignant. ...Isn't life grand?

This is simply the long history of the origin of responsibility. That task of breeding an animal which can make promises, includes, as we have already grasped, as its condition and preliminary, the more immediate task of first making man to a certain extent, necessitated, uniform, like among his like, regular, and consequently calculable. The immense work of what I have called, "morality of custom", the actual work of man on himself during the longest period of the human race, his whole prehistoric work, finds its meaning, its great justification (in spite of all its innate hardness, despotism, stupidity, and idiocy) in this fact: man, with the help of the morality of customs and of social strait-waistcoats, was made genuinely calculable. If, however, we place ourselves at the end of this colossal process, at the point where the tree finally matures its fruits, when society and its morality of custom finally bring to light that to which it was only the means, then do we find as the ripest fruit on its tree the sovereign individual, that resembles only himself, that has got loose from the morality of custom, the autonomous "super-moral" individual (for "autonomous" and "moral" are mutually-exclusive terms),—in short, the man of the personal, long, and independent will, competent to promise, and we find in him a proud consciousness (vibrating in every fibre), of what has been at last achieved and become vivified in him, a genuine consciousness of power and freedom, a feeling of human perfection in general. And this man who has grown to freedom, who is really competent to promise, this lord of the free will, this sovereign—how is it possible for him not to know how great is his superiority over everything incapable of binding itself by promises, or of being its own security, how great is the trust, the awe, the reverence that he awakes—he "deserves" all three—not to know that with this mastery over himself he is necessarily also given the mastery over circumstances, over nature, over all creatures with shorter wills, less reliable characters? The "free" man, the owner of a long unbreakable will, finds in this possession his standard of value: looking out from himself upon the others, he honours or he despises, and just as necessarily as he honours his peers, the strong and the reliable (those who can bind themselves by promises),—that is, every one who promises like a sovereign, with difficulty, rarely and slowly, who is sparing with his trusts but confers honour by the very fact of trusting, who gives his word as something that can be relied on, because he knows himself strong enough to keep it even in the teeth of disasters, even in the "teeth of fate,"—so with equal necessity will he have the heel of his foot ready for the lean and empty jackasses, who promise when they have no business to do so, and his rod of chastisement ready for the liar, who already breaks his word at the very minute when it is on his lips. The proud knowledge of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility, the consciousness of this rare freedom, of this power over himself and over fate, has sunk right down to his innermost depths, and has become an instinct, a dominating instinct—what name will he give to it, to this dominating instinct, if he needs to have a word for it? But there is no doubt about it—the sovereign man calls it his conscience.

In the passion of love, for instance, a cause unknown to the sufferer, but which is doubtless the spring-flood of hereditary instincts accidentally let loose, suddenly checks the young man's gayety, dispels his random curiosity, arrests perhaps his very breath; and when he looks for a cause to explain his suspended faculties, he can find it only in the presence or image of another being, of whose character, possibly, he knows nothing and whose beauty may not be remarkable; yet that image pursues him everywhere, and he is dominated by an unaccustomed tragic earnestness and a new capacity for suffering and joy. If the passion be strong there is no previous interest or duty that will be remembered before it; if it be lasting the whole life may be reorganized by it, it may impose new habits, other manners, and another religion. Yet what is the root of all this idealism? An irrational instinct, normally intermittent, such as all dumb creatures share, which has here managed to dominate a human soul and to enlist all the mental powers in its more or less permanent service, upsetting their usual equilibrium. This madness, however, inspires method; and for the first time, perhaps, in his life, the man has something to live for.

Nonconformity is an affront to those in the mainstream. Our impulse is to dismiss this lifestyle, create reasons why it can’t work, why it doesn’t even warrant consideration. Why not? Living outdoors is cheap and can be afforded by a half year of marginal employment. They can’t buy things that most of us have, but what they lose in possessions, they gain in freedom. In Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, lead character Larry returns from the First World War and declares that he would like to “loaf.”23 The term “loafing” inadequately describes the life he would spend traveling, studying, searching for meaning, and even laboring. Larry meets with the disapproval of peers and would-be mentors: “Common sense assured…that if you wanted to get on in this world, you must accept its conventions, and not to do what everybody else did clearly pointed to instability.” Larry had an inheritance that enabled him to live modestly and pursue his dreams. Larry’s acquaintances didn’t fear the consequences of his failure; they feared his failure to conform. I’m no maverick. Upon leaving college I dove into the workforce, eager to have my own stuff and a job to pay for it. Parents approved, bosses gave raises, and my friends could relate. The approval, the comforts, the commitments wound themselves around me like invisible threads. When my life stayed the course, I wouldn’t even feel them binding. Then I would waiver enough to sense the growing entrapment, the taming of my life in which I had been complicit. Working a nine-to-five job took more energy than I had expected, leaving less time to pursue diverse interests. I grew to detest the statement “I am a…” with the sentence completed by an occupational title. Self-help books emphasize “defining priorities” and “staying focused,” euphemisms for specialization and stifling spontaneity. Our vision becomes so narrow that risk is trying a new brand of cereal, and adventure is watching a new sitcom. Over time I have elevated my opinion of nonconformity nearly to the level of an obligation. We should have a bias toward doing activities that we don’t normally do to keep loose the moorings of society. Hiking the AT is “pointless.” What life is not “pointless”? Is it not pointless to work paycheck to paycheck just to conform? Hiking the AT before joining the workforce was an opportunity not taken. Doing it in retirement would be sensible; doing it at this time in my life is abnormal, and therein lay the appeal. I want to make my life less ordinary.

