My Life Sucks Quotes

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.

It's like I have this large black hole in my brain and it's sucking the life out of me. The answers are in there so I sit for hours and stare. No matter how hard and long I look, I only see darkness.

My life sucks when I’m only half-aware of it. If I quit drinking and saw what it’s really like, I’d probably jump off a bridge.

For the first time in my life, I was in a shoot-out. A real, honest-to-goodness shoot-out with a bad guy. And, apparently, we both sucked.

In the past few hours, I’ve been possessed, nearly had my head caved in, and found out my mom is secretly a Prodigium hunter. And before that, I lost just about everyone else I care about, and discovered that people I trusted are secretly demon-raising creeps. My life sucks pretty hard right now. So, yeah. I’m making jokes.

That is my problem with life, I rush through it, like I'm being chased. Even things whose whole point is slowness, like drinking relaxing tea. When I drink relaxing tea I suck it down as if I'm in a contest for who can drink relaxing tea the quickest.

Of course it hurts", she grumbled, tipping my head further back. "Life sucks. Get over it

So I was beginning my new life as a anomaly, which figured about as much as it sucked.

I have realized; it is during the times I am far outside my element that I experience myself the most. That I see and feel who I really am, the most! I think that's what a comet is like, you see, a comet is born in the outer realms of the universe! But it's only when it ventures too close to our sun or to other stars that it releases the blazing "tail" behind it and shoots brazen through the heavens! And meteors become sucked into our atmosphere before they burst like firecrackers and realize that they're shooting stars! That's why I enjoy taking myself out of my own element, my own comfort zone, and hurling myself out into the unknown. Because it's during those scary moments, those unsure steps taken, that I am able to see that I'm like a comet hitting a new atmosphere: suddenly I illuminate magnificently and fire dusts begin to fall off of me! I discover a smile I didn't know I had, I uncover a feeling that I didn't know existed in me... I see myself. I'm a shooting star. A meteor shower. But I'm not going to die out. I guess I'm more like a comet then. I'm just going to keep on coming back.

And let’s face it people, no one is ever honest with you about child birth. Not even your mother.       “It’s a pain you forget all about once you have that sweet little baby in your arms.”     Bullshit.   I CALL BULLSHIT.   Any friend, cousin, or nosey-ass stranger in the grocery store that tells you it’s not that bad is a lying sack of shit.   Your vagina is roughly the size of the girth of a penis.   It has to stretch and open andturn into a giant bat cave so the life-sucking human you’ve been growing for nine months can angrily claw its way out.   Who in their right mind would do that willingly?   You’re just walking along one day and think to yourself, “You know, I think it’s time I turn my vagina into an Arby’s Beef and Cheddar (minus the cheddar) and saddle myself down for a minimum of eighteen years to someone who will suck the soul and the will to live right out of my body so I’m a shell of the person I used to be and can’t get laid even if I pay for it.

Yeah, right. Life is a soul-sucking test that you either survive or you fail. Personally, I think failure blows, so I intend to survive and laugh my ass off at all the losers. (Nick)

A word of advice, though. This won't be the last time you have to deal with something in life that throws you off your game. In future courses, as well as in the real world--such as it is--professors and employers won't always be accommodating. We all have to--what's my daughter's terminology--suck it up and deal?

Somehow, my whole existence had become a really complicated word problem. I'd always sucked at those.

I suck at being social. I think one thing and my mouth says something completely different, like I'm possessed. By a whole lot of stupid.

Every day was like a day out of someone else's life. Nothing had ever happened to me, and now everything was happening to me -- and by everything, I really meant Lena. An hour was both faster and slower. I felt like I had sucked the air out of a giant balloon, like my brain wasn't getting enough oxygen. Clouds were more interesting, the lunchroom less disgusting, music sounded better, the same old jokes were funnier, and Jackson went from being a clump of grayish-green industrial buildings to a map of times and places where I might run into her. I found myself smiling for no reason, keeping my earphones in and replaying our conversations in my head, just so I could listen to them again. I had seen this kind of thing before. I had just never felt it.

The people I'm stuck with in my life now aren't sucking the life out of me, they just suck.

I might have been a fuckup and a failure and a disappointment, but I wasn’t a liar. I did lie to Belly, though. Just that one time in that crappy motel. I did it to protect her. That’s what I kept telling myself. Still, if there was one moment in my life I could redo, one moment out of all the shitty moments, that was the one I’d pick. When I thought back to the look on her face—the way it just crumpled, how she’d sucked in her lips and wrinkled her nose to keep the hurt from showing—it killed me. God, if I could, I’d go back to that moment and say all the right things, I’d tell her I loved her, I’d make it so that she never look that way again.

I want my life to be easier than this. I mean, I know I'm not some starving kid who has to wash clothes in the Ganges for a nickel, but today just sucks.

I’ve been thinking about that ever since. Am I lucky? Am I lucky that I didn’t die? Am I lucky that, compared to the other kids here, my life doesn’t seem so bad? Maybe I am, but I have to say, I don’t feel lucky. For one thing, I’m stuck in this pit. And just because your life isn’t as awful as someone else’s, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck. You can’t compare how you feel to the way other people feel. It just doesn’t work. What might look like the perfect life—or even an okay life—to you might not be so okay for the person living it.

Good in Crisis; Sucks at Normal.’ That about sums up my whole life, doesn’t it?

You know what? I was wrong. You are an idiot. My life happens to, on occasion, suck beyond the telling of it. Sometimes more than I can handle. And it's not just mine. Every single person down there is ignoring your pain because they're too busy with their own. The beautiful ones. The popular ones. The guys that pick on you. Everyone. If you could hear what they were feeling. The loneliness. The confusion. It looks quiet down there. It's not. It's deafening.

