Mcdonald's Love Quotes

You can die of a broken heart -- it's scientific fact -- and my heart has been breaking since that very first day we met. I can feel it now, aching deep behind my rib cage the way it does every time we're together, beating a desperate rhythm: Love me. Love me. Love me.

No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages 1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. 2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5. 3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on “Bright Eyes.” 4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank. 5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13. 6) Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14. 7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15. 8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil. 9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19. 10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961. 11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936. 12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23 13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24 14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record 15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity 16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France 17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures “David” and “Pieta” by age 28 18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world 19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter 20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean 21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind 22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest 23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech “I Have a Dream." 24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics 25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight 26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions. 27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon. 28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas 30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger 31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States 32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out. 33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games" 34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out. 35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa. 36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president. 37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels. 38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat". 40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived 41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise 42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out 43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US 44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats 45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President

You’re not in love with me, not really, you just love the way I always made you feel. Like you were the center of my world. Because you were. I would have done anything for you.

Love isn't pain. Heartbreak isn't noble or romantic. You deserve better, so don't ever forget.

It is by loving and not by being loved, that one can come nearest to the soul of another.

I love jell-o. I love the way it comes in rainbow colours, wiggles and jiggles and looks like brains.

Just because they were soul mates doesn't mean they had to last forever. Just because they felt true love doesn't mean they couldn't have a new life after that love was over.

I can't keep doing this to myself, getting my hopes up so high, only to have them come crashing down. I can't keep waiting for him to come to his senses, having my whole emotional state rest on what he decides. What if he never wakes up to how perfect we'd be together? What if I spend another year pining for him - or longer even? In a terrible flash, I see my future stretching out before me: waiting for his calls, rearranging my life around college visits, and decoding texts and instant messages like they could be something real, something true. This isn't love; this is pure torment.

I want to know because you never told me, but what do you have against Mary McDonald?” he asked. “I want to know why we hate her.” Why we hate her. Ivan. Fucking Ivan.

So how are we suppose to win? On the one hand, the world tells us that capital-L Love is epic, and all-conquering, and the meaning of everything, but on the other, it drills us with this message that we shouldn't make any sacrifice or effort to pursue it, because that would make us weak, unempowered, desperate, silly girls.

The specter of unrequited love can strike at any time, reducing even the most fearless, independent woman to a weepy wreck

You don’t have to be right one hundred percent of the time to show you love someone.

I love getting older," I muse as I carefully begin to peel the layers away. "You're closer to death, but there are presents.

Are you a person who peels off a band-aid slowly or just rips it off all at once?" Casey contemplated Alexa's warning, recognizing it for what it was.

How could I have been so stupid? All this time, I've been certain he feels the same way about me. I was so sure that my feelings were requited that I'd convinced myself he was just getting up the courage to confess. But I was wrong. Garrett's feelings for me are nothing but friendship - plain, simple, and overwhelmingly platonic. I built his love out of thin air, I realize in horror - crafted it from e-mails and late-night conversations as if my sheer will would make it so. It was all in my head. Again!

I've never had a love letter before. Not from anyone. It is a most wonderful thing to receive. I realise that it makes a present to me of your life, not just your love.

To feel love was to feel fear—you just couldn’t let it dictate your life. Love was a risk, but it opened up a world of possibility, one you would never experience without it.

When we understand how precious each moment is, we can treat each breath, each moment, as a newborn baby.

And that's how it was with Garrett. Because he understood me, the me I wanted so desperately to be. Think about your best friend - how you tell them everything, how they're the person who knows you best, all your deepest fears and insecurities. They're the one you call when something amazing happens or when everything falls apart and you need someone to come over and watch movies and tell you that everything's going to be OK. It's not like family, who are obligated to love you and even then sometimes fail to be everything they're supposed to be. Your true friend has chosen you, and you them, and that's a different kind of bond. That's Garrett to me. I'm used to talking to him all the time, about the most meaningless stuff. To have him gone feels like a loss, an absence haunting me every day. Without him, there's just the empty space that used to be filled with laughter and friendship and comfort. Can you really blame me for finding it so hard to let go?

Garrett has been the best friend a girl could want, so how could I be so stupid as to think about shutting him out for good? I've been so busy thinking about my unrequited love, I haven't even stopped to consider the other, more important part of our relationship. Friendship. Ignoring him now would make him think I don't care, that I don't want to be friends. I want to get over him, not lose him for good! How must he feel, with me not replying to his texts and e-mails like this? What kind of friend am I?

Oh I don't know,' he said. 'But maybe, maybe love should be a kind of journey

You’re not a failure. You’re a survivor. Call me. –Drew

A love that remains young at heart, remains as constant as the rising sun.

I just wanna be fit and have good blood pressure and feel good with my clothes off and I do. I love my body but I think that there’s always a part of me that wishes I looked more like Antoni or like an underwear model. But then again, I still really love to binge eat at McDonald’s at night, so...you know.

I fell in love with McDonald's. McDonald's, to me, tasted like America. McDonald's is America. You see it advertised and it looks amazing. You crave it. You buy it. You take your first bite, and it blows your mind. It's even better than you imagined. Then, halfway through, you realize it's not all it's cracked up to be. A few bites later, you're like, Hmm, there's a lot wrong with this. Then you're done, you miss it like crazy, and you go back for more.

