Lyon City Quotes

You draw a line in the sand and say you won’t cross it, you won’t believe or do a particular thing. But once you’ve grown accustomed to the unbelievable, or you’ve done what you’ve sworn you’d never do, you redraw the line a little farther back. You let the waves wash the first away like it never existed.

Those eyes, seemingly without mystery, are like certain closed cities, such as Lyons and Zurich, and they hypnotize me as do empty theaters, deserted prisons, machinery at rest, deserts, for deserts are closed and do not communicate with the infinite.

Lyons sued the City of Los Angeles for violation of his constitutional rights and sought, as a remedy, a ban against future use of the chokeholds. By the time his case reached the Supreme Court, sixteen people had been killed by police use of the chokehold, twelve of them black men.

It is possible that the city of London was initially named for ravens or a raven-deity. According to the Oxford Companion to the English Language, the designation comes from “Londinium,” a Romanized version of an earlier Celtic name. But the word closely resembles “Lugdunum,” the Roman name for both the city of Lyon in France and Leiden in the Netherlands. That Roman name, in turn, was derived from the Celtic “Lugdon,” which meant, literally, “hill, or town, of the god Lugh” or, alternatively, “…of ravens.” The site of Lyon was initially chosen for a town when a flock of ravens, avatars of the god, settled there. Whether or not “Lugdunum” was the origin of “London,” ravens were important for inhabitants of Britain for both practical and religious reasons.

Dark humor is in our genes. I can die having laughed every chance I got, or I can die having been miserable. Either way, I’ll be dead. Besides, I didn’t mean it as much of a joke.

But you’re ruining it.” “I did warn you about my powers of fuckupitude.” “I didn’t know they could be used for good.” “Me neither, but there you go. You’re welcome.

Because we might as well dance while we wait.

The two big cities of Australia are tonally as distinct from each other as Boston is from L.A. or Lyon from Marseilles.

What a dick,” she says. “You know what the worst part is?” “That there are forty people left in the world and he’s one of them?

I retreat into my book—the number one reason why one should always have a book when out in public.

He’s funny and attractive. That doesn’t mean I want to sleep with him.” “That always means you want to sleep with someone.” “Thanks a lot,” I say. “Was that a thinly-veiled slut accusation?” “That’s funny, it wasn’t supposed to be thinly-veiled.

She just has to get out of her own way." I've heard the expression countless times—from my brief forays into Al-Anon to Grace—but it's only now that I hear it, as Grace would say. I'm my own worst enemy. It's great to recognize the problem. How to stop doing it is the biggie.

The text of his speech, including some of the heckling that apparently even an emperor had to endure, was inscribed on bronze and put on display in the province, in what is now the city of Lyon, where it still survives. Claudius, it seems, did not get the chance that Cicero had to make adjustments for publication.

My favorite of all was still the place on Vermont, the French cafe, La Lyonnaise, that had given me the best onion soup on that night with George and my father. The two owners hailed from France, from Lyon, before the city had boomed into a culinary sibling of Paris. Inside, it had only a few tables, and the waiters served everything out of order, and it had a B rating in the window, and they usually sat me right by the swinging kitchen door, but I didn't care about any of it. There, I ordered chicken Dijon, or beef Bourguignon, or a simple green salad, or a pate sandwich, and when it came to the table, I melted into whatever arrived. I lavished in a forkful of spinach gratin on the side, at how delighted the chef had clearly been over the balance of spinach and cheese, like she was conducting a meeting of spinach and cheese, like a matchmaker who knew they would shortly fall in love. Sure, there were small distractions and preoccupations in it all, but I could find the food in there, the food was the center, and the person making the food was so connected with the food that I could really, for once, enjoy it.