It takes no skill to find a bald eagle. You look for flat rabbits on country roads. Wait a while and the national emblem will appear, menace anything that got there first, and plunge his majestic head deep in a mass of entrails. Alternatively, you can follow some industrious hawk through swamp or bottomland forest until he dispatches a squirrel; an eagle is likely to descend, savage the smaller bird, and steal his prize. The eagle can hunt, of course; he just prefers not to. Benjamin Franklin called him a bird of bad moral character. It takes no skill to find the nest, either. Look for a shipwreck in a tree, layered in feces . . . The likeliest impediment to (the eagles’) reproductive success was a human observer bungling around twice a day, but their welfare was almost incidental anyway. The point was for patriotic human hearts to swell with pride on outdoor weekends, and convincing replicas would have sufficed; the compulsive monitoring was not good husbandry, just an expression of national guilt. I did what I was paid for. Privately I sided with the furred and feathered residents of the area who must have wondered why humans were loosing winged hyenas in their midst . . . They’re glorified vultures. An apex predator that never hunts. Absurd.

Theme is not imposed on the story but evoke from within it--initally an intuitive but finally an intellectual act on the part of the writer. The writer muses on the story idea to determine what it is in it that has attracted him, why it seems to him worth telling. Having determined that what interests him and what chiefly concerns the major character is the idea of nakedness (physical, psychological, perhaps spiritual), he toys with various ways of telling his story, thinks about what has been said before about nakedness (for instance, in traditional Christianity and pagan myth), broods on every image that occuurs to him, turning it over and over, puzzling on it, hunting for connections, trying to figure out--before he writes, while he writes, and in the process of revisions, what it is he really thinks. (How naked should we be or can we be? Is openness, vulnerability, a virtue or a defect? To what extent, with what important qualifications?) He finds himself bringing in black strippers, perhaps an Indian stripper, supported by imagery that recalls primitive nakedness. And so on. Only when he thinks out his story in this way does he achieve not just an alternative reality or, loosely, an imitation of nature, but true, firm art--fiction as serious thought.

So Beaujolais is like this hybrid---a red that drinks like a white, we even put a chill on it. Maybe that's why it has trouble, it doesn't quite fit. No one takes Gamay seriously---too light, too simple, lacks structure. But..." I swirled the glass and it was so... optimistic. "I like to think it's pure. Fleurie sound like flowers doesn't it?" "Girls love flowers," she said judiciously. "They do." I put her wine down, then moved it two inches closer to her, where I knew the field of her focus began. "None of that means anything. It just speaks to me. I feel invited to enjoy it. I get roses." "Child, what is wrong with you? There's no roses in the damn wine. Wine is wine and it makes you loose and helps you dance. That's it. The way you kids talk, like everything is life or death." "It's not?" "You ain't even learned about living yet!" I thought about buying wine. About how I would scan the different Beaujolais crus at the liquor store---the Morgan, the Côte de Brouilly, the Fleurie would be telling me a story. I would see different flowers when I looked at the labels. I thought about the wild strawberries dropped off from Mountain Sweet Berry Farm just that afternoon and how the cooks laid out paper towels and sheet trays in the kitchen, none of them touching, as if they would disintegrate, their fragrance euphoric.