When I was ten years old I was actually given McDonald’s gift certificates for Christmas by my mom. Yes, my own mother. I guess she couldn’t find gift certificates for a vending machine. I like to think it was her way of saying, “Merry Christmas. Here are some coupons for poison.” McDonald’s introduced the gift certificate prior to the obesity epidemic. I’m not saying that McDonald’s gift certificates caused the obesity epidemic, but in retrospect, the timing is kind of suspicious.

Let stuff simply unfold, for once in your life, without spinning all those hopeful romantic fantasies. The less time you spend dreaming up a world of happily ever after, the more time you’ll have to actually live — no evers or afters required.

Thomas Lull knows he is un-American: he hates cars but loves trains, Indian trains, big trains like a nation on the move. He is content with the contradiction that they are at once hierarchical and democratic, a temporary community brought together for a time; vital while it lasts, burning away like early mist when the terminus is reached.

So you try, and try, to move past it and forget about them, but it's like they're stuck in your head -- you can't just flip a switch and stop loving them! So you hate yourself for it because you know it's no use, but nothing you do seems to ever make a difference.

You’re not in love with me, not really, you just love the way I always made you feel. Like you were the centre of my world. Because you were. I would have done anything for you.

It’s so much better to have sex with someone who’s always available, knows what you want and who loves you more deeply than anyone else ever can. Yourself.

She felt lighter suddenly, lighter and happier

We aren’t defined by our tragedies, by our history, by our mistakes, but by pieces of love and sadness and happiness, and the whole range of human emotions we feel.

How is it?" I ask as we stroll towards the dressing rooms. "Working at the playground. That must be fun." "Sure, they're just adorable," she says, "For the first five minutes. And then I want to wring their adorable little necks." I stop, shocked. "I always figured you loved kids." "Yeah, no." Kayla shakes her head emphatically. "One kid, I can do, even two-- just stick them in front of a Disney movie, let them play Xbox all night. But a herd of them?" She shudders.

Exposing impressionable young men to the glories of opera on their first evening at home with you tended to put the kiss of death on things, as Oliver, to his cost, had discovered over the years.

People will look different when I see them with God. People are a huge part of the “with God” life, because we have to live with people. We have to interact with them. How we get along with people says a lot about where our soul rests. When we are living with God, we will see people as God sees them. If I’m aware God is here with me, and God is looking at you at the same moment I’m looking at you, it will change how I respond to you. Instead of seeing you as the annoying server at McDonald’s who messed up my order, I will see you as someone God loved enough to send his Son to die on your behalf. I will see you as a real person who got up dreading going to work, dealing with impatient customers, being on her feet all day. In other words, I will no longer see you as everyone else sees you. This is exactly what Paul is after when he says, “From now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.” From now on, now that my soul is centered with God in Jesus, I won’t look at people the same way.

I lean back into your body - memory is a shade of the color blue. Painted the walls white, the clocks went back an hour and who knew you'd be the one? I am okay with chopsticks, you know how to please just about any man. Your cheeks a hot air balloon lifting up into the sky, a kind of yellow vibrant, tastes like the milkshakes in Pulp Fiction. The McDonald's lobby is now open 24 hours in case you really want a big mac or some french fries and do not have a car. It might make you fat but it might be worth it. The ones who will love you regardless.

Of course, in my mind, violence would have been better, but since that wasn’t an option, I decided to play along. “It’s okay, handsome. I’ve only been here a few minutes. I’d like to introduce you to Dick.” “No, it’s…” Richard tried to correct me only to be interrupted by Drew. “Nice to meet you, Dick,” Drew retorted.

Excuse me," he greeted, smiling. "I'm sorry to bother you, but do either of you know how to get to the Nokia Theater?" "Absolutely," Dylan chimed in. "That street right there is forty-second." He pointed to the right of where we were sitting. "You want to follow that for another four blocks and then turn right when you see Yangsoon's Kitchen. Then you want to go up another two blocks and bang a left at Starbucks. You'll see the theater up on your right after the big McDonald's sigh. You can't miss it." The man put the newspaper he was holding under his arm and extended his hand out to shake Dylan's. "Thank you sir. I really appreciate it. "He turned and scrambled off at lighting speed. I peered at Dylan suspiciously. "You don't really know how to get to the theater, do you?" His face remained blank as he shook his head. "Not a clue.

He's never been interested with one night stands or sex with strangers but he couldn't deny her.

Worshipping Elvis seems to be an excuse for Americans to be fat and stupid.‘Probably probably, they love vulgarity. Look at McDonald’s

People love to do that, to point to some single phenomenon, assign it all the blame, and wipe the slate clean, like when overeaters sue McDonald’s for making them fat pigs.

I used to know…this bum that sat outside of McDonalds. He sat there, begging for food. He sat there so long, he became frozen to the pavement. He’s loving it.

It’s McDonald’s of the soul: momentary pleasure followed by incredible guilt, eventually leading to cancer.

