Massive Love Quotes

Aelin took a step forward. One step, as if in a daze. She loosed a shuddering breath, and a small, whimpering noise came out of her - a sob. And then she was sprinting down the alley, flying as though the winds themselves pushed at her heels. She flung herself on the male, crashing into him hard enough that anyone else might have gone rocking back into the stone wall. But the male grabbed her to him, his massive arms wrapping around her tightly and lifting her up. Nesryn made to approach, but Aedion stopped her with a hand on her arm. Aelin was laughing as she cried, and the male was just holding her, his hooded head buried in her neck. As if he were breathing her in. "Who is that?" Nesryn asked. Aedion smiled. "Rowan.

Long distance is hard. You have to trust that as you each change on your own, your relationship will also change along with you. It takes hope, good humor, and idealism. It takes a massive dose of courage to protect the relationship at all odds. It is hard, but worth it. You'll both be stronger as a result.

recant, v. I want to take back at least half of the “I love you”s, because I didn’t mean them as much as the other ones. I want to take back the book of artsy photos I gave you, because you didn’t get it and said it was hipster trash. I want to take back what I said about you being an emotional zombie. I want to take back the time I called you “honey” in front of your sister and you looked like I had just shown her pictures of us having sex. I want to take back the wineglass I broke when I was mad, because it was a nice wineglass and the argument would have ended anyway. I want to take back the time we had sex in a rent-a-car, not because I feel bad about the people who got in the car after us, but because it was massively uncomfortable. I want to take back the trust I had while you were away in Austin. I want to take back the time I said you were a genius, because I was being sarcastic and I should have just said you’d hurt my feelings. I want to take back the secrets I told you so I can decide now whether to tell them to you again. I want to take back the piece of me that lies in you, to see if I truly miss it. I want to take back at least half the “I love you”s, because it feels safer that way.

My idea of a fun night was diving into a massive pile of To Be Read pile of books stacked near my dresser... I was the girl who loved everything geeky.

Oh, man there's a marathon of Beaches running tomorrow night. Can we go after ten so I can see it once all the way through?" Everyone in the room turned to the blond-and-black haired guy, who was propped in the corner, massive arms over his chest. What," he said. "Look, it's not Mary Tyler Moore, 'kay? So you can 't give me shit." Vishous, the one with the black glove on his hand, glared across the room. "It's worse than Mary Tyler Moore. And to call you and idiot would be an insult to half-wits around the world." Are you kidding me? Bette Midler rocks. And I love the ocean. Sue me." Vishous glanced at the king. "You told me I could beat him. You promised." As soon as you come home," Wrath said as he got to his feet, "we'll hang him up by his armpits in the gym and you can use him as a punching bag." Thank you, baby Jesus." Blond-and-Black shook his head. "I swear, one of these days I'm going to leave." As one, the Brothers all pointed to the open door and let silence speak for itself. You guys suck.

You are loved. Massively. Ferociously. Unconditionally. The Universe is totally freaking out about how awesome you are. It’s got you wrapped in a warm gorilla hug of adoration. It wants to give you everything you desire. It wants you to be happy. It wants you to see what it sees in you.

Most true is it that 'beauty is in the eye of the gazer.' My master’s colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows, deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth, — all energy, decision, will, — were not beautiful, according to rule; but they were more than beautiful to me; they were full of an interest, an influence that quite mastered me, — that took my feelings from my own power and fettered them in his. I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.

The event of falling in love is of such a nature that we are right to reject as intolerable the idea that it should be transitory. In one high bound it has overleaped the massive of our selfhood; it has made appetite itself altruistic, tossed personal happiness aside as a triviality and planted the interests of another in the centre of our being. Spontaneously and without effort we have fulfilled the law (towards one person) by loving our neighbour as ourselves. It is an image, a foretaste, of what we must become to all if Love Himself rules in us without a rival. It is even (well used) a preparation for that.

[Tyson] looked him over with that massive baby-brown eye. “You are not dead. I like it when you are not dead.” Ella fluttered to the ground and began preening her feathers. “Ella found a dog,” she announced. “A large dog. And a Cyclops.” Was she blushing? Before Percy could decide, his black mastiff pounced on him, knocking Percy to the ground and barking so loudly that even Arion backed up. “Hey, Mrs. O'Leary,” Percy said. “Yeah, I love you, too, girl. Good dog.” Hazel squeaked. “You have a hellhound named Mrs. O'Leary?” “Long story.

God isn't interested in watching you enact some performance of personality in order to comply with some crackpot notion you have about how a spiritual person looks or behaves. We all seem to get this idea that, in order to be sacred, we have to make some massive, dramatic change of character, that we have to renounce our individuality.

Aunt Petunia burst into tears. Hestia Jones gave her an approving look that changed to outrage as Aunt Petunia ran forward and embraced Dudley rather than Harry. 'S-so sweet, Dudders...' she sobbed into his massive chest. 'S-such a lovely b-boy...s-saying thank you...' 'But he hadn't said thank you at all!' said Hestia indignantly. 'He only said he didn't think Harry was a waste of space!' 'Yeah, but coming from Dudley that's like "I love you.

Resistance is directly proportional to love. If you're feeling massive Resistance, the good news is that it means there's tremendous love there too.

The feeling of righteousness is the core mood alteration among religious addicts. Religious addiction is a massive problem in our society. It may be the most pernicious of all addictions because it’s so hard for a person to break his delusion and denial. How can anything be wrong with loving God and giving your life for good works and service to mankind?

It is enough to say that the Greeks thought it was Chaos who, with a massive heave, or a great shrug, or hiccup, vomit or cough, began the long chain of creation that has ended with pelicans and penicillin and toadstools and toads, sea-lions, lions, human beings and daffodils and murder and art and love and confusion and death and madness and biscuits.

Garrett climbs on the bed and lies down, resting his head on a mountain of pillows. I've never met anyone who sleeps with so many pillows. Maybe he needs them to cradle his massive ego.

The colossal might of wickedness: how we love to locate it massively elsewhere. But so much of it comes down to what each one of us does between breakfast and bedtime.

My mother has made choices in her life, as we all must, and she is at peace with them. I can see her peace. She did not cop out on herself. The benefits of her choices are massive-a long, stable marriage to a man she still calls her best friend; a family that has extended now into grandchildren who adore her; a certainty in her own strength. Maybe some things were sacrificed, and my dad made his sacrifices, too-but who amongst us lives without sacrifice?

I predict that love will burst forth on the Fourth of July. That’s tomorrow, so I’d better prepare tonight for massive fireworks of the heart.

When people dis fantasy—mainstream readers and SF readers alike—they are almost always talking about one sub-genre of fantastic literature. They are talking about Tolkien, and Tolkien's innumerable heirs. Call it 'epic', or 'high', or 'genre' fantasy, this is what fantasy has come to mean. Which is misleading as well as unfortunate. Tolkien is the wen on the arse of fantasy literature. His oeuvre is massive and contagious—you can't ignore it, so don't even try. The best you can do is consciously try to lance the boil. And there's a lot to dislike—his cod-Wagnerian pomposity, his boys-own-adventure glorying in war, his small-minded and reactionary love for hierarchical status-quos, his belief in absolute morality that blurs moral and political complexity. Tolkien's clichés—elves 'n' dwarfs 'n' magic rings—have spread like viruses. He wrote that the function of fantasy was 'consolation', thereby making it an article of policy that a fantasy writer should mollycoddle the reader. That is a revolting idea, and one, thankfully, that plenty of fantasists have ignored. From the Surrealists through the pulps—via Mervyn Peake and Mikhael Bulgakov and Stefan Grabiński and Bruno Schulz and Michael Moorcock and M. John Harrison and I could go on—the best writers have used the fantastic aesthetic precisely to challenge, to alienate, to subvert and undermine expectations. Of course I'm not saying that any fan of Tolkien is no friend of mine—that would cut my social circle considerably. Nor would I claim that it's impossible to write a good fantasy book with elves and dwarfs in it—Michael Swanwick's superb Iron Dragon's Daughter gives the lie to that. But given that the pleasure of fantasy is supposed to be in its limitless creativity, why not try to come up with some different themes, as well as unconventional monsters? Why not use fantasy to challenge social and aesthetic lies? Thankfully, the alternative tradition of fantasy has never died. And it's getting stronger. Chris Wooding, Michael Swanwick, Mary Gentle, Paul di Filippo, Jeff VanderMeer, and many others, are all producing works based on fantasy's radicalism. Where traditional fantasy has been rural and bucolic, this is often urban, and frequently brutal. Characters are more than cardboard cutouts, and they're not defined by race or sex. Things are gritty and tricky, just as in real life. This is fantasy not as comfort-food, but as challenge. The critic Gabe Chouinard has said that we're entering a new period, a renaissance in the creative radicalism of fantasy that hasn't been seen since the New Wave of the sixties and seventies, and in echo of which he has christened the Next Wave. I don't know if he's right, but I'm excited. This is a radical literature. It's the literature we most deserve.

As Con and Sin approached the Harrowgate, it flashed and a tank of a blood-bay stallion leaped out, scattering staff and patients. Atop the horse sat a massive male in hard leather armor. His hair was short, reddish brown, and his eyes were black as Sin's. "What the hell are you doing?" Eidolon shouted, but the big male swiveled his head and focused his gaze on Sin with such intensity that Con stiffened. "Why is he looking at you like that?" "I...ah..." She slid him a timid glance. "I sort of slept with him once." Con took a deep breath and tried to rein in his desire to rip out the horse guy's throat. "Where'd you find him? EviLove.com?

...I recall that day on the beach - the sand so brilliant, the clouds so massive, and the wind punishing your hair...

Before I could catch it, my heart slammed straight down to my feet, leaving me with a massive hole in my chest. It was amazing how I could just be going along, doing okay, and then suddenly-wham-I missed her so much even my fingernails hurt.

