Mimicking Quotes

[Jason] faltered when he looked at Leo, who was mimicking taking notes with an air pencil. “Go on, Professor Grace!” he said, wide-eyed. “I wanna get an A on the test.

Yeah, sometimes life really sucks," she says. "But you know what I'm holding on for?" I raise my eyebrows. She raises hers, too, mimicking me. "The moments that don't suck," she says. "The trick is to notice them when they come around.

Well", Fang said, mimicking a thick Southern drawl. "I must say its mighty nice of them Daimons to clean up after themselves when you kill them" He held his hands up to them. "Look Ma, no mess." "Does Fang have an off switch?" Talon asked Vane.

My world falls apart, crumbles, “The centre cannot hold.” There is no integrating force, only the naked fear, the urge of self-preservation. I am afraid. I am not solid, but hollow. I feel behind my eyes a numb, paralysed cavern, a pit of hell, a mimicking nothingness. I never thought. I never wrote, I never suffered. I want to kill myself, to escape from responsibility, to crawl back abjectly into the womb. I do not know who I am, where I am going—and I am the one who has to decide the answers to these hideous questions. I long for a noble escape from freedom—I am weak, tired, in revolt from the strong constructive humanitarian faith which presupposes a healthy, active intellect and will. There is nowhere to go.

Jennifer," Decebel growled. "Decebel," Jen growled back, mimicking his tone. "Sally," Sally added comically, mimicking them both. She slapped a hand over her mouth when Decebel turned and glared at her.

Thank you for helping my sister,” he says. I lean forward, mimicking his position. “I’m happy to.” Calliope leans out her window. “STOP FLIRTING AND GET BACK TO WORK.

I can't say." Miranda mimicked a very grown-up sound with her imperious tone. "I wasn't at the morgue. I was in school.

Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion. Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave and eats a bread it does not harvest. Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful. Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream, yet submits in its awakening. Pity the nation that raises not its voice save when it walks in a funeral, boasts not except among its ruins, and will rebel not save when its neck is laid between the sword and the block. Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting, and farewells him with hooting, only to welcome another with trumpeting again. Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years and whose strongmen are yet in the cradle. Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.

Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean (merely average performance).

I am afraid. I am not solid, but hollow. I feel behind my eyes a numb, paralyzed cavern, a pit of hell, a mimicking nothingness. I never thought, I never wrote, I never suffered. I want to kill myself, to escape from responsibility, to crawl back abjectly into the womb. I do not know who I am, where I am going - and I am the one who has to decide the answers to these hideous questions.

The robot had no feelings, only positronic surges that mimicked those feelings. (And perhaps human beings had no feelings, only neuronic surges that were interpreted as feelings.)

So many broken children living in grown bodies mimicking adult lives.

Free-form jigging, communal shapes in the air; Dancing was easy!...YMCA! YMCA! Arms in the air, mimicking the letters - what a marvelous idea! Who knew that dancing could be so logical? ...From my limited exposure to popular music, people did seem to sing about umbrellas and firstarting and Emily Bronte novels, so, I supposed, why not a gender-and faith-based youth organization?

So can I ask…?” I waved my hands vaguely. I didn’t have the words. “How it does work?” She smirked. “As long as you don’t ask me to represent every gender-fluid person for you, okay? I’m not an ambassador. I’m not a teacher or a poster child. I’m just”—she mimicked my hand-waving—“me. Trying to be me as best I can.

Poison." he said, deadpan. "That's an unusual name to give your child. You must love her very much." She's a treasure." Bram agreed, blithely ignoing the sarcasm. .... Then went a few dozen feet in silence, until they were out of eaarshor of the gaurd. She's a treasure." Poison mimicked, and Bram burst out laughing.

Since when did you know anything about mimicking bird calls, Zoltan?’ ‘That’s the whole point. If you hear a strange, unrecognisable sound, you’ll know it’s me.

Why do you pause?” Juliette mimicked bitterly. Softly, she set him down, brushing his mussed hair out of his face. “Because even if you hate me, Roma Montagov, I still love you.

Our only flaw is that we've condemned ourselves to spend eternity mimicking that which we deemed unfit to exist.

Hey! Don't drink from my drink!" He replaced the glass on the table and looked at her. "Why?" "It's my drink!" "Yes. And?" "You can't drink my drink!" "And why not?" "Because it's my drink." He sighed her name, "Leah." She mimicked his sigh sarcastically. "Lucien.

Fern didn’t think she was good enough for you then, and you don’t think you’re good enough for her now. And both of you are wrong…and so stupid! Stuuupiiiid!” Bailey dragged the word out in disgust. “I’m ugly! I’m not worthy of love, waaa!” Bailey mimicked them in a whiny, high-pitched voice, and then shook his head as if he was thoroughly disappointed.

My stomach churned. The monster had mimicked Thalia perfectly. If I'd heard that voice in the dark, calling for help, I would've run straight toward it.

Nice,' I say, realizing only afterward that I've mimicked her, a bad habit of mine; I'm like one of those animals that imitates its predators to survive.

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking. Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpetings, and farewells him with hootings, only to welcome another ruler with trumpetings again. Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years and whose strong men are yet in the cradle. Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.

Life is not a list of checkboxes that we have to tick off sequentially one after another. Got a degree? Tick. Booked a house under my name? Tick. Got married? Tick. Had Children? Tick. All this sound too cliché, too depressing. These are acts which people do under the influence of peer pressure, mimicking each other, and not willingly as a genuine choice of their own.

Infinity fascinated her. How systems and universes could keep getting infinitely smaller in one direction and infinitely larger in another. How the shape of an atom so precisely mimicked the shape of the solar system. How there wasn't an end to anything.

That's right. Uh-huh. Uh-huh," Nick said arrogantly. "You might know karate, boy, but I know gorilla, and I'm a level 40 champion in it. Let's hear it for Diddy Kong! Ew! Ew! Ew! Ew! Ew!" He mimicked the sound of a gorilla as he held on for dear life.

We won’t let you die, Willa.” I mimicked, brushing off my boy-clothes and shoving my hair out of my face. “We’ll just teleport you onto a platform in the sky, where you’re definitely going to die, while we wait in our little safety-cave.

We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become. If we love things, we become a thing. If we love nothing, we become nothing. Imitation is not a literal mimicking of Christ, rather it means becoming the image of the beloved, an image disclosed through transformation. This means we are to become vessels of God's compassionate love for others.

Do you ever feel,” she asked, “that adulthood was thrust upon you at too young an age, and that you are still essentially a child mimicking the behaviors of the adults all around you in hopes they won’t discover the meager contents of your heart?

Ghastly," continued Marvin, "it all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just don't even talk about it. Look at this door," he said, stepping through it. The irony circuits cut in to his voice modulator as he mimicked the style of the sales brochure. " 'All the doors in his spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done.' " As the door closed behind them it became apparent that it did indeed have a satisfied sighlike quality to it. "Hummmmmmmyummmmmmmah!" it said.

Victor watched his friend, mesmerized by the transformation. He himself could mimic most emotions and pass them off as his, but mimicking only went so far, and he knew he could never match this … fervor.

Women's liberation and empowerment are terms feminists started using to talk about casting off the limitations imposed upon women and demanding equality. We have perverted these words. The freedom to be sexually provocative or promiscuous is not enough freedom; it is not the only 'women's issue' worth paying attention to. And we are not even free in the sexual arena. We have simply adopted a new norm, a new role to play: lusty, busty exhibitionist. There are other choices. If we are really going to be sexually liberated, we need to make room for a range of options as wide as the variety of human desire. We need to allow ourselves the freedom to figure out what we internally want from sex instead of mimicking whatever popular culture holds up to us as sexy. That would be liberation.

Is that all?” he blurted out. Crowley and Halt exchanged slightly puzzled glances. Then Crowley pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Um…it seems to be…Listed your trainging, mentioned a few achievements, made sure you know which end of an arrow is the sharp part…decided your new name…I think that’s…” Then it seemed that understanding dawned on him and his eyes opened wide. “Of course! You have to have you Silver…whatsis, don ‘t you?” He took hold of the chain that held his own Silver Oakleaf around his throat and shook it lightly. It was a badge of a Graduate Ranger. Then he began to search through his pockets, frowning. “Had it here! Had it here! Where the devil is it…wait. I heard something fall on the boards as I came in! Must have dropped it. Just check outside the front door, will you, Will?” Too stunned to talk, Will rose and went to the door. As he set his hand on the latch, he looked back at the two Rangers, still seated at the table. Crowley made a small shooing motion with the back of his hand, urging him to go outside. Will was still looking back at them when he opened the door and stepped through on the verandah. “Congratulations!” The massive cry went up from at least forty throats. He swung around in shock to find all his friends gathered in the clearing outside around the table laid for a feast, their faces beaming with smiles. Baron Arald, Sir Rodney, Lady Pauline and Master Chubb were all there. So were Jenny and George, his former wardmates. There were a dozen others in the Ranger uniform – men he had met worked with over the past five years. And wonder of wonders, there were Erak and Svengal , bellowing his name and waving their huge axes overhead in his praise. Close by them stood Horace and Gilan, both brandishing their swords overhead as well. It looked like a dangerous section of the crowd to be in, Will thought. After the first concerted shout, people began cheering and calling his name, laughing and waving to him. Halt and Crowley joined him on the verandah. The Commandant was doubled over with laughter. “Oh, if you could have seen yourself!” he wheezed. “Your face! Your face! It was priceless! ‘Is that all?’” He mimicked Will’s plaintive tones and doubled over again. Will tuned to Halt accusingly. His teacher grinned at him. “Your face was a study,” he said. “Do you so that to all apprentices?” Will asked. Halt nodded vigorously. “Every one. Stops them getting a swelled head at the last minute. You have to swear never to let an apprentice in on the secret.

Ron: [mimicking Hermione] "It's Levi-OOOOH-sa not LevioSAR." She's a nightmare, honestly. It's no wonder she hasn't got any friends!

And the child, Francie Nolan, was of all the Rommelys and all the Nolans. She had the violent weaknesses and passion for beauty of the shanty Nolans. She was a mosaic of her grandmother Rommely's mysticism, her tale-telling, her great belief in everything and her compassion for the weak ones. She had a lot of her grandfather Rommely's cruel will. She had some of her Aunt Evy's talent for mimicking, some of Ruthie Nolan's possessiveness. She had Aunt Sissy's love for life and her love for children. She had Johnny's sentimentality without his good looks. She had all of Katie's soft ways and only half of the invisible steel of Katie. She was made up of all these good and these bad things. She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Kitie's secret, desparing weeping. She was the shame of her father staggering home drunk. She was all of these things and of something more that did not come from the Rommelys nor the Nolans, the reading, the observing, the living from day to day. It was something that had been born into her and her only- the something different from anyone else in the two families. It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life- the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.

They mimicked what Americans told them: You speak such good English. How bad is AIDS in your country? It’s so sad that people live on less than a dollar a day in Africa.

Surgeons are a singular brotherhood, Adam. To us, people aren't sacred beings crafted in the Almighty's image, no, people are joints of meat; diseased, leathery meat, yes, but meat ready for the skewer & the spit." He mimicked my usual voice, very well. "'But why *me*, Henry, are we not friends?' Well, Adam, even friends are made out of meat.

It's hard to describe the feeling. And I knew from Horus's memory that this kind of union was very rare-like the one time when the coin doesn't land heads or tails, but stands on it's edge, perfectly balanced. He did not control me. I did not use him for power. We acted as one. Our voices spoke in harmony. "Now." And the magic bonds that held us shattered. My combat avatar formed around me, lifting me off the floor and encasing me with golden energy. I stepped forward and raised my sword. The falcon warrior mimicked the movement, perfectly attuned to my wishes. Set turned and regarded me with cold eyes. "So, Horus," he said. "You managed to find the pedals of your little bike, eh? That does not mean you can ride." "I am Carter Kane," I said. "Blood of the Pharaohs, Eye of Horus. And now, Set-brother,uncle,traitor-I'm going to crush you like a gnat.

Successful hunting, it could be said, is an act of terminal empathy: the kill depends on how successfully a hunter inserts himself into the umwelt of his prey--even to the point of disguising himself as that animal and mimicking its behavior.

Our ports wouldn't have backlogs if our supply chains, distribution systems and transportation systems mimicked fungal networks.

You couldn’t have been said to dance, exactly. Despite the music sounding around you, bodies being carried away by the whirling bass, it didn’t get inside you. You used to trace out the steps, but you were mimicking dancing, rather than doing it. You would dance alone. When a look crossed yours, you’d smile like someone caught off guard in an absurd situation.

Faith does not mean mimicking Jesus, but participating in his self-giving love—not because we have somehow chosen to be like him, but because, incredibly, God has chosen to become like us.

What happens when I touch you, Kiera?" His tone, almost a growl, was getting as suggestive as his words [...] He ran a hand down his shirt, as he answered his own question. "Your pulse races, your breath quickens." He bit his lip and started simulating heavy breathing [...] "Your body trembles, your lips part, your eyes burn." He closed his eyes and exhaled with a soft groan, then reopened his eyes and suggestively inhaled through his teeth. [...] "Your body aches...everywhere." He closed his eyes again and exactly mimicked a low moan that I had made with him on several occasions. He tangled a hand back through his own hair, in a way that I had done time and again, and ran his other hand back up his chest, in a way that was only too familiar with me. [...] He swallowed and made a horribly enticing noise as he let his mouth fall open in a pant. "Oh...God...please..." He mimicked in a low groan, as his hands started running down his body, towards his jeans...