The sea is wide the ocean is deep My love for you is big as a sheep

I would love it if we could limit my red carpet topics to my favorite colors, what sound a duck makes, and my thoughts on McDonald’s All-Day Breakfast—blessing or curse?

Sometimes the most powerful understanding comes from someone short, brown feathered and beautiful. "Thank you very much and I do like French fries," said Mrs. Duck politely.

Loss, death, a broken heart, no matter how figurative, was unbearable. There was never a guarantee you wouldn’t lose those you loved.

Being a parent is one long process of daring yourself to let go. Sometimes worry and love and control, all get jumbled up until you can't see the difference.

A ship there is and she sails the sea. She’s loaded deep as deep can be. But not so deep as the love I’m in. I know not if I sink or swim.

Otto could be extremely convincing. During our sophomore year, he’d persuaded me to boycott McDonald’s, even though they’d recently brought back the McRib.

It's their way of touching one another without having to touch one another. It's their way of saying I had a nightmare and are you there and I am here. And it's their way.

How do I know I’m right? Well I once got a room full of lefties to admit through clenched teeth that Karl Marx would have despised the organic movement, but would have loved McDonald’s.

I can't get past the strange contradiction that seems to lurk behind everything we do. Because no matter what, or who, we end up choosing, all of us feel like we've failed somehow. Kayla feels guilty for planning a future with Blake; Dominique feels guilty that she won't with Carlos. LuAnn dropped everything to make it work with her guy, and I'm filled with shame every time I think about how I did the same thing, building my life around Garrett without realizing it then working just as hard to take that version of my life apart, piece by piece. So how are we supposed to win? On the one hand, the world tells us that capital-L Love is epic, and all conquering, and the meaning of everything, but on the other it drills us with this message that we shouldn't make any sacrifice or effort to pursue it, because that would make us weak, unempowered, desperate, silly girls.

We love the idea of transformation, so we can make ourselves something more than just ordinary. It's why you're doing this, isn't it?" she asked. "You don't want to settle for what you are; you want to be more. You want to win.

we’re not helping. So now we’re helping. Me: (Standing in doorway, looking bewildered.) Thanks, I guess. Joey: (Takes away Stevie’s hand.) But that’s not fair! Alex: What’s not fair? Stevie: (Striking Shakespeare pose.) All’s fair in love and sisters. Me: You guys are weird, you know that? Stevie: Go ahead. Take it. Go. (Makes shooing-dog motion with hands.) OK. Bye-bye, then. Joey: (Calling after Alex.) Bye-bye, Birdie! Me: (Leaves room, taking list. Sisters behind me mumbling and grumbling — Joey

I just wanna be fit and have good blood pressure and feel good with my clothes off and I do. I love my body but I think that there’s always a part of me that wishes I looked more like Antoni or like an underwear model. But then again, I still really love to binge eat at McDonald’s at night, so...you know.

Forget bringing the troops home from Iraq. We need to get the troops home from World War II. Can anybody tell me why, in 2009, we still have more than sixty thousand troops in Germany and thirty thousand in Japan? At some point, these people are going to have to learn to rape themselves. Our soldiers have been in Germany so long they now wear shorts with black socks. You know that crazy soldier hiding in the cave on Iwo Jima who doesn’t know the war is over? That’s us. Bush and Cheney used to love to keep Americans all sphinctered-up on the notion that terrorists might follow us home. But actually, we’re the people who go to your home and then never leave. Here’s the facts: The Republic of America has more than five hundred thousand military personnel deployed on more than seven hundred bases, with troops in one hundred fifty countries—we’re like McDonald’s with tanks—including thirty-seven European countries—because you never know when Portugal might invade Euro Disney. And this doesn’t even count our secret torture prisons, which are all over the place, but you never really see them until someone brings you there—kinda like IHOP. Of course, Americans would never stand for this in reverse—we can barely stand letting Mexicans in to do the landscaping. Can you imagine if there were twenty thousand armed Guatemalans on a base in San Ber-nardino right now? Lou Dobbs would become a suicide bomber. And why? How did this country get stuck with an empire? I’m not saying we’re Rome. Rome had good infrastructure. But we are an empire, and the reason is because once America lands in a country, there is no exit strategy. We’re like cellulite, herpes, and Irish relatives: We are not going anywhere. We love you long time!

I picked a sushi spot even though I don’t love sushi, because the restaurant is really sunny and cute, and I wanted to make a good impression. Which, in hindsight, is fucking misleading, because I am 100 percent the kind of friend who wants you to pick me up so we can go to the drive thru and gossip over Big Macs in the McDonald’s parking lot. All my real friends are like, “Sushi? Table service? In daylight? I once had to watch you eat a hot dog on the bus!