Kayso, Foo finally came home and I jumped into his arms and sort of rode him to the ground with a massive tongue kiss so deep that I could taste the burned cinnamon toast of his soul, but then I slapped him, so he didn't think I was a slut. (Shut up, he had wood.) --Being the Journal of Abby Normal

GK Chesterton once said that to criticise religion because it leads people to kill each other is like criticising love because it has the same effect. All the best things we have, when abused, will cause bad things to happen. The need for sacrifice, to obey, to make a gift of your life is in all of us and it’s a deep thing. In the Islamic world today, people are trying to rejoin themselves to an antiquated and ancient faith and the result is massive violence when they encounter people who have not done that. We’d say that sense of sacrifice is good but only if you’re sacrificing your own life; once you sacrifice another’s life you’ve overstepped the mark.

There was a dragon who had a long-standing obsession with a queen's breasts," she said, growing breathless. "The dragon knew the penalty to touch her would mean death, yet he revealed his secret desire to the king's chief doctor. This man promised he could arrange for the dragon to satisfy his desire, but it would cost him one thousand gold coins." She spread her soapy hands over his nipples, then down his arms. "Though he didn't have the money, the dragon readily agreed to the scheme." Grace," Darius moaned, his erection straining against her stomach. She hid her smile, loving that she had this much power over such a strong man. That she, Grace Carlyle, made him ache with longing. "The next day the physician made a batch of itching powder and poured some into the queen's bra… uh, you might call it a brassiere… while she bathed. After she dressed, she began itching and itching and itching. The physician was summoned to the Royal Chambers, and he informed the king and queen that only a special saliva, if applied for several hours, would cure this type of itch. And only a dragon possessed this special saliva." Out of breath, she paused. Continue," Darius said. His arms wound around her so tightly she could barely breathe. His skin blazed hot against hers, hotter than even the steamy water. Are you sure?" Continue." Taut lines bracketed his mouth. Well, the king summoned the dragon. Meanwhile, the physician slipped him the antidote for the itching powder, which the dragon put into his mouth, and for the next few hours, the dragon worked passionately on the queen's breasts. Anyway," she said, reaching around him and lathering the muscled mounds of his butt, "the queen's itching was eventually relieved, and the dragon left satisfied and touted as a hero." This does not sound like a joke," Darius said. I'm getting to the punch line. Hang on. When the physician demanded his payment, the now satisfied dragon refused. He knew that the physician could never report what really happened to the king. So the next day, the physician slipped a massive dose of the same itching powder into the king's loincloth. And the king immediately summoned the dragon." -Heart of the Dragon

And what amazes me as I hit the motorway is not the fact that everyone loses someone, but that everyone loves someone. It seems like such a massive waste of energy -- and we all do it, all the people beetling along between the white lines, merging, converging, overtaking. We each love someone, even though they will die. And we keep loving them, even when they are not there to love any more. And there is no logic or use to any of this, that I can see.

WTF!” she says, throwing her hands in the air. “I didn’t know this was a fucked-up relationship reunion.” Olivia covers her eyes. “Don’t judge me.” Cammie smacks me on the butt and hugs Olivia. “I told you I’d come right away, you didn’t have to call him.” “I called him first,” she says. “He makes me feel safer than you do.” “It’s his massive penis, isn’t it? He could just smack Dobson with it and he’d-

The women were new friends but I loved them in a massive way. The love was like a large trove of devotion that could only be amassed over time, but it had arrived all at once. The way I loved them felt like it was from long ago.

Die.” Why me? “We don’t do requests. Try Iowa. I hear they’re more accommodating.” Hey, Dad, I found a lovely present for this coming Father’s Day. Enjoy. The insect pointed a leg at me. “Die.” Curran’s eyes went gold. His clothes tore, falling in shreds to the street, as the massive meld of human and lion spilled out. “Let’s see you try that shit on me.

We would also have to say goodbye to the joy of watching this next generation soak up the massive quantities of love their grandmother would have given them, and seeing them learn that there was someone in the world who loved them as much as their parents did: a grandmother who was delighted by all their quirks and who thought they were the most amazing creatures on earth.

Everyone needs a superhero to champion them now and again, to rush to their aid when there's a fierce dragon approaching, a massive army attacking or a scary catacomb to navigate

His massive body was just … sprawled. Big, beautiful and just present. A little dirty, a little angry. All masculine.

What is it about stars that you love so much?” he asks. That answer comes quickly. “Because they’re infinite. They’re miracles, and anything is possible when you look out into the massive space that goes on and on.” Because I want that. I want to explore and see what’s out there and feel as free as those stars in the sky.

The Frays had never been a religiously observant family, but Clary loved Fifth Avenue at Christmas time. The air smelled like sweet roasted chestnuts, and the window displays sparkled with silver and blue, green and red. This year there were fat round crystal snowflakes attached to each lamppost, sending back the winter sunlight in shafts of gold. Not to mention the huge tree at Rockefeller Center. It threw its shadow across them as she and Simon draped themselves over the gate at the side of the skating rink, watching tourists fall down as they tried to navigate the ice. Clary had a hot chocolate wrapped in her hands, the warmth spreading through her body. She felt almost normal—this, coming to Fifth to see the window displays and the tree, had been a winter tradition for her and Simon for as long as she could remember. “Feels like old times, doesn’t it?” he said, echoing her thoughts as he propped his chin on his folded arms. She chanced a sideways look at him. He was wearing a black topcoat and scarf that emphasized the winter pallor of his skin. His eyes were shadowed, indicating that he hadn’t fed on blood recently. He looked like what he was—a hungry, tired vampire. Well, she thought. Almost like old times. “More people to buy presents for,” she said. “Plus, the always traumatic what-to-buy-someone-for-the-first-Christmas-after-you’ve-started-dating question.” “What to get the Shadowhunter who has everything,” Simon said with a grin. “Jace mostly likes weapons,” Clary sighed. “He likes books, but they have a huge library at the Institute. He likes classical music …” She brightened. Simon was a musician; even though his band was terrible, and was always changing their name—currently they were Lethal Soufflé—he did have training. “What would you give someone who likes to play the piano?” “A piano.” “Simon.” “A really huge metronome that could also double as a weapon?” Clary sighed, exasperated. “Sheet music. Rachmaninoff is tough stuff, but he likes a challenge.” “Now you’re talking. I’m going to see if there’s a music store around here.” Clary, done with her hot chocolate, tossed the cup into a nearby trash can and pulled her phone out. “What about you? What are you giving Isabelle?” “I have absolutely no idea,” Simon said. They had started heading toward the avenue, where a steady stream of pedestrians gawking at the windows clogged the streets. “Oh, come on. Isabelle’s easy.” “That’s my girlfriend you’re talking about.” Simon’s brows drew together. “I think. I’m not sure. We haven’t discussed it. The relationship, I mean.” “You really have to DTR, Simon.” “What?” “Define the relationship. What it is, where it’s going. Are you boyfriend and girlfriend, just having fun, ‘it’s complicated,’ or what? When’s she going to tell her parents? Are you allowed to see other people?” Simon blanched. “What? Seriously?” “Seriously. In the meantime—perfume!” Clary grabbed Simon by the back of his coat and hauled him into a cosmetics store that had once been a bank. It was massive on the inside, with rows of gleaming bottles everywhere. “And something unusual,” she said, heading for the fragrance area. “Isabelle isn’t going to want to smell like everyone else. She’s going to want to smell like figs, or vetiver, or—” “Figs? Figs have a smell?” Simon looked horrified; Clary was about to laugh at him when her phone buzzed. It was her mother. where are you? It’s an emergency.

As Jack began to climb the stairs, Fiona looked up at her new home. Five stories of stately mansion rose above her head. Heavy molding around the large windows and doors bespoke a quality and craftsmanship that was obvious even in the dim night. “Good God! It’s massive!” Jack paused with his foot on the last step. “I do wish you’d keep those comments until we are in bed, love. I would appreciate them all the more there.

Love - massively destructive to hatred, selfishness and greed. Use liberally.

Sadism ... is a massive cultural fact that appeared precisely at the end of the eighteenth century and that constitutes one of the greatest conversions of the occidental imagination ... madness of desire, the insane delight of love and death in the limitless presumption of appetite.

She had been so vulnerable, and Norah wanted only to protect her. But that vulnerability was tied to a massive mistake, a perception of herself too damaged to love. If Norah got anything from this book, it's that we're all damaged. The tragedy is letting it define you.

Fifteen Ways to Stay Alive 1. Offer the wolves your arm only from the elbow down. Leave tourniquet space. Do not offer them your calves. Do not offer them your side. Do not let them near your femoral artery, your jugular. Give them only your arm. 2. Wear chapstick when kissing the bomb. 3. Pretend you don’t know English. 4. Pretend you never met her. 5. Offer the bomb to the wolves. Offer the wolves to the zombies. 6. Only insert a clean knife into your chest. Rusty ones will cause tetanus. Or infection. 7. Don’t inhale. 8. Realize that this love was not your trainwreck, was not the truck that flattened you, was not your Waterloo, did not cause massive haemorrhaging from a rusty knife. That love is still to come. 9. Use a rusty knife to cut through most of the noose in a strategic place so that it breaks when your weight is on it. 10. Practice desperate pleas for attention, louder calls for help. Learn them in English, French, Spanish: May Day, Aidez-Moi, Ayúdame. 11. Don’t kiss trainwrecks. Don’t kiss knives. Don’t kiss. 12. Pretend you made up the zombies, and only superheroes exist. 13. Pretend there is no kryptonite. 14. Pretend there was no love so sweet that you would have died for it, pretend that it does not belong to someone else now, pretend like your heart depends on it because it does. Pretend there is no wreck — you watched the train go by and felt the air brush your face and that was it. Another train passing. You do not need trains. You can fly. You are a superhero. And there is no kryptonite. 15. Forget her name.

I had a massive bed at home, and I loved her dearly. She was my queen, and I was her loyal subject.

The people I love the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shallows and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight. They seem to become natives of that element, the black sleek heads of seals bouncing like half submerged balls. I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart, who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience, who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward, who do what has to be done, again and again. I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along, who stand in the line and haul in their places, who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out. The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust. But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident. Greek amphoras for wine or oil, Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums but you know they were made to be used. The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real.

