Millions Knives Quotes

If I could, I would have you use me as your stepping stone, the bridge you take apart after crossing, the corpse bones you need to trample to climb up, the sinner who deserved the butchering of a million knives. But I know you wouldn't allow it.

Hua Cheng said quietly, "Your Highness, I understand your everything. "Your courage, your despair; your kindness, your pain; your resentment, your hate; your intelligence, your foolishness. "If I could, I would have you use me as your stepping stone, the bridge you take apart after crossing, the corpse bones you need to trample to climb up, the sinner who deserved the butchering of a million knives. But, I know you wouldn't allow it." (...) However, Hua Cheng only replied, "To die in battle for you is my greatest honour." Those words were like a fatal blow. The tears in Xie Lian's eyes could no longer be restrained, and they came pouring out. Like he was hanging on the thread of his life, he pleaded, "You said you would never leave me." However, Hua Cheng replied, "There is no banquet in this world that doesn't come to an end." Xie Lian bowed his head and buried it deep into his chest, his heart and throat in constricted agony, unable to speak. Yet soon after, he heard Hua Cheng say above him, "But, I will never leave you." Hearing this, Xie Lian's head shot up. Hua Cheng said to him, "I will come back. Your Highness, believe me.

There is only darkness, starless and complete. The waves glitter like a million dull knives.

For more than 2 million years, human neural networks kept growing and growing, but apart from some flint knives and pointed sticks, humans had precious little to show for it. What then drove forward the evolution of the massive human brain during those 2 million years? Frankly, we don’t know.

There is a whirlwind in southern Morocco, the aajej, against which the fellahin defend themselves with knives. There is the africo, which has at times reached into the city of Rome. The alm, a fall wind out of Yugoslavia. The arifi, also christened aref or rifi, which scorches with numerous tongues. These are permanent winds that live in the present tense. There are other, less constant winds that change direction, that can knock down horse and rider and realign themselves anticlockwise. The bist roz leaps into Afghanistan for 170 days--burying villages. There is the hot, dry ghibli from Tunis, which rolls and rolls and produces a nervous condition. The haboob--a Sudan dust storm that dresses in bright yellow walls a thousand metres high and is followed by rain. The harmattan, which blows and eventually drowns itself into the Atlantic. Imbat, a sea breeze in North Africa. Some winds that just sigh towards the sky. Night dust storms that come with the cold. The khamsin, a dust in Egypt from March to May, named after the Arabic word for 'fifty,' blooming for fifty days--the ninth plague of Egypt. The datoo out of Gibraltar, which carries fragrance. There is also the ------, the secret wind of the desert, whose name was erased by a king after his son died within it. And the nafhat--a blast out of Arabia. The mezzar-ifoullousen--a violent and cold southwesterly known to Berbers as 'that which plucks the fowls.' The beshabar, a black and dry northeasterly out of the Caucasus, 'black wind.' The Samiel from Turkey, 'poison and wind,' used often in battle. As well as the other 'poison winds,' the simoom, of North Africa, and the solano, whose dust plucks off rare petals, causing giddiness. Other, private winds. Travelling along the ground like a flood. Blasting off paint, throwing down telephone poles, transporting stones and statue heads. The harmattan blows across the Sahara filled with red dust, dust as fire, as flour, entering and coagulating in the locks of rifles. Mariners called this red wind the 'sea of darkness.' Red sand fogs out of the Sahara were deposited as far north as Cornwall and Devon, producing showers of mud so great this was also mistaken for blood. 'Blood rains were widely reported in Portugal and Spain in 1901.' There are always millions of tons of dust in the air, just as there are millions of cubes of air in the earth and more living flesh in the soil (worms, beetles, underground creatures) than there is grazing and existing on it. Herodotus records the death of various armies engulfed in the simoom who were never seen again. One nation was 'so enraged by this evil wind that they declared war on it and marched out in full battle array, only to be rapidly and completely interred.

Somewhere outside the hospital, in a motel room full of bloody towels with his tool box of knives and needles, or driving down the highway to his next victim, or kneeling over a dog, drugged and cut up in a dirty bathtub, is the man a million dogs must hate.

If I could, I would have you use me as your stepping stone, the bridge you take apart after crossing, the bones you need to trample on your climb, the sinner who endures the agony of a million knives. But I know you won’t allow it.

If I could, I would have you use me as your stepping stone, the bridge you take apart after crossing, the corpse bones you need to trample to climb up, the sinner who deserved the butchering of a million knives.