She was theorizing on the Deep State; that enduring Turkish paranoia that the nation really was a conspiracy run by a cabal of generals, judges, industrialists and gangsters. The Taksim Square massacre of three years before, the Kahramanmaraş slaughter of Alevis a few months after, the oil crisis and the enduring economic instability, even the ubiquity of the Grey Wolves nationalist youth movement handing out their patriotic leaflets and defiling Greek Churches: all were links in an accelerating chain of events running through the fingers of the Derin Devlet. To what end? the men asked. Coup, she said, leaning forward, her fingers pursed. It was then that Georgios Ferentinou adored her. The classic profile, the strength of her jaw and fine cheekbones. The way she shook her head when the men disagreed with her, how her bobbed, curling hair swayed. The way she would not argue but set her lips and stared, as if their stupidity was a stubborn offence against nature. Her animation in argument balanced against her marvellous stillness when listening, considering, drawing up a new answer. How she paused, feeling the regard of another, then turned to Georgios and smiled. In the late summer of 1980 Georgios Ferentinou fell in love with Ariana Sinanidis by Meryem Nasi’s swimming pool. Three days later, on September 12th, Chief of General Staff Kenan Evren overthrew the government and banned all political activity.

Now, from the outside in, I can understand why you might be critical of McDonald’s. You might say that people shouldn’t eat meat. You might say that the hamburgers could be fatter, or less fatty, or this or that. But what you couldn’t say—what you could never say—is that McDonald’s doesn’t keep its promise. Because it does. Better than just about any business in the world, McDonald’s, the love of Ray Kroc’s life, still keeps its promise, long after Ray Kroc has gone. It delivers exactly what we have come to expect of it every single time.

Leta walked to the door and opened it with a ready smile for Colby Lane. And found herself looking straight into the eye of a man she hadn’t seen face-to-face in thirty-six years. Matt Holden matched her face against his memories of a young, slight, beautiful woman whose eyes loved him every time they looked at him. His heart spun like a cartwheel in his chest. “Cecily said it was Colby,” Leta said unsteadily. “Strange. She phoned me and asked if I was free this evening.” His broad shoulders shrugged and he smiled faintly. “I’m free every evening.” “That doesn’t sound like the life of a playboy widower,” Leta said caustically. “My wife was a vampire,” he said. “She sucked me dry of life and hope. Her drinking wore me down. Her death was a relief for both of us. Do I get to come in?” he added, glancing down the hall. “I’m going to collect dust if I stand out here much longer, and I’m hungry. A sack of McDonald’s hamburgers and fries doesn’t do a lot for me.” “I hear it’s a presidential favorite,” Cecily mused, joining them. “Come in, Senator Holden.” “It was Matt before,” he pointed out. “Or are you trying to butter me up for a bigger donation to the museum?” She shrugged. “Pick a reason.” He looked at Leta, who was uncomfortable. “Well, at least you can’t hang up on me here. You’ll be glad to know that our son isn’t speaking to me. He isn’t speaking to you, either, or so he said,” he added. “I suppose he won’t talk to you?” he added to Cecily. “He said goodbye very finally, after telling me that I was an idiot to think he’d change his mind and want to marry me just because he turned out to have mixed blood,” she said, not relating the shocking intimacy that had prefaced his remarks. “I’ll punch him for that,” Matt said darkly. “Ex-special forces,” Leta spoke up with a faint attempt at humor, nodding toward Matt. “He was in uniform when we went on our first date.” “You wore a white cotton dress with a tiered skirt,” he recalled, “and let your hair down. Hair…” He turned back to Cecily and grimaced. “Good God, what did you do that for?” “Tate likes long hair, that’s what I did it for,” she said, venom in her whole look. “I can’t wait for him to see it, even if I have to settle for sending him a photo!” “I hope you never get mad at me,” Matt said. “Fat chance.

ALICE COOPER: Now, if you’re in Norway and you want to have any kind of authority or credibility in metal, you have to eat your lead singer. It’s like rap: if you don’t shoot somebody you can’t really be a rapper. I love these advertisements in metal magazines for all these bands that are trying to be more evil than the other band, or they’re trying to be more Celtic or more occult. It’s just hysterical. These guys are role-playing for a couple years, and then they turn into something else. They go, “We are Gothora, and we are Vikings!” No, you’re not. You’re not Vikings at all. Vikings don’t go to McDonald’s.

He lowered his head, and she went to give him a friendly, perfunctory kiss (she hadn’t cleaned her teeth; she was impatient for her coffee) but the kiss turned unexpectedly lovely and she felt that ticklish, teary feeling behind her eyes as a lifetime of kisses filled her head: from the very first brand-new-boyfriend kiss, to “You may kiss the bride,” to the unshaven, shell-shocked, red-eyed kiss after Madison was born, to that aching, beautiful kiss after she broke up with Dominick and told Nick (standing in the car park of McDonald’s, the kids arguing in the backseat of the car), “Will you please come back home now?

Biswas-DIener and Dean claim that ‘so important is our work to our identity that we proudly claim our occupation as synonymous with who we are.’ Individuals are most fulfilled, they argue, when they have a ‘calling-orientation’ approach to work, meaning they work because they love to do it and because it makes them flourish, not because they ‘have to.’ The authors conveniently leave unaddressed the question of just exactly how someone can develop a calling when working as a pizza deliverer, a McDonald’s cashier or an office cleaner, but forcefully marshal the working and lower-middle classes to the ideal of the upper-middle classes.