Before I'd touch a square bitch's slit, I'd suck a thousand clappy pricks and swim through liquid shit, They got green puke between their rotten toes, And snot runs from their funky nose, I hope square bitches become syphilitic wrecks, I hope they fall through their own assholes and break their motherfucking necks.

Fine, you fun-vampire. I’ll take my scroll over here and play by myself. (Kat) Fun-vampire? What is that? (Sin) That would be you sucking all the fun out of life. (Kat) You have the most interesting terms for things. (Sin) Yes, but notice mine are creative, unlike the so stellarly named Rod of Time. (Kat)

Why bother trying? What was the point? So I could go to some suck-ass college, get a diploma, march out into a job that I hated, marry a pretty girl who would want to divorce me, but then she wouldn't because we'd have kids, so instead she'd be the angry woman at the other end of the kitchen table, and the kids would grow up watching this, until one day I'd look at my son and he'd look just like that face in the bathroom mirror? If that was life, then it was twisted.

,"I am not crazy, my reality is just different from yours."-Cheshire Cat

Quit? You kidding? My life sucks when I'm only half-aware of it. If I quit drinking and saw what it's really like, I'd probably jump off a bridge.

The girl who, twenty-four years ago to the day, stepped into my life with her big brown eyes, her hair in pigtails, sucking on a lollipop as she stared across at me through the garden fence and said, “I’m Trudy, you want a lollipop?” I let out a laugh as tears fill my eyes, realizing today’s date is August 31. The day Jake and I met.

Sometimes, life just sucked. "Bite me," she muttered. "Okay, where?" Deke asked, then went on. "Never mind. I've got some enticing ideas of my own.

School sucks. I'm dropping out and becoming a truck stop waitress. I think i'll change my name to Flo and get a really bad perm. Flo the truck stop waitress with a bad perm doesn't need high school. She lives off the knowledge of life.

I think sometimes she lies in bed at night and plots ways to make my life suck. There can be no other explanation.

No. Just thinking about how much my life sucks.” “Mine does, too. Sucks big-time. But I’m glad I’m with you.

We're talking about humans inhaling the toxic life force sucked out of a demon from another world.' Quite possible the weirdest sentence I'd ever said aloud...'And according to your mom, if they survive addiction-and that's a big if-their scrambled brains'll make Ozzy Osbourne look rational and coherent.

I think everyone’s caught up in these narrow-minded worlds and they think their world exists in the center of the universe. Relationships only happen when it’s convenient. You have to walk on eggshells for people because that’s about how strong they are these days. And you can’t confront people, because if you do, that brittle shell of confidence will crack. So we all become passive cowards that carry a fake smile wherever we go because God forbid you let your guard down long enough for people to see your life isn’t perfect. That you have a few flaws. Because who wants to see that? My theory is everybody sucks. So, my conclusion is I don’t need anybody.

So let me see if I got everything straight … This … means that we are somehow meant to be husband and wife. But if I refuse you, you spend the rest of your life impotent and alone? But I, on the other hand, am free to live my life however I see fit?” He nodded. “It really sucks to be you, doesn’t it?

Growing up in that house sucks so badly and when my brother leaves I break down and cry because I don't want him to leave, but I know that he has to have a life of his own

I feel like we meet people in life and want so much for them to like us that we suck in our stomachs and pretend we don’t fart and tell them a bunch of things we think they want to know. If it works they fall for the person we want to be, and not for the person we are.

Some days are hard on us. Life gets serious and shit sucks. But you're my favorite distraction, attraction and human being. And, I can't wait to love you more tomorrow.

Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees—he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder. His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete. Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something—an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.

"I gave up a world for you." He glared at me, not giving me anything. I kept right on going. "I thought, perhaps, when I learned I had powers, I might be able to use them to go home," his eyes flashed but that was all I got so I kept on going, "but not for good. My father isn't dead." Another flash. "He's alive and at home and living maybe with a fake Circe. He'll know the difference, though, I KNOW it. He's out of his mind with worry, I know that too. He's wondering where I am and if I'm okay and how to get me back. I also know that. I know that and I know that my life was good. I loved my life. I loved my home. I loved my job. I had a lot of people who loved me that loved me back." I sucked in a breath and then whispered, "But as much as your world scared me, as much as our practices repulsed me, I still chose you." His torso jerked, it was almost imperceptible, but I caught it. I kept at him. "I gave up my world for you, Lahn. I sat at your side through things people in my world would find loathsome and I did it with my head held high. I even felt 'pride' that I could endure, that I could be a good queen to you.......Everything I did in this fucking place, even before I fell in love with you, was for...fucking...YOU."

They say, that when I was born, my mother taught me to suck the milk. And every night beside my crib, she taught me to sleep as soft as silk. With a smile she pressed her lips to mine, till my mouth with joy oversplit. She took my hand and guided my foot, till I learned to walk with a happy lilt. One word, two words, then three and more... that's how she taught me to talk. That's why my life is part of her life, and will remain so as long as I live

And it sucks, because I want to kiss her. It's infuriating how perfect it would be to kiss her right now, perched on a cannon on a pirate ship under the stars. That sounds like something off the pages of an adventure novel. But my life isn't one of those stories. My story is a hurricane, and here with Swift is just the eye.