What are you doing here? What have you come for?' 'Work,' said Psmith, with simple dignity. 'I am now a member of the staff of this bank. Its interests are my interests. Psmith, the individual, ceases to exist, and there springs into being Psmith, the cog in the wheel of the New Asiatic Bank; Psmith, the link in the bank's chain; Psmith, the Worker. I shall not spare myself,' he proceeded earnestly. 'I shall toil with all the accumulated energy of one who, up till now, has only known what work is like from hearsay. Whose is that form sitting on the steps of the bank in the morning, waiting eagerly for the place to open? It is the form of Psmith, the Worker. Whose is that haggard, drawn face which bends over a ledger long after the other toilers have sped blithely westwards to dine at Lyons' Popular Cafe? It is the face of Psmith, the Worker.

they’re bloody good ones too. I thought we’d finished with this nonsense last year when we raided that house out on the Limerick road and found the printing press. But these are much higher quality. It wouldn’t have been detected at all except for the banknote counting machine that spat it out.” “Where did they come from?” Lyons said. “Oh, the usual. These two came from different pubs in the city when the landlord was doing the lodgement after the weekend, and I’m sure we’re not finished with them yet. I’ve put out a notification to all the pubs and restaurants to be sure to use their pens on all twenties, but you know yourself, when they are busy they don’t bother. Will you take Eamon out to the bars that these came from and see if there’s any CCTV, or if the barmen remember anything about who might have passed them?” Hays said. “Yes sure, no problem. I never need much encouragement to go calling on pubs, as you know!” Lyons said. *

Vaulx-en-Velin, a dreary Muslim-majority suburb of Lyon, is France’s third-poorest city and representative of the problems. Many youths simply call it “a ghetto.” It might also be called the Other France. Here, and in numerous other poor suburbs that ring French cities, joblessness runs around 20 percent, about double the national average. For young people, it can be as high as 40 percent. About half of residents do not have a high school diploma. Police harassment and profiling are taken for granted as the rule.

however, I couldn’t pass up a Saint-Marcellin from La Mère Richard, a spark plug of a woman who’s built a whole life on aging these small, puffy raw cow’s milk cheeses from the Dauphiné region to perfection and who has a stand in the main market of Lyon.

As a child, I prayed she’d live, that she’d make it through the night. Eventually, I prayed she’d choke to death in her sleep. Not very kind, I know, but it would have meant escape. I was a prisoner of war in my mother’s battle with herself, and the only liberator was death.

My mother will never make amends, will never be held accountable. She’s died just as selfishly as she lived. I contemplate kicking the bed. I go as far as lifting my foot but then imagine the rabbit hole of anger I’ll fall into if I give in to my wild urge. I won’t let my mother get to me.

Adolph Lyons’s attempt to ban the use of lethal chokeholds by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is a good example. Lyons, a twenty-four-year-old black man, was driving his car in Los Angeles one morning when he was pulled over by four police officers for a burned-out taillight. With guns drawn, police ordered Lyons out of his car. He obeyed. The officers told him to face the car, spread his legs, and put his hands on his head. Again, Lyons did as he was told. After the officers completed a pat-down, Lyons dropped his hands, prompting an officer to slam Lyons’s hands back on his head. When Lyons complained that the car keys he was holding were causing him pain, the officer forced Lyons into a chokehold. He lost consciousness and collapsed. When he awoke, “he was spitting up blood and dirt, had urinated and defecated, and had suffered permanent damage to his larynx.”91 The officers issued a traffic ticket for the burned-out taillight and released him. Lyons sued the City of Los Angeles for violation of his constitutional rights and sought, as a remedy, a ban against future use of the chokeholds. By the time his case reached the Supreme Court, sixteen people had been killed by police use of the chokehold, twelve of them black men. The Supreme Court dismissed the case, however, ruling that Lyons lacked “standing” to seek an injunction against the deadly practice. In order to have standing, the Court reasoned, Lyons would have to show that he was highly likely to be subject to a chokehold again.

I’m not in over my head—I’m drowning. My crystal ball says I will fuck this up. Of course, it always says that, but it’s usually right. “Are you okay?” he asks. I shake my head because I don’t have it in me to fake it. “Would a poop joke help?

You could see their connection in the way they looked at each other, as if they knew what the other person was about and loved them because of and, sometimes, in spite of it.