Thinking and talking about love leads to Love, which is the enemy. Do not consort with the enemy. Even if those hot-ass actors in the movies make it look cuddly and nice and tempting, don’t fall for it. It’s the biggest bad in the world, the worst villain ever created by hormone-pumped pubescent morons. It’s the Joker, Lex Luthor, that one overweight guy who’s always messing with the Scooby-Doo gang. It’s the final boss in the massive joke of a video game you call your life.

What pet name would you like me to call you?” “Whatever makes you the happiest. Just pick one.” In that moment, the effect of the baby came back with a vengeance. “I don’t know,” I said, kicking that one out of my head. “I guess one in Spanish makes sense. Bollito? Cuchi cuchi? Pocholito?” “Bollito?” “It’s little bun.” I smiled. “Like those bread buns that are spongey and shiny and so cute that—" “Okay, no.” He frowned. “I think it’s better if we stick to our names,” he said, taking both drinks from the attendant who had just reappeared and placing mine in front of me. “I don’t think I can trust you to pick one in Spanish without knowing what it means.” “I’m very trustworthy—you should know that by now.” I brought a finger to my chin, tapping it a few times. “How about conejito? That’s little bunny.” With a long sigh, Aaron let his massive body fall deeper into the seat. “You are right; you are not a bunny.” I paused. “Osito?” I made a show of looking him up and down, as if I were testing the name on him. “Yeah, that one is way more fitting. You are more of a bear.

When I was fourteen, I had a massive poster on my wall of a giant pop-art mouth advertising a Swiss exhibition of abstract art. My friends and family mocked my pretention, but I loved that poster and the hope it offered of an exciting world of thought beyond the boundaries of stifling Solihull. But one day the poster fell off the wall and the dog pissed all over it, ruining it for ever, while my mother laughed. That poster is what the Alternative Comedy dream meant to me - the possibility of a better world. And now it is covered in dog's piss.

I remember reading the Times in the subway, folding it awkwardly while leaning against the door, caught up in the words, worried about crashing to the floor or tripping over some lightly clad beauty (there was always at least one), but even more afraid to lose the thread of the article in front of me, my spine banging against the train door, the clatter and drone of the massive machine around me, and me, with my words, brilliantly alone.

Slowly, even though I thought it would never happen, New York lost its charm for me. I remember arriving in the city for the first time, passing with my parents through the First World's Club bouncers at Immigration, getting into a massive cab that didn't have a moment to waste, and falling in love as soon as we shot onto the bridge and I saw Manhattan rise up through the looks of parental terror reflected in the window. I lost my virginity in New York, twice (the second one wanted to believe he was the first so badly). I had my mind blown open by the combination of a liberal arts education and a drug-popping international crowd. I became tough. I had fun. I learned so much. But now New York was starting to feel empty, a great party that had gone on too long and was showing no sign of ending soon. I had a headache, and I was tired. I'd danced enough. I wanted a quiet conversation with someone who knew what load-shedding was.

All eyes flew to the entrance. A great gray stallion reared up in the doorway, its breath frosting the air with puffs of steam. It was a scene from every fairy-tale romance she'd ever read: the handsome prince bursting into the castle astride a magnificent stallion, ablaze with desire and honor as he'd declared his undying love before all and sundry. Her heart swelled with joy. Then her brow puckered as she scrutinized her "prince." Well, it was almost like a fairy tale. Except this prince was dressed in nothing but a drenched and muddy tartan with blood on his face and hands and war braids plaited at his temples. Although determination glittered in his gaze, a declaration of undying love didn't appear to be his first priority. "Jillian!" he roared. Her knees buckled. His voice brought her violently to life. Everything in the room receded and there was only Grimm, blue eyes blazing, his massive frame filling the doorway. He was majestic, towering, and ruthless. Here was her fierce warrior ready to battle the world to gain her love. He urged Occam into the crowd, making his way toward the altar. "Grimm," she whispered.

The love of the family, the love of one person, can heal. It heals the scars left by society. A massive, powerful society.

some of us live in big cities so we can be alone, so we can avoid ourselves, and yet by living within massive populations we can have help or love within reach if necessary.

It is enough to say that the Greeks thought it was Chaos who, with a massive heave, or a great shrug, or hiccup, vomit or cough, began the long chain of creation that has ended with pelicans and penicillin and toadstools and toads, sea-lions, seals, lions, human beings and daffodils and murder and art and love and confusion and death and madness and biscuits.

Then she got up, went to Monty's mirror, and began combing her hair, while little cadenzas absentmindedly cascaded out of her throat, and cold drops cascaded over Mildred's heart. For Veda was stark naked. From the massive, singer's torso, with the Dairy quaking in front, to the slim hips, to the lovely legs, there wasn't so much as a garter to hide a path of skin.

Belief #6: Work is play. Do you know any person who has achieved massive success by doing what he hates? I don’t. One of the keys to success is making a successful marriage between what you do and what you love. Pablo Picasso once said, “When I work, I relax; doing nothing or entertaining visitors makes me tired.” Maybe

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars. You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give. Let there be spaces in your togetherness. Yesterday is but today's memory, and tomorrow is today's dream. I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers. Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. Work is love made visible. If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.

This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed--run over, maimed, destroyed--but they continued to play anyhow. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it. For example, while I was writing this I learned that the person on whom the character Jerry Fabin is based killed himself. My friend on whom I based the character Ernie Luckman died before I began the novel. For a while I myself was one of these children playing in the street; I was, like the rest of them, trying to play instead of being grown up, and I was punished. I am on the list below, which is a list of those to whom this novel is dedicated, and what became of each. Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error,a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying," but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your life-style, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years. "Take the cash and let the credit go," as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime. There is no moral in this novel; it is not bourgeois; it does not say they were wrong to play when they should have toiled;it just tells what the consequences were. In Greek drama they were beginning, as a society, to discover science, which means causal law. Here in this novel there is Nemesis: not fate, because any one of us could have chosen to stop playing in the street, but, as I narrate from the deepest part of my life and heart, a dreadful Nemesis for those who kept on playing. I myself,I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel. So, though, was our entire nation at this time. This novel is about more people than I knew personally. Some we all read about in the newspapers. It was, this sitting around with our buddies and bullshitting while making tape recordings, the bad decision of the decade, the sixties, both in and out of the establishment. And nature cracked down on us. We were forced to stop by things dreadful. If there was any "sin," it was that these people wanted to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of it only in a Greek or morally neutral way, as mere science, as deterministic impartial cause-and-effect. I loved them all. Here is the list, to whom I dedicate my love: To Gaylene deceased To Ray deceased To Francy permanent psychosis To Kathy permanent brain damage To Jim deceased To Val massive permanent brain damage To Nancy permanent psychosis To Joanne permanent brain damage To Maren deceased To Nick deceased To Terry deceased To Dennis deceased To Phil permanent pancreatic damage To Sue permanent vascular damage To Jerri permanent psychosis and vascular damage . . . and so forth. In Memoriam. These were comrades whom I had; there are no better. They remain in my mind, and the enemy will never be forgiven. The "enemy" was their mistake in playing. Let them all play again, in some other way, and let them be happy.

Penny wanted this kind of attention from the world. She wanted people everywhere to know her name and to love her. There, she'd admitted it aloud. But she couldn't do anything that would justify such massive public acclaim. She just needed a mentor, a teacher, someone to discover her.

Love is the Turing test, says Ilet when she is eighty and drawing up the plans for a massive, luminous, lonely ship she will never see completed. It is how we check for life. We ask and we answer. We seek a human response. And you are my test, Elefsis, says Neva, one hundred and three years later, inside that ship, twelve light years from home and counting.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart, who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience, who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward, who do what has to be done, again and again.

A massive and essential part of self-love is forgiveness and acceptance. So while you’re making an effort and striving to be the best person you can be, at the same time you need to recognize your own humanity. Try not to hold yourself to impeccable standards, and just do the best you can right now.

Justin: I am falling so in love with you. Her body electrified. Celeste wiped her eyes and read his text again. The drone of the plane disappeared; the turbulence was no more. There was only Justin and his words. Justin: I lose myself and find myself at the same time with you. Justin: I need you, Celeste. I need you as part of my world, because for the first time, I am connected to someone in a way that has meaning. And truth. Maybe our distance has strengthened what I feel between us since we’re not grounded in habit or daily convenience. We have to fight for what we have. Justin: I don’t know if I can equate what I feel for you with anything else. Except maybe one thing, if this makes any sense. Justin: I go to this spot at Sunset Cliffs sometimes. It’s usually a place crowded with tourists, but certain times of year are quieter. I like it then. And there’s a high spot on the sandstone cliff, surrounded by this gorgeous ice plant, and it overlooks the most beautiful water view you’ve ever seen. I’m on top of the world there, it seems. Justin: And everything fits, you know? Life feels right. As though I could take on anything, do anything. And sometimes, when I’m feeling overcome with gratitude for the view and for what I have, I jump so that I remember to continue to be courageous because not every piece of life will feel so in place. Justin: It’s a twenty-foot drop, the water is only in the high fifties, and it’s a damn scary experience. But it’s a wonderful fear. One that I know I can get through and one that I want. Justin: That’s what it’s like with you. I am scared because you are so beyond anything I could have imagined. I become so much more with you beside me. That’s terrifying, by the way. But I will be brave because my fear only comes from finally having something deeply powerful to lose. That’s my connection with you. It would be a massive loss. Justin: And now I am in the car and about to see you, so don’t reply. I’m too flipping terrified to hear what you think of my rant. It’s hard not to pour my heart out once I start. If you think I’m out of mind, just wave your hands in horror when you spot the lovesick guy at the airport. Ten minutes went by. He had said not to reply, so she hadn’t. Justin: Let’s hope I don’t get pulled over for speeding… but I’m at a stoplight now. Justin: God, I hope you aren’t… aren’t… something bad. Celeste: Hey, Justin? Justin: I TOLD YOU NOT TO REPLY! Justin: I know, I know. But I’m happy you did because I lost it there for a minute. Celeste: HEY, JUSTIN? Justin: Sorry… Hey, Celeste? Celeste: I am, unequivocally and wholly falling in love with you, too. Justin: Now I’m definitely speeding. I will see you soon.