I look back over the events of my life and see the hands that carried Moses to his grave lifting me out of mine. In remembering I go back to these places where God met me and I meet him again and I lay my head on his breast, and he shows me the land beyond the Jordan and I suck into my lungs the fragrance of his breath, the power of his presence.

I would savor every moment of my life that remained, suck its marrow, crunch its bones. And when the end came... well, I would not be alone. That was a precious and holy thing.

I’m the most expensive person in my life. Every day I pay for the poor decisions of my past.

I’m at a point in my life where I feel like I can’t go anywhere. Maybe I’ll try to coax my cat off my lap so I can get up and move.

Just shut up and start sucking each other's faces already," Vida grumbled, leaning awkwardly against the stump. She would never admit it aloud, but I knew the burns on her back her eating her alive with pain. "I'm trying to make up for the sleep I lost when you started screeching at each other like cats in heat." "Miss Vida," Liam said, "has anyone ever told you that you are positively the whipped cream on the sundae of life?" She glared at him. "Anyone ever told you your head is shaped like a pencil?" "That is physically impossible," Chubs groused. "He'd be--" "Actually," Liam began, "Cole once did try to-- What?" "Oh, I'm sorry," Chub said, "apparently the middle of my sentence interrupted the beginning of yours. Do continue." "I'm going to guess you probably don't want to hear about the time he pushed my head through the neighbours fence..." "Was there a lot of blood?" Vida asked, suddenly interested. "Did you lose an ear?" Liam held his hands up next to his ears, indicating both were firmly attached to his skull. "Then, no" she said. "No one wants to hear your boring-ass story.

Well, I don’t know. Mostly I just suck up what life throws my way, stomp on it, and then keep going. I don’t dwell much on what I am or how I got this way. It just is. I just am. I’m Max, and whatever form I take, it’s good enough for me.

my relationship with my body is like that of an egomaniac with a self-esteem problem. mostly i think about myself and how much i suck. but there are rare moments when i walk around for hours and think i look amazing. either i feel great about myself or i've decided some guy is checking me out. then i catch a side view of myself in a store window or a department store mirror and i'm plunged into despair. if i could always life in a place with no mirrors or disapproving glances, i would think i was the prettiest girl around.

I spent most of my teen years trying to figure out the rules of life, theories for why things happened, why people behaved as they did, and mostly I came to the conclusion that either there were no rules, or the rules sucked. Reading science fiction wasn't about imagining myself into some more exciting life filled with adventure, it was about finding a world where things worked the way I wanted them to.

I suck at it? You’re acting like this is some stupid play you’ve put together for the neighbors. This is real life, and I’m doing the best I can.” “My plays were not stupid. We made a lot of money in admission tickets. I thought Annie was excellent.” He snorted. “You can’t even sing and you cast yourself as Annie.” “You’re still pissed because I wouldn’t let you play Daddy Warbucks.” He plowed ten fingers through his hair and made a noise deep in his throat. “How the hell do you get me on these ridiculous subjects?

Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds? … It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace. But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches. No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being.

I can't help but think about things critically. Sometimes it can be a curse. What I wouldn't give every once in a while to be a blithering idiot skipping through life with shit in my pants like it's a goddamned party.

I snatched up the cardboard cup, plastered my lips to the plastic sippy-lid and sucked down a scalding hot mouthful. It burned, but I didn’t give a damn. I held the cup to my chest as if it were my most special friend while feeling the instant affect the coffee had on my mood and I smiled. “Hello lover.

Adults are starved for a kind word. When you understand the power of honest praise (as opposed to bullshitting, flattery, and sucking up), you realize that withholding it borders on immoral. If you see something that impresses you, a decent respect to humanity insists you voice your praise.

I'll explain it to you. To me it's more than a game." She touches her chest and says, "When you love something as much as I love football, you just feel it inside. Did you ever love doing something so bad that it consumed you?" "A long time ago." "That's what football is to me. It's my passion, my life… my escape. When I play, I forget everything that sucks in my life. And when we win…" She looks down like she's embarrassed to admit what she's about to reveal. "I know this is going to sound stupid, but when we win I think miracles can happen.

By the time I make my way to the border of Mauritania, to the edge of the Sahara, I see no end to being lost. You can spend your entire life simply falling in that direction. It isn't a station you reach but just the general state of going down. Once you make it back, if you make it back, you will stand before your long-lost friends but in some essential way they will no longer know you.

Depression and anxiety are not feelings. Feelings return me to myself. Depression and anxiety are body snatchers that suck me out of myself so that I appear to be there but I’m really gone. Other people can still see me, but no one can feel me anymore—including me. For me, the tragedy of mental illness is not that I’m sad but that I’m not anything. Mental illness makes me miss my own life.