Ultimately, the roast turkey must be regarded as a monument to Boomer's love. Look at it now, plump and glossy, floating across Idaho as if it were a mammoth, mutated seed pod. Hear how it backfires as it passes the silver mines, perhaps in tribute to the origin of the knives and forks of splendid sterling that a roast turkey and a roast turkey alone possesses the charisma to draw forth into festivity from dark cupboards. See how it glides through the potato fields, familiarly at home among potatoes but with an air of expectation, as if waiting for the flood of gravy. The roast turkey carries with it, in its chubby hold, a sizable portion of our primitive and pagan luggage. Primitive and pagan? Us? We of the laser, we of the microchip, we of the Union Theological Seminary and Time magazine? Of course. At least twice a year, do not millions upon millions of us cybernetic Christians and fax machine Jews participate in a ritual, a highly stylized ceremony that takes place around a large dead bird? And is not this animal sacrificed, as in days of yore, to catch the attention of a divine spirit, to show gratitude for blessings bestowed, and to petition for blessings coveted? The turkey, slain, slowly cooked over our gas or electric fires, is the central figure at our holy feast. It is the totem animal that brings our tribe together. And because it is an awkward, intractable creature, the serving of it establishes and reinforces the tribal hierarchy. There are but two legs, two wings, a certain amount of white meat, a given quantity of dark. Who gets which piece; who, in fact, slices the bird and distributes its limbs and organs, underscores quite emphatically the rank of each member in the gathering. Consider that the legs of this bird are called 'drumsticks,' after the ritual objects employed to extract the music from the most aboriginal and sacred of instruments. Our ancestors, kept their drums in public, but the sticks, being more actively magical, usually were stored in places known only to the shaman, the medicine man, the high priest, of the Wise Old Woman. The wing of the fowl gives symbolic flight to the soul, but with the drumstick is evoked the best of the pulse of the heart of the universe. Few of us nowadays participate in the actual hunting and killing of the turkey, but almost all of us watch, frequently with deep emotion, the reenactment of those events. We watch it on TV sets immediately before the communal meal. For what are footballs if not metaphorical turkeys, flying up and down a meadow? And what is a touchdown if not a kill, achieved by one or the other of two opposing tribes? To our applause, great young hungers from Alabama or Notre Dame slay the bird. Then, the Wise Old Woman, in the guise of Grandma, calls us to the table, where we, pretending to be no longer primitive, systematically rip the bird asunder. Was Boomer Petaway aware of the totemic implications when, to impress his beloved, he fabricated an outsize Thanksgiving centerpiece? No, not consciously. If and when the last veil dropped, he might comprehend what he had wrought. For the present, however, he was as ignorant as Can o' Beans, Spoon, and Dirty Sock were, before Painted Stick and Conch Shell drew their attention to similar affairs. Nevertheless, it was Boomer who piloted the gobble-stilled butterball across Idaho, who negotiated it through the natural carving knives of the Sawtooth Mountains, who once or twice parked it in wilderness rest stops, causing adjacent flora to assume the appearance of parsley.

That done, a second list began to sketch itself from memory. Food, water, containers, blankets... I set three piles aside, starting with the blankets, then took what pillowcases I could find. They always made useful bags for carrying things when backpacks weren't available. One small pot for boiling, one small pan for cooking or additional self-defense. Knives, always good. One fork and a spoon for each of us. More than that, and they'd clatter inside our bags, keeping us from moving silently. No batteries. One flashlight that seemed to be working for now, even if the beam wasn't strong. The real coup would have been canned food or toilet paper, but those were truly one-in-a-million finds. "Did you forget to tell us that you're taking us camping?" I'm all four roughing it as long as that entails air-conditioning and a nice view." ... "Sorry," I muttered, forcing myself onto my feet. "Old habits.

Kill the spiders to save the butterflies, it’s only rational, until you realize that ; by striving to do so you yourself become the spider” - Vash the Stampede "If you keep saving butterflies, spiders will starve to death! But…wanting to save both is a contradiction. What would you rather do? Keep deliberating? The butterfly will be eaten in the meantime." - Million Knives, Vash’s brother