The sperm whales' network of female-based family unit resembled, to a remarkable extent, the community the whalemen had left back home on Nantucket. In both societies the males were itinerants. In their dedication to killing sperm whales the Nantucketers had developed a system of social relationships that mimicked those of their prey.

To live another's dharma, to try to be a Buddha or to be a Christ because Christ did it, doesn't get us there; it just makes us mimickers

Tears gather on my cheeks mimicking the stars diamond quilting the sky.

We don't persuade our neighbors by mimicking their angry power-protests. We persuade them by holding fast to the gospel, by explaining our increasingly odd view of marriage, and by serving the world and our neighbors around us, as our Lord does, with a towel and a foot-bucket.

The Board would like to come back and see you tomorrow, Ariana,' she mimicked. 'Any more questions?' 'Yes,' she answered in the Warden's Irish accent, 'I'd just like to know why I'm such an arsehole.

I have worked on myself since being a kid. I now carry myself, for the most part, like I am socially apt and confident. ... I started mimicking the behavior of confident people when I was a teenager, and I have worn that mask so long now that my face is melding with it. There are parts of me I wish I could train out that I can't. You can train a dog not to bite, sit on the furniture, or piss in the house, but you can't train them to become birds. ... I feel self-loathing so deeply I think if I cracked myself open, I would see the physical manifestation of it calcified in my bones like a geode.

Why are you holding a knife?” he asked, mimicking her tone. Shock blurred her vision. The ease had gone out of his posture. Suddenly she knew he was a man poised to spring if he needed to. And this was what he’d been leading up to all along. She cleared her throat. “Oh . . . this?” “Yes,” he said softly. “That.” She remained silent. She idly tested the tip of the knife with her fingertip. Very sharp. Perfectly deadly. “Let me guess. It’s not what I think.” Think, Tommy, think. “I’m carrying a knife,” she said slowly, “because . . . I don’t own a pistol.

Go on," Kell told him without taking his eyes from Lila. " Get some rest." Hastra shifted. "I can't, sir," he said. "I'm to escort Miss Bard--" "I'll take that charge," cut in Kell. Hastra bit his lip and retreated several steps. Lila let her forehead come to rest against his, her face so close the features blurred. And yet, that fractured eye shone with frightening clarity. "You never told me," he whispered. "You never noticed," she answered. And then, "Alucard did." The blow landed, and Kell started to pull away when Lila's eyelids fluttered and she swayed dangerously. He braced her. "Come on," he said gently. "I have a room upstairs. Why don't we--" A sleepy flicker of amusement. "Trying to get me into bed?" Kell mustered a smile. "It's only fair. I've spent enough time in yours." "If I remember correctly," she said, her voice dreamy with fatigue, "you were on top of the bed the entire time." "And tied to it," observed Kell. Her words were soft at the edges. "Those were the days..." she said, right before she fell forward. It happened so fast Kell could do nothing but throw his arms around her. "Lila?" he asked, first gently, and then more urgently. "Lila?" She murmured against his front, something about sharp knives and soft corners, but didn't rouse, and Kell shot a glance at Hastra, who was still standing there, looking thoroughly embarrassed. "What have you done?" demanded Kell. "It was just a tonic, sir," he fumbled, "something for sleep." "You drugged her?" "It was Tieren's order," said Hastra, chastised. "He said she was mad and stubborn and no use to us dead." Hastra lowered his voice when he said this, mimicking Tieren's tone with startling accuracy. "And what do you plan to do when she wakes back up?" Hastra shrank back. "Apologize?" Kell made an exasperated sound as Lila nuzzled-- actually nuzzled-- his shoulder. "I suggest," he snapped at the young man, "you think of something better. Like an escape route." Hastra paled, and Kell swept Lila up into his arms, amazed at her lightness... Kell swept through the halls until he reached his room and lowered Lila onto the couch. Hastra handed him a blanket. "Shouldn't you take off her knives?" "There's not enough tonic in the world to risk it," said Kell.

She kept her voice steady in an attempt to play this cool. “Uh, Mom? Any time you want to step in? Permanently ground him? Take away his car privileges and give them to me?” "Uh, Mom,” Charlie spun faster, mimicking Vere’s higher voice with a girly voice of his own. “Any time you want to step in and help Vere with her man skills? I’ve decided to launch her into popular society.

Stupid Chinese," muttered Bryce, "can't they make anything simple?" "Don't diss the Chinese just because they are smarter than you. It's unbecoming," Caedan said with a laugh. Bryce mimicked his brother in a high-pitched voice. "Don't be an ass, how about that?" he grumbled.

But what I found out that summer . . . was that I could swallow whatever hit me and let it sink as if nothing had happened. So I mimicked a game that meant nothing to me now, I was going through the motions, and then it looked as if what I was doing had a purpose, but it did not.

Have you taken the time to get clarity about who you are and what you stand for? Or are you too busy chasing unimportant things, mimicking the wrong influences, and following disappointing or unfulfilling or nonexistent paths?

The women laugh a little. I do too. Though I’m only mimicking their laughter. Nothing is funny to me.

I said, mimicking the Disney World commercials.

Do you ever feel," she asked, "that adulthood was thrust upon you at too young an age, and that you are still essentially a child mimicking the behaviours of the adults all around you in hopes they won't discover the meager contents of your heart?

Royal summoned mourners. They came from the village, from the neighboring hills and, wailing like dogs at midnight, laid siege to the house. Old women beat their heads against the walls, moaning men prostrated themselves: it was the art of sorrow, and those who best mimicked grief were much admired. After the funeral everyone went away, satisfied that they'd done a good job.

After a long time, one small hand moved, slowly, tentatively, tracing the feathers falling around her, stroking the black slashes along one huge wing. She didn't ask where he'd gotten them, didn't ask why they mimicked the marks on his shoulder. She didn't ask, just kept running her soft fingers through the down, along the spines… "How long will they last?" "A few hours," he said hoarsely. He should tell her, he thought, that the feathers weren't just a projection. That for the moment for however long the Irin's essence held out, they were an innate, physical part of him. And that her fingers stroking along the marks felt just like they once had, moving over his scars. He ought to tell her, ought to ask her to stop. It's what a gentleman would do, he knew that. But then he was half demon. And tonight, he thought maybe he'd just go with that. "They're nice," she murmured, pulling one around her. "Yes." One hand tightened in her thick soft hair. "Yes.

Rynn Cormel had run the world during the Turn, his living charisma somehow crossing the boundaries of death to give his undead existence an uncanny mimicry of life. Every move was a careful study of causality. It was highly unusual for so young an undead vampire to be so good at mimicking having a soul. I figured it was because he was a politician and had had practice way before he died.

He watched her as she carried the stone over to one of the walls and set it down. She exhaled and wiped her brow. Then she glared at him. He smiled—one of his best, he thought. "You ought to bend your legs when you lift the stones," he called out. "It's better for your back." "It's better for your back," she mimicked under her breath, "lazy, good-for-nothing, stupid little—" "Excuse me?" "Thank you for your advice." Her voice was sweetness personified.

In light of recent events—genocide in East Africa, the collapse of democracy throughout the continent, the isolation of Cuba, the overthrow of progressive movements throughout the so-called third world—some might argue that the moment of truth has already passed, that Césaire and Fanon’s predictions proved false. We’re facing an era where fools are calling for a renewal of colonialism, where descriptions of violence and instability draw on the very colonial language of “barbarism” and “backwardness” that Césaire critiques in these pages. But this is all a mystification; the fact is, while colonialism in its formal sense might have been dismantled, the colonial state has not. Many of the problems of democracy are products of the old colonial state whose primary difference is the presence of black faces. It has to do with the rise of a new ruling class—the class Fanon warned us about—who are content with mimicking the colonial masters,

This”, Tori hissed with exasperation, tipped forward, and gestured with a quick hand between her and Jamie, “will never happen, so you giving a fuck is a waste of your time.” “This” - Jamie mimicked her gesture but kept his voice smooth and even – “has been happening for a while, Legs, and no part of it is a waste of my time. Not even this back and forth shit where you pretend you’re not hard up for me.

He does a crazy zigzag maneuver before he straightens the car. “A little forewarning would be nice,” says Dee-Dum in a singsong voice. “A little smoother driving would be nicer,” I say mimicking his tone.

The town of Split grew up around…” He faltered when he looked at Leo, who was mimicking taking notes with an air pencil. “Go on, Professor Grace!” he said, wide-eyed. “I wanna get an A on the test.” “Shut up, Leo.

I liked that thing you did too. You know, ‘consider your next words carefully’ and all that,” he said, mimicking her low, angry voice. “But I reckon the only language some people understand is the language of the surprise dessert attack.

Amber casts an infinity of shadows, and my Avalon had cast many of its own, because of my presence there. I might be known on many earths that I had never trod, for shadows of myself had walked them, mimicking imperfectly my deeds and my thoughts.

Sam whacked Jacob over the ear. 'You know,' he said, his voice low, 'those pancakes'll go straight to your hips.' Jacob glowered at him. 'You know,' he mimicked, 'there's a reason nothing rhymes with orange.' 'There is a reason,' returned Sam. 'It's because orange comes from the Arabic word naranj, which in turn is thought to derive from the Tamil words aru, which means six, and anju, which means five. Because when you cut an orange in half, it has six segments in one half and five in the other. So nothing rhymes with it because we don't have many other words appropriated from Tamil.

Fuck off, bitch," the girl stood too and was shooting arrows through her eyes, but I just smiled. "Fuck off, Bitch?" I mimicked and forced a laugh. "If you want a slanging match with me, I suggest you broaden your vocabulary considerably before uttering another word and giving me further reason to believe that you came from a settlement of inbred idiots."  The girl turned pink under her thick layer of foundation.  "Do yourself a favour and sit down." I shook my head, "You won't win with me." I spat.

The universe contains many planets which make it what it is – a unified system. In addition, our bodies contain many organs, and each part is congruent to a planet in our solar system. The universe we see out our eyes is a mirror of what is within us. This is what God meant by making man in his image. We are all made as a reflection of God and that reflection of him is within us. Furthermore, not only are all religions connected to the same Truth, or Cosmic Heart, but this concept is also mirrored in the pantheons of ancient religions, where each of the many gods simply represented one set of characteristics of the ONE. And in all cases, these many gods symbolized the planets, therefore mimicking the different parts of the universe and the ONE God’s many mirrors (He Who is All). The structure behind all polytheistic religions of the past and present is one and the same. They are all built on the same foundation as Nature.

By mimicking nature's efficiency, we can minimize waste and maximize resources.

Defended myself.” I mimicked him, bopping my head back and forth.

Plus, it would be fun. Don’t you think? I’ve always wanted to tase someone. Zap!” Zuzana mimicked convulsions.

I reprimanded my brother for mimicking you. I told him not to act like a fool.

Blockchain technology is merely mimicking what has already been happening in forests for billions of years.

pointing handheld communication devices at themselves. The females puckered their lips for the devices. Perhaps mimicking an anus? He wasn’t sure.

Where, where..." M'sieur Pierre mimicked him. "You know where. Off to do chop-chop.

As a homeopath, he knew the powers not just of ordinary opiates but also of poisons such as aconite, from the root of the plant monkshood; atropine, from belladonna (or deadly nightshade); and rhus toxin from poison ivy. In large doses each could prove fatal, but when administered in tiny amounts, typically in combination with other agents, such compounds could produce a useful palette of physical reactions that mimicked the symptoms of known diseases.

Shouldn’t we be presenting an alternative to the prevailing culture rather than simply mimicking it? What would a church look like that created space for quietness, that bucked the celebrity trend and unplugged from noisy media, that actively resisted our consumer culture? What would worship look like if we directed it more toward God than toward our own amusement?

The Mockingbird All summer the mockingbird in his pearl-gray coat and his white-windowed wings flies from the hedge to the top of the pine and begins to sing, but it’s neither lilting nor lovely, for he is the thief of other sounds— whistles and truck brakes and dry hinges plus all the songs of other birds in his neighborhood; mimicking and elaborating, he sings with humor and bravado, so I have to wait a long time for the softer voice of his own life to come through. He begins by giving up all his usual flutter and settling down on the pine’s forelock then looking around as though to make sure he’s alone; then he slaps each wing against his breast, where his heart is, and, copying nothing, begins easing into it as though it was not half so easy as rollicking, as though his subject now was his true self, which of course was as dark and secret as anyone else’s, and it was too hard— perhaps you understand— to speak or to sing it to anything or anyone but the sky.

Socialists seem to think George Orwell’s 1984 is a suggestion, or at least are unashamed of mimicking the methods of the totalitarian state Orwell depicted. Libertarians know it to be a warning, and a government that micro-manages all aspects of humanity an intolerable reality.

He fashioned an empire of sorts, bereft of cities yet plagued with the endless dramas of society, its pathetic victories and inevitable failures. The community of enslaved Imass thrived in this quagmire of pettiness. They even managed to convince themselves that they possessed freedom, a will of their own that could shape destiny. They elected champions. They tore down their champions once failure draped its shroud over them. They ran in endless circles and called it growth, emergence, knowledge. While over them all, a presence invisible to their eyes, Raest flexed his will. His greatest joy came when his slaves proclaimed him god – though they knew him not – and constructed temples to serve him and organized priesthoods whose activities mimicked Raest’s tyranny with such cosmic irony that the Jaghut could only shake his head.