Finally, some people tell me that they avoid science fiction because it’s depressing. This is quite understandable if they happened to hit a streak of post-holocaust cautionary tales or a bunch of trendies trying to outwhine each other, or overdosed on sleaze-metal-punk-virtual-noir Capitalist Realism. But the accusation often, I think, reflects some timidity or gloom in the reader’s own mind: a distrust of change, a distrust of the imagination. A lot of people really do get scared and depressed if they have to think about anything they’re not perfectly familiar with; they’re afraid of losing control. If it isn’t about things they know all about already they won’t read it, if it’s a different color they hate it, if it isn’t McDonald’s they won’t eat at it. They don’t want to know that the world existed before they were, is bigger than they are, and will go on without them. They do not like history. They do not like science fiction. May they eat at McDonald’s and be happy in Heaven." Pro: "But what I like in and about science fiction includes these particular virtues: vitality, largeness, and exactness of imagination; playfulness, variety, and strength of metaphor; freedom from conventional literary expectations and mannerism; moral seriousness; wit; pizzazz; and beauty. Let me ride a moment on that last word. The beauty of a story may be intellectual, like the beauty of a mathematical proof or a crystalline structure; it may be aesthetic, the beauty of a well-made work; it may be human, emotional, moral; it is likely to be all three. Yet science fiction critics and reviewers still often treat the story as if it were a mere exposition of ideas, as if the intellectual “message” were all. This reductionism does a serious disservice to the sophisticated and powerful techniques and experiments of much contemporary science fiction. The writers are using language as postmodernists; the critics are decades behind, not even discussing the language, deaf to the implications of sounds, rhythms, recurrences, patterns—as if text were a mere vehicle for ideas, a kind of gelatin coating for the medicine. This is naive. And it totally misses what I love best in the best science fiction, its beauty." "I am certainly not going to talk about the beauty of my own stories. How about if I leave that to the critics and reviewers, and I talk about the ideas? Not the messages, though. There are no messages in these stories. They are not fortune cookies. They are stories.

... People like to know what they are getting ahead of time. Thus, McDonald's, Wal-Mart, F.W. Woolworth: store-brands maintained and visible across the entire country. Wherever you go, you will get something that is, with small regional variations, the same. 'In the field of funeral homes, however, things are, perforce, different. You need to feel that you are getting small-town personal service from someone who has a calling to the profession. You want personal attention to you and your loved one in a time of great loss. You wish to know that your grief is happening on a local level, not a national one. But in all branches of industry - and death is an industry, my young friend, make no mistake about that - one makes one's money from operating in bulk, from buying in quantity, from centralising one's operations. It's not pretty, but it's true. Trouble is, no one wants to know that their loved ones are travelling in a cooler van to some big old converted warehouse where they may have twenty, fifty, or a hundred cadavers to go... 'So when big companies come in they buy the name of the company, they pay the funeral directors to stay on, they create the apparency of diversity. But that is merely the tip of the gravestone. In reality, they are as local as Burger King.

Marcelina loved that miniscule, precise moment when the needle entered her face. It was silver; it was pure. It was the violence that healed, the violation that brought perfection. There was no pain, never any pain, only a sense of the most delicate of penetrations, like a mosquito exquisitely sipping blood, a precision piece of human technology slipping between the gross tissues and cells of her flesh. She could see the needle out of the corner of her eye; in the foreshortened reality of the ultra-close-up it was like the stem of a steel flower. The latex-gloved hand that held the syringe was as vast as the creating hand of God: Marcelina had watched it swim across her field of vision, seeking its spot, so close, so thrillingly, dangerously close to her naked eyeball. And then the gentle stab. Always she closed her eyes as the fingers applied pressure to the plunger. She wanted to feel the poison entering her flesh, imagine it whipping the bloated, slack, lazy cells into panic, the washes of immune response chemicals as they realized they were under toxic attack; the blessed inflammation, the swelling of the wrinkled, lined skin into smoothness, tightness, beauty, youth. Marcelina Hoffman was well on her way to becoming a Botox junkie. Such a simple treat; the beauty salon was on the same block as Canal Quatro. Marcelina had pioneered the lunch-hour face lift to such an extent that Lisandra had appropriated it as the premise for an entire series. Whore. But the joy began in the lobby with Luesa the receptionist in her high-collared white dress saying “Good afternoon, Senhora Hoffman,” and the smell of the beautiful chemicals and the scented candles, the lightness and smell of the beautiful chemicals and the scented candles, the lightness and brightness of the frosted glass panels and the bare wood floor and the cream-on-white cotton wall hangings, the New Age music that she scorned anywhere else (Tropicalismo hippy-shit) but here told her, “you’re wonderful, you’re special, you’re robed in light, the universe loves you, all you have to do is reach out your hand and take anything you desire.” Eyes closed, lying flat on the reclining chair, she felt her work-weary crow’s-feet smoothed away, the young, energizing tautness of her skin. Two years before she had been to New York on the Real Sex in the City production and had been struck by how the ianqui women styled themselves out of personal empowerment and not, as a carioca would have done, because it was her duty before a scrutinizing, judgmental city. An alien creed: thousand-dollar shoes but no pedicure. But she had brought back one mantra among her shopping bags, an enlightenment she had stolen from a Jennifer Aniston cosmetics ad. She whispered it to herself now, in the warm, jasmine-and vetiver-scented sanctuary as the botulin toxins diffused through her skin. Because I’m worth it.