He had brought her to this house, “and,” continued the priest, while genuine tears rose to his eyes, “here, too, he shelters me, his old tutor, and Agnes, a superannuated servant of his father’s family. To our sustenance, and to other charities, I know he devotes three-parts of his income, keeping only the fourth to provide himself with bread and the most modest accommodations. By this arrangement he has rendered it impossible to himself ever to marry: he has given himself to God and to his angel-bride as much as if he were a priest, like me.” The father had wiped away his tears before he uttered these last words, and in pronouncing them, he for one instant raised his eyes to mine. I caught this glance, despite its veiled character; the momentary gleam shot a meaning which struck me. These Romanists are strange beings. Such a one among them—whom you know no more than the last Inca of Peru, or the first Emperor of China—knows you and all your concerns; and has his reasons for saying to you so and so, when you simply thought the communication sprang impromptu from the instant’s impulse: his plan in bringing it about that you shall come on such a day, to such a place, under such and such circumstances, when the whole arrangement seems to your crude apprehension the ordinance of chance, or the sequel of exigency. Madame Beck’s suddenly-recollected message and present, my artless embassy to the Place of the Magi, the old priest accidentally descending the steps and crossing the square, his interposition on my behalf with the bonne who would have sent me away, his reappearance on the staircase, my introduction to this room, the portrait, the narrative so affably volunteered—all these little incidents, taken as they fell out, seemed each independent of its successor; a handful of loose beads: but threaded through by that quick-shot and crafty glance of a Jesuit-eye, they dropped pendent in a long string, like that rosary on the prie-dieu. Where lay the link of junction, where the little clasp of this monastic necklace? I saw or felt union, but could not yet find the spot, or detect the means of connection.

Day dreamers often can become night writers...When young I didn't toy with the concept of a glass half full or half empty. I was blessed if I had a glass at all and if it had something in it...If you only water the weeds in your garden what will you eventually harvest?...You will continue to loose a lot of your future potential if you keep living in the past...When writing I'm glad to be able to give my readers characters they can bond with...An author staring out a window is busy writing. He's thinking about how to say what has never been said before...Is there honesty in written fiction? Often the answer is yes if you know where to look. Try the author's heart...I had to care more about where I was going rather than where I had been. Where I was going would have been impossible if I'd chosen not to do it...I chose to not allow circumstances to decide my future. Indeed I am what I chose to become...A writer can communicate his soul and then edit to soften what he intended, sometimes using metaphors as a way to more gently convey a truth. (Walt Biondi)

May 1915. The Australians, who were about to go into action for the first time in trying circumstances, were cheerful, quiet and confident. There was no sign of nerves nor of excitement. As the moon waned, the boats were swung out, the Australians received their last instructions, and men who six months ago had been living peaceful civilian lives had begun to disembark on a strange and unknown shore in a strange land to attack an enemy of a different race. The boats had almost reached the beach, when a party of Turks, entrenched ashore, opened a terrible fusillade with rifles and a Maxim. Fortunately, the majority of the bullets went high. The Australians rose to the occasion. Not waiting for orders, or for the boats to reach the shore, they sprang into the sea, and, forming a sort of rough line, rushed at the enemy’s trenches. Their magazines were not charged, so they just went in with cold steel. It was over in a minute. The Turks in the first trench were either bayoneted or they ran away, and their Maxim was captured. Then the Australians found themselves facing an almost perpendicular cliff of loose sandstone, covered with thick shrubbery. Somewhere, half-way up, the enemy had a second trench, strongly held, from which they poured a terrible fire on the troops below and the boats pulling back to the destroyers for the second landing party. Here was a tough proposition to tackle in the darkness, but those colonials, practical above all else, went about it in a practical way. They stopped for a few minutes to pull themselves together, got rid of their packs, and charged their magazines. Then this race of athletes proceeded to scale the cliffs without responding to the enemy’s fire. They lost some men, but did not worry. In less than a quarter of an hour the Turks were out of their second position, either bayoneted or fleeing. But then the Australasians, whose blood was up, instead of entrenching, rushed northwards and eastwards, searching for fresh enemies to bayonet. It was difficult country to entrench. Therefore they preferred to advance.

April 13 MORNING “A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me.” — Song of Solomon 1:13 MYRRH may well be chosen as the type of Jesus on account of its preciousness, its perfume, its pleasantness, its healing, preserving, disinfecting qualities, and its connection with sacrifice. But why is He compared to “a bundle of myrrh”? First, for plenty. He is not a drop of it, He is a casket full. He is not a sprig or flower of it, but a whole bundle. There is enough in Christ for all my necessities; let me not be slow to avail myself of Him. Our well-beloved is compared to a “bundle” again, for variety: for there is in Christ not only the one thing needful, but in “Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,” everything needful is in Him. Take Jesus in His different characters, and you will see a marvellous variety — Prophet, Priest, King, Husband, Friend, Shepherd. Consider Him in His life, death, resurrection, ascension, second advent; view Him in His virtue, gentleness, courage, self-denial, love, faithfulness, truth, righteousness — everywhere He is a bundle of preciousness. He is a “bundle of myrrh” for preservation — not loose myrrh tied up, myrrh to be stored in a casket. We must value Him as our best treasure; we must prize His words and His ordinances; and we must keep our thoughts of Him and knowledge of Him as under lock and key, lest the devil should steal anything from us. Moreover, Jesus is a “bundle of myrrh” for speciality. The emblem suggests the idea of distinguishing, discriminating grace. From before the foundation of the world, He was set apart for His people; and He gives forth His perfume only to those who understand how to enter into communion with Him, to have close dealings with Him. Oh! blessed people whom the Lord hath admitted into His secrets, and for whom He sets Himself apart. Oh! choice and happy who are thus made to say, “A bundle of myrrh is my wellbeloved unto me.