Brad (Lauren's ex) ignored Hayley (she's Brad's ex girlfriend) and looked at me, he did a top to toe and back again then his gaze moved to Tate. "I'm here to tell you I'm suing you," he announced. Jim-Billy, Nadine, Steg, Wing and my eyes moved to Tate. Tate stared at Brad then he said, "Come again?" "I'm suing you," Brad repeated. "For what?" Tate asked. "Alienation of affection," Brad answered. Without hesitation, Tate threw his head back and burst out laughing. Then he looked at me and remarked, "You're right, babe, this is fun." Ignoring Tate's comment, Brad declared, "You stole my wife." Tate looked back at Brad. "Yeah, bud, I did." Brad pointed at Tate and his voice was raised when he proclaimed, "See? You admit it." He threw his arm out. "I have witnesses." "Not that any judge'll hear your case, seein' as Lauren divorced your ass before I alienated her affection, but you manage it, I'll pay the fine. In the meantime, I'll keep alienating her affection. You should know, and feel free to share it with your lawyers," Tate continued magnanimously, "schedule's comin' out mornin' and night. Usually, in the mornin', she sucks me off or I make her come in the shower. Night, man…shit, that's even better. Definitely worth the fine." Sorry, it's just too long; I have to cut it off. But it continues…like that: "This is the good life?" (Brad) "Part of it," Tate replied instantly, taking his fists from the bar, leaning into his forearms and asking softly, in a tone meant both to challenge and provoke, "She ever ignite, lose so much control she'd attack you? Climb on top and fuck you so hard she can't breathe?" I watched Brad suffer that blow because I hadn't, not even close. We'd had good sex but not that good and Brad was extremely proud of his sexual prowess. He was convinced he was the best. And he knew, with Tate's words, he was wrong. "Jesus, you're disgusting," Brad muttered, calling up revulsion to save face. "She does that to me," Tate continued. "Fuck off," Brad snapped. "All the fuckin' time," Tate pushed. "Fuck off," Brad repeated. "It's fuckin' magnificent," Tate declared. "Thanks, honey," I whispered and grinned at him when his eyes came to me. I was actually expressing gratitude, although embarrassed by his conversation, but I was also kind of joking to get in Brad's face. Tate wasn't. His expression was serious when he said, "You are, Ace. Fuckin' magnificent.

I am thinking now of old Moses sitting on a mountain—sitting with God—looking across the Jordan into the Promised Land. I am thinking of the lump in his throat, that weary ache in his heart, that nearly bitter longing sweetened by the company of God... And then God—the great eternal God—takes Moses' thin-worn, thread-bare little body into His hands—hands into whose hollows you could pour the oceans of the world, hands whose breadth marked off the heavens—and with these enormous and enormously gentle hands, God folds Moses' pale lifeless arms across his chest for burial. I don't know if God wept at Moses' funeral. I don't know if He cried when He killed the first of His creatures to take its skins to clothe this man's earliest ancestors. I don't know who will bury me— ...Of God, on whose breast old Moses lays his head like John the Beloved would lay his on the Christ's. And God sits there quietly with Moses—for Moses—and lets His little man cry out his last moments of life. But I look back over the events of my life and see the hands that carried Moses to his grave lifting me out of mine. In remembering I go back to these places where God met me and I meet Him again and I lay my head on His breast, and He shows me the land beyond the Jordan and I suck into my lungs the fragrance of His breath, the power of His presence.

Sometimes I'd see my father, walking past my building on his way to another nowhere. I could have given him a key, offered a piece of my floor. A futon. A bed. But I never did. If I let him inside I would become him, the line between us would blur, my own slow-motion car wreck would speed up. The slogan on the side of a moving company truck read TOGETHER WE ARE GOING PLACES--modified by a vandal or a disgruntled employee to read TOGETHER WE ARE GOING DOWN. If I went to the drowning man the drowning man would pull me under. I couldn't be his life raft.

What would they talk about? Hi, my name's Vane and I howl at the moon late at night in the form of a wolf. I sleep with your daughter and don't think I could live without her. Mind if I have a beer? Oh and while we're at it, let me introduce my brothers. This one here is a deadly wolf known to kill for nothing more than looking at him cross-eyed, and the other one is comatose because some vampires sucked the life out of him after we'd both been sentenced to death by our jealous father. Yeah, that would go over like a lead balloon.

Noticing and remembering everything would trap bright scenes to light and fill the blank and darkening past which was already piling up behind me. The growing size of that blank and ever-darkening past frightened me; it loomed beside me like a hole in the air and battened on scraps of my life I failed to claim. If one day I forgot to notice my life, and be damned grateful for it, the blank cave would suck me up entire.

That is my problem with life, I rush through it, like I’m being chased. Even things whose whole point is slowness, like drinking relaxing tea. When I drink relaxing tea, I suck it down as if I’m in a contest for who can drink relaxing tea the quickest. Or if I’m in a hot tub with some other people and we’re all looking up at the stars, I’ll be the first to say, It’s so beautiful here. The sooner you say, It’s so beautiful here, the quicker you can say, Wow, I’m getting overheated.

But this isn't their God, she decided. It's my God. This is a God I have found through sacrificing my own life, through my flesh being cut, my skin ripped off, my blood sucked away, my nails torn, all my time and hopes and memories being stolen from me. This is not a God with a form. No white clothes, no long beard. This god has no doctrine, no scripture, no precepts. No reward, no punishment. This God doesn't give, and doesn't take away. There is no heaven up in the sky, no hell down below. When it's hot, and when it's cold, God is simply there.

My niceness has a very low threshold and that little girl just sucked it dry, so don’t push me, Olympain. I don’t want so much as a single Atlantean stone overturned. Guard it with your life because the next time I come here, that’s the price I’m going to demand for your incompetence. (ZT) Nice talking to you, ZT. I so look forward to your visits. Next time we’ll do pastries, ‘kay? (Kat)

... I am more of an ambler. I once overheard my old boss in Dublin describe me as very "hello trees, hello flowers." It was intended as an insult and it fulfilled its brief; I was insulted. I had little interest in greeting trees and flowers but nor did I treat life as a treadmill, on which it was vital to keep fleeing forward in order to avoid being sucked off the back and out of the game.