Then it was horn time. Time for the big solo. Sonny lifted the trumpet - One! Two! - He got it into sight - Three! We all stopped dead. I mean we stopped. That wasn't Sonny's horn. This one was dented-in and beat-up and the tip-end was nicked. It didn't shine, not a bit. Lux leaned over-you could have fit a coffee cup into his mouth. "Jesus God," he said. "Am I seeing right?" I looked close and said: "Man, I hope not." But why kid? We'd seen that trumpet a million times. It was Spoof's. Rose-Ann was trembling. Just like me, she remembered how we'd buried the horn with Spoof. And she remembered how quiet it had been in Sonny's room last night... I started to think real hophead thoughts, like - where did Sonny get hold of a shovel that late? and how could he expect a horn to play that's been under the ground for two years? and - That blast got into our ears like long knives. Spoof's own trademark! Sonny looked caught, like he didn't know what to do at first, like he was hypnotized, scared, almighty scared. But as the sound came out, rolling out, sharp and clean and clear - new-trumpet sound - his expression changed. His eyes changed: they danced a little and opened wide. Then he closed them, and blew that horn. Lord God of the Fishes, how he blew it! How he loved it and caressed it and pushed it up, higher and higher and higher. High C? Bottom of the barrel. He took off, and he walked all over the rules and stamped them flat. The melody got lost, first off. Everything got lost, then, while that horn flew. It wasn't only jazz; it was the heart of jazz, and the insides, pulled out with the roots and held up for everybody to see; it was blues that told the story of all the lonely cats and all the ugly whores who ever lived, blues that spoke up for the loser lamping sunshine out of iron-gray bars and every hop head hooked and gone, for the bindlestiffs and the city slicers, for the country boys in Georgia shacks and the High Yellow hipsters in Chicago slums and the bootblacks on the corners and the fruits in New Orleans, a blues that spoke for all the lonely, sad and anxious downers who could never speak themselves... And then, when it had said all this, it stopped and there was a quiet so quiet that Sonny could have shouted: 'It's okay, Spoof. It's all right now. You get it said, all of it - I'll help you. God, Spoof, you showed me how, you planned it - I'll do my best!' And he laid back his head and fastened the horn and pulled in air and blew some more. Not sad, now, not blues - but not anything else you could call by a name. Except... jazz. It was Jazz. Hate blew out of that horn, then. Hate and fury and mad and fight, like screams and snarls, like little razors shooting at you, millions of them, cutting, cutting deep... And Sonny only stopping to wipe his lip and whisper in the silent room full of people: 'You're saying it, Spoof! You are!' God Almighty Himself must have heard that trumpet, then; slapping and hitting and hurting with notes that don't exist and never existed. Man! Life took a real beating! Life got groined and sliced and belly-punched and the horn, it didn't stop until everything had all spilled out, every bit of the hate and mad that's built up in a man's heart. ("Black Country")

In Stalin’s famous words, one death is a tragedy; one million deaths is a statistic. In this case, it is not even a particularly good statistic. The very incomprehensibility of what a million horrible and violent deaths might mean, and the impossibility of producing an appropriate response, is perhaps the reason that the events following partition have yielded such a great and moving body of fictional literature and such an inadequate and flimsy factual history. What does it matter to the readers of history today whether there were 200,000 deaths, or 1 million, or 2 million? On that scale, is it possible to feel proportional revulsion, to be five times more upset at 1 million deaths than at 200,000? Few can grasp the awfulness of how it might feel to have their fathers barricaded in their houses and burnt alive, their mothers beaten and thrown off speeding trains, their daughters torn away, raped and branded, their sons held down in full view, screaming and pleading, while a mob armed with rough knives hacked off their hands and feet. All these things happened, and many more like them; not just once, but perhaps a million times. It is not possible to feel sufficient emotion to appreciate this monstrous savagery and suffering. That is the true horror of the events in the Punjab in 1947: one of the vilest episodes in the whole of history, a devastating illustration of the worst excesses to which human beings can succumb. The death toll is just a number.

This was a war of attrition...A mug's game! A mug's game as far as killing men was concerned, but not an uninteresting occupation if you considered it as a struggle of various minds spread all over the broad landscape in the sunlight. They did not kill many men and they expended an infinite number of missiles and a vast amount of thought. If you took six million men armed with loaded canes and stockings containing bricks or knives and set them against another six million men similarly armed, at the end of three hours four million on the one side and the entire six million on the other would be dead. So, as far as killing went, it really was a mug's game. That was what happened if you let yourself get into the hands of the applied scientist. For all these things were the products not of the soldier but of hirsute bespectacled creatures who peer through magnifying glasses. Or of course, on our side, they would be shaven-cheeked and less abstracted. They were efficient as slaughterers in that they enabled the millions of men to be moved. When you had only knives you could not move very fast. On the other hand, your knife killed at every stroke: you would set a million men firing at each other with rifles from eighteen hundred yards. But few rifles ever registered a hit. So the invention was relatively inefficient. And it dragged things out! And suddenly it had become boring.