It’s supposed to be raining Thank Yous on Thursday, after an ingratitude draught. Also, you’d better enjoy my love while it’s fresh, before it goes rotten and I have to sell it to McDonald’s as chicken filler.

After six long hours of driving and three rest stops, Tiger pulls up to a snow-topped, metal speaker box just outside the State Penitentiary's first gate in Walla Walla. As he rolls down his window and snow flies in his face, Joshua starts begging for a Happy Meal. I turn around, snapping at him. "This ISN'T MCDONALDS and YOU AREN'T HUNGRY. NOW SHUT UP BRAT." A loud scratchy masculine voice blasts out of the speaker. "CAN I HELP YOU?" Tiger leans out the window, as he answers- We're here to visit Raven Chandler. "HAVE YOU BEEN HERE BEFORE?" "Yes sir. I've been here A LOT." "WHERE'S HIS MOTHER?" "I don't know.. I haven't seen her in months." "NOT THE PRISONER'S MOTHER. THE BRAT IN THE BACK SEAT OF YOUR JEEP." "Oh- HIM-" As he turns, smiling and sticking his tongue out at Joshua, I lean towards his window to answer the guard's question. "SHE'S IN VEGAS, SIR. I'M BABYSITTING. HE'S MY GODSON." When the speaker remains disturbingly silent for far too long, I continue. "HE'S A GOOD BOY SIR. HE WON'T BE ANY TROUBLE- I SWEAR." "THAT'S RIGHT," Tiger said. "HE SWEARS ON THE LITTLE BRAT'S MOTHER'S GRAVE.

Since I first laid eyes on her that night in the bar, I knew she was meant for me. She tells me all the time, I saved her, because her dream came true. The truth is, she saved me that night, and has been saving me every night since then.

All separate, independent nation states bristling behind borders one centimeter greater than the surface area of their skins. Never talking. Never ever talking: privacy infringement, caste-breaking, SoulCrime, PainCrime, help! call the Love Police!

She loved her dream, because in the midst of the lifeswarm, it was one thing that was hers and hers alone, her dream of flying. Just … flying. Never to, or from, anywhere,

wondering when the Environmental Maintenance Unit would get round to patching up the hole the Love Police had blasted in her apartment wall.

The Love Police, vigilant and valiant defenders of … Of what? Mediocrity? Benign Incompetence? One and a half billion people for whom nothing was more important than their own happiness?

About the Author MEGAN MCDONALD grew up in a house full of books and sisters—four sisters, who inspire many of the stories she writes. She has loved to write since she was ten, when she got her first story published in her school newspaper. Megan vividly remembers growing up in the 1970s, from making apple-seed bracelets to learning the metric system. San Francisco is close to home for Megan, who lives with her husband in Sebastopol, California, where she writes the Judy Moody series and many other books for young people.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was a great writer. He said that a person never experiences the same kind of love twice. That means what we have with each other is not like anything either of us has had with anyone else. I like that idea.

Eric Boocock had been England’s No.1 for a spell in the late 60s and early 70s. He reached three world finals and in 1974 put the town on the map by winning the British Championship in front of a 10,000 crowd and ITV's World of Sport cameras. Everybody

Adaptogens: Herbs for Strength, Stamina, and Stress Relief by David Winston and Steven Maimes An in-depth discussion of adaptogens with detailed monographs for many adaptogenic, nervine, and nootropic herbs. Adaptogens in Medical Herbalism: Elite Herbs and Natural Compounds for Mastering Stress, Aging, and Chronic Disease by Donald R. Yance A scientifically based herbal and nutritional program to master stress, improve energy, prevent degenerative disease, and age gracefully. Alchemy of Herbs: Transform Everyday Ingredients into Foods and Remedies That Heal by Rosalee de la Forêt This book offers an introduction to herbal energetics for the beginner, plus a host of delicious and simple recipes for incorporating medicinal plants into meals. Rosalee shares short chapters on a range of herbs, highlighting scientific research on each plant. The Business of Botanicals: Exploring the Healing Promise of Plant Medicines in a Global Industry by Ann Armbrecht Forbes In a world awash with herbal books, this is a much-needed reference, central to the future of plant medicine itself. Ann weaves a complex tapestry through the story threads of the herbal industry: growers, gatherers, importers, herbalists, and change-making business owners and non-profits. As interest in botanical medicine surges and the world’s population grows, medicinal plant sustainability is paramount. A must-read for any herbalist. The Complete Herbal Tutor: The Ideal Companion for Study and Practice by Anne McIntyre Provides extensive herbal profiles and materia medica; offers remedy suggestions by condition and organ system. This is a great reference guide for the beginner to intermediate student. Foundational Herbcraft by jim mcdonald jim mcdonald has a gift for explaining energetics in a down-to-earth and engaging way, and this 200-page PDF is a compilation of his writings on the topic. jim’s categorization of herbal actions into several groups (foundational actions, primary actions, and secondary actions) adds clarity and depth to the discussion. Access the printable PDF and learn more about jim’s work here. The Gift of Healing Herbs: Plant Medicines and Home Remedies for a Vibrantly Healthy Life by Robin Rose Bennett A beautiful tour of some of our most healing herbs, written in lovely prose. Full of anecdotes, recipes, and simple rituals for connecting with plants. Herbal Healing for Women: Simple Home Remedies for All Ages by Rosemary Gladstar Thorough and engaging materia medica. This was the only book Juliet brought with her on a three-month trip to Central America and she never tired of its pages. Information is very accessible with a lot of recipes and formulas. Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health: 175 Teas, Tonics, Oils, Salves, Tinctures, and Other Natural Remedies for the Entire Family by Rosemary Gladstar Great beginner reference and recipe treasury written by the herbal fairy godmother herself. The Modern Herbal by Maude Grieve This classic text was first published in 1931 and contains medicinal, culinary, cosmetic, and economic properties, plus cultivation and folklore of herbs. Available for free online.