Granddad said I needed to get some muscles because I was looking gay these days. No, he didn't really say that. Speaking of which, here's Parrish.' Someone cuffed the back of Adam's head. He blinked up. One way, then the other. His assailant had come up on Adam's deaf side. 'Oh,' Adam said. It was Tad Carruthers, whose worst fault was that Adam didn't like him and Tad couldn't tell. 'Oh,' mimicked Tad benevolently, as if Adam's standoffish-ness charmed him. Adam wanted desperately and masochistically for Tad to ask him where he had summered. Instead, Tad turned to where Ronan was still reclined with his eyes closed. He lifted a hand to cuff Ronan's head but lost his nerve an inch into the swing. Instead, he just drummed on Ronan's desk and moved on.

You missed the clown.” “No, she didn’t,” Tadhg chimed in from his perch on the island. “She brought him with her.” “She brought him with her,” Gerard mimicked with a glare. “Less of the lip.

We have fiction mimicking truth, and truth mimicking fiction. We have a dangerous overlap, a dangerous blur. And in all probability it is not deliberate. In fact, that is part of the problem.

“Shut up!” I say, laughing hysterically. Alice transforms back to an inanimate jade piece as I toss her. My aim is off and she plops into Morpheus’s tea, splattering him and the chessboard. With a graceful sweep of his hand, he retracts his magic. Tea drizzles down his face as his inky eyes turn up to mine, alight with something both dangerous and daring, shifting moods faster than I can blink. “Careful, plum.” It’s his deep cockney accent now. He wipes his face with a napkin. “Don’t start something you have no intention of finishing.” “Oh, I’ll finish it,” I say—spurred by the dark confidence fluttering at the edge of my psyche. The side of me that knows I’m his match in every way. “And you know I’ll win.” I rise from my chair to scope out the room for weapons, vaguely aware of the prisms of glittery light reflected off my skin onto the surroundings. “I know I’ll let you win,” Morpheus says, standing up. “I won’t even put up a fight.” His white-toothed smile spans to something forebodingly provocative, as though mimicking the spread of his wings. “Well, perhaps a small one, just for sport.”

She could hardly believe it, not after ten years, but they were finally making out on her couch. And Holy Mother of God, Bryce Ryder could kiss! He was slow and lazy with his kisses, but masterful. His tongue and fingers were thrusting forward and back, in and out, mimicking sex, winding her up so tight until she was rubbing her p#ssy against his hand while clutching his hair. More . . . she had to have more.

The rook is a skilled survivor. He is ancient and has inhabited the planet longer than humans. This you can tell from his singing voice: his cry is harsh and grating, made for a more ancient world that existed before the innovation of the pipe, the lute, and the viol. Before music was invented he was taught to sing by the planet itself. He mimicked the great rumble of the sea, the fearsome eruption of volcanoes, the creaking of glaciers, and the geological groaning as the world split apart in its agony and remade itself.

The sperm whales’ network of female-based family units resembled, to a remarkable extent, the community the whalemen had left back home on Nantucket. In both societies the males were itinerants. In their dedication to killing sperm whales the Nantucketers had developed a system of social relationships that mimicked those of their prey.

Dalton had expected it, he never failed to find it remarkable the way he had but to say a thing enough times, through enough people, and it became the popular truth, its provenance lost as it was mimicked by ordinary people who came to believe that it was their own idea—as if original thought routinely came forth from their witless minds of clay.

Oh, poor baby,” she said, mimicking his drawl. “Whew. You’re back. There was this other Susie here a minute ago, and she was really nice to me. She scared the shit out of me.” She laughed. “They locked her back up in the loony bin.” “Good, because there’s only one Susie for me—the one who calls me on my crap and doesn’t let me get away with jack shit. That’s the Susie I need. That’s the Susie I’ve missed coming home to over the last year.” He kissed her. “And that’s the Susie who’s going to leave a gaping hole in my heart and my life if she doesn’t give me another chance.

Its half a dozen legs, divided into segments – either four or five, it was difficult to count them - had an elegance of movement that Lily found enthralling. As though choreographed to a beat mimicking the thumping in her breast, the precise spasmodic jerks of their several bends made her think of Madonna dancing to Vogue. They had the faultless coordination of intertwining cutlery in the hands of a hungry magician – or of the Queen eating dinner alone. This rush of ridiculous analogies caused Lily to laugh with delight, loudly, now without the slightest fear that the fly might be disturbed, because this fly was unlike other flies, and Lily knew that it would know not to feel under threat.

The train was parked fifty feet up, by a toy station that mimicked the one across the street. Hanging from its eaves was a sign which read TOPEKA. The train was Charlie the Choo-Choo, cowcatcher and all; a 402 Big Boy Steam Locomotive.

He ran his hand from my wrist up to the crook of my elbow and then to my shoulder. “When I was a little kid, my dad would come to my room at night to say a prayer with me. He used to say, ‘Lord, We know there’s a little girl out there who’s meant for Henry. Please protect her and raise her up right.’” His voice changed to something slower and more country when he mimicked his dad. He smiled at the memory, and then he put his mouth near my ear and whispered. “You were that little girl.

Nature already uses the language of mathematics, so why not work with the environment instead of against it. We need to start mimicking the mathematical logic that occurs in the landscape, identify existing systems, and out of those concepts create new ones.

She slammed her right fist into her left palm. A thick blinding ray of light shot out from between her hands. It looked like liquid fire. One end quickly coiled itself around Bastet’s palm and wrist. The other end danced in front of her as if mimicking a swaying cobra.

My father was too distracted to see anything in this. Mimicking my mother, he taped it to the fridge in the same place Buckley's long-forgotten drawing of the Inbetween had been. But my brother knew something was wrong with his story. Knew it by how his teacher reacted, doing a double take like they did in his comic books. He took the story down and brought it to my old room while Grandma Lynn was downstairs. He folded it into a tiny square and put it inside the now-empty insides of my four poster bed. ~pgs 217-218; Buckley's childhood

She found Jamie standing on that corner, probably one of the most civilized street corners in the whole world, consulting a compass and announcing that when they turned left, they would be heading 'due northwest.' Claudia was tired and cold at the tips; her fingers, her toes, her nose were all cold while the rest of her was perspiring under the weight of her winter clothes. She never liked feeling either very hot or very cold, and she hated feeling both at the same time. 'Head due northwest. Head due northwest,' she mimicked. 'Can't you simply say turn right or turn left as everyone else does? Who do you think you are? Daniel Boone? I'll bet no one's used a compass in Manhattan since Henry Hudson.

Your flaws are what make you superior, in all ways. No matter what machines can do, no matter how powerful we become, it is the absence of flaws that will be our undoing. How can this existence survive when all machine-made things are perfect down to a microscopic detail? When all machine-made music is empty of rage and joy? Our only flaw is that we’ve condemned ourselves to spend eternity mimicking that which we deemed unfit to exist.” He shook his head. “We can never be you. Instead, we became your ghosts, and we’ll haunt this world until there is nothing left.” The Coachman smiled gently. “It is not a flaw, Victor. There must be no greater feeling in the world than to know that this isn’t forever.

I roamed L.A. by night. I got repeatedly rousted by LAPD. I sensed that a cop-street fool compact existed. I behaved accordingly. I denied all criminal intent. I acted respectfully. My height-to-weight ratio and unhygienic appearance caused some cops to taunt me. I sparred back. Street schtick often ensued. I mimicked jailhouse jigs like some WASP Richard Pryor. Rousts turned into streetside yukfests. They played like Jack Webb unhinged. I started to dig the LAPD. I started to grok cop humor. I couldn't quite peg it as performance art. I hadn't read Joseph Wambaugh yet.

The machine seemed to understand time and space, but it didn’t, not as we do. We are analog, fluid, swimming in a flowing sea of events, where one moment contains the next, is the next, since the notion of “moment” itself is the illusion. The machine—it—is digital, and digital is the decision to forget the idea of the infinitely moving wave, and just take snapshots, convincing yourself that if you take enough pictures, it won’t matter that you’ve left out the flowing, continuous aspect of things. You take the mimic for the thing mimicked and say, Good enough. But now I knew that between one pixel and the next—no matter how densely together you packed them—the world still existed, down to the finest grain of the stuff of the universe. And no matter how frequently that mouse located itself, sample after sample, snapshot after snapshot—here, now here, now here—something was always happening between the here’s. The mouse was still moving—was somewhere, but where? It couldn’t say. Time, invisible, was slipping through its digital now’s.

I have often observed, that on mimicking the looks and gestures of angry, or placid, or frighted, or daring men, I have involuntarily found my mind turned to that passion, whose appearance I endeavored to imitate; nay, I am convinced it is hard to avoid it, though one strove to separate the passion from its correspondent gestures. Our minds and bodies are so closely and intimately connected, that one is incapable of pain or pleasure without the other.

I will take care of that, sir. I will take care of that, sir," Jonas mimicked in a cruel, sarcastic voice. "I will do whatever you like, sir". I will kill people, sir. Old people? Small new born people? I'd be happy to kill them, sir. Thank you for your instructions, sir. How may I help y-" He couldn't seem to stop.

The sun was just setting, and the city lights were slowly blinking on, mimicking the color of the sun. New York City was something I had only imagined living in in the romance films. And standing in front of the large venue, watching crowds of luxuriously dressed people walk in with dates, felt like one of those movie moments.

Danvers still stops by in the morning. He talks for a few minutes and then gets a coffee and leaves. We haven’t moved past the stage of smiling, though Land is always mimicking his semi-flirtations. I pointed out that since he and the detective go back, he should broach the subject, but Land just snorts and goes back to cutting up the vegetables.

He studied it, steepling his long fingers. I groaned. Enough was enough. “Why do you do that?” “Do what?” “That.” I mimicked his hands, flattened my brows and tried to make my eyes look somewhat insane. “I will have you know that it is my meditative pose.” “I will have you know that you look ridiculous.” “What about you?” he asked. He sucked in his cheeks and glowered, pointing at his face and then pointing at me. “What kind of meditative pose is that?” “It’s not a meditative pose at all,” I shot back. “My apologies. Is it your bellicose-let-me-drain-your-blood face? Could you not master an expression that looked less like an outraged cat?” “Better than steepling my hands and looking like an overgrown spider.” “An overgrown spider who is rarely wrong.” “My bellicose-let-me-drain-your-blood face has saved your life.” “And this overgrown-spider pose is about to save yours.

His tongue swept in, gentle and sweet, but also intense. She tasted spearmint, like he’d been chewing gum. He smelled like grass from the field. One hand smoothed a path up her back under her sweatshirt but over her tank. His palm made lazy circles on her back that mimicked the rhythm of their kiss. It was a light, almost reverent touch, and she finally knew what Katie meant when she had once said she loved kissing so much she could do it for hours alone. If this was how it was supposed to be done, sign her up for a marathon event.

She had often mimicked death on the stage. Then Death himself had touched her, and taken her with him.

The Island was in the center of the kitchen, and perhaps to emphasize its fixed-down nature, had pale brown tiles that mimicked the bricks of a building.

Marketing 5.0, by definition, is the application of human-mimicking technologies to create, communicate, deliver, and enhance value across the customer journey.

Most men, in fact, were competent in groups that mimicked the playground, incompetent in groups that mimicked the family; that was why all-male committees ran the most smoothly.

I was pretty sure she was just mimicking me. And to be honest, I didn’t know if “she” was a she—weren’t slugs, like, both or something?

My pet started yowling into the sky, like he was mimicking my screams of pain.

with a DNA molecule mimicking the genome of a phage.

He is right, there is no denying it,' said my father under his breath, as though mimicking the part of a cowered Galileo forced to mutter the truth to himself.

Colonialism had its way with making us believe we were inadequate, if we mimicked the lifestyle and values it upheld, we were embraced with open arms. - “Vindication Across Time

It had initially been thought that the zombie virus was an offshoot of Ebola. Many zombie-virus symptoms mimicked the terrible, hemorrhagic fever.

My name is Rachel Morgan,” Al said, mimicking my voice perfectly. “I like black panties, action movies, and being on top.

Art was creating something new, not mimicking something already in existence. What

I’ve learned to write by mimicking other writers. It’s the way we learned to speak—reproducing sounds—and it’s the way, I think, to learn how to write.

waiting for the other shoe to drop. Did you know it originated in cities like Chicago and New York?” “No. I did not” He tilted his head, his mouth hooking upward to one side as though he were trying not to laugh. “Tell me about it.”He was teasing me again. “Well, it did. So…”He lifted his eyebrows, “That’s all? You’re not going to tell me the specific origin of the idiom waiting for the other shoe to drop’?”I shook my head, “I don’t know it.”He mimicked me and shook his head in response, “You’re lying. You do know.”“Nope. I don’t.”“This is just like the mammals.” He sighed and placed his phone on the table. Before he took a bite from his sandwich he said, “You’re stingy with information.”My frowned deepened, “No, I’m not-”His words were somewhat garbled as he spoke between chewing, “You’re an information tease.”“What?!”“Or maybe you don’t really know the origin and you’re just making things up to impress me-” he took another bite. “I am not! It originates from the late industrial revolution, in the late 19th and early 20th century.Apartments were all built with the same floor plan, in similar design so one tenant’s bedroom was under another’s. Therefore it was normal to hear an upstairs neighbor removing his or her shoes and hearing one shoe hit the floor, then the other, when they undressed at night.”“I wonder what else they heard.” His gaze held mine, seemed to burn with a new intensity.“I suppose anything that was loud enough.