I’d rather be a heart, keeping my body alive and well although I tend to get lost sometimes in the mix of so many emotions, yet there is still a certain beauty in loosing yourself. I have a mind with intellect and intelligence but my brain does not consist of compassion and character, so I will live this life with both side by side, but my beating heart will lead the way.

I write what I call “Factual Fiction,” whereby my plot, story and characters are not loosely set in history but intrinsically tied to real events, people and places.

This would enable them to develop those noneconomic virtues—intelligence, unselfishness, courage, decency—which he loosely defined as “character.” Character determined the worth of the individual, and “what is true of the individual is also true of the nation.

What matters is the general picture of the domestic environment, and this I have indicated, - vulgarity of character, love of glittering appearances, disorder, looseness of will, mastery of caprice, and more.

I've always been a pantser when I write. Planning detail with what happens at every turn isn't me. I'm not a plotter. I like to make the characters and turn them loose in the scenario and the world I create for them.

It is also customary to supply a name when introducing a new character, but the name of a world is a more elusive creature than you might suspect. Consider how many names your own Earth has been assigned, in how many different languages—Erde, Midgard, Tellus, Ard, Uwa—and how absurd it would be for a foreign scholar to arrive and give the entire planet a single title. Worlds are too complex, too beautifully fractured, to be named. But for the sake of convenience we may loosely translate one of this world’s names: the Written. If this seems an odd name for a world, understand that in the Written, words themselves have power.

Linnaeus positioned Homo sapiens europaeus at the top of the racial hierarchy, making up the most superior character traits. “Vigorous, muscular. Flowing blond hair. Blue eyes. Very smart, inventive. Covered by tight clothing. Ruled by law.” He made up the middling racial character of Homo sapiens asiaticus: “Melancholy, stern. Black hair; dark eyes. Strict, haughty, greedy. Covered by loose garments. Ruled by opinion.” He granted the racial character of Homo sapiens americanus a mixed set of atttributes: “Ill-tempered, impassive. Thick straight black hair; wide nostrils; harsh face; beardless.

I can feel the meta layers of reality vibrating so I know we’re on track. As a bad boy character, this kind of thing is bound to happen, and you’re bound to be both disgusted and impressed. The thing is, this isn’t just a romance, it’s also a parody, and a loose one. Chuck has very literal understanding of the source material.

Here is why the wellbeing economy comes at the right time. At the international level there have been some openings, which can be exploited to turn the wellbeing economy into a political roadmap. The first was the ratification of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. The SDGs are a loose list of 17 goals, ranging from good health and personal wellbeing to sustainable cities and communities as well as responsible production and consumption. They are a bit scattered and inconsistent, like most outcomes of international negotiations, but they at least open up space for policy reforms. For the first time in more than a century, the international community has accepted that the simple pursuit of growth presents serious problems. Even when it comes at high speed, its quality is often debatable, producing social inequalities, lack of decent work, environmental destruction, climate change and conflict. Through the SDGs, the UN is calling for a different approach to progress and prosperity. This was made clear in a 2012 speech by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who explicitly connected the three pillars of sustainable development: ‘Social, economic and environmental wellbeing are indivisible.’82 Unlike in the previous century, we now have a host of instruments and indicators that can help politicians devise different policies and monitor results and impacts throughout society. Even in South Africa, a country still plagued by centuries of oppression, colonialism, extractive economic systems and rampant inequality, the debate is shifting. The country’s new National Development Plan has been widely criticised because of the neoliberal character of the main chapters on economic development. Like the SDGs, it was the outcome of negotiations and bargaining, which resulted in inconsistencies and vagueness. Yet, its opening ‘vision statement’ is inspired by a radical approach to transformation. What should South Africa look like in 2030? The language is uplifting: We feel loved, respected and cared for at home, in community and the public institutions we have created. We feel understood. We feel needed. We feel trustful … We learn together. We talk to each other. We share our work … I have a space that I can call my own. This space I share. This space I cherish with others. I maintain it with others. I am not self-sufficient alone. We are self-sufficient in community … We are studious. We are gardeners. We feel a call to serve. We make things. Out of our homes we create objects of value … We are connected by the sounds we hear, the sights we see, the scents we smell, the objects we touch, the food we eat, the liquids we drink, the thoughts we think, the emotions we feel, the dreams we imagine. We are a web of relationships, fashioned in a web of histories, the stories of our lives inescapably shaped by stories of others … The welfare of each of us is the welfare of all … Our land is our home. We sweep and keep clean our yard. We travel through it. We enjoy its varied climate, landscape, and vegetation … We live and work in it, on it with care, preserving it for future generations. We discover it all the time. As it gives life to us, we honour the life in it.83 I could have not found better words to describe the wellbeing economy: caring, sharing, compassion, love for place, human relationships and a profound appreciation of what nature does for us every day. This statement gives us an idea of sufficiency that is not about individualism, but integration; an approach to prosperity that is founded on collaboration rather than competition. Nowhere does the text mention growth. There’s no reference to scale; no pompous images of imposing infrastructure, bridges, stadiums, skyscrapers and multi-lane highways. We make the things we need. We, as people, become producers of our own destiny. The future is not about wealth accumulation, massive