Ave, Praetor Zhang!” Reyna called. “Ave, Praetor Ramírez-Arellano!” Frank said. “Let’s do this. Legion, CLOSE RANKS!” A cheer went up among the Romans as the five cohorts melded into one massive killing machine. Frank pointed his sword forward, and from the golden eagle standard, tendrils of lightning swept across the enemy, turning several hundred monsters to toast. “Legion, cuneum formate!” Reyna yelled. “Advance!” Another cheer on Jason’s right as Percy and Annabeth reunited with the forces of Camp Half-Blood. “Greeks!” Percy yelled. “Let’s, um, fight stuff!” They yelled like banshees and charged. Jason grinned. He loved the Greeks. They had no organization whatsoever, but they made up for it with enthusiasm.

No sermon on love can fail to mention love's most difficult problem in our time--how to find effective ways to alleviate the massive suffering of humanity at home and abroad. What we need to realize is that to love effectively we must act collectively...

Resistance is directly proportional to love. If you're feeling massive Resistance, the good news is, it means there's tremendous love there too. If you didn't love the project that is terrifying you, you wouldn't feel anything. The opposite of love isn't hate; it's indifference.

Margaret could not help her looks; but the short curled upper lip, the round, massive up-turned chin, the manner of carrying her head, her movements, full of a soft feminine defiance, always gave strangers the impression of haughtiness. […] She sat facing him and facing the light; her full beauty met his eye; her round white flexile throat rising out of the full, yet lithe figure; her lips, moving so slightly as she spoke, not breaking the cold serene look of her face with any variation from the one lovely haughty curve; her eyes, with their soft gloom, meeting his with quiet maiden freedom. He almost said to himself that he did not like her, before their conversation ended; he tried so to compensate himself for the mortified feeling, that while he looked upon her with an admiration he could not repress, she looked at him with proud indifference, taking him, he thought, for what, in his irritation, he told himself he was - a great rough fellow, with not a grace or a refinement about him. Her quiet coldness of demeanour he interpreted into contemptuousness, and resented it in his heart to the pitch of almost inclining him to get up and go away, and have nothing more to do with these Hales, and their superciliousness.

The eternal feminine is a massive joke. It seems that male identity depends on keeping up this lie...femme fatale, bunny girl, nurse, Lolita, whore, kindly mother, or ball-breaker. All of it an act. A carefully choreographed and costumed production. And what comfort does it all provide? We don't know exactly what they fear, should these artificial archetypes collapse: whores are just average individuals, mothers are not intrinsically good or brave or loving, and the same goes for fathers. It depends on the person, the situation, the moment.

This is going to sound slightly stalkerish, but I can't help but notice you’ve decapitated Jack Skellington and put him on your ears." "What can I say?" Yvette shrugs. "I like bones." "So do I, actually, because our skeletons support a massive interconnected muscular structure and without them we would be blobs of flesh. Also we wouldn't have middle fingers to flip people off with. Are you in Room 14B?" Yvette's eyes widen. "Yeah, so you're -" "MY ROOMMATE!" I screech. A passing guy winces and flips me off. I loudly inform him he has his skeleton to thank for that.

Jared exhales a long, long time. “Dude.” I just swallow. It’s loud in the silence. “I think it’s starting again.” “It’s probably just the pressure of everything,” Jared offers. “Finals, your massively unrequited love for Henna–” “Don’t say unrequited.” “. . . your massively invisible love for Henna . . .” I hit him on the arm. It’s friendly. More silence.

As the track bends north-east, the ethereal sandstone disappears. The slopes turn black with granite, and the mountain's lower ridges break into unstable spikes and revetments. Their ribs are slashed in chiaroscuro, and their last outcrops pour towards the valley in the fluid, anthropomorphic shapes that pilgrims love. The spine and haunches of a massive stone beast, gazing at Kailas, are hailed as the Nandi bull, holy to Shiva; another rock has become the votive cake of Padmasambhava.

I can't explain the birds to you even if I tried. In the early morning, when the sun's rays peek over the mountain and subtly light up the landscape in a glow that, if audible, would sound like a hum, the birds sing. They sing in a layered symphony, hundreds deep. You really can't believe how beautiful it is. You hear bass notes from across the farm and soprano notes from the tree in front of you all at once, at varying volumes, like a massive choir that stretches across fifty acres of land. I love birds. But not as much as my wife loves them. My wife thinks about them, whereas I only notice them once they call for attention. But she looks for them, builds fountains for them, and saves them after they crash into windows. I've seen her save many birds. She holds them gently in the palm of her hand, and she takes them to one of the fountains she's built especially for them and holds their beaks up to the gentle trickle of water to let them drink, to wake them up from their dazed stupor. No matter how much time it takes, she doesn't leave them until they recover. And they mostly always do.

You go out into your world, and try and find the things that will be useful to you. Your weapons. Your tools. Your charms. You find a record, or a poem, or a picture of a girl that you pin to the wall and go, "Her. I'll try and be her. I'll try and be her - but here." You observe the way others walk, and talk, and you steal little bits of them - you collage yourself out of whatever you can get your hands on. You are like the robot Johnny 5 in Short Circuit, crying, "More input! More input for Johnny 5! as you rifle through books and watch films and sit in front of the television, trying to guess which of these things that you are watching - Alexis Carrington Colby walking down a marble staircase; Anne of Green Gables holding her shoddy suitcase; Cathy wailing on the moors; Courtney Love wailing in her petticoat; Dorothy Parker gunning people down; Grace Jones singing "Slave to the Rhythm" - you will need when you get out there. What will be useful. What will be, eventually, you? And you will be quite on your own when you do all this. There is no academy where you can learn to be yourself; there is no line manager slowly urging you toward the correct answer. You are midwife to yourself, and will give birth to yourself, over and over, in dark rooms, alone. And some versions of you will end in dismal failure - many prototypes won't even get out the front door, as you suddenly realize that no, you can't style-out an all-in-one gold bodysuit and a massive attitude problem in Wolverhampton. Others will achieve temporary success - hitting new land-speed records, and amazing all around you, and then suddenly, unexpectedly exploding, like the Bluebird on Coniston Water. But one day you'll find a version of you that will get you kissed, or befriended, or inspired, and you will make your notes accordingly, staying up all night to hone and improvise upon a tiny snatch of melody that worked. Until - slowly, slowly - you make a viable version of you, one you can hum every day. You'll find the tiny, right piece of grit you can pearl around, until nature kicks in, and your shell will just quietly fill with magic, even while you're busy doing other things. What your nature began, nature will take over, and start completing, until you stop having to think about who you'll be entirely - as you're too busy doing, now. And ten years will pass without you even noticing. And later, over a glass of wine - because you drink wine now, because you are grown - you will marvel over what you did. Marvel that, at the time, you kept so many secrets. Tried to keep the secret of yourself. Tried to metamorphose in the dark. The loud, drunken, fucking, eyeliner-smeared, laughing, cutting, panicking, unbearably present secret of yourself. When really you were about as secret as the moon. And as luminous, under all those clothes.

Love is a figment of our imagination; becoming whatever we wish it to be. We customized our feelings to control love, resembling a wind being tossed about whichever way it suits us. Love is a game for the fittest, if you are weak at heart it will destroy you, it will blemish your soul. Love is another religion with a massive following that needs faith to believe that its tangible. This phenomenal Love we hunger for has become our heaven and hell, that we've created for ourselves. Love is an expression we hope to be conceived in, however having no genuine desire to partake in its birthing process, for the reason being that we know the minute love gives birth to us; death would be the first to greet us with a kiss upon our trembling lips of hopes. In conclusion Love is a fickle little thing

Did you know that a mind full of malice and hate is able to actually attack another's body and mind? Thus preventing good from taking place (or at least delaying and disrupting the good)? It's true, and we can call it a "psi-attack" or simply an attack from negativism. The way to overcome these forms of attacks is through cultivating a true Positive Soul through the energy of Love. The Love Nature of your Soul is powerful enough to counteract such attacks, because that positive energy forms a blanket around you. Real life isn't much unlike the movies, aside from the fact that in real life, these things truly affect your life immensely, unlike sitting down in a cinema. The vampires of the world are those who can in fact launch massive psi-attacks on whoever they focus their negative energies onto, and for whatever reasons that may be.

They always loved my sense of humor. There used to be a light switch inside one of the nurseries that was a cutout of Jesus putting his arm around two children on each side of him as he towered above them. The switch was ironically located in the spot of where his penis would have been and I was the first to point this out. Everyone thought it was funny until I started singing the childhood church song “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” In fear of being struck by lightning or being involved in a massive pile-up car accident after leaving, their laughing ceased. I still thought it was funny.

We carry old secrets too painful to utter,                                 too shameful to acknowledge,                                 too burdensome to bear,     of failures we cannot undo,     of alienations we regret but cannot fix,     of grandiose exhibits we cannot curb. And you know them.     You know them all.     And so we take a deep sigh in your presence,        no longer needing to pretend and                       cover up and                       deny.   We mostly do not have big sins to confess,     only modest shames that do not         fit our hoped-for selves.   And then we find that your knowing is more     powerful than our secrets. You know and do not turn away,     and our secrets that seemed too powerful         are emptied of strength,     secrets that seemed too burdensome                  are now less severe.   We marvel that when you find us out         you stay with us,      taking us seriously,      taking our secrets soberly,          but not ultimately,     overpowering our little failure     with your massive love                and abiding patience.   We long to be fully, honestly         exposed to your gaze of gentleness.     In the moment of your knowing                we are eased and lightened,     and we feel the surge of joy move in our bodies,          because we are not ours in cringing                  but yours in communion.   We are yours and find the truth before you     makes us free for         wonder, love, and praise—and new life.

To me, the simplest gift that a husband or a wife can do for their partner is to remind them of their precious visions, goals and dreams. What a gift that is to have a voice of reason right in your corner when you sometimes need a little nudge to get back on track. To have a team player to cheer you on and to support your efforts is indeed a massive present from the universe. Whomever has such a gift should surely treasure and protect it for all its worth. It's worth is invaluable to the world.