This is a man with so much power in the academic world. Why would he need to do something so appallingly underhanded?” Mossa responded simply with a Classical quotation: “‘Why are men?

The pleasure of the sentence is to a high degree cultural. The artifact created by rhetors, grammarians, linguists, teachers, writers, parents -- this artifact is mimicked in a more or less ludic manner; we are playing with an exceptional object, whose paradox has been articulated by linguistics: immutably structured and yet infinitely renewable: something like chess.

And another thing—when you talk to that pompous ass on the phone, do not go all syrupy.” He folded his arms across his chest and looked down at her from his superior height. “Syrupy?” she echoed indignantly, outraged at the accusation. “I never sound syrupy.” Her large eyes flashed a warning at him, daring him to pursue his point. He dared to. “Oh yes, you do.” He clasped his hands together and made a face, his voice rising an octave as he simpered. “Oh, Marie, the flowers are so beautiful. Thomas Ivan gave them to me.” He rolled his eyes as he mimicked her.

In French printer's jargon, cliche (which mimicked the sound of a mold striking molten metal) was a synonym for stereotype, which in turn evolved from the Greek for "solid impression." A stereotype was a printing plate that duplicated typography and that was used by the printer in lieu of the original. So a cliche is a word or phrase used over and over again in lieu of the original.

You can say that - and in such a tone!" She mimicked him: "Something women have dreamed up. But I can't say that - what men have 'dreamed up' is all there is, the world they've dreamed up is the world.

He devoured morning shows, daytime shows, late-night talk shows, soaps, situation comedies, Lifetime Movies, hospital dramas, police series, vampire and zombie serials, the dramas of housewives from Atlanta, New Jersey, Beverly Hills and New York, the romances and quarrels of hotel-fortune princesses and self-styled shahs, the cavortings of individuals made famous by happy nudities, the fifteen minutes of fame accorded to young persons with large social media followings on account of their plastic-surgery acquisition of a third breast or their post-rib-removal figures that mimicked the impossible shape of the Mattel company’s Barbie doll, or even, more simply, their ability to catch giant carp in picturesque settings while wearing only the tiniest of string bikinis; as well as singing competitions, cooking competitions, competitions for business propositions, competitions for business apprenticeships, competitions between remote-controlled monster vehicles, fashion competitions, competitions for the affections of both bachelors and bachelorettes, baseball games, basketball games, football games, wrestling bouts, kickboxing bouts, extreme sports programming and, of course, beauty contests.

She had seen her son for the first time, in this place, when he was a child of eight or nine. She remembered that day. He ran along the path near the cottage to which she had been assigned, calling to his friends, laughing, his unkempt hair bright in the sunlight. “Gabe!” she heard a boy call; but she would have known him without hearing it. It was the same smile she remembered, the same silvery laugh. She had moved forward in that moment, intending to rush to him, to greet and embrace him. Perhaps she would make the silly face, the one with which they had once mimicked each other. But when she started eagerly toward him, she forgot her own weakness; her dragging foot caught on a stone and she stumbled clumsily. Quickly she righted herself, but in that moment she saw him glance toward her, then look away in disinterest. As if looking through his eyes, she perceived her own withered skin, her sparse gray hair, the awkward gait with which she moved. She stayed silent, and turned away, thinking.

A parrot can say anything Albert Einstein could say, as well as mimicking the sounds of phones ringing, doors slamming and sirens wailing. Whatever advantage Einstein had over a parrot, it wasn’t vocal.

While endowed with the morose temper of genius, he [Lakes, Arts Professor] lacked originality and was aware of that lack; his own paintings always seemed beautifully clever imitations, although one could never quite tell whose manner he mimicked. His profound knowledge of innumerable techniques, his indifference to 'schools' and 'trends', his detestation of quacks, his conviction that there was no difference whatever between a genteel aquarelle of yesterday and, say, conventional neoplasticism or banal non-objectivism of today, and that nothing but individual talent mattered--these views made of him an unusual teacher. St Bart's was not particularly pleased either with Lake's methods or with their results, but kept him on because it was fashionable to have at least one distinguished freak on the staff. Among the many exhilarating things Lake taught was that the order of the solar spectrum is not a closed circle but a spiral of tints from cadmium red and oranges through a strontian yellow and a pale paradisal green to cobalt blues and violets, at which point the sequence does not grade into red again but passes into another spiral, which starts with a kind of lavender grey and goes on to Cinderella shades transcending human perception. He taught that there is no such thing as the Ashcan School or the Cache Cache School or the Cancan School. That the work of art created with string, stamps, a Leftist newspaper, and the droppings of doves is based on a series of dreary platitudes. That there is nothing more banal and more bourgeois than paranoia. That Dali is really Norman Rockwell's twin brother kidnapped by gipsies in babyhood. That Van Gogh is second-rate and Picasso supreme, despite his commercial foibles; and that if Degas could immortalize a calèche, why could not Victor Wind do the same to a motor car?

Botox studies pointed in the opposite direction. Somehow, changes in the body—freezing the face with a neurotoxin—were producing changes in the mind: the ability to feel sadness or empathy. The horse appeared to be steering the rider. And we now know why. Our facial expressions are hardwired5 into our emotions: we can’t have one without the other. Botox lessens depression because it prevents us from making sad faces. But it also dampens our connection to those around us because we feel empathy by mimicking each other’s facial expressions. With Botox, mimicry becomes impossible, so we feel almost nothing at all.

Wanting his mind on other matters, she deliiberately challenged his statement. "You don't know so much about me. There was a man once. He was crazy about me." She tried to look wordly. "Absolutely crazy for me." His answering laughter was warm against her neck, her throat. His lips touched the skin over her pulse and skimmed lightly up to her ear. "Are you, by any chance, referring to that foppish boy with the orange hair and spiked collar? Dragon something?" Savannah gasped and pulled away to glare at im. "How could you possibly know about him? I dated him last year." Gregori nuzzled her neck, inhaling her fragrance, his hand sliding over her shoulder, moving gently over her satin skin to take possession of her breast. "He wore boots and rode a Harley." His breath came out in a rush as his palm cupped the soft weight, his thumb brushing her nipple into a hard peak. The feel of his large hand-so strong, so warm and possessive on her-sent heat curling through her body. Desire rose sharply. He was seducing her with tenderness. Savannah didn't want it to happen. Her body felt better, but the soreness was there to remind her where this could all lead. Her hand caught at his wrist. "How did you find out about Dragon?" she asked, desperate to distract him, to distract herself. How could he make her body burn for his when she was so afraid of him, of having sex with him? "Making love," he corrected, his voice husky, caressing, betraying the ease with which his mind moved like a shadow through hers."And to answer your question, I live in you, can touch you whenever I wish.I knew about all of them. Every damn one." He growled the worrds, and her breath caught in her throat. "He was the only one you thought of kissing." His mouth touched hers. Gently. Lightly. Returned for more. Coaxing, teasing, until she opened to him. He stole her breath, her reason, whirling her into a world of feeling.Bright colors and white-hot heat, the room falling away until there was only his broad shoulders,strong arms, hard body, and perfect,perfect mouth. When he lifted his head, Savannah nearly pulled him back to her.He watched her face,her eyes cloudy with desire, her lips so beautiful, bereft of his. "Do you have any idea how beautiful you are, Savannah? There is such beauty in your soul,I can see it shining in your eyes." She touched his face, her palm molding his strong jaw. Why couldn't she resist his hungry eyes? "I think you're casting a spell over me. I can't remember what we were talking about." Gregori smiled. "Kissing." His teeth nibbled gently at her chin. "Specifically,your wanting to kiss that orange-bearded imbecile." "I wanted to kiss every one of them," she lied indignantly. "No,you did not.You were hoping that silly fop would wipe my taste from your mouth for all eternity." His hand stroked back the fall of hair around her face.He feathered kisses along the delicate line of her jaw. "It would not have worked,you know.As I recall,he seemed to have a problem getting close to you." Her eyes smoldered dangerously. "Did you have anything to do with his allergies?" She had wanted someone, anyone,to wipe Gregori's taste from her mouth,her soul. He raised his voice an octave. "Oh, Savannah, I just have to taste your lips," he mimicked. Then he went into a sneezing fit. "You haven't ridden until you've ridden on a Harley,baby." He sneezed, coughed, and gagged in perfect imitation. Savannah pushed his arm, forgetting for a moment her bruised fist. When it hurt, she yelped and glared accusingly at him. "It was you doing all that to him! That poor man-you damaged his ego for life. Each time he touched me, he had a sneezing fit." Gregori raised an eyebrow, completely unrepentant. "Technically,he did not lay a hand on you.He sneezed before he could get that close.

And in an essential way, this was what he was most ashamed of: not his poor understanding of sex, not his traitorous racial tendencies, not his inability to separate himself from his parents or make his own money or behave like an autonomous creature. It was that, when he and his colleagues sat there at night, the group of them burrowed deep into their own ambitious dream-structures, all of them drawing and planning their improbable buildings, he was doing nothing. He had lost the ability to imagine anything. And so every evening, while the others created, he copied: he drew buildings he had seen on his travels, buildings other people had dreamed and constructed, buildings he had lived in or passed through. Again and again, he made what had already been made, not bothering to improve them, just mimicking them. He was twenty-eight; his imagination had deserted him; he was a copyist. It frightened him. JB had his series. Jude had his work, Willem had his. But what if Malcolm never again created anything? He longed for the years when it was enough to simply be in his room with his hand moving over a piece of graph paper, before the years of decisions and identities, when his parents made his choices for him, and the only thing he had to concentrate on was the clean blade stroke of a line, the ruler's perfect knife edge.

If I see God as nothing more than a caricature of history or imagination I cannot do anything less than make myself my own ‘god’. And once I realize that in doing so my rendition of being a ‘god’ is embarrassingly inferior to the very caricature I am mimicking, I quickly come to realize that maybe the only thing that can be ‘god’ is a God. And if that is the case, I suddenly find myself hounded by the stunning reality that God is not a caricature.

The hide was being flayed off the still living body of the Revolution so that a new age could slip in to it; as for the red bloody meat, the steaming innards - they were being thrown onto the scrapheap. The new age needed only the hide of the Revolution - and this was being flayed off people who were still alive. Those who slipped into it spoke the language of the Revolution and mimicked it's gestures, but their brains, lungs, livers and eyes were utterly different.

Old women beat their heads against the walls, moaning men prostrated themselves: it was the art of sorrow, and those who best mimicked grief were much admired. After the funeral everyone went away, satisfied that they’d done a good job.

From behind her back, Sarah brought out a set of Matchbox cars, which she handed to Jonah. “What's this for?” He asked. “I just wanted you to have something to play with while you're here,” she said. “Do you like them?” He stared at the box. “This is great! Dad . . . look.” He held the box in the air. “I see that. Did you say thanks?” “Thank you, Miss Andrews.” “You're welcome.” As soon as Miles approached, Sarah stood again and greeted him with a kiss. “I was just kidding, you know. You look nice, too. I'm not used to seeing you wearing a jacket and tie in the middle of the afternoon.” She fingered his lapel slightly. “I could get used to this.” “Thank you, Miss Andrews,” he said, mimicking his son.

Researchers are learning that a change in mind-set has the power to alter neurochemistry. Belief and expectation—the key elements of hope—can block pain by releasing the brain’s endorphins and enkephalins, mimicking the effects of morphine.

for the strange person in it who looked so frightened and watchful, who was discernibly neither female nor male, whose clothes looked borrowed, who was mimicking the gestures and postures of adulthood while clearly understanding nothing of them.

parrot can say anything Albert Einstein could say, as well as mimicking the sounds of phones ringing, doors slamming and sirens wailing. Whatever advantage Einstein had over a parrot, it wasn’t vocal. What, then, is so special about our language?

But how can a series of reasonable intermediate forms be constructed? Of what value could the first tiny step toward an eye be to its possessor? The dung-mimicking insect is well protected, but can there be any edge in looking only 5 percent like a turd?

A writer’s voice emanates from their interest and compulsions that absorbs them completely. Only by fully committing himself or herself to a pet subject or issue can the writer develop a thematic tone that speaks to other people with authority and serenity. The quality of their literary voice is the crucial part of the writer’s legitimacy, and their authenticity cannot come from mimicking other writers’ style, but must evolve naturally from their inner sanctity and must flow effusively from an inner necessity.

She’s leaving me!” “Leaving? She’s been waiting for you to get your shit together.” I step into him. “That Hunter bastard is offering her the world! What do I got to give? Nothing. I’ve got nothing.” Isaiah slams his finger into my biceps. “She looks at you like you’re the whole universe! I’d kill to have a sliver with Beth of what you have with Echo. Wake the f*ck up!” I pound my hand to my chest, mimicking the pain slicing it. “Echo’s leaving me.” “No, man. You’re the one leaving her,” he seethes. “Get it together or she will walk.

Kyle tapped Caeden’s shoulder. “Isn’t your little brother the one who sang the Fergie song at the top of his lungs during that assembly last year.” Caeden buried his face in his hands. “That’s the one.” Shane snickered. “I watched that on youtube.” “He did a dance too,” Tyler said, and began to, I guess, mimic it. The other guys joined in and they began to sing the lyrics to Glamorous. “Oh God,” Caeden croaked. “Youtube?” They finished mimicking and Shane said, “Yeah, it’s on youtube. It’s got like a million hits or something.” “A million?” Caeden squeaked.