I see you’ve been paying attention to my pirate tricks.” “Indeed I have,” she said, looking down into his handsome face and twinkling blue eyes. She didn’t want to think about the next chapter, not now, not yet. But there it was, staring up at her, framed in tousled blond hair and five o’clock shadow. This could be your life, Kerry McCrae. Just say yes. “In other news,” she said, sliding off him to sit on the side of the bed, drawing the sheet around her, trying like hell to push those thoughts away for now, “we need to pull anchor before the sun gets any lower.” “Aw, because that would be…bad?” he said, tugging at the sheet. She couldn’t help it; she laughed, and the glow simply refused to fade. She tugged the sheet free from his grasp and stood, albeit on wobbly legs for a moment or two. Summoning her most haughty pirate queen manner, she made a show of draping the end of the sheet over her shoulder and shaking loose her bed-head curls, knowing she likely looked more like Medusa than anything remotely regal. “Your merry band of one here is going topside to get us underway.” She made the mistake of looking at him, sprawled in all his gorgeous, naked indolence across white sheets, beams of the lowering sun streaking across his golden skin, making it look even more burnished than it already was. Dear Lord, she wanted to have him all over again. Even hungrier now that she knew what awaited her when she did. Taking full advantage of her hesitation, he propped his arms behind his head and crossed his legs at the ankles, a grin equally as indolent as his pose sliding across his handsome face. “You were saying, my queen?” She scooped a pillow off the floor and threw it at him. “Incorrigible.” Chuckling, he caught the pillow with one hand and tucked it behind his head. “Well, I’m pretty sure that’s near the top of the list of preferred character traits in the pirate handbook.” She laughed, then dodged to the door when he made a sudden, nimble grab for the edges of the sheet.

as St. Francis of Assisi said, “wear the world like a loose garment, which touches us in a few places and there lightly.

Jade does not loose its brilliance even if it breaks and the bamboo does not bend even if it burns.

In an ideal world, the only character encoding (or, loosely, “character set”) that you’d ever see would be UTF-8 (utf-8), and Latin-1 (iso-8859-1) for all those legacy documents. However, the encodings mentioned below exist and can be found on the Web.

In the Declaration of Independence, freedom comes right after equality. For Reagan and the narrative of Free America, it meant freedom from government and bureaucrats. It meant the freedom to run a business without regulation, to pay workers whatever wage the market would bear, to break a union, to pass all your wealth on to your children, to buy out an ailing company with debt and strip it for assets, to own seven houses—or to go homeless. But a freedom that gets rid of all obstructions is impoverished, and it degrades people. Real freedom is closer to the opposite of breaking loose. It means growing up, and acquiring the ability to participate fully in political and economic life. The obstructions that block this ability are the ones that need to be removed. Some are external: institutions and social conditions. Others are embedded in your character and get in the way of governing yourself, thinking for yourself, and even knowing what is true. These obstructions crush the individuality that freedom lovers cherish, making them conformist, submissive, a group of people all shouting the same thing—easy marks for a demagogue.

Light in the room faded away like an actor exiting a stage on his role’s completion, and Dusk, the next character, took her place assuring his audience a stunning performance. Sifting through a few loosely arranged pages for a few hours, Bianca solved the jigsaw puzzle called Madeline.

The breeze through the metal-framed window that had been cool in the earlier evening was suddenly cold. I stood to close the window, and then poured a glass of water from the clay pitcher on my nightstand. Khader accepted the glass, whispered a prayer, and drank the water. He handed me the glass when he was finished. I poured water into the same glass and sat down on the stool to sip at my drink. I said nothing, afraid that, if I asked the wrong question or made the wrong comment, he would stop talking altogether and leave the room. He was calm, and he seemed to be completely relaxed, but the brilliant, laughing gleam was missing from his eyes. It was also disturbingly out of character for him to be so expansive about his own life. He’d talked to me for long hours about the Koran or the life of the Prophet Mohammed or the scientific, rational basis for his moral philosophy, but I’d never known him to tell me or anyone else so much about himself. In the lengthening silence I looked at the lean, sinewed face and I controlled even the sound of my breathing, lest it disturb him. We were both dressed in the standard Afghan costume of a long, loose shirt and wide-waisted pants. His clothes

I squeaked and squirmed to get loose, but I was born with the upper body strength of a hamster.