It may seem from a cursory look at the news that the streets are a battleground, a deadly arena of fists, guns and knives. In fact armed attacks are not at all common, though they are serious enough to merit attention when they do happen. Lesser levels of violent assault are more frequent, but even these are not as likely as many people think. The perception of constant street violence derives mainly from the fact that it gets reported while its absence does not. Headlines like 'nobody got stabbed today' would not sell a lot of newspapers, so we are told about incidents that do happen and never hear about the millions of people who go about their business unharmed. To illustrate that, look at this page. The words stand out but there is a lot more white space between and around them. You do not notice it because it is not brought to your attention. So it is with violence - a lot more people do not encounter violence than do.

As I became older, I was given many masks to wear. I could be a laborer laying railroad tracks across the continent, with long hair in a queue to be pulled by pranksters; a gardener trimming the shrubs while secretly planting a bomb; a saboteur before the day of infamy at Pearl Harbor, signaling the Imperial Fleet; a kamikaze pilot donning his headband somberly, screaming 'Banzai' on my way to my death; a peasant with a broad-brimmed straw hat in a rice paddy on the other side of the world, stooped over to toil in the water; an obedient servant in the parlor, a houseboy too dignified for my own good; a washerman in the basement laundry, removing stains using an ancient secret; a tyrant intent on imposing my despotism on the democratic world, opposed by the free and the brave; a party cadre alongside many others, all of us clad in coordinated Mao jackets; a sniper camouflaged in the trees of the jungle, training my gunsights on G.I. Joe; a child running with a body burning from napalm, captured in an unforgettable photo; an enemy shot in the head or slaughtered by the villageful; one of the grooms in a mass wedding of couples, having met my mate the day before through our cult leader; an orphan in the last airlift out of a collapsed capital, ready to be adopted into the good life; a black belt martial artist breaking cinderblocks with his head, in an advertisement for Ginsu brand knives with the slogan 'but wait--there's more' as the commercial segued to show another free gift; a chef serving up dog stew, a trick on the unsuspecting diner; a bad driver swerving into the next lane, exactly as could be expected; a horny exchange student here for a year, eager to date the blonde cheerleader; a tourist visiting, clicking away with his camera, posing my family in front of the monuments and statues; a ping pong champion, wearing white tube socks pulled up too high and batting the ball with a wicked spin; a violin prodigy impressing the audience at Carnegie Hall, before taking a polite bow; a teen computer scientist, ready to make millions on an initial public offering before the company stock crashes; a gangster in sunglasses and a tight suit, embroiled in a turf war with the Sicilian mob; an urban greengrocer selling lunch by the pound, rudely returning change over the counter to the black patrons; a businessman with a briefcase of cash bribing a congressman, a corrupting influence on the electoral process; a salaryman on my way to work, crammed into the commuter train and loyal to the company; a shady doctor, trained in a foreign tradition with anatomical diagrams of the human body mapping the flow of life energy through a multitude of colored points; a calculus graduate student with thick glasses and a bad haircut, serving as a teaching assistant with an incomprehensible accent, scribbling on the chalkboard; an automobile enthusiast who customizes an imported car with a supercharged engine and Japanese decals in the rear window, cruising the boulevard looking for a drag race; a illegal alien crowded into the cargo hold of a smuggler's ship, defying death only to crowd into a New York City tenement and work as a slave in a sweatshop. My mother and my girl cousins were Madame Butterfly from the mail order bride catalog, dying in their service to the masculinity of the West, and the dragon lady in a kimono, taking vengeance for her sisters. They became the television newscaster, look-alikes with their flawlessly permed hair. Through these indelible images, I grew up. But when I looked in the mirror, I could not believe my own reflection because it was not like what I saw around me. Over the years, the world opened up. It has become a dizzying kaleidoscope of cultural fragments, arranged and rearranged without plan or order.