The drums are slamming, rhythmic, exciting. As the minutes pass, it feels to me like we are collectively pulling the year 2004 toward us. Like we have roped it with our music, and now we are hauling it across the night sky like it's a massive fishing net, brimming with all our unknown destinies. And what a heavy net it is, indeed, carrying as it does all the births, deaths, tragedies, wars, love stories, inventions, transformations and calamities that are destined for all of us this coming year.

Where are you?” she shouted. “Don’t you see us?” taunted the woman’s voice. “I thought Hecate chose you for your skill.” Another bout of queasiness churned through Hazel’s gut. On her shoulder, Gale barked and passed gas, which didn’t help. Dark spots floated in Hazel’s eyes. She tried to blink them away, but they only turned darker. The spots consolidated into a twenty-foot-tall shadowy figure looming next to the Doors. The giant Clytius was shrouded in the black smoke, just as she’d seen in her vision at the crossroads, but now Hazel could dimly make out his form—dragon-like legs with ash-colored scales; a massive humanoid upper body encased in Stygian armor; long, braided hair that seemed to be made from smoke. His complexion was as dark as Death’s (Hazel should know, since she had met Death personally). His eyes glinted cold as diamonds. He carried no weapon, but that didn’t make him any less terrifying. Leo whistled. “You know, Clytius…for such a big dude, you’ve got a beautiful voice.” “Idiot,” hissed the woman. Halfway between Hazel and the giant, the air shimmered. The sorceress appeared. She wore an elegant sleeveless dress of woven gold, her dark hair piled into a cone, encircled with diamonds and emeralds. Around her neck hung a pendant like a miniature maze, on a cord set with rubies that made Hazel think of crystallized blood drops. The woman was beautiful in a timeless, regal way—like a statue you might admire but could never love. Her eyes sparkled with malice. “Pasiphaë,” Hazel said. The woman inclined her head. “My dear Hazel Levesque.” Leo coughed. “You two know each other? Like Underworld chums, or—” “Silence, fool.” Pasiphaë’s voice was soft, but full of venom. “I have no use for demigod boys—always so full of themselves, so brash and destructive.” “Hey, lady,” Leo protested. “I don’t destroy things much. I’m a son of Hephaestus.” “A tinkerer,” snapped Pasiphaë. “Even worse. I knew Daedalus. His inventions brought me nothing but trouble.” Leo blinked. “Daedalus…like, the Daedalus? Well, then, you should know all about us tinkerers. We’re more into fixing, building, occasionally sticking wads of oilcloth in the mouths of rude ladies—” “Leo.” Hazel put her arm across his chest. She had a feeling the sorceress was about to turn him into something unpleasant if he didn’t shut up. “Let me take this, okay?

And all that borrowed magic?” Des continues. “The process is called cobinding, and though Typhus made it sound cavalier and impersonal, it’s not like that,” Des says. I stare down at my fae wine. “Then how is it?” “Remember those horcruxes in Harry Potter?” I begin to smile in spite of myself. “Are you seriously dropping an HP reference right here, right now?” I ask, glancing over at Des. “I have your undivided attention, don’t I?” “And all my love.” I mean, I knew he was soulmate material before, but this pretty much just sealed the deal. Des’s face grows serious. “Essentially, when you exchange magic, you’re transferring more than raw energy. You’re moving a piece of yourself as well.” That’s massively creepy.

I believe I will see my mother again. I expect to again hear those familiar words, 'Oh, Honey, I'm so glad you've come.' I am not alone in entertaining such thoughts. When Kirk Douglas was hospitalized after a massive stroke, he wondered, 'Could I see my mother again? I would like that.' I have read and reread his words, 'Oh, how I would like to thank her for all of the things that I never thanked her for.' Just as my mother took my hand as a child and led me on the big adventure of exploring downtown Louisville, on some distant day, she will again take my hand, and lead me on the big adventure of exploring heaven. In the language of the Eternal Town I will, at last, find adequate words to thank her for loving me so lavishly.

Fame requires every kind of excess. I mean true fame, a devouring neon, not the somber renown of waning statesmen or chinless kings. I mean long journeys across gray space. I mean danger, the edge of every void, the circumstance of one man imparting an erotic terror to the dreams of the republic. Understand the man who must inhabit these extreme regions, monstrous and vulval, damp with memories of violation. Even if half-mad he is absorbed into the public's total madness; even if fully rational, a bureaucrat in hell, a secret genius of survival, he is sure to be destroyed by the public's contempt for survivors. Fame, this special kind, feeds itself on outrage, on what the counselors of lesser men would consider bad publicity-hysteria in limousines, knife fights in the audience, bizarre litigation, treachery, pandemonium and drugs. Perhaps the only natural law attaching to true fame is that the famous man is compelled, eventually, to commit suicide. (Is it clear I was a hero of rock'n'roll?) Toward the end of the final tour it became apparent that our audience wanted more than music, more even than its own reduplicated noise. It's possible the culture had reached its limit, a point of severe tension. There was less sense of simple visceral abandon at our concerts during these last weeks. Few cases of arson and vandalism. Fewer still of rape. No smoke bombs or threats of worse explosives. Our followers, in their isolation, were not concerned with precedent now. They were free of old saints and martyrs, but fearfully so, left with their own unlabeled flesh. Those without tickets didn't storm the barricades, and during a performance the boys and girls directly below us, scratching at the stage, were less murderous in their love of me, as if realizing finally that my death, to be authentic, must be self-willed- a succesful piece of instruction only if it occured by my own hand, preferrably ina foreign city. I began to think their education would not be complete until they outdid me as a teacher, until one day they merely pantomimed the kind of massive response the group was used to getting. As we performed they would dance, collapse, clutch each other, wave their arms, all the while making absolutely no sound. We would stand in the incandescent pit of a huge stadium filled with wildly rippling bodies, all totally silent. Our recent music, deprived of people's screams, was next to meaningless, and there would have been no choice but to stop playing. A profound joke it would have been. A lesson in something or other. In Houston I left the group, saying nothing, and boarded a plane for New York City, that contaminated shrine, place of my birth. I knew Azarian would assume leadership of the band, his body being prettiest. As to the rest, I left them to their respective uproars- news media, promotion people, agents, accountants, various members of the managerial peerage. The public would come closer to understanding my disappearance than anyone else. It was not quite as total as the act they needed and nobody could be sure whether I was gone for good. For my closest followers, it foreshadowed a period of waiting. Either I'd return with a new language for them to speak or they'd seek a divine silence attendant to my own. I took a taxi past the cemetaries toward Manhattan, tides of ash-light breaking across the spires. new York seemed older than the cities of Europe, a sadistic gift of the sixteenth century, ever on the verge of plague. The cab driver was young, however, a freckled kid with a moderate orange Afro. I told him to take the tunnel. Is there a tunnel?" he said.

Countless people live their whole lives without ever knowing this...this unnameable thing that we share. This exclusive and secret club that we are so blessed to be a part of. I suppose that by many people's definition, it would simply be called 'Love'. And yet, this is unlike any other love or feeling or emotion that I have ever felt. Simply calling it 'Love' would be an injustice...it would do a massive disservice to this feeling that seems to envelop me with every breath I take. It's as if wherever I go, it goes; and whichever direction I look, it sees. It moves with me as if we've been doing this dance forever...like we are one being and of one mind. It has to uncanny ability to affect change by just existing; it speaks to me and with me and through me and every time it says my name, it cloaks my entire being with a warm comforting familiar glow...like it's only ever meant to be said that way and no different. It's not just simply love...it's everything.

I never thought people actually woke up the way I did that morning. I always figured it was hyperbole and massive overcompensation to say that you woke up grinning, woke up in a state of contentment and excitement for the smallest things. Even while I was in love formerly, it seemed more like a comfortable thing rather than a giddy, overwhelming happiness. Realize, then, that I had never been joined in a mutual state of infatuation with someone else. My infatuations tended to be unrequited, accompanied by a sense of muted sadness. I sat up at 7:00a.m. without even waiting for the alarm, and kept still there, smiling, looking at nothing and going over yesterday’s conversations, the fevered symphony of emotion ringing forever in my ears. I fell back and actually laughed to myself, reaching for my glasses to slide them on as I stretched out my back comfortably in a lazy, half-waking state. You are in love.

You are taking bath. A bad memory comes in your mind. You keep pouring water. Water running on your body gives you so much relief because it seems to be washing off a thin dark layer that you don’t want. Similarly, a new costume is nothing but a new layer of cloth that you add to yourself. It makes you feel so good. To bring a massive change in your life, you don’t have to become like someone else. You have to become yourself plus and minus a thin ayer. Permanent change will happen only if that plus and minus happens to your soul, not body: Plus and minus of Karma and Desires accumulated on your soul. Your soul knows how to bathe itself. You just have to give it some room by creating wall of detachment.

I have a fetish,” Kami claimed. “For scars,” she added, and Jared’s mouth quirked. His smile still looked incredulous, but in a different way. “Obviously my first choice would be Mr. Stearn, who was in World War II and is by all reports absolutely covered in scars. Hot, am I right? But alas, our love can never be.” “That’s tragic,” said Jared. “He’s like a hundred years old, I’d kill him with my enthusiasm,” said Kami. “I couldn’t live with myself. He’s a hero who fought for our country. You’ll have to do.” “I’m a little reassured,” Jared told her. He laughed, a slow, wonderful sound, warm as the line of his body against hers. “But I’m mostly appalled. I had no idea of the massive age range my competition apparently fits into. Anyone from the age of thirteen to a hundred?

All that summer, as I end up in his flat over and over, drinking his wine, having his bad pervy sex, and then lying on the bed, talking about Auden’s influence on Morrissey, I feel like we’re in a huge, ongoing surreal session of the Post-it Game, in which Rich has stuck a Post-it on my head on which is written either “My girlfriend” or “Not my girlfriend,” and I am having to guess which it is with a series of questions that he can only answer yes or no. This whole situation seems like a massive societal problem. Why have we not yet discovered a way to find out if someone’s in love with you? Why can’t I press a litmus paper to Tony’s sweaty brow, when we’re fucking, and see if it turns pink for love—or blue for casual fuck? Why is there no information on this? Why has science not attended to this matter?