None of that however, is the form to which I’d referred. It was rather a yet-cited, five-inch thick, loosely bundled heap of paper which not fully three hours past our beginning, the former 15-year-old would then briefly waggle in his left hand as he stood near center of the very escape route alluded to in the same chapter. Within its pages were row-upon-row of dark impressions; marked one-by-one by an array of blows arising from a basket of clustered steel typebars cast with embossed slugs upon their tips ‒ striking in sequential forward arcs, as if inhabited by a crew of nether-situated Lilliputians sitting side-by-side; wielding slender embossed hammers, forged character-by-character to smash against pigment-impregnated woven black ribbons; poised in turn overtop a seemingly endless succession of lily-white storyteller's leaves; each a direct byproduct of majestically beautiful, seasonally fragrant, faintly audible, partly edible, often climbable; utterly tangible trees ‒ its outer layer of fifteen pages having chronicled the antecedent evoked by this very beginning more than 400 billion harvested timber ago. So then to be more succinct, Nate’s story began again with yet another scurrying rat…

None of that however, is the form to which I’d referred. [ever transforming tangible form] It was rather a yet-cited, five-inch thick, loosely bundled heap of paper which not fully three hours past our beginning, the former 15-year-old would then briefly waggle in his left hand as he stood near center of the very escape route alluded to in the same chapter. Within its pages were row-upon-row of dark impressions; marked one-by-one by an array of blows arising from a basket of clustered steel typebars cast with embossed slugs upon their tips ‒ striking in sequential forward arcs, as if inhabited by a crew of nether-situated Lilliputians sitting side-by-side; wielding slender embossed hammers, forged character-by-character to smash against pigment-impregnated woven black ribbons; poised in turn overtop a seemingly endless succession of lily-white storyteller's leaves; each a direct byproduct of majestically beautiful, seasonally fragrant, faintly audible, partly edible, often climbable; utterly tangible trees ‒ its outer layer of fifteen pages having chronicled the antecedent evoked by this very beginning more than 400 billion harvested timber ago. So then to be more succinct, Nate’s story began again with yet another scurrying rat…

None of that however, is the ever transforming tangible form to which I’d referred. It was rather a yet-cited, five-inch thick, loosely bundled heap of paper which not fully three hours past our beginning, the former 15-year-old would then briefly waggle in his left hand as he stood near center of the very escape route alluded to in the same chapter. Within its pages were row-upon-row of dark impressions; marked one-by-one by an array of blows arising from a basket of clustered steel typebars cast with embossed slugs upon their tips ‒ striking in sequential forward arcs, as if inhabited by a crew of nether-situated Lilliputians sitting side-by-side; wielding slender embossed hammers, forged character-by-character to smash against pigment-impregnated woven black ribbons; poised in turn overtop a seemingly endless succession of lily-white storyteller's leaves; each a direct byproduct of majestically beautiful, seasonally fragrant, faintly audible, partly edible, often climbable, utterly tangible trees ‒ its outer layer of fifteen pages having chronicled the antecedent evoked by this very beginning more than 400 billion harvested timber ago. So then to be more succinct, Nate’s story began again with yet another scurrying rat…