Maybe your McDonald’s is telling yourself your Starbucks Frappuccino is not a milkshake,

The Pharisee isn’t loving his neighbor as God’s law requires—instead, he looks down on his neighbors, so he can feel good about himself. He doesn’t love God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength, as the law says: he’s using God for his own ego-grooming. He’s like a terrible date: “Nice to meet you. Now let me talk about myself for an hour.

Michael pulled himself up straighter, wondering if he should let any of them across his threshold. He’d watched enough vampire movies to know they couldn’t hurt you in your own home unless you invited them inside.

really sorry you lost your sister and brother-in-law. There’s never anything adequate to say in sympathy,

Shaney is a prince?” Sara squeaked the question. “Why does no one tell me these things? This is my kingdom, but I don’t know what’s going on.

Meaning?” Shane asked. “That I think it would be fun to put Brooke and Drake in a box and shake them up together to see what kind of noise they make,” Michael suggested, giving in to his laughter.

But what Afghanistan needs is a big dose of Jesus. Western culture will leave Afghans feeling as empty as they were before. Maybe their lifestyle will improve, but without Christ they will still die in their sin and go straight to hell. Jesus' message of real freedom is what is needed—in a hurry. The pure gospel that sets us free from our personal sin is the only thing that will revolutionize Afghanistan. McDonald's won't. Don't get me wrong. I love a Big Mac, but the church is the one with all the answers. Western culture without Jesus Christ in the middle of it will not deliver what it promises. Americans can testify to this.

Cocky spilled a little of the tea on the folded towel Flynn had on the edge of the desk for just that purpose—for Cocky to spill on it. “That’s lovely,” said Flynn.

In this experiment you’re going to prove that your thoughts and feelings also create energy waves. Here’s what you do: Get two wire coat hangers, easy to obtain in most any closet. Untwist the neck of each hanger until you’ve got just two straight wires. These are your “Einstein wands.” Or rather they will be when you shape them into an L, about 12 inches long for the main part and 5 inches for the handle. Cut a plastic straw in half (you can score one free of charge at any McDonald’s), slide the handle that you just bent inside the straws (it’ll make your wands swing easily), and bend the bottom of the hanger to hold the straw in place. Now, pretend you’re a double-fisted, gun-slinging Matt Dillon from Gunsmoke with the wands held chest high and about ten inches from your body. They’ll flap all over the place at first (like I said, you’re an ongoing river of energy), so give them a few moments to settle down. Once they’ve stopped flapping, you’re ready to begin the experiment. With your eyes straight ahead, vividly recall some very unpleasant event from your past. Depending on the intensity of your emotion, the wands will either stay straight ahead (weak intensity) or will point inward, tip to tip. The wands are following the electromagnetic bands around your body, which have contracted as a result of the negative frequency generated by your unpleasant thought and emotions. Now make your frequencies turn positive by thinking about something loving or joyous. The wands will now expand outward as your energy field expands to your positive energy flow. Okay, now keep your eyes straight ahead, but focus your attention on an object to your far right or far left and watch your wands follow your thoughts. The more you play with this, the more adept you’ll become at feeling the vibrational shift as you change from one frequency to another.

She looked at her note cards and took a breath. "Why I Love America, by Hayley McDonald's. America is the greatest group of countries in the world because we have freedom. In countries like France, where the Government isn't privatized, they still have to pay tax and do whatever the Government says, which would really suck. In USA countries, we respect individual rights and let people do whatever they want.

Frankly, out in America, you get the feeling that America is dying. And along its highways and byways, the country seems less ready to leap into the future than it is already clinging to a sepia-toned past when America stood as the unencumbered Big Boy in a Manichean world of good and evil, capitalists and Commies. Even the neon oasis-pods of the interstate—the perpetual clusters of Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Denny’s, and Burger King—are crowded with people strangely reclaiming bygone days, connecting themselves to some prior eating experience, reveling in the familiar. We gas

No one noticed them step off the train, no one saw them arrive in Desolation Road . . . . Then something very much like a sustained explosion of light filled the hotel and there, at the epicenter of the glare, was the most beautiful woman anyone had ever seen. Every man in the room had to swallow hard. Every woman fought an inexpressible need to sigh. A dozen hearts cracked down the middle and all the love flew out like larks and circled round the incredible being. It was as if God Himself had walked into the room. Then the God-light went out and there was a blinking, eye-rubbing darkness. When vision was restored, everyone saw before them a small, very ordinary man and a young girl of about eight who was quite the plainest, drabbest creature anyone had ever seen. For it was the nature of Ruthie Blue Mountain, a girl of stunning ordinariness, to absorb like sunlight the beauty of everything around her and store it until she chose to release it, all at once, like a flashbulb of intense beauty. Then she would return again to dowdy anonymity, leaving behind her an afterimage in the heart of unutterable loss.