One mode of anti-frontier and anti-self-reliance propaganda is contemporary hysteria about gun control – a part of the materialistic determinism of the hour. To the superficial minds of “Liberals,” collectivists, Marxians, et al., instruments are supposed to act upon man, and men (no longer self-reliant) merely to be acted upon: to them, murder lies in the gun and not in the soul of man. So they think that to deprive men of guns would prevent man from murder! “What the Power Boys – the insiders – behind the gun controls really want, of course, is not to control guns but to control us. They want registration so that they can confiscate; they want to confiscate so that they will have power and we shall be powerless – even as we live today upon a wild frontier demanding ever more self-reliance. “On the old frontier, men had to rely upon themselves and had to be armed until there were sound laws and until law-enforcement officers could enforce the laws. Today laws against thieves, muggers, thugs, rapist, arsonists, looters, murderers (thanks largely to the “Liberal” majority on the Supreme Court) are diluted almost to the point of abolition; the Marshal Dillons of the world, thanks to the same Court, are disarmed or emasculated, they are told to respect the “rights” of thieves, muggers, thugs, rapists, arsonists, looters, muggers, above the right of good citizens to be secure from such felons. “Good citizens, deprived of the processes of the law or the protection of the police, are supposed to accept their lot as the passive happy victims of “the unfortunate,” sheep to be sheared of feed to the wolves bleating about the loveliness of it all. It is “violence” if good citizens defend themselves; it is not “violent” but “protest” if they or their property are assaulted. So gun controls are the order of the day – gun controls that will disarm me of good will, but will not disarm the Mafia, the mobs out on a spree, the wolves on the prowl, the men of ill will. “This is a part of the “Liberal” sentimentality that does not see sin, evil, violence, as realities in the soul of man. To the “Liberal,” all we need is dialogue, discussion, compromise, co-existence, understanding – always in favor of the vicious and never in defense of the victim. The sentimental “Liberal,” fearful of self-reliant man, believes this to be a good thing; the cynical Power Boys pretend to believe it, and use it for their own ends. “Gun control is the new Prohibition. It will not work, as Prohibition did not work. But meanwhile, it will be tried, as a sentimental cure-all, a new usurpation of the rights of a once thoroughly self-reliant people, another step on the march to 1984. It is only a symptom of our modern disease, but it is well worth examining at a little more length. And, as I recently made a trip to the land of Sentimentalia, and brought back a published account of gun control there, I hope you will permit me to offer it as evidence speaking to our condition: “A few hundred of the several hundred million citizens of Sentimentalia have in recent years been shot by criminals. The Congress of that land, led by Senators Tom Prodd and Jokey Hidings, and egged on by the President, responded with a law to first register, and eventually confiscate, all the wicked instruments known as ‘guns.’ The law was passed amid tears of joy. “But, alas, when guns continued to be used by the happy thugs thus freed from the fear of being shot by self-reliant citizens, the Prohibitionists claimed that this meant that knives need to be forbidden… and then violence and murders would end.

I’d hate for us to get into an argument,” he said, “but if that’s the only way we could communicate....” Carlotta said that grown-ups recover from arguments if they keep their knives in the drawer. “What if our talents don’t mesh?” he worried. “We’ll create a weave that works,” she said in a silvery tone. He brought her to a bench by the lake; they chatted while kids played soccer behind them. “I’m not sure the west coast would appeal with me.” “So you don’t want me to disrupt your life,” Carlotta needled him. “I know two men who’ll provide for me from their millions.” “And let their money ruin your talent?” he nearly exploded. “Over my dead body. I thought you could support yourself. You and I together....” We’ve encircled each other; I can about guess what will happen next. Either her “no” or her “yes” would cause him to quake. They inspected the flowers in a rock garden – purple and red, daisies past their prime, white dots and white dust on deep green leaves, brown tufts that created an impression of mauve from a distance but looked red and green as they moved closer – all on purplish brown stalks. Other nearby blooms could have been the tails of the proudest birds – the kind that have red maple feathers and violet eyes. Carlotta interrupted his reverie. “You’ll have to speak up. I can’t say ‘yes’ for both of us.

In fact these statistics record an astonishingly low rate of gun-related violence in the late nineteenth century. The Home Office reported the results of three separate inquiries: hospital figures throughout England for fatal and nonfatal wounds arising from handguns in 189o-92; coroners' inquests on such accidents; and the number of burglars found carrying firearms over five years ending with December 31, 1892.121 In the course of three years, according to hospital reports, there were only 59 fatalities from handguns in a population of nearly 30 million people. Of these, 19 were accidents, 35 were suicides, and only 3 were homicides-an average of one a year. The report noted that in the 189o pistol homicide both the murderer and the victim had been foreigners.122 The number of injuries treated in hospitals for revolver or pistol wounds over the three years was 226.123 The coroners' inquests relative to the use of both pistols and other firearms for the same three years was 536, of which 443 were suicides, 49 were accidents, 32 were homicidal, and 12 not known. As for armed burglaries, no policeman had been shot dead, although several had been wounded by gunfire. Over the five-year period only 31 burglars had been found carrying arms, and only 18 had escaped by the use of guns.124 On the basis of these modest figures the bill was objected to as "absolutely unnecessary ... and that it attacked the natural right of everybody who desired to arm himself for his own protection and not to harm anybody else." Hopwood suggested that the government legislate with regard to knives and daggers, since the number of murders and suicides committed by them was "infinitely greater ... than those committed by means of revolvers." As with the 1870 licence statute, this bill was attacked as class legislation. Mr. Conybeare thought it would be better to drop it "so that the efforts of the Government might be devoted to some more worthy measure."121 The debate was adjourned until the next day, but in light of its reception it was prudently withdrawn. Behind the scenes, however, a House of Lords standing committee was at work during 1894 to produce a more acceptable bill.