The Golem, The Monster was in love with herself; the Goy was in love with her too. She was in love with Club Golan. A perfect storm was approaching and I could almost feel it. I didn't know what was wrong with my beautiful girlfriend as her face gradually began to look like a monster's and she started treating me like garbage. What was controlling her mind? Who was behind her, making her get so sick again so quickly after meeting some new people at the beach bar? Why did Sabrina say that I would die lonely and sad, and why was Martina's perception of me so wrong and unreal? How was their plan on track, I didn't understand while I was running after Martina and I couldn't understand where our happiness had slipped out of our hands again? I was desperately trying to figure out what had happened to my life, my career, and what had happened to my pretty girlfriend, what had happened to my baby? It was almost like my girlfriend's perceptions were all wrong somehow. She had seen me as a useless homeless bum and she had seen the only value or service in Europe and Barcelona which could make a living or money as, 'short shorts and loose legs'. I felt hopeless and I didn't understand what the spell was. How was my 'Stupid Bunny' a Frankenstein? I could feel it on my skin, and I could see it in Martina's eyes, that the criminals' plans were in play and had been working since the moment Adam arrived in Spain, or maybe even before that somehow. Before I even met Martina. Before we even broke all up with Sabrina. Before the Red Moon, the last date and before the provocation the following night. I felt like 10-20 criminals were trying to bully me and trying to woo Martina and outsmart me with her, but I was so worried for her and was so busy trying to save her every day with her on my mind, as if I too was under spells, under possession and couldn't do anything about it to help her or break the illusions keeping her possessed, even when supposedly she was, we were, rid of the bad people. I felt like I was in a screenplay in the set up stages of a drama. I felt like someone had sat down with a piece of paper and a pen, and was drawing plans against my life. I felt like someone had written a screenplay on how to play this out, how to take the club from me and Martina. Someone must have written a list of characters. Casting. I never called Sabrina a bitch. Adam and Martina both called her “bitch.” Martina said “The Bitch” and Adam said “that Crazy Bitch.” ’The Goy’ ’The Bitch’ ’The Gipsy’ ’The Giants’ ’The Golem’ ’The Lawyer’ ’The Big Boss’ ’My Girlfriend’ ’The False Flag’ ’The Big Brother’ ’The Stupid Bunny’ ’The Big Boss Daddy’ ’The Italian Connection’, etc. I was unable to break any illusion, the secret, the code; I was dumbstruck in love with “my girlfriend” (who I thought was my “stupid bunny”), being the ‘false flag’, and maybe it was actually “the bitch” portrayed by Sabrina who was my true love perhaps, putting me to the tests, with Adam and the rest, using Martina and her brother, playing with strings, with her long pretty fingernails, teaching me a lesson for cheating when I thought she was cheating too and making me unhappy when I thought she was unhappy with me. As if I knew, Sabrina had been behind my new girlfriend, Martina playing roles; I had seen all the signs and jokes. I just couldn't comprehend it having a cover over my eyes. I was unsure what should I do what would be real wise? I didn't think Sabrina would be capable of hurting me at all. Why did Martina keep saying, Tomas you are so nice and tall?

We’ve written the rough draft of our love together, the draft with loose ends, unfinished edges, mistakes every other page. But every writer knows there’s magic in revision, where your work changes from a manuscript into a book. Where intentions, emotions, missed connections coalesce into something complete. It’s where what you mean to say becomes what you have said. The characters deepen, the details shine, the prose sparkles. Suddenly, from nothing, you find your story.

I WANDER THE film criticism district, formulating theories, grinding axes; it keeps me sane in these insane times to return to my roots, to praise those films and filmmakers worthy of an audience’s attention, to destroy those filmmakers who loose self-satisfied garbage onto the world. Consider Stranger Than Fiction, I say to my imagined lecture hall full of cinephiles: a wonderfully quirky film starring William Ferrell and the always adorkable Zooey Deschanel. The work done here by director Marc Forster (who directed the unfortunately misguided, misogynistic, and racistic Monster’s Ball) and screenwriter Zachary H. Elms is stellar in that all the metacinematic techniques work, its construction analogous to that of a fine Swiss watch (no accident that a wristwatch figures so prominently into the story!). Compare this to any mess written by Charlie Kaufman. Stranger Than Fiction is the film Kaufman would’ve written if he were able to plan and structure his work, rather than making it up as he goes along, throwing in half-baked concepts willy-nilly, using no criterion other than a hippy-dippy “that’d be cool, man.” Such a criterion might work if the person making that assessment had even a shred of humanism within his soul. Kaufman does not, and so he puts his characters through hellscapes with no hope of them achieving understanding or redemption. Will Ferrell learns to live fully in the course of Stranger Than Fiction. Dame Emily Thomson, who plays his “author,” learns her own lessons about compassion and the value and function of art. Had Kaufman written this film, it would have been a laundry list of “clever” ideas culminating in some unearned emotional brutality and a chain reaction of recursional activity wherein it is revealed that the author has an author who has an author who has an author who has an author, et chetera, thus leaving the audience depleted, depressed, and, most egregiously, cheated. What Kaufman does not understand is that such “high concepts” are not an end in themselves but an opportunity to explore actual mundane human issues. Kaufman is a monster, plain and simple, but a monster unaware of his staggering ineptitude (Dunning and Kruger could write a book about him!). Kaufman is Godzilla with dentures, Halloween’s Mike Myers with a rubber knife, Pennywise the Clown with contact dermatitis from living in a sewer. He is a pathetic—

The character of the Open Conspiracy will now be plainly displayed. It will have become a great world movement as wide-spread and evident as socialism or communism. It will have taken the place of these movements very largely. It will be more than they were, it will be frankly a world religion. This large, loose assimilatory mass of movements, groups, and societies will be definitely and obviously attempting to swallow up the entire population of the world and become the new human community.