Was it ghastly?" I remembered the sunlit summer of 1940, the crowds rushing from Paris, as from a fire, to join the snake-like lines of mattress-topped cars that drove slow, slower and slowest of all just before their closely packed passengers scattered into ditches where the dive bombers still found them. I remembered Nice with its sea and sky and palm trees still as bright as new travel posters and its sidewalks crowded with the most typical of twentieth-century tourists: displaced persons. I remembered the sensation of living in a dull fear-encircled vacuum and the incredulous joy with which I greeted my husband when he arrived hollow-eyed from his narrow escape and long hitch-hike across two countries. I remembered Lyons in the unheated winters, the wind scything between the cliff-like gray houses and inserting itself into the city's labyrinth of passageways. I remembered the turnip meals, the recurrent colds and chilblains, the disinclination to wash in icy water, the sordid temporary lodgings and false identity cards, the drearily uncomfortable atmosphere, and the exhilarating meetings with friends who had also escaped arrest. And then I remembered my husband's arrest and the nightmare that followed. "Yes," I said, repudiating stiff upper lips, "yes, it was ghastly.

During a temporary absence of General Harney, Captain Lyon, commanding United States forces at St. Louis, initiated hostilities against the State of Missouri under the following circumstances: In obedience to the militia law of the State, an annual encampment was directed by the Governor for instruction in tactics. Camp Jackson, near St. Louis, was designated for the encampment of the militia of the county in 1861. Here for some days companies of State militia, amounting to about eight hundred men, under command of Brigadier-General D. M. Frost, were being exercised, as is usual upon such occasions. They presented no appearance of a hostile camp. There were no sentinels to guard against surprise; visitors were freely admitted; it was the picnic-ground for the ladies of the city, and everything wore the aspect of merry-making rather than that of grim-visaged war. Suddenly, Captain (afterward General) Nathaniel Lyon appeared with an overwhelming force of Federal troops, surrounded this holiday encampment, and demanded an unconditional surrender. Resistance was impracticable, and none was attempted; the militia surrendered, and were confined as prisoners; but prisoners of what? There was no war, and no warrant for their arrest as offenders against the law. It is left for the usurpers to frame a vocabulary suited to their act.

As an activist myself, I’ve been all over the place the last few years, taking stock of what’s been going on and advocating for change. I’ve marched, organized, and agitated; slept in tents on the path of pipelines with snipers in the distant hills; been arrested for civil disobedience on one of the largest bridges in New York City; and seen tanks rolling down more than one street—under two different presidential administrations. It’s all given me so many reasons for despair, but also for hope.

Federalism should not provide state and local governments with the power to ignore the Constitution in any area, least of all in policing. Rizzo v. Goode, followed a short time later by City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, eliminated the power of federal courts to remedy proven patterns of racist, unconstitutional policing.

In October, after a two-month siege, the government had retaken Lyon from a group of moderates who had overthrown the local Jacobin club the previous spring; the government carried out reprisals intended to punish the entire city, destroying many of its finest buildings and murdering nearly two thousand of its residents. The Jacobins then proceeded to rename Lyon—with no apparent irony—“Liberated City.

Although maybe it has an upside: There are so few people left that being a decent human makes you valuable, which is how it always should’ve been but never truly was.

Even your freak-outs are lame. Can’t you just have a good cry and be done with it?

Everyone’s nice,” I say, and think of Paul. “Well, maybe not everyone, but I like everybody else. How about that?” I prod her with my elbow. “I like people.” “You know what’s happening? You’re having corrective emotional experiences. That’s where—” I groan. “No, we are not having a Psychoanalyze Sylvie session on the roof. We’re making fun of Paul and possibly shopping, not discussing correctional emotions or whatever.

If I stay within the tree line at the edge of the field, my buddies across the way won’t notice, as they’re now chasing a bird. The bird lands to peck at the grass and, when they get close again, it flaps another ten feet and lands. I think it’s fucking with them.

For a time he devoted himself to the study of the Scriptures and then (1180) gave himself to travelling and preaching, taking as a guide the Lord’s words: “He sent His disciples two and two before His face into every city and place whither He Himself would come. Therefore said He unto them, The harvest truly is great but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He would send forth labourers into His harvest. Go your ways: behold I send you forth as lambs among wolves. Carry neither purse nor scrip nor shoes: and salute no man by the way.” Companions joined him, and, travelling and preaching in this way, came to be known as the “Poor Men of Lyons”. Their appeal for recognition (1179) to the third Lateran Council, under Pope Alexander III, had already been scornfully refused. They were driven out of Lyons by Imperial edict and (1184) excommunicated. Scattered over the surrounding countries, their preaching proved very effectual, and “Poor Men of Lyons” became one of the many names attached to those who followed Christ and His teaching. An inquisitor, David of Augsburg, says: “The sect of the Poor Men of Lyons and similar ones are the more dangerous the more they adorn themselves with the appearance of piety… their manner of life is, to outward appearance, humble and modest, but pride is in their hearts”; they say they have pious men among them, but do not see, he continues, “that we have infinitely more and better than they, and such as do not clothe themselves in mere appearance, whereas among the heretics all is wickedness covered by hypocrisy.