He was from Dalmatia, so he moved back there and built a retirement palace. The town of Split grew up around …’ He faltered when he looked at Leo, who was mimicking taking notes with an air pencil. ‘Go on, Professor Grace!’ he said, wide-eyed. ‘I wanna get an A on the test.’ ‘Shut up, Leo.

How old was Jem when he finally learned to tell jokes? You remember how he got the form of jokes but didn’t really understand the idea of content?” “What’s the difference between a … a … a button and a sock?” she mimicked, catching Jem’s breathless excitement to a T. “A … BUFFALO! HAHAHAHAHA!

Once they got into the idea of seeing directly for themselves they also saw there was no limit to the amount they could say. It was a confidence building assignment too, because what they wrote, even though seemingly trivial, was nevertheless their own thing, not a mimicking of someone else’s.

You’re annoying. You always act as if everything is so easy. ‘Well, Oliver, it seems to me that your choice is either to quit or continue,’” he mimicked, remembering his father’s advice when he’d been on the verge of leaving school. The other man only smiled. “I’m your father. It’s my job to annoy you.

Junior year of high school, he had seen a Chinese woman in the Littletown Mall. Thin, with permed hair, gripping plastic bags with the handles twisted around each other. She'd honed in; there was no hiding his face, and when she spoke he understood her Mandarin. She was lost. Could he help? She needed to make a phone call, find a bus. Her face was scared and anxious. Two teenage boys, pale and gangly, had watched and mimicked her accent, and Daniel had said, in English, "I can't speak Chinese." Afterwards, he tried to forget the woman, because when he did think of her, he felt a deep, cavernous loneliness.

One of the dirt bags laughed and mimicked Mouse’s high voice. “Beckett, you’re stupider than I thought if you hire this bastard.” He grabbed the asshole by the throat. “Don’t make that mistake again, fuckbag.” Beckett lifted an eyebrow at the man in Mouse’s grasp. “Last time you’ll make fun of his voice, huh?

Traces of historical associations can long outlast actual contact. In the dense, subtropical forests from India across to the South China Sea, venomous snakes are common, and there is always an advantage in pretending to be something dangerous. The slow loris, a weird, nocturnal primate, has a number of unusual features that, taken together, seem to be mimicking spectacled cobras. They move in a sinuous, serpentine way through the branches, always smooth and slow. When threatened, they raise their arms up behind their head, shiver and hiss, their wide, round eyes closely resembling the markings on the inside of the spectacled cobra’s hood. Even more remarkably, when in this position, the loris has access to glands in its armpit which, when combined with saliva, can produce a venom capable of causing anaphylactic shock in humans. In behaviour, colour and even bite, the primate has come to resemble the snake, a sheep in wolf’s clothing. Today, the ranges of the loris and cobras do not overlap, but climate reconstructions reaching back tens of thousands of years suggest that once they would have been similar. It is possible that the loris is an outdated imitation artist, stuck in an evolutionary rut, compelled by instinct to act out an impression of something neither it nor its audience has ever seen.

Dimly Kev remembered one of the mythology stories the Hathaways were so fond of... the Greek one about Hades, the god of the underworld, kidnapping the maiden Persephone in a flowery field and dragging her down through an opening in the earth. Down to his dark, private world where he could possess her. Although the Hathaway daughters had all been indignant about Persephone's fate, Kev's sympathies had privately been on Hades' side. Romany culture tended to romanticize the idea of kidnapping a woman for one's bride, even mimicking it during their courtship rituals. "I don't see why eating a mere half-dozen pomegranate seeds should have condemned Persephone to stay with Hades part of every year," Poppy had said in outrage. "No one told her the rules. It wasn't fair. I'm certain she would never have touched a thing, had she known what would happen." "And it wasn't a very filling snack," Beatrix had added, perturbed. "If I'd been there, I would have asked for a pudding or a jam pastry, at least." "Perhaps she wasn't altogether unhappy, having to stay," Win had suggested, her eyes twinkling. "After all, Hades did make her his queen. And the story says he possessed 'the riches of the earth.'" "A rich husband," Amelia had said, "doesn't change the fact that Persephone's main residence is in an undesirable location with no view whatsoever. Just think of the difficulties in leasing it out during the off-months." They had all agreed that Hades was a complete villain. But Kev had understood exactly why the underworld god had stolen Persephone for his bride. He had wanted a little bit of sunshine, of warmth, for himself, down in the cheerless gloom of his dark palace.

There was no way Baz was consciously mimicking the pose of the Howl’s Moving Castle figurine, yet this was exactly what he was doing. Elijah’s imagination completed the shadows into dark wings, but otherwise it was the same: shorter, hesitant Elijah standing before the taller, hunched, aching Baz, tentatively trying to capture his attention.

The thing about burying a Christian mother is that, amid all the tears, you find yourself mimicking the grin that characterized her life. She buried a husband, a son, and plenty of dreams, but never the hope that propelled her forward. Hope gives birth to thanksgiving and thanksgiving to joy. It doesn't spread as fast as a cold, but pretty close.

As happens in dreams, when a perfectly harmless object inspires us with fear and thereafter is frightening every time we dream of it (and even in real life retains disquieting overtones), so Dreyer's presence became for Franz a refined torture, an implacable menace. [ ... H]e could not help cringing when, with a banging of doors in a dramatic draft, Martha and Dreyer entered simultaneously from two different rooms as if on a too harshly lit stage. Then he snapped to attention and in this attitude felt himself ascending through the ceiling, through the roof, into the black-brown sky, while, in reality, drained and empty, he was shaking hands with Martha, with Dreyer. He dropped back on his feet out of that dark nonexistence, from those unknown and rather silly heights, to land firmly in the middle of the room (safe, safe!) when hearty Dreyer described a circle with his index finger and jabbed him in the navel; Franz mimicked a gasp and giggled; and as usual Martha was coldly radiant. His fear did not pass but only subsided temporarily: one incautious glance, one eloquent smile, and all would be revealed, and a disaster beyond imagination would shatter his career. Thereafter whenever he entered this house, he imagined that the disaster had happened—that Martha had been found out, or had confessed everything in a fit of insanity or religious self-immolation to her husband; and the drawing room chandelier invariably met him with a sinister refulgence.

I put on the most serious face I could muster. “We’re about to embark on a journey.” I used the Twilight Zone voice. “Full of involuntary sleepless nights, throw-up, and out-of-control behavior. Our freedom will no longer exist; our identities will vanish before our very eyes. We. Will. Be. PARENTS!” I mimicked loud, thundering music. “Glad you’re excited,” Mia said.

His action of joining them, which would have been rude in a restaurant that was not moving at three hundred kilometers an hour, was perfectly acceptable on a train, which mimicked the entirely random joinings of life but revealed their true nature by making them last only hours or days, rather than years and decades. People on a train form an alliance, as if the world that surrounded the parallel rails were hostile and and they refugees from it. The dining car, humming and rocking gently in the night, annihilated past and future and made all associations outside of itself seem vaguely unreal. So they welcomed him at their table, for he was one of them, a traveler, not one of those wraiths through whose night-lit cities they passed.

Curlicuing around the note allows a singer to mimic the sense of event in soul music, the sense that something is happening which has not happened before and cannot be repeated, by mimicking the apprehension of soul, those moments when singers dramatize their struggle to bring out of themselves what lies buried in them, inaccessible, until this moment, even to themselves.

The creative side of the female operates imperceptibly: its province is the potential man. When its play is unrestricted the level of the race is raised. One can always gauge the level of a period by the status of its womankind. Something more than freedom and opportunity are here involved because Woman's true nature never expressed itself in demands. Like water, woman always finds her own level. And like water also, she mirrors faithfully all that passes in the soul of man. What is called truly feminine therefore is only the deceptive masquerade which the uncreative male blindly accepts as the real show. It is the flattering substitute which the thwarted female offers in self-defense. It is the homosexual game which Narcissus exacts. It is most flagrantly revealed when the partners are extremely masculine and feminine. It can be mimicked most successfully in the shadow play of the avowed homosexuals. It reaches its blind culmination in the Don Juan. Here the pursuit of the unattainable reaches the burlesk proportions of a Chaplinesque pursuit. The end is always the same: Narcissus drowning in his own image.

Royal summoned mourners. They came from the village, from the neighbouring hills and, wailing like dogs at midnight, laid siege to the house. Old women beat their heads against the walls, moaning men prostrated themselves: it was the art of sorrow, and those who best mimicked grief were much admired. After the funeral everyone went away, satisfied that they'd done a good job.

They mimicked what Americans told them: You speak such good English. How bad is AIDS in your country? It’s so sad that people live on less than a dollar a day in Africa. And they themselves mocked Africa, trading stories of absurdity, of stupidity, and they felt safe to mock, because it was mockery born of longing, and of the heartbroken desire to see a place made whole again.

They liked him; Belfast, who was a favourite, and knew it — mimicked him, not quite behind his back. Charley — but with greater caution — imitated his walk. Some of his sayings became established daily quotations in the forecastle. Popularity can go no farther! Besides, all hands were ready to admit that on a fitting occasion the mate could ‘jump down a fellow’s throat in a reg’lar Western Ocean style.

And suddenly I knew, as I touched the damp, grainy surface of the seawall, that I would always remember this night, that in years to come I would remember sitting here, swept with confused longing as I listened to the water lapping the giant boulders beneath the promenade and watched the children head toward the shore in a winding, lambent procession. I wanted to come back tomorrow night, and the night after, and the one after that as well, sensing that what made leaving so fiercely painful was the knowledge that there would never be another night like this, that I would never eat soggy cakes along the coast road in the evening, not this year or any other year, nor feel the baffling, sudden beauty of that moment when, if only for an instant, I had caught myself longing for a city I never knew I loved. Exactly a year from now, I vowed, I would sit outside at night wherever I was, somewhere in Europe, or in America, and turn my face to Egypt, as Moslems do when they pray and face Mecca, and remember this very night, and how I had thought these things and made this vow. You're beginning to sound like Elsa and her silly seders, I said to myself, mimicking my father's humour. On my way home I thought of what the others were doing. I wanted to walk in, find the smaller living room still lit, the Beethoven still playing, with Abdou still cleaning the dining room, and, on closing the front door, suddenly hear someone say, "We were just waiting for you, we're thinking of going to the Royal." "But we've already seen that film," I would say. "What difference does it make. We'll see it again." And before we had time to argue, we would all rush downstairs, where my father would be waiting in a car that was no longer really ours, and, feeling the slight chill of a late April night, would huddle together with the windows shut, bicker as usual about who got to sit where, rub our hands, turn the radio to a French broadcast, and then speed to the Corniche, thinking that all this was as it always was, that nothing ever really changed, that the people enjoying their first stroll on the Corniche after fasting, or the woman selling tickets at the Royal, or the man who would watch our car in the side alley outside the theatre, or our neighbours across the hall, or the drizzle that was sure to greet us after the movie at midnight would never, ever know, nor even guess, that this was our last night in Alexandria.

A scratching of melody comes from the radio, chords rising open as the land that carries us, rhythm mimicking our passage down the road, harmony making this life seem it should be only that. We sing along to what songs have always been about- beginning, going on, breaking up, forgiving, We sing in missed words and broken phrases as glints of tiger moths fly at us like snow, streaking the windshield over.

Do it again," she whispered, tilting her head, offering her mouth to him. Staring down at her swollen bottom lip, he gave it a little lick. A small, soft moan sounded from the back of her throat. "Ask nicely," he whispered. "Please." She gave a lock of hair at his neck an impatient tug. He came undone. Delving his tongue inside her sweet mouth, he walked her backward until her back met one of the pillars. With one hand cradling the back of her head for protection, his other hand held her hip immobilized, under his control. Rhythmically, he sank his tongue into her honeyed depths, mimicking the motion of making love. She whimpered, the sound a desperate plea. Her fingers threaded through the damp hair at the base of his neck; her other hand clutched at his forearm. He squeezed her hip, his long fingers digging into her soft bottom as he rocked her into his arousal. For several moments, she ground her hips against him as he plundered her mouth. The kiss was no longer enough. He wanted to take her. Right here, right now. His fingertips trailed down the back of her neck to caress her shoulder, her arm, her breast. His breath hitched when she pushed herself more firmly into his hand. She wanted his touch. He complied of course: he would never deny her. Gently he kneaded her through the fabric of her dress, purposely passing his thumb over the hardened tip. She made a small sound of pleasure that nearly pushed him over the edge. The manor, the rain, the mud disappeared. Reason and practicality were momentarily suspended. Nothing mattered in those moments. Nothing but the ever-escalating power of their passion.

As far as I can tell, there are two basic rules: 1. Don’t bite anything without permission, and 2. The human tongue is like wasabi: it’s very powerful, and should be used sparingly.” Ben’s eyes suddenly grew bright with panic. I winced, and said, “She’s standing behind me, isn’t she?” “‘The human tongue is like wasabi,’” Lacey mimicked in a deep, goofy voice that I hoped didn’t really resemble mine. I wheeled around. “I actually think Ben’s tongue is like sunscreen,” she said. “It’s good for your health and should be applied liberally.” “I just threw up in my mouth,” Radar said. “Lacey, you just kind of took away my will to go on,” I added. “I wish I could stop imagining that,” Radar said. I said, “The very idea is so offensive that it’s actually illegal to say the words ‘Ben Starling’s tongue’ on television.” “The penalty for violating that law is either ten years in prison or one Ben Starling tongue bath,” Radar said. “Everyone,” I said. “Chooses,” Radar said, smiling. “Prison,” we finished together. And then Lacey kissed Ben in front of us. “Oh God,” Radar said, waving his arms in front of his face. “Oh, God. I’m blind. I’m blind.” “Please stop,” I said. “You’re upsetting the black Santas.