Name/ First name: Madeline (mads, or maddy) Middle name: Marie Last name: Fractures --------------------------- Birth/ Age: 17 Date of birth: 9/13 Date of death: none Place of birth: West Place of death: none ---------------------------- Romantic and social/ Gender: Girl Sexuality: heterosexual Friends: 3 Boyfriend/ Girlfriend: none Crush: none ---------------------------- Personality/ Likes:hunting, reading, drawing, knife throwing, music, fighting Dislikes: none can think of Disorders: PTSD (explained in history) Personality: Strong, has had a rough life, may seem stuck up at times, is close to her 3 friends as she can be because she is afraid to loose them if they see her violent side. She has this side because of what happened when she and her twin brother were small. ---------------------------- History/ History: was born in west katos, and lost parents and older brothers when she was five, only she and her twin survived. Was on the streets for one year with her brother before he was found while he was looking for food. They were reunited at the age of 7 one year later. He was living at the palace with a noble family, she was allowed to return with him and stay, she soon became close friends with the secondborn boy Jacob (if this is'nt fine let me know). When she was 13 her brother was kidnapped by a group from the east, she soon discovered that they were the same group that killed their family.4 years later she is still looking. Now she works at the palace as a hunter, archivest, and guard, and does some art. Lore: ( Any lore behind your character?) ---------------------------- Appearance/ Description : Dark brown hari, Forest green eyes, and one scar on the left side of her face from her first fight. Picture: Hair: Dark Brown Eyes: kind of almond shaped but also round and are forest green Skin: lightly tan ---------------------------- Family/ Mother : Deceased Father: Deceased Husband/ Wife: None Sons/ Daughters/ Offspring : None ---------------------------- Other/ Living situation: Small cottage in woods with her 3 friends Money: not rich but not poor either Pets: A wolf named Alla (a-la) Job: Hunter, guard, and archivest Other Side: West

She had disapproved, audibly, repeatedly, and eventually to my face, of my habit of going about with my head uncovered, it being her opinion that it was unseemly for a woman of my age not to wear either cap or kerch, reprehensible for the wife of a man of my husband’s position—and furthermore, that only “backcountry sluts and women of low character” wore their hair loose upon their shoulders. I had laughed, ignored her, and given her a bottle of Jamie’s second-best whisky, with instructions to have a wee nip with her breakfast and another after supper. A

Once the aberrant logic of the pharmakon is let loose, it poisons the fixity and clarity of the other oppositions grouped around it. For instance, Plato’s argument relies on father/son, Egyptian/Greek, original/derivation. Can we be sure of these? In Derrida’s hands, they start to unravel. He turns to the “original” Egyptian myth where the characters are Thoth and King Ammon. Thoth is the son of the sun god, Ammon.

As he sat down, a man in the next booth cleared his throat violently. Then he said, 'Honesty is my God. Frankly, I wouldn't have lied to Hitler.' There was a kind of female moan of assent. Sophie peered over the back of the booth and saw a woman, her head resting over the back of the booth and saw a woman, her head resting on one hand as though it had come loose from her neck. 'How do you know what Otto feels? What is it you want him to do? You and he have been fighting for years, haven't you? Like smiling people in a swimming pool, kicking each other under water.

Four key elements of some mental illnesses—mania and depression—appear to promote crisis leadership: realism, resilience, empathy, and creativity. These aren’t just loosely defined character traits; they have specific psychiatric meanings, and have been extensively studied scientifically. I use these terms in their scientific, not their commonsense, meanings.

Storytelling is one means to entertain, share knowledge, and transmit cultural ideology. Through the universal lens of storytelling, do we become familiar with the life altering dilemmas and moral challenges that fuselage provides the linkage to mode the character patterns essential to leading a principled life? By shuffling through scores of loose leafed stories, can we glean the clarity of thought and the lucidity of perception needed successfully to tackle our own life with gusto? Is reading stories of struggle and redemption one way that we become acquainted with the chemistry of pain and suffering that permeates the arteries of all thinking human beings? Does appreciation for other people’s hardbound stories assist us place the vertebrae of our own experiences into a telling template? Can we draw upon the accumulated experiences of other people’s lives as well as our own hands-on experiences when we see our lives folded into a comprehensible scabbard depicting what it means to be human and, therefore, fallible?

I no more try to outline the world and lives of the characters in my books than I would attempt to outline my own life. These guys live and breathe. I have had readers tell me they dream about them. I just start a few "fictional" characters going, and then watch how they develop and reveal their own lives. Fully prepared to lose a few of them along the way, move scenes and chapters around, and head off to explore something they themselves find suddenly interesting. I do not keep catalogs of notes on them because that may be confining and force them into cubbyholes they do not want to stay in. There are many layers and twists through each of our lives and personalities, and if this cannot be said of those who live in books, then these book people have not come fully alive. If I am not startled and thrilled every few chapters by a sudden blast of "Wow! I did NOT see THAT coming!", then I do not see how readers could find these stories anywhere near as exciting and full of surprises as they always have. I thrill to going back from the beginning to rewrite everything because someone has just popped in who shakes everything loose. And when I reach the end of first draft, I fool myself if I pretend to know what the story is about, or where it will be taking us. The characters are just getting warmed up. - Edward Fahey