So sell the Hummer, buy a Dodge, and move into a trailer. (Wulf) Oh, yeah, right. Remember when I traded the Hummer for an Alpha Romeo last year? You burned the car and bought me a new Hummer and threatened to lock me in my room with a hooker if I ever did it again. And as for the perks…Have you bothered to look around this place? We have a heated indoor pool, a theater with surround sound, two cooks, three maids, and a pool guy I get to boss around, not to mention all kinds of other fun toys. I’m not about to leave Disneyland. It’s the only good part in this arrangement. I mean, hell, if my life has to suck there’s no way I’m going to live in the Mini-Winni. Which knowing you, you’d make me park out front anyway with armed guards standing watch in case I get a hangnail. (Chris)

All in all, when I look at my dating life from the bigger perspective, it pretty much sucks. If it were a bar graph, and each guy were a different colored bar, and the side of the graph measured things like stupidity, lack of consideration, and overpowering lust, the colored bars of all the guys I’ve dated would crash through the top of the graph and rocket skyward like a testosterone-fueled rainbow.

O 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 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 feels the vast Draft of the abyss sucking him down and down, An endlessly helplessly falling and appalled clown: This is the way the night passes by, this Is the overnight endless trip to the famous unfathomable abyss.

I'm speechless.I think at the rooftops of Paris. he touches my cheek,pulling my gaze back to him.I suck in my breath. "Anna.I'm sorry for what happened in Luxembourg Gardens.Not because of the kiss-I've never had a kiss like that in my life-but because I didn't tell you why I was running away.I chased after Meredith because of you." Touch me again. Please,touch me again. "All I could think about was what that bastard did to you last Christmas. Toph never tried to explain or apologize. How could I do that to Mer? And I ought to have called you before I went to Ellie's,but I was so anxious to just end it,once and for all,that I wasn't thinking straight." I reach for him. "St. Clair-" He pulls back. "And that.Why don't you call me Etienne anymore?" "But...no one else calls you that.It was weird.Right?" "No.It wasn't." His expression saddens. "And every time you say 'St. Clair,' it's like you're rejecting me again." "I have never rejected you." "But you have.And for Dave." His tone is venomous. "And you rejected me for Ellie on my birthday. I don't understand.If you liked me so much,why didn't you break up with her?" He gazes at the river. "I've been confused. I've been so stupid." "Yes.You have." "I deserve that." "Yes.You do." I pause. "But I've been stupid,too.You were right.About...the alone thing.

I’ve had a lot of sucks in life A lot My parents died almost four years ago, right after I turned seven With every day that goes by I remember them less and less Like my mom…I remember that she used to sing. She was always happy, always dancing. Other than what I’ve seen of her in pictures, I don’t really remember what she looks like. Or what she smells like Or what she sounds like And my Dad I remember more things about him, but only because I thought he was the most amazing man in the world. He was smart. He knew the answer to everything. And he was strong. And he played the guitar. I used to love lying in bed at night, listening to the music coming from the living room. I miss that the most. His music. After they died, I went to live with my grandma and grandpaul. Don’t get me wrong…I love my grandparents. But I loved my home even more. It reminded me of them. Of my mom and dad. My brother had just started college the year they died. He knew how much I wanted to be home. He knew how much it meant to me, so he made it happen. I was only seven at the time, so I let him do it. I let him give up his entire life just so I could be home. Just so I wouldn’t be so sad. If I could do it all over again, I would have never let him take me. He deserved a shot, too. A shot at being young. But sometimes when you’re seven, the world isn’t in 3-D. So, I owe a lot to my brother. A lot of ‘thank you’d’ A lot of ‘I’m sorry’s’ A lot of ‘I love you’s’ I owe a lot to you, Will For making the sucks in my life a little less suckier And my sweet? My sweet is right now.

I don't believe that." She seems like suck a force,this reasonable girl who kills with a turn of her fingers. She would have left all this behind, if she had the chance. "I honestly don't remember," she sighs "I don't think I was strong in life. Now it seems like I loved every moment, that every breath was charmed and crisp." she clasps her hands comically to her chest and breaths in deep through her nose, then blows it out in a huff. "I probably didn't. For all my dreams and fancies, I can't recall being...what would you call it? Perky?

Hi, I’m Jude Ryder Jamieson,” he began, extending his hand. I took it, shaking it. He held onto it when I tried to pull it back. “My mom left when I was thirteen. My dad’s serving a life sentence for killing a young kid. I spent the last five years in a boys’ home being bullied, beat, and abused by the kids, the staff, and even the goddamn dog. I sold drugs. I did drugs. I got arrested. A lot. I screwed a lot of faceless women.” He paused, sucking in a breath. “And then I met one whose face I couldn’t forget. I fell in love with her. I hurt her because I fell in love with her and was afraid she was going to leave me the way everyone else had.” He lifted his other hand, cradling mine between his. “I still love her.

Find somebody else to entertain you," I said. "There is no one else." I turned a page in my notebook and started writing again. "There's always someone else.You've been Feeding off Forfeits for hundreds of years. Get a new one." "You don't give my job enough credit. It's really hard to convince a girl to follow me. The average pickup lines don't work so well. 'Hey,wanna get coffee? And then spend an eternity getting the life force sucked out of you?' They don't go for it.

Kind of why I can’t always go along with everyone’s happy attitude all the time. Life sucks sometimes and most people don’t get it. They think - well all of the people at this school anyway, they think everything is just handed to them. Real easy, ya know? Like, the day is never something you have to fight through.” I placed my hand on top of Tony’s and let it rest there for a moment. What could I say? I was a death giver. Happy to do it. I had been so good at being dead.