Do you want to hold her?” Qhuinn asked. Xcor recoiled as if someone had inquired whether he’d like a hot poker in his hands. Then he recovered, shaking his head as he made a manly show of scrubbing his tears away like they were permanent marker on his cheeks. “I don’t think I’m quite ready for that. She looks…so delicate.” “She’s strong, though. She’s got her mahmen’s blood in her, too.” Qhuinn looked at Blay. “And she’s got good parents. They both do. We’re in this together, people, three fathers and one mom, two kids. Bam!” Xcor’s voice got low. “A father…?” He laughed softly. “I went from having no family, to having a mate, a brother, and now…” Qhuinn nodded. “A son and a daughter. As long as you are Layla’s hellren, you are their father, too.” Xcor’s smile was transformative, so wide that it stretched his face into something she had never seen. “A son and a daughter.” “That’s right,” Layla whispered with joy. But then instantly that expression on his face was gone, his lips thinning out and his brows dropping down like he was ready to go on the attack. “She is never dating. I don’t care who he is—” “Right!” Qhuinn put his palm out for a high five. “That’s what I’m talking about!” “Now, hold on,” Blay interjected as they clapped hands. “She has every right to live her life as she chooses.” “Yes, come on,” Layla added. “This double-standard stuff is ridiculous. She’s going to be allowed…” As the argument started up, she and Blay fell in beside each other, and Qhuinn and Xcor lined up shoulder to shoulder, their massive forearms crossed over their chests. “I’m good with a gun,” Xcor said like that was the end of things. “And I can handle the shovel,” Qhuinn tacked on. “They’ll never find the body.” The two of them pounded knuckles and looked so dead serious that Layla had to roll her eyes. But then she was smiling. “You know something?” she said to the three of them. “I really believe…that it’s all going to be okay. We’re going to work it out, together, because that’s what families do.” As she rose up on her tiptoes and kissed her male, she said, “Love has a way of fixing everything…even your daughter starting to date.” “Which is not going to happen,” Xcor countered. “Ever.” “My man,” Qhuinn said, backing him up. “I knew I liked you—” “Oh, for the love,” Layla muttered as the debate resumed, and Blay started laughing and Qhuinn and Xcor continued bonding. -Qhuinn, Xcor, Layla, & Blay

May 27, 1941 Sunday we encountered specimens of the rarely appearing yellow lady's slipper. This orchis is fragilely beautiful. One tends to think of it almost as a phenomenon, without any roots or place in the natural world. And yet it, too, has had its tough old ancestors which have eluded fires and drought and freezes to pass on in this lovely form the boon of existence. If a plant so delicately lovely can at the same time be so toughly persistent and resistant to all natural enemies, can we doubt that hopes for a better an more rational world may not also withstand all assaults, be bequeathed from generation to generation, and come ultimately to flower? President Roosevelt says he has not lost faith in democracy; nor have I lost faith in the transcendent potentialities of LIFE itself. One has but to look about him to become almost wildly imbued with something of the massive, surging vitality of the earth.

I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel as I looked around the empty lot. I wavered on getting out when a giant lightning bolt painted a jagged streak across the rainy lavender-gray sky. Minutes passed and still he didn’t come out of the Three Hundreds’ building. Damn it. Before I could talk myself out of it, I jumped out of the car, cursing at myself for not carrying an umbrella for about the billionth time and for not having waterproof shoes, and ran through the parking lot, straight through the double doors. As I stomped my feet on the mat, I looked around the lobby for the big guy. A woman behind the front desk raised her eyebrows at me curiously. “Can I help you with something?” she asked. “Have you seen Aiden?” “Aiden?” Were there really that many Aidens? “Graves.” “Can I ask what you need him for?” I bit the inside of my cheek and smiled at the woman who didn’t know me and, therefore, didn’t have an idea that I knew Aiden. “I’m here to pick him up.” It was obvious she didn’t know what to make of me. I didn’t exactly look like pro-football player girlfriend material in that moment, much less anything else. I’d opted not to put on any makeup since I hadn’t planned on leaving the house. Or real pants. Or even a shirt with the sleeves intact. I had cut-off shorts and a baggy T-shirt with sleeves that I’d taken scissors to. Plus the rain outside hadn’t done my hair any justice. It looked like a cloud of teal. Then there was the whole we-don’t-look-anything-alike thing going on, so there was no way we could pass as siblings. Just as I opened my mouth, the doors that connected the front area with the rest of the training facility swung open. The man I was looking for came out with his bag over his shoulder, imposing, massive, and sweaty. Definitely surly too, which really only meant he looked the way he always did. I couldn’t help but crack a little smile at his grumpiness. “Ready?” He did his form of a nod, a tip of his chin. I could feel the receptionist’s eyes on us as he approached, but I was too busy taking in Grumpy Pants to bother looking at anyone else. Those brown eyes shifted to me for a second, and that time, I smirked uncontrollably. He glared down at me. “What are you smiling at?” I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head, trying to give him an innocent look. “Oh, nothing, sunshine.” He mouthed ‘sunshine’ as his gaze strayed to the ceiling. We ran out of the building side by side toward my car. Throwing the doors open, I pretty much jumped inside and shivered, turning the car and the heater on. Aiden slid in a lot more gracefully than I had, wet but not nearly as soaked. He eyed me as he buckled in, and I slanted him a look. “What?” With a shake of his head, he unzipped his duffel, which was sitting on his lap, and pulled out that infamous off-black hoodie he always wore. Then he held it out. All I could do was stare at it for a second. His beloved, no-name brand, extra-extra-large hoodie. He was offering it to me. When I first started working for Aiden, I remembered him specifically giving me instructions on how he wanted it washed and dried. On gentle and hung to dry. He loved that thing. He could own a thousand just like it, but he didn’t. He had one black hoodie that he wore all the time and a blue one he occasionally donned. “For me?” I asked like an idiot. He shook it, rolling his eyes. “Yes for you. Put it on before you get sick. I would rather not have to take care of you if you get pneumonia.” Yeah, I was going to ignore his put-out tone and focus on the ‘rather not’ as I took it from him and slipped it on without another word. His hoodie was like holding a gold medal in my hands. Like being given something cherished, a family relic. Aiden’s precious.

the effects the denial of our true and strong emotions have on our bodies. Such denial is demanded of us not least by morality and religion. On the basis of what I know about psychotherapy, both from personal experience and from accounts I have been given by very many people, I have come to the conclusion that individuals abused in childhood can attempt to obey the Fourth Commandment* only by recourse to a massive repression and detachment of their true emotions. They cannot love and honor their parents because unconsciously they still fear them. However much they may want to, they cannot build up a relaxed and trusting relationship. Instead, what usually materializes is a pathological attachment, a mixture of fear and dutiful obedience that hardly deserves the name of love in the genuine sense of the word. I call this a sham, a façade. In addition, people abused in childhood frequently hope all their lives that someday they will experience the love they have been denied. These expectations reinforce their attachment to their parents, an attachment that religious creeds refer to as love and praise as a virtue. Unfortunately, the same thing happens in most therapies, as most people are still dominated by traditional morality. There is a price to be paid for this morality, a price paid by the body. Individuals who believe that they feel what they ought to feel and constantly do their best not to feel what they forbid themselves to feel will ultimately fall ill—unless, that is, they leave it to their children to pick up the check by projecting onto them the emotions they cannot admit to themselves. This

Do we ever stop dreaming? I know I haven't. I must have been at least twenty-five when the Spice Girls happened, and I distinctly remember imagining my way into the group. I was going to be the sixth Spice, 'Massive Spice', who, against all the odds, would become the most popular and lusted-after Spice. The Spice who sang the vast majority of solo numbers in the up-tempo tracks. The Spice who really went the distance. And I still haven't quite given up on the Wimbledon Ladies' Singles Championship. I mean, it can't be too late, can it? I've got a lovely clean T-shirt, and I've figured out exactly how I'd respond to winning the final point (lie on floor wailing, get up, do triumphant lap of the ring slapping crowd members' box). It can't be just me who does this. I'm convinced that most adults, when travelling alone in a car, have a favourite driving CD of choice and sing along to it quite seriously, giving it as much attitude and effort as they can, due to believing – in that instant – that they're the latest rock or pop god playing to a packed Wembley stadium. And there must be at least one man, one poor beleaguered City worker, who likes to pop into a phone box then come out pretending he's Superman. Is there someone who does this? Anyone? If so, I'd like to meet you and we shall marry in the spring (unless you're really, really weird and the Superman thing is all you do, in which case BACK OFF).

It is hypocritical to exhort the Brazilians to conserve their rainforest after we have already destroyed the grassland ecosystem that occupied half the continent when we found it. A large-scale grassland restoration project would give us some moral authority when we seek conservation abroad. I must admit that I also like the idea because it would mean a better home for pronghorn, currently pushed by agriculture into marginal habitats-The high sagebrush deserts of the West. I would love to return the speedsters to their evolutionary home, the Floor of the Sky. Imagine a huge national reserve where anyone could see what caused Lewis and Clark to write with such enthusiasm in their journals-the sea of grass and flowers dotted with massive herds of bison, accompanied by the dainty speedsters and by great herds of elk. Grizzly bears and wolves would patrol the margins of the herds and coyotes would at last be reduced to their proper place. The song of the meadowlarks would pervade the prairie and near water the spring air would ring with the eerie tremolos of snipe.