I know this disbelief I feel, the disbelief on the others’ faces, is a survival mechanism. You draw a line in the sand and say you won’t cross it, you won’t believe or do a particular thing. But once you’ve grown accustomed to the unbelievable, or you’ve done what you’ve sworn you’d never do, you redraw the line a little farther back. You let the waves wash the first away like it never existed.

Right now, your brain is a bad neighborhood, and we’re not letting you wander around in there alone.

The positive effects of war on mental health were first noticed by the great sociologist Emile Durkheim, who found that when European countries went to war, suicide rates dropped. Psychiatric wards in Paris were strangely empty during both world wars, and that remained true even as the German army rolled into the city in 1940. Researchers documented a similar phenomenon during civil wars in Spain, Algeria, Lebanon, and Northern Ireland. An Irish psychologist named H. A. Lyons found that suicide rates in Belfast dropped 50 percent during the riots of 1969 and 1970, and homicide and other violent crimes also went down. Depression rates for both men and women declined abruptly during that period, with men experiencing the most extreme drop in the most violent districts. County Derry, on the other hand—which suffered almost no violence at all—saw male depression rates rise rather than fall. Lyons hypothesized that men in the peaceful areas were depressed because they couldn’t help their society by participating in the struggle. “When people are actively engaged in a cause their lives have more purpose… with a resulting improvement in mental health,” Lyons wrote in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research in 1979. “It would be irresponsible to suggest violence as a means of improving mental health, but the Belfast findings suggest that people will feel better psychologically if they have more involvement with their community.

The nurses hand out food that was made yesterday. I’ve barely eaten, but I’m full after one bite of a tasteless sandwich. The rumbling and shaking finally stopped, and it’s been quiet in here ever since. I don’t imagine it’s quiet outside, though. I imagine it’s anything but quiet

It's one thing to want to be alone, and an entirely different thing to be cast into a world that's empty but for you. Part of the fun of a close call is having someone with whom to laugh it off. Alone, it can magnify into something to be feared.

I don't like new people and new situations. I don't like figuring out how I fit in. Very often I don't, even if I try.

You test people," Grace continues. "You push them away to see if they'll come back, and, even if they do, you push until they don't. You pretend not to have feelings. Getting you to say anything but a joke or angry words is impossible." Even when I want to let them out, words cling in my throat like barnacles. And, after I'm invariably disappointed, I'm glad I haven't given my true feelings away. But maybe it's because I haven't said them that I'm invariably disappointed. I'm sure I've caused my share of disappointment to the people who've waited for words instead of my signature wordless stare.

Not for the first time, I could use a manual on human interaction.

He did what my mom couldn't: found the strength to love himself.

Fear claws its way up my throat before I tell myself to chill the fuck out. I acknowledge the fear because it's real, and because fear is sneaky like that: if you don't let it be heard, it finds a new way in. But I won't let it control me.

She disappears with fast footsteps. She might need friends, but I'm not sure she wants them.

I decide to see if he is a mortal human like the rest of us. "Okay, here's my question—are you scared?" "Anyone who isn't needs to have their head examined." If Golden Boy is afraid, then I should be petrified. The distraction of the past few minutes vanishes, and now I am petrified—stomach boiling and chest taut. "I'm terrified," I whisper. "That's because it's terrifying. Just promise you'll be careful." I nod. But I'm terrified of so much more than zombies. I'm terrified of wanting to be around people, and I'm terrified of the inevitable moment when I'll find out they don't want me to be around me. And I'm especially terrified of this guy, these people, who make me want to be around people.