I want to make love to you, Rhone. I want to fill your ass with my penis and fuck you until you love it just as much as I do. I want to suck your dick and eat your balls until your cum coats my tongue and throat. I want you to do the same to me. I want to come inside you, in your mouth, in your ass, on your chest, marking you as mine in a way you can feel even when I’m not by your side. That’s what I want. It’s what I’ve wanted ever since you told me I could have a different, better life and then took the time to care and to show me how to care about myself. I want everything you can give, and I want to offer you everything that I am.

I remember discussing this dynamic with my Russian teacher one day, and he had an interesting theory. Having lived under communism for so many generations, with little to no economic opportunity and caged by a culture of fear, Russian society found the most valuable currency to be trust. And to build trust you have to be honest. That means when things suck, you say so openly and without apology. People’s displays of unpleasant honesty were rewarded for the simple fact that they were necessary for survival—you had to know whom you could rely on and whom you couldn’t, and you needed to know quickly. But, in the “free” West, my Russian teacher continued, there existed an abundance of economic opportunity—so much economic opportunity that it became far more valuable to present yourself in a certain way, even if it was false, than to actually be that way. Trust lost its value. Appearances and salesmanship became more advantageous forms of expression. Knowing a lot of people superficially was more beneficial than knowing a few people closely. This is why it became the norm in Western cultures to smile and say polite things even when you don’t feel like it, to tell little white lies and agree with someone whom you don’t actually agree with. This is why people learn to pretend to be friends with people they don’t actually like, to buy things they don’t actually want. The economic system promotes such deception. The downside of this is that you never know, in the West, if you can completely trust the person you’re talking to. Sometimes this is the case even among good friends or family members. There is such pressure in the West to be likable that people often reconfigure their entire personality depending on the person they’re dealing with. Rejection

Mostly, as I'm sitting here in A.P. English, I think about the way my classmates are always raising their hands and sucking up to Mrs. Giavotella just so she will give them As, which they will send to Harvard or Princeton or Stanford or where-fucking-ever, to go along with their lies about how much community service they supposedly did and essays about how much they care about poor minority children they'll never meet in real life or how they are going to save the world armed with nothing but a big heart and an Ivy League education.

My depression had grown on me as that vine had conquered the oak; it had been a sucking thing that had wrapped itself around me, ugly and more alive than I. It had had a life of its own that bit by bit asphyxiated all of my life out of me. At the worst stage of major depression, I had moods that I knew were not my moods: they belonged to the depression, as surely as the leaves on that tree’s high branches belonged to the vine. When I tried to think clearly about this, I felt that my mind was immured, that it couldn’t expand in any direction. I knew that the sun was rising and setting, but little of its light reached me. I felt myself sagging under what was much stronger than I; first I could not use my ankles, and then I could not control my knees, and then my waist began to break under the strain, and then my shoulders turned in, and in the end I was compacted and fetal, depleted by this thing that was crushing me without holding me.

Reading for me, was like breathing. It was probably akin to masturbation for my brain. Getting off on the fantasy within the pages of a good novel felt necessary to my survival. If I wasn't asleep, knitting, or working, I was reading. This was for several reasons, all of them focused around the infititely superior and enviable lives of fictional heroines to real-life people. Take romans for instance. Fictional women in romance novels never get their period. They never have morning breath. They orgasm seventeen times a day. And they never seem to have jobs with bosses. These clean, well-satisfied, perm-minty-breathed women have fulfilling careers as florists, bakery owners, hair stylists or some other kind of adorable small business where they decorate all day. If they do have a boss, he's a cool guy (or gal) who's invested in the woman's love life. Or, he's a super hot billionaire trying to get in her pants. My boss cares about two things: Am I on time ? Are all my patients alive and well at the end of my shift? And the mend in the romance novels are too good to be true; but I love it, and I love them. Enter stage right the independently wealthy venture capitalist suffering from the ennui of perfection until a plucky interior decorator enters stage left and shakes up his life and his heart with perky catch phrases and a cute nose that wrinkles when she sneezes. I suck at decorating. The walls of my apartment are bare. I am allergic to most store-bought flowers. If I owned a bakery, I'd be broke and weigh seven hundred pounds, because I love cake.

Girl, you are the epitome of spoiled. I can smell it in your expensive perfume, in the quality of your ridiculous clothing, in the bracelet wrapped ’round that delicate wrist.” He closed the gap between us and all the air sucked from the room. “You won’t last out here. You’ll stay blind to the environment that surrounds you. You’ll live in your clean, perfect bubble and return to your posh life come six months. You are....you. I know your kind. I’ve seen it all before. You will never wake up. Not really,” he explained away before backing up and leaving me to my room once again.

Because of that, because my life ended fifty-two Thursdays ago, because...I have nothing left to live for. God damn it, suck me, you asshole. You made me want you, always staring at me like I'm candy or something. Suck me, I want to come in your mouth, you motherfucking..." Deacon lifted him off his body and flipped him onto his back. He landed on the hard floor, out of breath. "Demanding little foul-mouthed whelp, aren't you? I like that, Thursday. Unbutton your jeans. Slowly. While I watch." "Fuck you." "Later, sweetheart. Right now I want to see your cock. Show me your cock, Thursday.

This is the explanation I used to have on the site before my page got turned into an author's page. Don't get butt hurt if I give you a 2 or 3 star rating. That means your book was good. I give very few 4 star ratings cause that means your book is gonna be a reread for me. I don't reread a lot of books. I think I gave less than a handful of 5 stars. 5 stars means that I think the book is a GREAT GREAT. Like a classic that will still be read in a 100 years, at least if I were alive it would be. As you can see I don't buy into the hoopla that everybody is great. It's not true. Most are average. Some suck. Some are great. If you want a visual go google bell curve. Life has winners and losers. Not everyone deserves a gold star. Suck it up.