and offered them little in any event. There was even talk of pressuring North Korea to demilitarize significantly. The Chinese wished for peace, not conflict, in the region and James Marshall was the president’s man to make it happen. Lifelong friends, they had both excelled in their fields, President Jack King in the military and James Marshall in business. When James had announced his retirement on his fifty-fifth birthday, President King had pounced; Marshall was perfect to obtain the treaties that would secure the Far East. Jack loved and trusted him like a brother. With over four hundred million dollars in the bank, all James Marshall had wanted was to enjoy life but he’d never let Jack down and he’d certainly never

The closest thing I have to a spiritual experience anymore is a Mocha Frappe from McDonald's.

Um, people.” It wasn’t hard to get their attention. They gathered around. Even the littlest ones toned down their giggling, at least a bit. “First of all, thanks to Albert and his helpers for this meal. Let’s give it up for the true Mac Daddy.” A round of hearty applause and some laughter, and Albert waved sheepishly. He frowned a little too, obviously conflicted about the use of the “Mac” prefix in a way that was not approved in the McDonald’s manual. “And we have to mention Lana and Dahra, because without them, there would be a lot fewer of us here.” Now the applause was almost reverential. “Our first Thanksgiving in the FAYZ,” Sam said when the applause died down. “Hope it’s our last,” someone shouted. “Yeah. You got that right,” Sam agreed. “But we’re here. We’re here in this place we never wanted to be. And we’re scared. And I’m not going to lie and tell you that from here on, it will all be easy. It won’t be. It will be hard. And we’ll be scared some more, I guess. And sad. And lonely. Some terrible things have happened. Some terrible things…” For a moment, he lost his way. But then he stood up straighter again. “But, still, we are grateful, and we give thanks to God, if you believe in Him, or to fate, or to just ourselves, all of us here.” “To you, Sam,” someone shouted. “No, no, no.” He waved that off. “No. We give thanks to the nineteen kids who are buried right there.” He pointed at the six rows of three, plus the one who started a seventh row. Neat hand-painted wooden tombstones bore the names of Bette and too many others. “And we give thanks to the heroes who are standing around here right now eating turkey. Too many names to mention, and they’d all just be embarrassed, anyway, but we all know them.” There was a wave of loud, sustained applause, and many faces turned toward Edilio and Dekka, Taylor and Brianna, and some toward Quinn. “We all hope this will end. We all hope we’ll soon be back in the world with people we love. But right now, we’re here. We’re in the FAYZ. And what we’re going to do is work together, and look out for each other, and help each other.” People nodded, some high-fived. “Most of us are from Perdido Beach. Some are from Coates. Some of us are…well, a little strange.” A few titters. “And some of us are not. But we’re all here now, we’re all in it together. We’re going to survive. If this is our world now…I mean, it is our world now. It is our world. So, let’s make it a good one.” He stepped down in silence. Then someone started clapping rhythmically and saying, “Sam, Sam, Sam.” Others joined in, and soon every person in the plaza, even some of the prees, was chanting his name.

The loving God of the universe might not always fix it the way we expect, but He will fix it. — Joyce McDonald Hoskins —

Love isn’t pain. Heartbreak isn’t noble or romantic.

See that big white house with the wide front porch?” he asked. “That’s our home and we love it. We sit out on the porch in the evenings and watch the sunset and look down on our place here. It’s peaceful. We don’t need any more problems. We are in a position to enjoy life now, and that’s just what we intend to do.” His

I was doing my solo routine for requests one night, and an old geezer who’d won a bundle at the racetrack that day came in with a doll who could have been his granddaughter but obviously was not. They danced over to the piano in a spastic flutter, cheek-to-cheek, and the old boy waved a dollar bill at me and asked if I could play “I Love You Truly.” I just stared at him and shook my head negatively. He was startled and the young girl slapped his hand with the dollar, knocking it into the top hat, and she shouted, “How dare you insult him with a dollar, you cheapskate!” Then she grabbed a twenty-dollar bill out of the bundle that protruded from his breast pocket and dropped it in my lap. “Hey, wait a minute,” I called. “Did you say ‘I Love You Truly’?” and I played the first few bars haltingly, as though striving to recall them. He nodded vigorously, and I went ahead with the tune

The only thing I really enjoyed about school was debating. Here was an activity I could get my teeth into—figuratively, of course—but I would not have hesitated to bite a debate opponent if it would have advanced my argument. I loved being the center of attention, persuading the audience that my side was right. One debate that I remember in particular was on the question “Should Smoking Be Abolished?” As happened more often than not, I was on the side of the underdogs, trying to defend smoking. It was a very spirited exchange, but my opponents made the mistake of painting the demon tobacco too black, too vile, too evil to be countenanced by a sane society.

I’m no beauty queen, but her face is stronger than a McDonalds Sprite.