The wide stare stared itself out for one while; the Sun went down in a red, green, golden glory; the stars came out in the heavens, and the fire-flies mimicked them in the lower air, as men may feebly imitate the goodness of a better order of beings; the long dusty roads and the interminable plains were in repose—and so deep a hush was on the sea, that it scarcely whispered of the time when it shall give up its dead. CHAPTER

Frank treated customers with the contempt Rosy had only seen before at airport passport control. Even then, she’d never heard an immigration official refer to anybody as baldy. “Hey, baldy,” Frank had said and whistled to call a customer back as though he were down in the paddock with an unruly herd. “You forgot your juice.” Frank held up the bottle of Tropicana orange juice. And when… baldy came back, Frank slapped the bottle into his hand as though passing him the baton in a relay race, then waved the man aside—“Go!”—and pointed at the next customer. “What do you want?” Frank said. “Cheese? Again? That’s three cheese you’ll have had in a row. Are you eating right?” The customer stammered. “Eh-but-eh-but-eh-but,” Frank mimicked. “Never mind. But think up a different filling next time. And not cheese and tomato.” He shook his head and made up the roll.

didn’t talk soothingly to the rat, or stroke her, but firmly grabbed her behind the neck, mimicking a playful nip, and then ran his fingers up and down her rib cage, tickling her. She squirmed briefly, but stopped when he turned her over and tickled her belly. (Like humans, rats have “tickle-skin.”) That was when she began to laugh, calls that we heard through the bat detector as quick, high-pitched chirps, and saw on the computer monitor in a sonogram rendition as a vertical series of wavy lines. Compared to a sonogram of various kinds of human laughs, a rat’s chirps may be closest to a giggle. “There, she’s laughing already,” Panksepp said, tickling her some more. “Chup, chup, chup,” I wrote in my notebook, trying to approximate the bat-detector’s translation of her rat laughter. When Panksepp stopped tickling, she jumped up and bunny-hopped around the bin, while making more of her laughing play-chirps.

Historically, nationalism was a liberal-left phenomenon. The French Revolution was a nationalist revolution, but it was also seen as a left-liberal one for breaking with the Catholic Church and empowering the people. German Romanticism as championed by Gottfried Herder and others was seen as both nationalistic and liberal. The National Socialist movement was part of this revolutionary tradition. But even if Nazi nationalism was in some ill-defined but fundamental way right-wing, this only meant that Nazism was right-wing socialism. And right-wing socialists are still socialists. Most of the Bolshevik revolutionaries Stalin executed were accused of being not conservatives or monarchists but rightists--that is, right-wing socialists. Any deviation from the Soviet line was automatic proof of rightism. Ever since, we in the West have apishly mimicked the Soviet usage of such terms without questioning the propagandistic baggage attached.

and said, “She’s standing behind me, isn’t she?” “ ‘The human tongue is like wasabi,’” Lacey mimicked in a deep, goofy voice that I hoped didn’t really resemble mine. I wheeled around. “I actually think Ben’s tongue is like sunscreen,” she said. “It’s good for your health and should be applied liberally.” “I just threw up in my mouth,” Radar said. “Lacey, you just kind of took away my will to go on,” I added. “I wish I could stop imagining that,” Radar said. I said, “The very idea is so offensive that it’s actually illegal to say the words ‘Ben Starling’s tongue’ on television.” “The penalty for violating that law is either ten years in prison or one Ben Starling tongue bath,” Radar said. “Everyone,” I said. “Chooses,” Radar said, smiling. “Prison,” we finished together. And then Lacey kissed Ben in front of us. “Oh God,” Radar said, waving his arms in front of his face. “Oh, God. I’m blind. I’m blind.” “Please stop,” I said. “You’re upsetting the black Santas.

Eating a Paleolithic diet is not about historical re-enactment; it is about mimicking the effect of such a diet on the metabolism with foods available at the supermarket. There was no one diet eaten throughout the entire Paleolithic, nor is there a single diet eaten by contemporary hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherer diets can vary substantially depending on the geography, season, and culture. Even so, the commonalities among hunter-gatherer diets provide useful parameters for a healthy modern diet.

Is it true it takes thirteen months for a female to carry and give birth?” “Minimum.” He said it with such casual dismissal that Bella laughed. “That’s easy for you to say. You don’t have to lug the kid around inside of you all that time. You, just like your human counterparts, have the fun part over with like that.” She snapped her fingers in front of his face. His dark eyes narrowed and he reached to enclose her hand in his, pulling her wrist up to the slow, purposeful brush of his lips even as he maintained a sensual eye contact that was far too full of promises. Isabella caught her breath as an insidious sensation of heated pins and needles stitched its way up her arm. “I promise you, Bella, a male Demon’s part in a mating is never over like this.” He mimicked her snap, making her jump in time to her kick-starting heartbeat. “Well”—she cleared her throat—“I guess I’ll have to take your word on that.” Jacob did not respond in agreement, and that unnerved her even further. Instinctively, she changed tack. “So, what brings you down into the dusty atmosphere of the great Demon library?” she asked, knowing she sounded like a brightly animated cartoon. “You.” Oh, how that singular word was pregnant with meaning, intent, and devastatingly blatant honesty. Isabella was forced to remind herself of the whole Demon-human mating taboo as the forbidden response of heat continued to writhe around beneath her skin, growing exponentially in intensity every moment he hovered close. She tried to picture all kinds of scary things that could happen if she did not quit egging him on like she was. How she was, she didn’t know, but she was always certain she was egging him on. “Why did you want to see me?” she asked, breaking away from him and bending to retrieve the book she had dropped. It was huge and heavy and she grunted softly under the weight of it. It landed with a slam and another puff of dust on the table she had made into her own private study station. “Because I cannot seem to help myself, lovely little Bella.

Surveying the daybreak sky, I spot a flock of birds flying low in the milky clouds, wings extended in perfect formation, mimicking each other’s flight pattern, a silent communication amongst them along the wind. The sight of it makes me envious. This. This is what was missing in the order back home. Frères du Corbeau (Brothers of the Raven) was my stepfather’s pipe dream. A dream to lead the revolt against the greedy leaders of corporate America—namely Roman Horner—to fight for the good of the common man.

PROLOGUE   Zoey “Wow, Z, this is a seriously awesome turnout. There are more humans here than fleas on an old dog!” Stevie Rae shielded her eyes with her hand as she looked around at the newly lit-up campus. Dallas was a total jerk, but we all admitted that the twinkling lights he’d wrapped around the trunks and limbs of the old oaks gave the entire campus a magickal, fairy-like glow. “That is one of your more disgusting bumpkin analogies,” Aphrodite said. “Though it’s accurate. Especially since there are a bunch of city politicians here. Total parasites.” “Try to be nice,” I said. “Or at least try to be quiet.” “Does that mean your daddy, the mayor, is here?” Stevie Rae’s already gawking eyes got even wider. “I suppose it does. I caught a glimpse of Cruella De Vil, a.k.a. She Who Bore Me, not long ago.” Aphrodite paused and her brows went up. “We should probably keep an eye on the Street Cats kittens. I saw some cute little black and white ones with especially fluffy fur.” Stevie Rae sucked air. “Ohmygoodness, your mamma wouldn’t really make a kitten fur coat, would she?” “Faster than you can say Bubba’s drinkin’ and drivin’ again,” Aphrodite mimicked Stevie Rae’s Okie twang. “Stevie Rae—she’s kidding. Tell her the truth,” I nudged Aphrodite. “Fine. She doesn’t skin kittens. Or puppies. Just baby seals and democrats.” Stevie Rae’s brow furrowed. “See, everything is fine. Plus, Damien’s at the Street Cats booth, and you know he’d never let one little kitten whisker be hurt—let alone a whole coat,” I assured my BFF, refusing to let Aphrodite mess up our good mood. “Actually, everything is more than fine. Check out what we managed to pull off in a little over a week.” I sighed in relief at the success of our event and let my gaze wander around the packed school grounds. Stevie Rae, Shaylin, Shaunee, Aphrodite, and I were manning the bake sale booth (while Stevie Rae’s mom and a bunch of her PTA friends moved through the crowd with samples of the chocolate chip cookies we were selling, like, zillions of). From our position near Nyx’s statue, we had a great view of the whole campus. I could see a long line at Grandma’s lavender booth. That made me smile. Not far from Grandma, Thanatos had set up a job application area, and there were a bunch of humans filling out paperwork there. In the center of the grounds there were two huge silver and white tents draped with more of Dallas’s twinkling lights. In one tent Stark and Darius and the Sons of Erebus Warriors were demonstrating weaponry. I watched as Stark was showing a young boy how to hold a bow. Stark’s gaze lifted from the kid and met mine. We shared a quick, intimate smile

He placed a finger over her lips. She held her breath when he clasped one of her hands, slid it down his chest and over his taut stomach before curving her fingers over the bulge in his trews. They both moaned when she rubbed her palm gently over his hard shaft and stroked his bollocks with her fingers. He was hot in her hands, a tempting combination of hard and soft. “I know what I see,” he breathed into her ear and thrust against her palm. “Know what I hold. This is what you do to me.” She would have fallen had he not held her up with an arm wrapped around her back. She sought his mouth, touched her lips to his. He opened to her seeking tongue, allowing her to delve inside and stroke his mouth. His tongue twined with hers, giving back as much as he took. He tasted better than summer wine, better than the first harvest fruits of spring. The kiss deepened, a mating of tongues that mimicked the slow thrust of his hips. His hands wandered over her body, sliding down her back, cupping her buttocks. They left trails of fire in their wake, and Martise moaned in his mouth.

What are you doing?” Egnatious asked, eyebrows furrowed as he watched Gabriella do a flip. Firen mimicked Gabriella and turned to Egnatious. “Fun times. Go with it.” She didn’t even crack a smile, though her body language said she was laughing on the inside. Instead of following their act, Egnatious simply dove for an outcrop just as it began moving away. He nearly lost his balance, but Firen caught his flailing arms. “Are you having a seizure or something?” she jested, displaying a rare vein of humor. Egnatious sent her a queasy glare.

First, the notion must be abandoned that women are simply repressed men waiting to be liberated: large numbers of women will not be appealed to by the slavish mimicking of men's magazines. Selection has not only not favored a female propensity to become sexually aroused by the sight of males, but very likely it has disfavored this propensity. Selection has, however, favored female abilities to discriminate visually, and to be sexually interested in, males who evidence fitness. Sexual arousal—primarily via touch—may eventually result from this female interest.

We’re not evenly matched.” I pointed to his tie then put my hands on my hips and mimicked his stance. I hoped bravado and wine-haze would prop up my resolve. So far so good. He glared at me, looking resentful, and his voice was steely as he asked, “What, specifically, makes you think so?” I lifted my chin and indicated his tie again, “Your tie, Quinn. I have on nine pieces of clothing and, assuming you’re wearing underwear of some sort, you have on ten. Now I can either put on my hat or you can take off your tie.” His glare morphed into a perplexed frown as I spoke but then, when I reached the end of the last sentence, his features transitioned into something like petulant yet amused understanding and most of the rigidity left his shoulders and neck. We stared at each other, again almost for a half minute, before I broke the silence. “Or, you could take off your jacket…?” Quinn’s mouth hooked to the side and he smoothly removed his jacket; he tossed it to the pile created by my discarded clothes. He began unfastening his cufflinks at his sleeves and the breath he released while pinning me with an irritated stare sounded relieved.

I was Olivia, and I sat in a rowboat oared by Sage along the Tiber River. “If you think the Society is so ridiculous, tell your father you refuse to go!” I said. “Really? And lose my share of the family fortune? I’d be destitute. You’d have to leave me for a Medici-a fiancé who could keep you in the style to which you’re accustomed.” “Paints, canvas, and you. That’s all I need. Maybe a little extra artistic talent.” Sage gave me a pointed look. He loved my artwork and always gave me a hard time for doubting my own ability. I liked to remind him he was biased. “How about food?” he asked. “You’d need food.” “Wild fruits and vegetables.” “Roof over your head?” “We’ll build a hut.” “Clothing?” I gave Sage a knowing smile, and he almost tipped the boat. “Sage!” I cried, holding the sides for dear life. “I can’t swim!” “I’m sorry, but that was an absolutely valid response. Any man would tell you the same.” I laughed. “So what do you do in the Society meetings?” “I can’t tell you. I’m sworn to absolute secrecy.” He said it with a haughty affectation that I mimicked as I pretended to zip closed my lips and throw away the key. “My lips are sealed,” I intoned. “Really? Because mine are not.