By enforcing laws which forbid men to trade peacefully as they please, the police create a social environment which breeds crime. The small-time burglar who is frightened away by the police is far outweighed by the Mafia boss who makes millions off the black market in prostitution and gambling, which activities are fraught with violence because of government prohibitions. Not only do governmental police make possible more crime than they discourage, they enforce a whole host of invasive laws designed to make everyone behave in a manner which the lawmakers considered morally proper. They see to it that you’re not permitted to foul your mind with pornography (whatever that is—even the courts aren’t too sure) or other people’s minds by appearing in public too scantily clad. They try to prevent you from experiencing the imaginary dangers of marijuana (in the ‘20s they protected you from liquor, but that’s not a no-no any more). They even have rules about marriage, divorce, and your sex life. No, the police don’t offer the citizen any protection from such invasions of privacy ... they’re too busy enforcing the invasive laws! Nor do they protect him from the many governmental violations of his rights—if you try to evade being enslaved by the draft, the police will help the army, not you. The police prevent the establishment of an effective, private enterprise defense system which could offer its customers real protection (including protection from governments). In fact, they often prevent you from protecting yourself, as in New York City, where women, even in the most crime-ridden areas, are forbidden to carry effective self-defense devices. Guns, switch-blade knives, tear gas sprayers, etc., are illegal. Of course, the criminals ignore these laws, but the peaceful citizens are effectively disarmed and left at the mercy of hoodlums. In addition to failing to protect citizens from either private criminals or the government, making it almost impossible for the citizens to protect themselves, encouraging crime by creating black markets, and invading privacy with stupid and useless “moral” laws, the police compel citizens to pay taxes to support them! If a citizen requests to be relieved of police “protection” and protests by refusing to pay taxes for the upkeep of the government and its police, the police will initiate force by picking him up and the government will fine and/or imprison him (unless he attempts to defend himself against the police’s initiated violence, in which case his survivors will be forced to bury him at their expense). With the entire weight of the law behind them, this gives the police the safest protection racket ever devised. If the police in a democracy don’t exist to protect the citizens, what is their function? It is essentially the same as that of the police in a dictatorship—to protect the government.

They sent us here to die, but we survived, and to thrive, we must push harder, reach farther, and fight our fingers to the bones to become knives in Earth’s twisted heart.

p. 362 "There are nights I lie awake wondering what the moment was we lost the Germany I knew. Some might point to the invasion of Poland ... There are a million such moments. Kristallnacht, the Night of the long Knives, the Jewish boycotts, the race laws ... But sometimes I think it was the moment right before the gasoline was poured on the books. The moment the most educated country in the world willingly, joyously, wholeheartedly turned away from knowledge.

But just before I head inside, I pause for a second to take in the enormity of the moment and my small role in it. Five stories up and I'm still standing on hallowed ground. Caskets and chains and splintered beams of slave ships, knives and forks and salt shakers, Woolworth stools and mammy figurines, freedom and blood, progress and pain, voices raised and voices silenced, courage. The purpose of this museum is to resurrect the dead, to honor their lives, to celebrate their progress, to remember their suffering, to never forget their stories. This building is an argument that these stories, traditions, this suffering, this history, matters. In three weeks, I will open my restaurant and with it, I'll have a chance to add my voice to that chorus. To prove that my story, like the millions of voices behind and beneath me, matters. As I push open the kitchen door, the last of my smile fades and I get back to work. I'm standing on stories, and this is my own.

If I could, I would have you use me as your stepping stone, the bridge you take apart after crossing, the corpse bones you need to trample to climb up, the sinner who deserved the butchering of a million knives. But, I know you wouldn’t allow it.