She said to me, over the phone She wanted to see other people I thought, Well then, look around. They're everywhere Said that she was confused... I thought, Darling, join the club 24 years old, Mid-life crisis Nowadays hits you when you're young I hung up, She called back, I hung up again The process had already started At least it happened quick I swear, I died inside that night My friend, he called I didn't mention a thing The last thing he said was, Be sound Sound... I contemplated an awful thing, I hate to admit I just thought those would be such appropriate last words But I'm still here And small So small.. How could this struggle seem so big? So big... While the palms in the breeze still blow green And the waves in the sea still absolute blue But the horror Every single thing I see is a reminder of her Never thought I'd curse the day I met her And since she's gone and wouldn't hear Who would care? What good would that do? But I'm still here So I imagine in a month...or 12 I'll be somewhere having a drink Laughing at a stupid joke Or just another stupid thing And I can see myself stopping short Drifting out of the present Sucked by the undertow and pulled out deep And there I am, standing Wet grass and white headstones all in rows And in the distance there's one, off on its own So I stop, kneel My new home... And I picture a sober awakening, a re-entry into this little bar scene Sip my drink til the ice hits my lip Order another round And that's it for now Sorry Never been too good at happy endings...

I was in the fifth grade the first time I thought about turning thirty. My best friend Darcy and I came across a perpetual calendar in the back of the phone book, where you could look up any date in the future, and by using this little grid, determine what the day of the week would be. So we located our birthdays in the following year, mine in May and hers in September. I got Wednesday, a school night. She got a Friday. A small victory, but typical. Darcy was always the lucky one. Her skin tanned more quickly, her hair feathered more easily, and she didn't need braces. Her moonwalk was superior, as were her cart-wheels and her front handsprings (I couldn't handspring at all). She had a better sticker collection. More Michael Jackson pins. Forenze sweaters in turquoise, red, and peach (my mother allowed me none- said they were too trendy and expensive). And a pair of fifty-dollar Guess jeans with zippers at the ankles (ditto). Darcy had double-pierced ears and a sibling- even if it was just a brother, it was better than being an only child as I was. But at least I was a few months older and she would never quite catch up. That's when I decided to check out my thirtieth birthday- in a year so far away that it sounded like science fiction. It fell on a Sunday, which meant that my dashing husband and I would secure a responsible baby-sitter for our two (possibly three) children on that Saturday evening, dine at a fancy French restaurant with cloth napkins, and stay out past midnight, so technically we would be celebrating on my actual birthday. I would have just won a big case- somehow proven that an innocent man didn't do it. And my husband would toast me: "To Rachel, my beautiful wife, the mother of my chidren and the finest lawyer in Indy." I shared my fantasy with Darcy as we discovered that her thirtieth birthday fell on a Monday. Bummer for her. I watched her purse her lips as she processed this information. "You know, Rachel, who cares what day of the week we turn thirty?" she said, shrugging a smooth, olive shoulder. "We'll be old by then. Birthdays don't matter when you get that old." I thought of my parents, who were in their thirties, and their lackluster approach to their own birthdays. My dad had just given my mom a toaster for her birthday because ours broke the week before. The new one toasted four slices at a time instead of just two. It wasn't much of a gift. But my mom had seemed pleased enough with her new appliance; nowhere did I detect the disappointment that I felt when my Christmas stash didn't quite meet expectations. So Darcy was probably right. Fun stuff like birthdays wouldn't matter as much by the time we reached thirty. The next time I really thought about being thirty was our senior year in high school, when Darcy and I started watching ths show Thirty Something together. It wasn't our favorite- we preferred cheerful sit-coms like Who's the Boss? and Growing Pains- but we watched it anyway. My big problem with Thirty Something was the whiny characters and their depressing issues that they seemed to bring upon themselves. I remember thinking that they should grow up, suck it up. Stop pondering the meaning of life and start making grocery lists. That was back when I thought my teenage years were dragging and my twenties would surealy last forever. Then I reached my twenties. And the early twenties did seem to last forever. When I heard acquaintances a few years older lament the end of their youth, I felt smug, not yet in the danger zone myself. I had plenty of time..

Pretend you're me," she says. I can barely see her over the frothy mound. And it happens just like that. A feeling of sinking, a falling deep inside. And I'm her. And this is my house, and Matt French is my husband, tallying columns all day, working late into the night for me, for me. And here I am, my tight, my perfect body, my pretty, perfect face, and nothing could ever be wrong with me, or my life, not even the sorrow that is plainly right there in the center of it. Oh, Colette, it's right there in the center of you, and some kind of despair too. Colette-- --that silk sucking into my mouth, the weight of it now, and I can't catch my breath, my breath.

I love you, and it's driving me crazy to see you so upset. I want to fix it, and I know I can't. But what I want to do is rewrite this whole world so you can fix it. I want to come up with a story that all the world will choose to celebrate, and in it, the people we love will never get sick, and the people we love will never be sad for long, and there would be unlimited frozen hot chocolate. Maybe if it were up to me I wouldn't have the whole world collectively believe in Santa Claus, but I would definitely have them collectively believe in something, because there is a messed-up kind of beauty in the way we can bend over backward to make life seem magical when we want to. In other words, after giving it some thought , I think that reality has the distinct potential to complete suck, and the way to get around that is to step out of reality with someone you completely, unadulteratedly enjoy. In my life, that's you. And if it takes dressing up like Santa to get that across to you, then so be it.