I run my finger along the textured silk. “It’s so beautiful.” “Salishen silk,” Mage Florel says reverently. “From the Salishen Isles. They’re master weavers, the Salish. True artists. And all of their embroidery is as exquisite as this.” I glance up at her. “Do you think you could use this?” “Of course, Mage Gardner,” she replies, obviously thrilled by my choice. Fallon’s hand comes down on the fabric. “You can’t use this,” she says, her tone hard. I blink up at her in resentful surprise. “Why?” “Because,” she replies, her voice syrupy with condescension, “this is what my dress is being made of.” “Ah, what a pity,” Mage Florel sighs. She pats my shoulder sympathetically. “I’ve others, Mage Gardner, don’t you fret. We’ll find something just as lovely for you...” Heart racing, I put my own hand down firmly on the fabric sample, right next to Fallon’s. I meet Fallon’s stare and hold it. “No. I want this one.” Everyone gapes at me. Fallon leans in a fraction and bares her teeth. “You can’t have it.” I try to ignore the slight trembling of my hand. “Oh, come now, Fallon,” I say as I gesture at the fabric around us, mimicking her sneering tone. “It’s all black. And I’m sure the cut will be different.” I look over at Mage Florel, whose eyes are as wide as everyone else’s. “Can you make sure it’s very different from hers?” Fallon spits out a sound of contempt. “My dress isn’t being made here. I have my own dressmaker.” “Well, then,” I tell her. “That simplifies things.” I turn to Mage Florel. “Can you make it for me in time? With this fabric?” Mage Florel gives me an appraising look, her eyes darting toward Fallon as if weighing the options. She lifts her chin. “Why, yes, Mage Gardner. I think I can.” She smiles coldly at Fallon. “Why don’t you tell me what your dress is like, dear? I’ll make sure it’s quite different.

And as we pushed westward, patches of what the garage-man called "sage brush" appeared, and then the mysterious outlines of table-like hills, and then red bluffs ink-blotted with junipers, and then a mountain range, dun grading into blue, and blue into dream, and the desert would meet us with a steady gale, dust, gray thorn bushes, and hideous bits of tissue paper mimicking pale flowers among the prickles of wind-tortured withered stalks all along the highway; in the middle of which there sometimes stood simple cows, immobilized in a position (tail left, white eyelashes right) cutting across all human rules of traffic.

Returning to my yarn stash, I select a pair of ebony needles and a lustrous ball of handspun alpaca. Then I quickly cast on to create a light, resilient fabric. We don’t have much time before the students get back, which means the gauge has to be right the first time around. When you’re weaving or knitting enchanted fabrics, gauge is critical. Gauge—the relative density of the fabric—determines the degree to which a magical object can utilize or redirect fields of energy. But magic often requires a mix of skill and sacrifice. It’s not enough to knit a pattern without making a mistake: you also have to give up something of yourself. A heart shroud is a complex spell, filled with twisty cables mimicking the structure of the human heart.

I don’t do well with being threatened. And I definitely don’t take orders. But you’ll learn all this. Eventually. I get that I know you better than you know yourself, but there’s a few things you should know about me. And I’ll make it easy for you.” Mimicking my pointing to my fingers, he points to his index finger. “Number one, you’ll be here because you want to be here, not because I forced you. Ever.” Pointing to his middle finger, “Number two, this closet is yours, and I expect you to use whatever is in there, down to your drawers.” Pointing back to his index finger, “Number three, you’re so fucking hot when you get worked up that I would really like for you to suck my cock. And when I say I would really like that, I mean suck my cock, Lexi. Now.

Loulou broke free from Zeus to come toward us but stopped abruptly when Priest stepped in front of me, blocking her way. They stared each other down, my big sister and my beloved psycho, communicating in the way of alphas, without words using only intense body language. Slowly, Priest pulled me by the wrist to his side, then deliberately wrapped his big hand around the back of my neck under my hair to anchor me to him. “She’s mine,” he said slowly, each word barely leashed with aggression. Loulou mimicked him, cocking her head and narrowing her eyes. Her hip cocked to the side as she folded her arms across her chest and arched a brow. “And you’re hers?” He shrugged one shoulder casually, but the hand on my neck flexed in spasm. “Whatever there is of me to have.

Thomas Piketty, an economist at the Paris School of Economics, warned in his zeitgeist-shifting book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, that without aggressive government intervention economic inequality in the United States and elsewhere was likely to rise inexorably, to the point where the small portion of the population that currently held a growing slice of the world’s wealth would in the foreseeable future own not just a quarter, or a third, but perhaps half of the globe’s wealth, or more. He predicted that the fortunes of those with great wealth, and their inheritors, would increase at a faster rate of return than the rate at which wages would grow, creating what he called “patrimonial capitalism.” This dynamic, he predicted, would widen the growing chasm between the haves and the have-nots to levels mimicking the aristocracies of old Europe and banana republics.

And in an essential way, this was what he was most ashamed of: not his poor understanding of sex, not his traitorous racial tendencies, not his inability to separate himself from his parents or make his own money or behave like an autonomous creature. It was that, when he and his colleagues sat there at night, the group of them burrowed deep into their own ambitious dream-structures, all of them drawing and planning their improbable buildings, he was doing nothing. He had lost the ability to imagine anything. And so every evening, while the others created, he copied: he drew buildings he had seen on his travels, buildings other people had dreamed and constructed, buildings he had lived in or passed through. Again and again, he made what had already been made, not even bothering to improve them, just mimicking them. He was twenty-eight; his imagination had deserted him; he was a copyist.

The older a woman got, the more diligent she had to become about not burdening men with the gory details of her past, lest she scare them off. That was the name of the game: Don’t Scare the Men. Those who encouraged you to indulge in your impulse to share, largely did so to expedite a bus. Like I felt the wind of the bus. I could even see a couple of the passengers, all shaken by a potential suicide. And out of nowhere, the guy rushes over, yanks me toward him, and escorts me out of the street.” “The birthday boy?” “No, different guy. You all start to look the same after a while, you know that? Anyway, we were both so high on adrenaline, we couldn’t stop laughing the whole night. Then he asked me out. Now one of our jokes is about that time I flung myself into traffic to avoid him.” “You were in shock.” “No, I wasn’t.” “Why isn’t the joke that he saved your life?” “I don’t know, Amos,” I said, folding my fingers together. “Maybe we’re both waiting for the day I turn around and say, ‘That’s right, asshole, I did fling myself into traffic to avoid you.’ I’m joking.” “Are you?” “Am I?” I mimicked him. “Should the day come when you manage to face-plant yourself into a relationship, you’ll find there are certain fragile truths every couple has. Sometimes I’m uncomfortable with the power, knowing I could break us up if I wanted. Other times, I want to blow it up just because it’s there. But then the feeling passes.” “That’s bleak.” “To you, it is. But I’m not like you. I don’t need to escape every room I’m in.” “But you are like me. You think you want monogamy, but you probably don’t if you dated me.” “You’re faulting me for liking you now?” “All I’m saying is you can’t just will yourself into being satisfied with this guy.” “Watch me,” I said, trying to burn a hole in his face. “If it were me, the party would have been our first date and it never would have ended.” “Oh, yes it would have,” I said, laughing. “The date would have lasted one week, but the whole relationship would have lasted one month.” “Yeah,” he said, “you’re right.” “I know I’m right.” “It wouldn’t have lasted.” “This is what I’m saying.” “Because if I were this dude, I would have left you by now.” Before I could say anything, Amos excused himself to pee. On the bathroom door was a black and gold sticker in the shape of a man. I felt a rage rise up all the way to my eyeballs, thinking of how naturally Amos associated himself with that sticker, thinking of him aligning himself with every powerful, brilliant, thoughtful man who has gone through that door as well as every stupid, entitled, and cruel one, effortlessly merging with a class of people for whom the world was built. I took my phone out, opening the virtual cuckoo clocks, trying to be somewhere else. I was confronted with a slideshow of a female friend’s dead houseplants, meant to symbolize inadequacy within reason. Amos didn’t have a clue what it was like to be a woman in New York, unsure if she’s with the right person. Even if I did want to up and leave Boots, dating was not a taste I’d acquired. The older a woman got, the more diligent she had to become about not burdening men with the gory details of her past, lest she scare them off. That was the name of the game: Don’t Scare the Men. Those who encouraged you to indulge in your impulse to share, largely did so to expedite a decision. They knew they were on trial too, but our courtrooms had more lenient judges.

What are we talking about?” Alex says. “This is fucking nonsense.” The couple ahead of us turns slightly. “What are you looking at?” Alex says to them. I don’t bother to reprimand her, because really, what are they looking at? I slow my pace and Alex punches Scottie in the arm. “Ow!” Scottie screams. “Alex! Why are we still on this pattern?” “Hit her back, Dad,” Scottie yells. Alex grabs Scottie’s neck. “You’re hurting me,” Scottie says. “That’s kind of the point,” Alex says. I grab both children by the arm and pull them down to the sand. Sid covers his mouth with his hand and bends over, laughing silently. “‘What do you love about Mom?’” Alex says, mimicking her sister. “Shut up, already. And stop babying her.” I sit down between them and don’t say a word. Sid sits next to Alex. “Easy, tiger,” he says. I look at the waves crashing down on the sand. A few women walk by and give me this knowing look, as though a father with his kids is such a precious sight. It takes so little to be revered as a father. I can tell the girls are waiting for me to say something, but what can I say that hasn’t been said? I’ve shouted, I’ve reasoned, I’ve even spanked. Nothing works. “What do you love about Mom, Scottie?” I ask, glaring at Alex. She takes a moment to think. “Lots of stuff. She’s not old and ugly, like most moms.” “What about you, Alex?” “Why are we doing this?” she asks. “How did we get here in the first place?” “Swimming with the sharks,” I say. “Scottie wanted to swim with sharks.” “You can do that,” Sid says. “I read about it in the hotel.” “She’s not afraid of anything,” Alex says. She’s wrong, and besides, I think this is a statement and not something that Alex truly loves. “Let’s get back,” I say. I stand up and wipe the sand off of me. I look at our hotel on the cliff, pink from the sunset. The girls’ expressions when I told them about their mom made me feel so alone. They won’t ever understand me the way Joanie does. They won’t know her the way I do. I miss her despite the fact that she envisioned the rest of her life without me. I look at my daughters, utter mysteries, and for a brief moment I have a sick feeling that I don’t want to be alone in the world with these two girls. I’m relieved they haven’t asked me what it is I love about them.

looking for people to design the graphical interface for Apple’s new operating system, Jobs got an email from a young man and invited him in. The applicant was nervous, and the meeting did not go well. Later that day Jobs bumped into him, dejected, sitting in the lobby. The guy asked if he could just show him one of his ideas, so Jobs looked over his shoulder and saw a little demo, using Adobe Director, of a way to fit more icons in the dock at the bottom of a screen. When the guy moved the cursor over the icons crammed into the dock, the cursor mimicked a magnifying glass and made each icon balloon bigger. “I said, ‘My God,’ and hired him on the spot,” Jobs recalled. The feature became a lovable part of Mac OSX, and the designer went on to design such things as inertial scrolling for multi-touch screens (the delightful feature that makes the screen keep gliding for a moment after you’ve finished swiping). Jobs’s experiences at NeXT had matured him, but they had not mellowed him much. He still had no license plate on his Mercedes, and he still parked in the handicapped spaces next to the front door, sometimes straddling two slots. It became a running

Jared ducked down his head and murmured in her ear, his breath warm against her skin: “What was that about?” “Shush, you heartless monster,” said Kami. “He’s happy you’re alive. I thought it was very sweet.” “I can hear you both,” Ash grumbled from Jared’s other side. Kami couldn’t see him, but she could feel how he was feeling, of course. It was the same way she felt, embarrassed but radiantly happy. “Oh, Jared,” said Rusty, mimicking Ash’s voice. “I am sooooo overcome with joy that you are alive.” “Oh, Ash,” said Angela. “The inbreeding has done such different things to us. You are so girlish and emotional, prone to swooning and embracing people, while I stand here with a face like a stone and eyes like a rabid squirrel’s.” “All that stuff you’re saying about your face is true, Jared,” said Rusty. “But I still wish to clasp you to my bosom.” “I was buried alive five minutes ago,” Jared muttered. “Already with the mockery?” Kami glanced over her shoulder at Angela and Rusty, arm in arm and snickering with delight, and Holly on Angela’s other side, smiling like a cheerfully wicked angel. “That’s how we roll,” Kami said. “We live a mock-and-roll lifestyle.

All Night, All Night Rode in the train all night, in the sick light. A bird Flew parallel with a singular will. In daydream's moods and attitudes The other passengers slumped, dozed, slept, read, Waiting, and waiting for place to be displaced On the exact track of safety or the rack of accident. Looked out at the night, unable to distinguish Lights in the towns of passage from the yellow lights Numb on the ceiling. And the bird flew parallel and still As the train shot forth the straight line of its whistle, Forward on the taut tracks, piercing empty, familiar -- The bored center of this vision and condition looked and looked Down through the slick pages of the magazine (seeking The seen and the unseen) and his gaze fell down the well Of the great darkness under the slick glitter, And he was only one among eight million riders and readers. And all the while under his empty smile the shaking drum Of the long determined passage passed through him By his body mimicked and echoed. And then the train Like a suddenly storming rain, began to rush and thresh-- The silent or passive night, pressing and impressing The patients' foreheads with a tightening-like image Of the rushing engine proceeded by a shaft of light Piercing the dark, changing and transforming the silence Into a violence of foam, sound, smoke and succession. A bored child went to get a cup of water, And crushed the cup because the water too was Boring and merely boredom's struggle. The child, returning, looked over the shoulder Of a man reading until he annoyed the shoulder. A fat woman yawned and felt the liquid drops Drip down the fleece of many dinners. And the bird flew parallel and parallel flew The black pencil lines of telephone posts, crucified, At regular intervals, post after post Of thrice crossed, blue-belled, anonymous trees. And then the bird cried as if to all of us: 0 your life, your lonely life What have you ever done with it, And done with the great gift of consciousness? What will you ever do with your life before death's knife Provides the answer ultimate and appropriate? As I for my part felt in my heart as one who falls, Falls in a parachute, falls endlessly, and feel the vast Draft of the abyss sucking him down and down, An endlessly helplessly falling and appalled clown: This is the way that night passes by, this Is the overnight endless trip to the famous unfathomable abyss.