Partnis's fight-masters will tell you it's a science, this business of fists and knives. They'll tell you, keep a cool head, detached, control.' The man had given a quick shrug of his shoulders and spat.'He'll tell you the professional calculates, watches, plans.''Don't they'' Nona had turned back towards him.'Nature shaped us, little girl. Shaped the animals. Predators. Prey. Millions of years. Fighting, making children, dying. A cycle that hones each to its purpose. And what have we in common, wolf, eagle, man, under-killers, bears, all of us'' His eyebrows had shaped the question. Nona had waited for him to answer, wondering what exactly under-killers were.'Rage. We've got hate and anger and red fury, child. Saw it in you too. Got your teeth into that idiot boy. Didn't care that he might snap your arms off.' The man had gone down on one knee, face close to hers.'Here in the Corridor they teach you to put that anger aside. They got their reasons. Keep a calm head and you'll see more. But on the ice we know better than to let go of the weapons so many hard years have forged for us.' He had jabbed a blunt finger at Nona's chest.'Keep that fire. Use it. We're wild things us men, and when we remember it we're at our most dangerous.

Kit Carson, fighting the Indians with knives and six-shooters. Brave men. But that’s all gone now. Now, some pencil-neck geek sitting at a computer can launch a thousand missiles and kill a million people. The world’s run by a bunch of fat-ass wimps who only know how to double-click their way to power. Think they should get a Purple Heart for a paper cut.” “I like that.” “Their idea of power is PowerPoint. They got headsets on their heads and their fingers on keyboards and they think they’re macho men when they’re just half wimp and half machine. Nothing more than sports-drink-gulping, instant-message-sending,

Economics is a notoriously complicated subject. To make things easier, let’s imagine a simple example. Samuel Greedy, a shrewd financier, founds a bank in El Dorado, California. A. A. Stone, an up-and-coming contractor in El Dorado, finishes his first big job, receiving payment in cash to the tune of $1 million. He deposits this sum in Mr Greedy’s bank. The bank now has $1 million in capital. In the meantime, Jane McDoughnut, an experienced but impecunious El Dorado chef, thinks she sees a business opportunity – there’s no really good bakery in her part of town. But she doesn’t have enough money of her own to buy a proper facility complete with industrial ovens, sinks, knives and pots. She goes to the bank, presents her business plan to Greedy, and persuades him that it’s a worthwhile investment. He issues her a $1 million loan, by crediting her account in the bank with that sum. McDoughnut now hires Stone, the contractor, to build and furnish her bakery. His price is $1,000,000. When she pays him, with a cheque drawn on her account, Stone deposits it in his account in the Greedy bank. So how much money does Stone have in his bank account? Right, $2 million. How much money, cash, is actually located in the bank’s safe? Yes, $1 million. It doesn’t stop there. As contractors are wont to do, two months into the job Stone informs McDoughnut that, due to unforeseen problems and expenses, the bill for constructing the bakery will actually be $2 million. Mrs McDoughnut is not pleased, but she can hardly stop the job in the middle. So she pays another visit to the bank, convinces Mr Greedy to give her an additional loan, and he puts another $1 million in her account. She transfers the money to the contractor’s account. How much money does Stone have in his account now? He’s got $3 million. But how much money is actually sitting in the bank? Still just $1 million. In fact, the same $1 million that’s been in the bank all along. Current US banking law permits the bank to repeat this exercise seven more times. The contractor would eventually have $10 million in his account, even though the bank still has but $1 million in its vaults. Banks are allowed to loan $10 for every dollar they actually possess, which means that 90 per cent of all the money in our bank accounts is not covered by actual coins and notes.2 If all of the account holders at Barclays Bank suddenly demand their money, Barclays will promptly collapse (unless the government steps in to save it). The same is true of Lloyds, Deutsche Bank, Citibank, and all other banks in the world. It sounds like a giant Ponzi scheme, doesn’t it? But if it’s a fraud, then the entire modern economy is a fraud. The fact is, it’s not a deception, but rather a tribute to the amazing abilities of the human imagination. What enables banks – and the entire economy – to survive and flourish is our trust in the future. This trust is the sole backing for most of the money in the world.

Violet suddenly felt something in her as her anger and adrenaline pulsed through her body like a raving lunatic. She felt the rage from before, trying to rise above her control. Her hands began to elongate and her nails grew to razor sharp knives. She tried to hold back the intense metamorphosis, but the more she let go, the better she felt. Millions of coarse hairs sprouted from her skin and covered her in a dense, white fur. Her eyes dilated and contracted with the effort of balancing light. Her face grew into a furry white snout and her limbs grew to immense sizes, filled with muscle. She looked down at herself. She was a beautiful werewolf. A white werewolf! She tried to laugh, but it came out as small barks. She was expecting black fur instead.