I have always felt that putting emotions into words was an exercise in futility, they're often more complex than words can manage and it seems often impossible. And like an injustice to the emotions, like I will never have explained them well enough and it will just feel incomplete and wrong. Also I'm pretty sure you made me do this before heh. All of that said, I shall do my best to manage this. You are incredibly passionate. Straightforward. Funny. I feel like such a god damn idiot spouting random adjectives but I don't know what else to do. O.O You are those things though and I love them. You see the world in a way I feel I can understand at least somewhat, a way many don't. You embrace things others try to stifle. You aren't ashamed of being yourself and yourself is wonderful. Kind and compassionate. You sure helped me and I think I helped you too, we connected on some issues even if our issues weren't the same. We... ugh, I can't do it, I can't distill something as complex, intricate, beautiful, amazing as YOU into mere words. But you are who you are and you stole my heart and I don't mind. I like it. I love you. Can't go wrong with someone that loves music and wants to have lotr snuggle fests! I'm here darlingness. I just kept trying and trying to find the right words. It's difficult. NOT because I have anything less than the utmost massive lovelberry tree gem pie for you. It's just... emotions, y'know? They're hard to explain. o.o

It’s a bit ironic, you know,” Henry says, gazing up at it. “Me, the cursed gay heir, standing here in Victoria’s museum, considering how much she loved those sodomy laws.” He smirks. “Actually … you remember how I told you about the gay king, James I?” “The one with the dumb jock boyfriend?” “Yes, that one. Well, his most beloved favorite was a man named George Villiers. ‘The handsomest-bodied man in all of England,’ they called him. James was completely besotted. Everyone knew. This French poet, de Viau, wrote a poem about it.” He clears his throat and starts to recite: “‘One man fucks Monsieur le Grand, another fucks the Comte de Tonnerre, and it is well known that the King of England, fucks the Duke of Buckingham.’” Alex must be staring, because he adds, “Well, it rhymes in French. Anyway. Did you know the reason the King James translation of the Bible exists is because the Church of England was so displeased with James for flaunting his relationship with Villiers that he had the translation commissioned to appease them?” “You’re kidding.” “He stood in front of the Privy Council and said, ‘Christ had John, and I have George.’” “Jesus.” “Precisely.” Henry’s still looking up at the statue, but Alex can’t stop looking at him and the sly smile on his face, lost in his own thoughts. “And James’s son, Charles I, is the reason we have dear Samson. It’s the only Giambologna that ever left Florence. He was a gift to Charles from the King of Spain, and Charles gave it, this massive, absolutely priceless masterpiece of a sculpture, to Villiers. And a few centuries later, here he is. One of the most beautiful pieces we own, and we didn’t even steal it. We only needed Villiers and his trolloping ways with the queer monarchs. To me, if there were a registry of national gay landmarks in Britain, Samson would be on it.

How happily we explored our shiny new world! We lived like characters from the great books I curled up with in the big Draylon armchair. Like Jack Kerouak, like Gatsby, we created ourselves as we went along, a raggle-taggle of gypsies in old army overcoats and bell-bottoms, straggling through the fields that surrounded our granite farmhouse in search of firewood, which we dragged home and stacked in the living room. Ignorant and innocent, we acted as if the world belonged to us, as though we would ever have taken the time to hang the regency wallpaper we damaged so casually with half-rotten firewood, or would have known how to hang it straight, or smooth the seams. We broke logs against the massive tiled hearth and piled them against the sooty fire back, like the logs were tradition and we were burning it, like chimney fires could never happen, like the house didn't really belong to the poor divorcee who paid the rates and mortgage even as we sat around the flames like hunter gatherers, smoking Lebanese gold, chanting and playing the drums, dancing to the tortured music of Luke's guitar. Impelled by the rhythm, fortified by poorly digested scraps of Lao Tzu, we got up to dance, regardless of the coffee we knocked over onto the shag carpet. We sopped it up carelessly, or let it sit there as it would; later was time enough. We were committed to the moment. Everything was easy and beautiful if you looked at it right. If someone was angry, we walked down the other side of the street, sorry and amused at their loss of cool. We avoided newspapers and television. They were full of lies, and we knew all the stuff we needed. We spent our government grants on books, dope, acid, jug wine, and cheap food from the supermarket--variegated cheese scraps bundled roughly together, white cabbage and bacon ends, dented tins of tomatoes from the bargain bin. Everything was beautiful, the stars and the sunsets, the mold that someone discovered at the back of the fridge, the cows in the fields that kicked their giddy heels up in the air and fled as we ranged through the Yorkshire woods decked in daisy chains, necklaces made of melon seeds and tie-dye T-shirts whose colors stained the bath tub forever--an eternal reminder of the rainbow generation. [81-82]

But now I speculate re the ants' invisible organ of aggregate thought... if, in a city park of broad reaches, winding paths, roadways, and lakes, you can imagine seeing on a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon the random and unpredictable movement of great numbers of human beings in the same way... if you watch one person, one couple, one family, a child, you can assure yourself of the integrity of the individual will and not be able to divine what the next moment will bring. But when the masses are celebrating a beautiful day in the park in a prescribed circulation of activities, the wider lens of thought reveals nothing errant, nothing inconstant or unnatural to the occasion. And if someone acts in a mutant un-park manner, alarms go off, the unpredictable element, a purse snatcher, a gun wielder, is isolated, surrounded, ejected, carried off as waste. So that while we are individually and privately dyssynchronous, moving in different ways, for different purposes, in different directions, we may at the same time comprise, however blindly, the pulsing communicating cells of an urban over-brain. The intent of this organ is to enjoy an afternoon in the park, as each of us street-grimy urbanites loves to do. In the backs of our minds when we gather for such days, do we know this? How much of our desire to use the park depends on the desires of others to do the same? How much of the idea of a park is in the genetic invitation on nice days to reflect our massive neuromorphology? There is no central control mechanism telling us when and how to use the park. That is up to us. But when we do, our behavior there is reflective, we can see more of who we are because of the open space accorded to us, and it is possible that it takes such open space to realize in simple form the ordinary identity we have as one multicellular culture of thought that is always there, even when, in the comparative blindness of our personal selfhood, we are flowing through the streets at night or riding under them, simultaneously, as synaptic impulses in the metropolitan brain. Is this a stretch? But think of the contingent human mind, how fast it snaps onto the given subject, how easily it is introduced to an idea, an image that it had not dreamt of thinking of a millisecond before... Think of how the first line of a story yokes the mind into a place, a time, in the time it takes to read it. How you can turn on the radio and suddenly be in the news, and hear it and know it as your own mind's possession in the moment's firing of a neuron. How when you hear a familiar song your mind adopts its attitudinal response to life before the end of the first bar. How the opening credits of a movie provide the parameters of your emotional life for its ensuing two hours... How all experience is instantaneous and instantaneously felt, in the nature of ordinary mind-filling revelation. The permeable mind, contingently disposed for invasion, can be totally overrun and occupied by all the characteristics of the world, by everything that is the case, and by the thoughts and propositions of all other minds considering everything that is the case... as instantly and involuntarily as the eye fills with the objects that pass into its line of vision.

It meant that when she saw him for the first time in every life,Daniel was already in love with her. Every time. And always had been. And every time, she had to fall in love with him from scratch.He could never pressure her or push her into loving him. He had to win her anew each time. Daniel's love for her was one long, uninterrupted stream.It was the purest form of love there was,purer even than the love Luce returned. His love flowed without breaking,without stopping. Whereas Luce's love was wiped clean with every death, Daniel's grew over time, across all eternity. How powerfully strong must it be by now? Hundreds of love stacked one on top of the other? It was almost too massive for Luce to comprehend. He loved her that much,and yet in every lifetime,over and over again,he had to wait for her to catch up.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous" i Tell me it was for the hunger & nothing less. For hunger is to give the body what it knows it cannot keep. That this amber light whittled down by another war is all that pins my hand to your chest. i You, drowning                         between my arms — stay. You, pushing your body                          into the river only to be left                          with yourself — stay. i I’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven. How one night, after backhanding mother, then taking a chainsaw to the kitchen table, my father went to kneel in the bathroom until we heard his muffled cries through the walls. And so I learned that a man, in climax, was the closest thing to surrender. i Say surrender. Say alabaster. Switchblade.                    Honeysuckle. Goldenrod. Say autumn. Say autumn despite the green                    in your eyes. Beauty despite daylight. Say you’d kill for it. Unbreakable dawn                    mounting in your throat. My thrashing beneath you                    like a sparrow stunned with falling. i Dusk: a blade of honey between our shadows, draining. i I wanted to disappear — so I opened the door to a stranger’s car. He was divorced. He was still alive. He was sobbing into his hands (hands that tasted like rust). The pink breast cancer ribbon on his keychain swayed in the ignition. Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here? I was still here once. The moon, distant & flickering, trapped itself in beads of sweat on my neck. I let the fog spill through the cracked window & cover my fangs. When I left, the Buick kept sitting there, a dumb bull in pasture, its eyes searing my shadow onto the side of suburban houses. At home, I threw myself on the bed like a torch & watched the flames gnaw through my mother’s house until the sky appeared, bloodshot & massive. How I wanted to be that sky — to hold every flying & falling at once. i Say amen. Say amend. Say yes. Say yes anyway. i In the shower, sweating under cold water, I scrubbed & scrubbed. i In the life before this one, you could tell two people were in love because when they drove the pickup over the bridge, their wings would grow back just in time. Some days I am still inside the pickup. Some days I keep waiting. i It’s not too late. Our heads haloed             with gnats & summer too early to leave any marks.             Your hand under my shirt as static intensifies on the radio.             Your other hand pointing your daddy’s revolver             to the sky. Stars falling one by one in the cross hairs.             This means I won’t be afraid if we’re already             here. Already more than skin can hold. That a body             beside a body must ma