And my dad. He's...he doesn't really like me, and I thought I'd be far enough away that I wouldn't care." "There's never far enough away that you don't care," I say, and his eyes dampen. "But we like you, so fuck anyone who doesn't.

For most people, sharing those details would mean nothing, but for someone who plays everything close to the vest, it feels as though I gave away a part of myself. Cold air whistles through the small hole it left in my armor; a way in for a dagger. But Grace says this is how you do it—you hand them the dagger and trust they won't use it.

The only reason I can ask my next question is because it's dark.

What I like best about Leo is that he'd rather be cheerful than sulking, and the most effective way to change his course is to call him on his drama.

Knowing you, you probably told him that mothers don't matter anyway." It's a shot in the heart. More than anyone around here, I'm aware of how much they matter. Everyone thinks you get one automatically, but I know that's not the case. I swallow to keep the tears at bay. This is why I fight—so I don't cry.

I think Sylvie's problem isn't that she can't make people like her; it's that she automatically thinks no one will, so she doesn't give them the chance.

Written words can be edited and polished and thrown away without ever seeing the light of day. Spoken words are different—once they're drifting out there in the breeze you can't call them back.

She laughs and takes a breath, lips parted as if on the verge of saying something. There are sentences—paragraphs—of thoughts behind her eyes, yet she doesn't speak. That's something I don't like. I try to understand how hard it must be for her, though I wish she would give me something before I go.

See?" I say. "That's what I didn't want." Grace faces me, her eyes red. "I can have more than one emotion at a time, Syls. I can be sad for me and happy for you, but not telling me will definitely make me upset. Even if I cry, it's okay.

Sometimes people have been so hurt that they live in fear of it happening again. They don't think they can survive it, so they push the good away even when they want it. That way it's a choice, not a rejection.

You're a good dad." "I just called my kid a pain in the ass and I'm a good dad?" "You're being honest. I would think you were either crazy or lying if you said it was always magical. I don't think your five-year-old son calling you a meanie butt qualifies as magical.

I had to make friends whenever Mom moved us to our newest shitty apartment, and it was painful to put myself out there for rejection again and again. Eventually, you pretend you don't need friends and, whether you want them to or not, people take the cue. After a while, you start to believe it yourself. I know how difficult it is to admit you're lonely the way Indy has.

Sylvie, if you let people in, some are going to disappoint you. That's life. I think you know better than most, and I'm sorry for that.

You're kind of high maintenance." I jab him with my elbow. "Maybe, but I maintain myself. It only counts if you ask other people to maintain you. I just know what I like.

Or maybe we don't owe them. Maybe they're being nice. It's not that crazy to imagine, is it? And maybe because you won't let them be nice, you'll never find out that they are.

The more I say nice things, or speak the thought it used to seem easier to leave unsaid, the more I realize how much everyone needs to hear them.

I'm the happiest I've ever been, which is strange but true. And it's not only Eric—it's Guillermo snoring away on a bench, Maria and Jorge dancing, Grace trying to come back from her shattered life, Rissa asking me for help, and a thousand other things. It's the soft lights on Indy's face as she laughs at Paul. It's community—something I've never had and always wanted, though I pretended it didn't matter.

Guillermo, you make everyone feel important," Eli says. "And, when it comes down to it, that's all anyone wants.

Sorry, I shouldn't have brought it up." "No," he says, shoulders easing some. "I'm glad you did. I felt like I was lying even if I wasn't.

Rissa has turned shades paler, and now her cheeks bloom pink. She closes the door and sinks down, arms around her knees and holding back tears. I've been in that remorseful big-mouthed spot many times, and I offer her a sympathetic smile. But better to learn not to burn her bridges now, at eighteen, than wait until twenty-seven.

My dad always said that women will put up with a lot more bullshit than men, but once they're done, they're done.

Guillermo told me to enjoy being a grownup, remember? Finding out how much it sucks?" Her laugh is sharp. "It sucks. I wish I could tell him that." I wish she could, too. "The secret is to act like one when you have to," I say, "but to be as immature as possible when you don't.