Many countries today already totally ban private gun ownership, with Rwanda and Sierra Leone as two notable examples. With more than a million people hacked to death with knives and cleavers over the last seven years, were the citizens of Rwanda and Sierra Leone better off without guns to defend themselves?

Hua Cheng said quietly, "Your Highness, I understand your everything." "Your courage, your despair; your kindness, your pain; your resentment, your hate; your intelligence, your foolishness." "If I could, I would have you use me as your stepping stone, the bridge you take apart after crossing, the corpse bones you need to trample to climb up, the sinner who deserved the butchering of a million knives. But, I know you wouldn't allow it.

His pace is slow, the drag of his cock against the ribbed walls of her pussy excruciatingly delightful. He continues to mark her delicate skin, works up a sweat to see her so completely undone. Open-mouthed kisses mix the sounds of their languid groans, their animalistic grunts, their passionate pleas for more please fuck more. Suddenly emboldened, Eden hooks a leg over his hip and uses the momentum to roll them over. She looks like a fucking goddess riding him, hair a beautiful mess as her perfect tits bounce with her movements. She rolls her hips, coming down on his shaft in a way that nearly leaves him blind with ecstasy. "You're so fucking beautiful, Eden." "God, you feel so good." "You like fucking yourself on my cock?" "Yes, Shang. You make me so--- ngh--- fucking wet." "I'm going to make you scream my name. Let's see if we can piss off the neighbors, hm?" Eden leans forward, the new angle nearly sending him straight over the edge. She presses her forehead to his, their breaths ricocheting off each other's cheeks. "Eden---" "I want you to come," she mewls. "I want you to come. I want to make you feel good." "I'm really close." "Me, too. Oh, God, I'm---" He grabs her by the waist and rapidly fucks up into her, snapping his hips and burying himself deep inside. The delicious friction sends them both hurtling, the tight coil in the pit of his stomach exploding like a million fireworks all at once. It's the sound she makes that he truly delights in, a half-sob, half-gasp as her climax rushes through her. They ride the high together, eventually falling limp in each other's arms.

Eden plates the shrimp stew and adds a bit of orange zest on top for a hit of refreshing citrus. The shrimp--- now a beautiful bright red amidst roasted garlic and fennel--- radiates steam. The soup itself is more of a sauce, hearty and thick and zesty. Next is the coq au vin. She's prepared a smaller batch in light of the fast serving time. It's as traditional as they come, but Eden honestly can't think of any way to make it 'her rendition.' She's added a side of white rice and places a savory chicken thigh atop of the mound, broth soaking into each individual grain. The mousse is a pain in the ass, but Eden doesn't give up. As much as she loves to eat desserts, she has a hell of a time preparing them. Eden just doesn't have the patience. Mousse itself takes forever to whip up to the right consistency, and considering the fact that she has a million other things to worry about, she can't get it quite the way she likes. She tops it off with a healthy dose of whipped cream, sprinkling bits of hard chocolate overtop to cover up the fact that it isn't the prettiest thing to look at.

to release his bed, and there was probably an alcove behind it with storage, maybe some traps to keep out unwanted visitors. At least, that’s the way Leo would’ve designed it. A fire pole came down from the second floor, even though the cabin didn’t appear to have a second floor from the outside. A circular staircase led down into some kind of basement. The walls were lined with every kind of power tool Leo could imagine, plus a huge assortment of knives, swords, and other implements of destruction. A large workbench overflowed with scrap metal—screws, bolts, washers, nails, rivets, and a million other machine parts. Leo had a strong urge to shovel them all into his coat pockets. He loved that kind of stuff. But he’d need a hundred more coats to fit it all. Looking around, he could almost imagine he was back in his mom’s machine shop. Not the weapons, maybe—but the tools, the piles of scrap, the smell of grease and metal and hot engines. She would’ve loved this place. He pushed that thought away. He didn’t like painful memories. Keep moving—that was his motto. Don’t

Andrew C. Thornton II was a lawyer turned drug lord whose body was found with night vision goggles, a bulletproof vest, Gucci loafers, and a duffel bag containing approximately $15 million of cocaine, $4,500 in cash, six 1/10 oz. gold Krugerrands, knives, and two pistols.