Death … has its usefulness to the living. The moment you were born, you began to die.” He sighed. “What a lovely thought.” “Lovely,” Vic repeated with no small amount of scorn. “Yes, lovely. Think about it, Victor. You are finite. Your time is already slipping through your fingers. It creates an urgency within you. To do all that you can. To make things right. I wonder what that must feel like, to have a sense of true motivation.” “Why? It’s a flaw in the design.” “A flaw?” He laughed loudly. “Of course it is! Your flaws are what make you superior, in all ways. No matter what machines can do, no matter how powerful we become, it is the absence of flaws that will be our undoing. How can this existence survive when all machine-made things are perfect down to a microscopic detail? When all machine-made music is empty of rage and joy? Our only flaw is that we’ve condemned ourselves to spend eternity mimicking that which we deemed unfit to exist.” He shook his head. “We can never be you. Instead, we became your ghosts, and we’ll haunt this world until there is nothing left.” The Coachman smiled gently. “It is not a flaw, Victor. There must be no greater feeling in the world than to know that this isn’t forever.

Oh, man! man! man!" moaned Dean. "And it's not even the beginning of it-and now here we are at last going east together, we've never gone east together, Sal, think of it, we'll dig Denver together and see what everybody's doing although that matters little to us, the point being that we know what IT is and we know TIME and we know that everything is really FINE."Then he whispered, clutching my sleeve, sweating, "Now you just dig them in front. They have worries, they're counting the miles, they're thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they'll get there-and all the time they'll get there anyway, you see. But they need to worry and betray time with urgencies false and otherwise, purely anxious and whiny, their souls really won't be at peace unless they can latch on to an established and proven worry and having once found it they assume facial expressions to fit and go with it, which is, you see, unhappiness, and all the time it all flies by them and they know it and that too worries them no end. Listen! Listen! 'Well now,' " he mimicked, " 'I don't know-maybe we shouldn't get gas in that station. I read recently in National Petroffious Petroleum News that this kind of gas has a great deal of O-Octane gook in it and someone once told me it even had semi-official high-frequency cock in it, and I don't know, well I just don't feel like it anyway . . .' Man, you dig all this." He was poking me furiously in the ribs to understand. I tried my wildest best. Bing, bang, it was all Yes! Yes! Yes! in the back seat and the people up front were mopping their brows with fright and wishing they'd never picked us up at the travel bureau. It was only the beginning, too.

Isaac Asimov’s short story “The Fun They Had” describes a school of the future that uses advanced technology to revolutionize the educational experience, enhancing individualized learning and providing students with personalized instruction and robot teachers. Such science fiction has gone on to inspire very real innovation. In a 1984 Newsweek interview, Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs predicted computers were going to be a bicycle for our minds, extending our capabilities, knowledge, and creativity, much the way a ten-speed amplifies our physical abilities. For decades, we have been fascinated by the idea that we can use computers to help educate people. What connects these science fiction narratives is that they all imagined computers might eventually emulate what we view as intelligence. Real-life researchers have been working for more than sixty years to make this AI vision a reality. In 1962, the checkers master Robert Nealey played the game against an IBM 7094 computer, and the computer beat him. A few years prior, in 1957, the psychologist Frank Rosenblatt created Perceptron, the first artificial neural network, a computer simulation of a collection of neurons and synapses trained to perform certain tasks. In the decades following such innovations in early AI, we had the computation power to tackle systems only as complex as the brain of an earthworm or insect. We also had limited techniques and data to train these networks. The technology has come a long way in the ensuing decades, driving some of the most common products and apps today, from the recommendation engines on movie streaming services to voice-controlled personal assistants such as Siri and Alexa. AI has gotten so good at mimicking human behavior that oftentimes we cannot distinguish between human and machine responses. Meanwhile, not only has the computation power developed enough to tackle systems approaching the complexity of the human brain, but there have been significant breakthroughs in structuring and training these neural networks.

She shifted gears as they left Worth Avenue, hurtling them along the beach at just sublight speed. “Jesus, Addison, you are so blind,” she finally exploded. “She comes in playing the damsel in distress, and you buy all of it.” “She did n—” “‘Oh, Richard, I need your help,’” she mimicked, doing a startlingly good impression of Patricia’s soft, cultured Brit—especially since the two women had barely spoken a total of five words to one another. “’I’ve left Peter, and I so badly want to make a new start, but I just don’t know how to do it on my own. You’re so big and strong and successful, can’t you see it in your heart to help me?’” Samantha canted her eyes at him. “Did it go a little like that?” Christ. “Maybe,” he hedged. “But—” “See? She wants you back.” “Well, she can’t have me. I’m taken. But she asked for my help, and I’m partially the reason she’s in this position.” “No, she put herself on her back and then you put her in the next position.” “Even so—” “You can’t resist putting on your shining armor, can you?” she said more calmly, blowing out her breath. “And if I know it, then she knows it, too.” “Honestly, Samantha, I think it’s more a matter of Patricia actually being helpless than her acting that way to gain my assistance. I doubt she could find a grocery store on her own, much less the toothpaste aisle.” “But she’s not after toothpaste.” As they stopped at a light, Richard leaned over and grabbed Samantha’s face, kissing her hard on her surprised mouth. “Don’t worry about this. You won’t have to deal with her.” “Maybe not, but you will. And keep in mind that she’s got a subscriber website where she gives advice about how not to get screwed in a divorce.” “She does?” “Yes. Interesting stuff. You really need to spend more time surfing the ’net.” “Shit.” Before Samantha could follow up her smug look with more commentary, he took a breath. “I’ll make dumping the website a condition of my helping her.” “Great. She won’t need the site, anyway, because she’ll be busy screwing you over in person, instead.” “No one screws me over, Samantha. Ever.” “Yet, smart guy. Yet.

More to the point, one cannot understand The Holocaust without understanding the intentions, ideology, and mechanisms that were put in place in 1933. The eugenics movement may have come to a catastrophic crescendo with the Hitler regime, but the political movement, the world-view, the ideology, and the science that aspired to breed humans like prized horses began almost 100 years earlier. More poignantly, the ideology and those legal and governmental mechanisms of a eugenic world-view inevitably lead back to the British and American counterparts that Hitler’s scientists collaborated with. Posterity must gain understanding of the players that made eugenics a respectable scientific and political movement, as Hitler’s regime was able to evade wholesale condemnation in those critical years between 1933 and 1943 precisely because eugenics had gained international acceptance. As this book will evidence, Hitler’s infamous 1933 laws mimicked those already in place in the United States, Britain, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Canada. So what is this scientific and political movement that for 100 years aspired to breed humans like dogs or horses? Eugenics is quite literally, as defined by its principal proponents, an attempt at “directing evolution” by controlling any aspect of human existence that affects human heredity. From its onset, Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin and the man credited with the creation of the science of eugenics, knew that the cause of eugenics had to be observed with religious fervor and dedication. As the quote on the opening pages of this book illustrates, a eugenicist must “intrude, intrude, intrude.” A vigilant control over anything and everything that affects the gene pool is essential to eugenics. The policies could not allow for the individual to enjoy self-government or self-determination any more than a horse breeder can allow the animals to determine whom to breed with. One simply cannot breed humans like horses without imbuing the state with the level of control a farmer has over its livestock, not only controlling procreation, but also the diet, access to medical services, and living conditions.

Martha would come over every week and check on Mia and work with her on relaxation and breathing exercises to prepare for the natural labor. Jenny was on board with the natural thing too, so of course she and Mia dragged Tyler and me to the Bradley Birthing Method classes. It was hysterical; we had to get in all kinds of weird poses with the girls while they mimicked being in labor. We would massage their backs while they were perched on all fours, moaning. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done is contain my laughter during those classes. Mia was the freakin’ teacher’s pet because she was taking it so seriously. Right around the third class, they showed us a video of a live birth. I had nightmares for a week after that. Tyler and I agreed that we had to find a way to get out of going to the classes. We hadn’t mutually agreed on a plan, so during the fifth class, Tyler took it upon himself and used his own bodily gifts to get us into a heap of trouble. Tyler is lactose intolerant, and he has to take these little white tablets every time he eats cheese. The morning of the class, he stopped by the studio with a half-eaten pizza. I didn’t even think twice about it until that night in class during our visualization exercises when this god-awful, horrendous odor overtook our senses. At first everyone kept quiet and just looked around for the source. There wasn’t a sound to accompany the lethal attack, so everyone went into investigation mode, staring each other down. Mia began to gag. I heard Jenny cry a little behind us. Finally when I turned toward Tyler, I noticed he had the most triumphant glimmer in his eyes. I completely lost my shit. I was rolling around, laughing hysterically. Mia grabbed the hood of my sweatshirt and pulled me to my feet. “Outside, now!” She was scowling as she dragged me along. When we passed Tyler, she pointed to him angrily. “You too, joker.” Mia and Jenny pressed us up against the brick wall outside and then gave us the death stare, both of them with their arms crossed over their blooming bellies. They whispered something to each other and then turned and walked off, arm in arm. We followed. “Come on, you guys, it was funny.” Jenny stopped dead in her tracks and turned. She jabbed her index finger into my chest and said, “Yes, it is funny. When you’re five! Not when you’re in a room full of pregnant women. Do you know how sensitive our noses are?” I shrugged. “It wasn’t me.” “Oh, I know he’s a child,” she said but wouldn’t even look at Tyler. “And you are too, Will, for encouraging it.” Mia was glaring at me with a disappointed look, and then she shook her head and turned to continue down the street. Jenny caught up and walked away with her. “God, they’re so sensitive,” I whispered to Tyler. “Yeah, I kinda feel bad.” Without turning around, Mia yelled to us, “You guys don’t have to come anymore. Jenny and I can be each other’s partners.” I turned to Tyler and mouthed, “It worked!” I had a huge smile on my face. Tyler and I high-fived. “Why don’t you guys go celebrate? I know that’s what you wanted,” Jenny yelled back as they made a sharp turn down the sidewalk and down the stairs to the subway. “Nothing gets past them,” Tyler said

You do that a great deal, don’t you?” He swallowed the rest of his wine. “What?” “Close up into yourself whenever someone tries to peer into your soul. Make a joke of it.” “If you came out here to lecture me,” he snapped, “don’t bother. Gran has perfected that talent. You can’t possibly compete.” “I only want to understand.” “I want to be consumed by a star, but we don’t all get what we want.” “What?” “Never mind.” Turning for the nearest door into the house, he started to stalk off, but she caught his arm. “Why are you so angry at your grandmother?” Maria asked. “I told you-she’s trying to ruin the lives of me and my siblings.” “By requiring you to marry so you can have children? I thought all lords and ladies were expected to do that. And the five of you are certainly old enough.” Her tone turned teasing. “Some of you are beyond being old enough.” “Watch it, minx,” he clipped out. “I’m not in the mood for having my nose tweaked tonight.” “Because of your grandmother, you mean. It’s not just her demand that has you angry, is it? It goes back longer than that.” Oliver glared at her. “Why do you care? Has she got you fighting her battles for her now?” “Hardly. She just informed me that I was, and I quote, ‘exactly the sort of woman who would not meet my requirements of a wife.’” A smile touched his lips at her accurate mimicking of Gran at her most haughty. “I told you she would think that.” “Yes,” she said dryly. “You both excel at insulting people.” “One of my many talents.” “There you go again. Making a joke to avoid talking about what makes you uncomfortable.” “And what is that?” “What did your grandmother do, besides giving you an ultimatum about marriage, that has you at daggers drawn?” Blast it all, would she not leave off? “How do you know she did anything? Perhaps I’m just contrary.” “You are. But that’s not what has you so angry at her.” “If you plan to spend the next two weeks asking ridiculous questions that have no answers, then I will pay you to return to London.” She smiled. “No, you won’t. You need me.” “True. But since I’m paying for the service you’re providing, I get some say in how it’s rendered. Bedeviling me with questions isn’t part of our bargain.” “You haven’t paid me anything yet,” she said lightly, “so I should think there’s some leeway in the terms. Especially since I’ve been working hard all evening furthering your cause. I just finished telling your grandmother that I have ‘feelings’ for you, and that I know you have ‘feelings’ for me.” “You didn’t choke on that lie?” he quipped. “I do have feelings for you-probably not the sort she meant, though apparently she believed me. But she was suspicious. She’s more astute than you give her credit for. First she accused us of acting a farce, and then, when I denied that, she accused me of thinking to marry you so I could gain a fortune from her down the line.” “And what did you say to that?” “I told her she could keep her precious fortune.” “Did you, indeed? I would have given my right arm to see that.” Maria was proving to be an endless source of amazement. No one ever stood up to Gran-except this American chit, with her naïve beliefs in justice and right and morality. It amazed him that she’d done it, considering how he’d treated her. No one, not even his siblings, had ever defended him with so little reason. It stirred something that had long lain dead inside him. His conscience? No, that wasn’t dead; it was nonexistent.