While much of the world is just now rapidly urbanising and coming to grips with its repercussions, over 75 percent of Europeans already live in cities, and dense ones at that. Paris has a density of 56,000 people per square mile (21,500 per square km), while New York City, the most densely settled US city, has less than half that amount. In fact, in spite of the many high-rise towers over Manhattan, the greater New York metropolitan area falls well behind the densities even of smaller European cities such as Athens, Munich and Lyon.

Among these adventurers, the most stylish chose the latest in luxurious transportation, the Orient Express. Paris by now boasted six large train stations. These stood, and still stand, as the termini for tracks that radiate outward from the city like ever-extending spokes of a wheel. The first, the Gare Saint-Lazare (8th), was inaugurated in 1837 and originally served Paris’s western suburbs before reaching north into Normandy. The Gare d’Austerlitz (13th) connects Paris with southwest France and Spain. Its neighbor on the Left Bank, the Gare Montparnasse (15th), is the terminus for trains to Brittany and western France. The Gare du Nord and the Gare de l’Est, near neighbors in north-central Paris (10th), were built to serve northern and eastern France as well as international destinations beyond. And the Gare de Lyon (12th), whose first station on this site opened in 1849, stands across the Seine from the Gare d’Austerlitz, where it connects Paris to southern France, Switzerland, and Italy. Eventually, the Orient Express would depart from the Gare de Lyon under the name of the Simplon Orient Express. But when the first Orient Express left Paris for Vienna in June 1883, it was from the Gare de l’Est. Soon after, the route was extended all the way to Istanbul.

Kate hovers a hand above my cookie. "You really don't want it? Eric said you wouldn't be able to resist cookies." "I'm stronger than he thinks," I say aloud, and then to myself, And infinitely more awkward than he realizes.

Someone leans on the counter beside me. "You need a cigarette?" It's Punk Rock from the café, with an unlit cigarette behind his ear, which he removes and taps filter-down on the counter. If it were anyone else, I'd take it in a hot second, but I find his persona annoying even without the added bonus that he's a bully. "No, thanks," I say, and turn to Artie.

I warm at the knowledge Eric cares for me in these quiet ways he doesn't think to mention. It's a new thing—a lovely thing—to be cared for like that.

Maybe Roger isn't so bad when you get to know him, which I've found is the case with most people.

But you're right—there's no escaping small minds. Why is it that they grow large enough to take over?

Another two weeks here has me feeling both better and worse about this place. I'm used to it, the way you can get used to anything if you have to.

But I do believe mercy is first and foremost a gift to ourselves, not to the ones we show mercy.

Indeed. If they won't, we have a right to defend ourselves. Maybe they do deserve punishment, but there's nothing we can do about it now. And, in the meantime, hate is poor comfort compared to what you still have to comfort you. So, tell me, who's being punished?

To paraphrase Goethe: Impotent hatred is the worst of all emotions; one should hate nobody whom one can't destroy.

Now you'll be on guard," Sylvie says. "Put yourself on my shifts." Casper shrugs. "I still have to pass—" "You're going to pass, and you're going to shove it in Roger's face, and it's going to be beautiful, Envision the world you want to live in.

Brother David says some prisons are in our minds. Your brother isn't here, so why let him in there?

Sylvie would be insulted if I so much as implied I don't trust her. More than insulted—she'd be wounded. Like most hotheaded emotions, envy takes on a life of its own and obscures the truth. And the truth is that we love each other, and I can't imagine it being any other way.

She wasn't mad at him. More like quietly disappointed." "Quiet disappointment is the worst." "My parents were great at it. So was Maria.

Sylvie, I didn't mean to—" "You didn't mean to what?" I ask, my voice venomous. "You didn't mean to kill people? You let your brother in. I don't care what you meant, I care what you did.

Funny how all these years, I swore I was a born-again pacifist," Kate says. "But you never know what you'll do in a situation until you're in it.

Except, when he was an asshole, you felt that much more alone," I say quietly. "And when he wasn't an asshole, you were overly grateful for any crumb he threw your way.

Talk to me," I say. He shrugs, jaw working. "There's nothing to say." I wait a few minutes, but he doesn't speak. This is how it feels to be on the other side of the emotional wall. It's every bit as frustrating as I've been told.

It hurt that life went on without me—was fun without me—even if that's truly what I would want for Sylvie. I felt weak. Useless. I don't fault myself for having those feelings, but the blame falls at my feet that, instead of sucking it up, I gave in to them.