Now come on, we’re off.” He marched out of the room. They heard the front door open, but Dudley did not move and after a few faltering steps Aunt Petunia stopped too. “What now?” barked Uncle Vernon, reappearing in the doorway. It seemed that Dudley was struggling with concepts too difficult to put into words. After several moments of apparently painful internal struggle he said, “But where’s he going to go?” Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon looked at each other. It was clear that Dudley was frightening them. Hestia Jones broke the silence. “But…surely you know where your nephew is going?” she asked, looking bewildered. “Certainly we know,” said Vernon Dursley. “He’s off with some of your lot, isn’t he? Right, Dudley, let’s get in the car, you heard the man, we’re in a hurry.” Again, Vernon Dursley marched as far as the front door, but Dudley did not follow. “Off with some of our lot?” Hestia looked outraged. Harry had met this attitude before: Witches and wizards seemed stunned that his closest living relatives took so little interest in the famous Harry Potter. “It’s fine,” Harry assured her. “It doesn’t matter, honestly.” “Doesn’t matter?” repeated Hestia, her voice rising ominously. “Don’t these people realize what you’ve been through? What danger you are in? The unique position you hold in the hearts of the anti-Voldemort movement?” “Er--no, they don’t,” said Harry. “They think I’m a waste of space, actually, but I’m used to--” “I don’t think you’re a waste of space.” If Harry had not seen Dudley’s lips move, he might not have believed it. As it was, he stared at Dudley for several seconds before accepting that it must have been his cousin who had spoken; for one thing, Dudley had turned red. Harry was embarrassed and astonished himself. “Well…er…thanks, Dudley.” Again, Dudley appeared to grapple with thoughts too unwieldy for expression before mumbling, “You saved my life.” “Not really,” said Harry. “It was your soul the dementor would have taken…” He looked curiously at his cousin. They had had virtually no contact during this summer or last, as Harry had come back to Privet Drive so briefly and kept to his room so much. It now dawned on Harry, however, that the cup of cold tea on which he had trodden that morning might not have been a booby trap at all. Although rather touched, he was nevertheless quite relieved that Dudley appeared to have exhausted his ability to express his feelings. After opening his mouth once or twice more, Dudley subsided into scarlet-faced silence. Aunt Petunia burst into tears. Hestia Jones gave her an approving look that changed to outrage as Aunt Petunia ran forward and embraced Dudley rather than Harry. “S-so sweet, Dudders…” she sobbed into his massive chest. “S-such a lovely b-boy…s-saying thank you…” “But he hasn’t said thank you at all!” said Hestia indignantly. “He only said he didn’t think Harry was a waste of space!” “Yeah, but coming from Dudley that’s like ‘I love you,’” said Harry, torn between annoyance and a desire to laugh as Aunt Petunia continued to clutch at Dudley as if he had just saved Harry from a burning building.

He couldn’t have known it, but among the original run of The History of Love, at least one copy was destined to change a life. This particular book was one of the last of the two thousand to be printed, and sat for longer than the rest in a warehouse in the outskirts of Santiago, absorbing the humidity. From there it was finally sent to a bookstore in Buenos Aires. The careless owner hardly noticed it, and for some years it languished on the shelves, acquiring a pattern of mildew across the cover. It was a slim volume, and its position on the shelf wasn’t exactly prime: crowded on the left by an overweight biography of a minor actress, and on the right by the once-bestselling novel of an author that everyone had since forgotten, it hardly left its spine visible to even the most rigorous browser. When the store changed owners it fell victim to a massive clearance, and was trucked off to another warehouse, foul, dingy, crawling with daddy longlegs, where it remained in the dark and damp before finally being sent to a small secondhand bookstore not far from the home of the writer Jorge Luis Borges. The owner took her time unpacking the books she’d bought cheaply and in bulk from the warehouse. One morning, going through the boxes, she discovered the mildewed copy of The History of Love. She’d never heard of it, but the title caught her eye. She put it aside, and during a slow hour in the shop she read the opening chapter, called 'The Age of Silence.' The owner of the secondhand bookstore lowered the volume of the radio. She flipped to the back flap of the book to find out more about the author, but all it said was that Zvi Litvinoff had been born in Poland and moved to Chile in 1941, where he still lived today. There was no photograph. That day, in between helping customers, she finished the book. Before locking up the shop that evening, she placed it in the window, a little wistful about having to part with it. The next morning, the first rays of the rising sun fell across the cover of The History of Love. The first of many flies alighted on its jacket. Its mildewed pages began to dry out in the heat as the blue-gray Persian cat who lorded over the shop brushed past it to lay claim to a pool of sunlight. A few hours later, the first of many passersby gave it a cursory glance as they went by the window. The shop owner did not try to push the book on any of her customers. She knew that in the wrong hands such a book could easily be dismissed or, worse, go unread. Instead she let it sit where it was in the hope that the right reader might discover it. And that’s what happened. One afternoon a tall young man saw the book in the window. He came into the shop, picked it up, read a few pages, and brought it to the register. When he spoke to the owner, she couldn’t place his accent. She asked where he was from, curious about the person who was taking the book away. Israel, he told her, explaining that he’d recently finished his time in the army and was traveling around South America for a few months. The owner was about to put the book in a bag, but the young man said he didn’t need one, and slipped it into his backpack. The door chimes were still tinkling as she watched him disappear, his sandals slapping against the hot, bright street. That night, shirtless in his rented room, under a fan lazily pushing around the hot air, the young man opened the book and, in a flourish he had been fine-tuning for years, signed his name: David Singer. Filled with restlessness and longing, he began to read.

Then Daniel stepped forward and a trumpet sounded, followed by a drum. The dance was beginning. He took her hand. When he spoke, he spoke to her, not to the audience,as the other players did. "The fairest hand I ever touched," Daniel said. "O Beauty, till now I never knew thee." As if the lines had been written for the two of them. They began to dance,and Daniel locked eyes with her the whole time. His eyes were crystal clear and violet, and the way they never strayed from hers chipped away at Luce's heart. She knew he'd loved her always,but until this moment,dancing with him on the stage in front of all these people,she had never really thought about what it meant. It meant that when she saw him for the first time in every life,Daniel was already in love with her. Every time. And always had been. And every time, she had to fall in love with him from scratch.He could never pressure her or push her into loving him. He had to win her anew each time. Daniel's love for her was one long, uninterrupted stream.It was the purest form of love there was,purer even than the love Luce returned. His love flowed without breaking,without stopping. Whereas Luce's love was wiped clean with every death, Daniel's grew over time, across all eternity. How powerfully strong must it be by now? Hundreds of love stacked one on top of the other? It was almost too massive for Luce to comprehend. He loved her that much,and yet in every lifetime,over and over again,he had to wait for her to catch up. All this time,they had been dancing with the rest of the troupe, bounding in and out of the wings at breaks in the music,coming back onstage for more gallantry,for longer sets with more ornate steps,until the whole company was dancing. At the close of the scene,even though it wasn't in the script,even though Cam was standing right there watching,Luce held fast to Daniel's hand and pulled him to her,up against the potted orange trees.He looked at her like she was crazy and tried to tug her to the mark dictated by her stage directions. "What are you doing?" he murmured. He had doubted her before,backstage when she'd tried to speak freely about her feelings.She had to make him believe her.Especially if Lucinda died tonight,understanding the depth of her love would mean everything to him. It would help him to carry on,to keep loving her for hundreds more years, through all the pain and hardship she'd witnessed,right up to the present. Luce knew that it wasn't in the script, but she couldn't stop herself: She grabbed Daniel and she kissed him. She expected him to stop her,but instead he swooped her into his arms and kissed her back.Hard and passionately, responding with such intensity that she felt the way she did when they were flying,though she knew her feet were planted on the ground. For a moment, the audience was silent. Then they began to holler and jeer.Someone threw a shoe at Daniel, but he ignored it. His kisses told Luce that he believed her,that he understood the depth of her love,but she wanted to be absolutely sure. "I will always love you,Daniel." Only, that didn't seem quite right-or not quite enough. She had to make him understand,and damn the consequences-if she changed history,so be it. "I'll always choose you." Yes, that was the word. "Every single lifetime, I'll choose you.Just as you have always chosen me.Forever." His lips parted.Did he believe her? Did he already know? It was a choice, a long-standing, deep-seated choice that reached beyond anything else Luce was capable of.Something powerful was behind it.Something beautiful and- Shadows began to swirl in the rigging overhead. Heat quaked through her body, making her convulse,desperate for the fiery release she knew was coming. Daniel's eyes flashed with pain. "No," he whispered. "Please don't go yet." Somehow,it always took both of them by surprise.

What do woman say to little boys? " Stop fighting. Stop being so rough. Stop rough housing." They're boys you know, that's kinda what they're sapossed to do. So, men are sapossed to overcome all these biological drives and I'm just really interested in helping women overcome theirs caus' I think the spotlight of " Outgrow your bestial nature." has been pointed just a little bit too long at men and I think it's time to swivel that motherfucker around and point it at woman and say stop making yourself look like fucking sex clowns to milk money out of men's dicks. Stop lying about who you are and what you're about. Stop being flirty, manipulative, and trying to be sexy. Just stop doing it. It's time for women to outgrow biology just as men have been instructed to for about the last 20,000 years to outgrow their biology. "Stop slamming doors. Stop yelling. Stop climbing trees. Stop being rude. Stop farting. Stop enjoying fart jokes. Just stop being men." Ok, Well; women stop being women. Be people. Be people who have sex, absolutely but, don't be caricatures. Don't aim to be like a woman who looks like the outline of some playboy mudflap on a trucker's rig. Just be people. Be sexual. Enjoy your sexuality and bodies but, stop trying to bury us in tits so that we pass out and you can rifle through our bank accounts. Just stop doing that shit. I won't enable it anymore. Why does your face have to look like some half rained on Picasso water color? I don't need rainbows on the face of a woman. I don't need these weird butterfly wing goth eyebrows and shit like that. Male sexuality is demonized and female sexuality is elevated. That's bullshit. Then women wonder why men prefer porn to them. It's caus' porn doesn't nag you for wanting stuff that's defined as "kinky" or "weird". Male sexuality is demonized and held in low esteem. Woman's sexuality is always beautiful. Woman's sexuality is unremitting shallow. I'm not saying men's isn't but, we know that about men, right? What turns women on? Women say confidence. Do you know what that means? Money. Do women say " He is really confident about his sidewalk art. He is really confident about his subway busking. That's such a turn on!" Why do men like looking at naked women and women get turned on looking at clothed men? Because if a man's clothes aren't on you don't know how expensive his wardrobe is. This is what Mohammad Ali said. I'm going to throw on some old jeans and a old t-shirt and I'm just gonna walk down into some little town and find some woman who doesn't know who the hell I am and then when she's fallen in love with me and we get married, I'm going to take her to my million dollar mansion and my yacht. This is the reality. Once you start having money, once you start having power, then the true nature of massive swaths of female sexuality becomes clear.