Your fidelity is formidable, Sylvia. To have it questioned and then cast away must have felt as though he didn't know who you are, or he didn't care.

Eric wouldn't sit back and watch it unfold, and his injuries mean he's no longer as nimble as he was. I'm annoyed that I'm worried, though hoping he's safe doesn't mean I forgive him.

This is Grace's fault. Years of glorious unfruitful sex, and I get pregnant the second I put on her stupid fertility necklace. Now I'm a single mother, which was my worst fear, worse than being a married mother. Grace used to say the universe gives us the things we fear in order to show us we're stronger than we think.

Kate exudes a gentle acceptance, like you could tell her your worst secret and she'd shrug it off. My own mother was the same, and I miss her more than ever. She'd assure me almost nothing's unfixable if it's worth fixing.

Artie grabs me in a hug. "I've wanted to say thank you since I saw you last." His eyes water behind his glasses. Thank you. I'd have a bullet in my bran if it wasn't for you." I shrug. It seems so long ago, and it's hard to feel good about that when I feel like a jerk for more recent events.

...the thought that I'm responsible for Roger makes me want to nap on the stairs. I don't want to be good for him. I don't want him to need me, or to think he does, in order to do the right thing. "Can I be honest?" I ask after Indy and Paul disappear through the lobby door. Walt stops on the landing and nods. "I like Roger. I encourage him to take care of himself, and I think he's a good person. But I'm not looking to be someone's reason for sobriety. I tried years with my mother, and it's doomed to fail.

I can't wait to leave tomorrow, all the more so because of Eric's Morse code message yesterday. It was a reminder there are places where people are normal and good. It's easy to forget that in here.

How are we going to do this?" Sharla asks. We. It's one of the shortest yet sweetest words in the English language. So often unobserved and disregarded. But, right now, it's everything.

Why's Daddy crying?" "It's happy crying. Sometimes you feel so happy that all the laughing in the world doesn't let it out, so you cry, too.

A CLASSIC WAITS for me, it contains all, nothing is lacking, Yet all were lacking if taste were lacking, or if the endorsement of the right man were lacking. O clublife, and the pleasures of membership, O volumes for sheer fascination unrivalled. Into an armchair endlessly rocking, Walter J. Black my president, I, freely invited, cordially welcomed to membership, My arm around John Kieran, Pearl S. Buck, My taste in books guarded by the spirits of William Lyon Phelps, Hendrik Willem Van Loon, (From your memories, sad brothers, from the fitful risings and callings I heard), I to the classics devoted, brother of rough mechanics, beauty-parlor technicians, spot welders, radio-program directors (It is not necessary to have a higher education to appreciate these books), I, connoisseur of good reading, friend of connoisseurs of good reading everywhere, I, not obligated to take any specific number of books, free to reject any volume, perfectly free to reject Montaigne, Erasmus, Milton, I, in perfect health except for a slight cold, pressed for time, having only a few more years to live, Now celebrate this opportunity. Come, I will make the club indissoluble, I will read the most splendid books the sun ever shone upon, I will start divine magnetic groups, With the love of comrades, With the life-long love of distinguished committees. I strike up for an Old Book. Long the best-read figure in America, my dues paid, sitter in armchairs everywhere, wanderer in populous cities, weeping with Hecuba and with the late William Lyon Phelps, Free to cancel my membership whenever I wish, Turbulent, fleshy, sensible, Never tiring of clublife, Always ready to read another masterpiece provided it has the approval of my president, Walter J. Black, Me imperturbe, standing at ease among writers, Rais'd by a perfect mother and now belonging to a perfect book club, Bearded, sunburnt, gray-neck'd, astigmatic, Loving the masters and the masters only (I am mad for them to be in contact with me), My arm around Pearl S. Buck, only American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, I celebrate this opportunity. And I will not read a book nor the least part of a book but has the approval of the Committee, For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times and not hit, that which they hinted at, All is useless without readability. By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms (89¢ for the Regular Edition or $1.39 for the DeLuxe Edition, plus a few cents postage). I will make inseparable readers with their arms around each other's necks, By the love of classics, By the manly love of classics.