[excerpt] The usual I say. Essence. Spirit. Medicine. A taste. I say top shelf. Straight up. A shot. A sip. A nip. I say another round. I say brace yourself. Lift a few. Hoist a few. Work the elbow. Bottoms up. Belly up. Set ‘em up. What’ll it be. Name your poison. I say same again. I say all around. I say my good man. I say my drinking buddy. I say git that in ya. Then a quick one. Then a nightcap. Then throw one back. Then knock one down. Fast & furious I say. Could savage a drink I say. Chug. Chug-a-lug. Gulp. Sauce. Mother’s milk. Everclear. Moonshine. White lightning. Firewater. Hootch. Relief. Now you’re talking I say. Live a little I say. Drain it I say. Kill it I say. Feeling it I say. Wobbly. Breakfast of champions I say. I say candy is dandy but liquor is quicker. I say Houston, we have a drinking problem. I say the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems. I say god only knows what I’d be without you. I say thirsty. I say parched. I say wet my whistle. Dying of thirst. Lap it up. Hook me up. Watering hole. Knock a few back. Pound a few down. My office. Out with the boys I say. Unwind I say. Nurse one I say. Apply myself I say. Toasted. Glow. A cold one a tall one a frosty I say. One for the road I say. Two-fisted I say. Never trust a man who doesn’t drink I say. Drink any man under the table I say. Then a binge then a spree then a jag then a bout. Coming home on all fours. Could use a drink I say. A shot of confidence I say. Steady my nerves I say. Drown my sorrows. I say kill for a drink. I say keep ‘em comin’. I say a stiff one. Drink deep drink hard hit the bottle. Two sheets to the wind then. Knackered then. Under the influence then. Half in the bag then. Out of my skull I say. Liquored up. Rip-roaring. Slammed. Fucking jacked. The booze talking. The room spinning. Feeling no pain. Buzzed. Giddy. Silly. Impaired. Intoxicated. Stewed. Juiced. Plotzed. Inebriated. Laminated. Swimming. Elated. Exalted. Debauched. Rock on. Drunk on. Bring it on. Pissed. Then bleary. Then bloodshot. Glassy-eyed. Red-nosed. Dizzy then. Groggy. On a bender I say. On a spree. I say off the wagon. I say on a slip. I say the drink. I say the bottle. I say drinkie-poo. A drink a drunk a drunkard. Swill. Swig. Shitfaced. Fucked up. Stupefied. Incapacitated. Raging. Seeing double. Shitty. Take the edge off I say. That’s better I say. Loaded I say. Wasted. Off my ass. Befuddled. Reeling. Tanked. Punch-drunk. Mean drunk. Maintenance drunk. Sloppy drunk happy drunk weepy drunk blind drunk dead drunk. Serious drinker. Hard drinker. Lush. Drink like a fish. Boozer. Booze hound. Alkie. Sponge. Then muddled. Then woozy. Then clouded. What day is it? Do you know me? Have you seen me? When did I start? Did I ever stop? Slurring. Reeling. Staggering. Overserved they say. Drunk as a skunk they say. Falling down drunk. Crawling down drunk. Drunk & disorderly. I say high tolerance. I say high capacity. They say protective custody. Blitzed. Shattered. Zonked. Annihilated. Blotto. Smashed. Soaked. Screwed. Pickled. Bombed. Stiff. Frazzled. Blasted. Plastered. Hammered. Tore up. Ripped up. Destroyed. Whittled. Plowed. Overcome. Overtaken. Comatose. Dead to the world. The old K.O. The horrors I say. The heebie-jeebies I say. The beast I say. The dt’s. B’jesus & pink elephants. A mindbender. Hittin’ it kinda hard they say. Go easy they say. Last call they say. Quitting time they say. They say shut off. They say dry out. Pass out. Lights out. Blackout. The bottom. The walking wounded. Cross-eyed & painless. Gone to the world. Gone. Gonzo. Wrecked. Sleep it off. Wake up on the floor. End up in the gutter. Off the stuff. Dry. Dry heaves. Gag. White knuckle. Lightweight I say. Hair of the dog I say. Eye-opener I say. A drop I say. A slug. A taste. A swallow. Down the hatch I say. I wouldn’t say no I say. I say whatever he’s having. I say next one’s on me. I say bottoms up. Put it on my tab. I say one more. I say same again

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

I did not know people your age still read books,' Penumbra says. He raises an eyebrow. 'I was under the impression they read everything on their mobile phones.' 'Not everyone. There are plenty of people who, you know--people who still like the smell of books.' 'The smell!' Penumbra repeats. 'You know you are finished when people start talking about the smell.' He smiles at that--then something occurs to him, and he narrows his eyes. 'I do not suppose you have a...Kindle?' Uh-oh. It feels like it's the principal asking me if I have weed in my backpack. But in a friendly way, like maybe he wants to share it. As it happens, I do have my Kindle. I pull it out of my messenger bag. It's a bit battered with wide scratches across the back and stray pen marks near the bottom of the screen. Penumbra holds it aloft and frowns. It's blank. I reach up and pinch the corner and it comes to life. He sucks in a sharp breath, and the pale gray rectangle reflects in his bright blue eyes.

Here are the sounds of Wear. It rattles stone on stone. It sucks its teeth. It sings. It hisses like the rain. It roars. It laughs. It claps its hands. Sometimes I think it prays. In winter, through the ice, I've seen it moving swift and black as Tune, without a sound. Here are the sights of Wear. It falls in braids. It parts at rocks and tumbles round them white as down or flashes over them in silver quilts. It tosses fallen trees like bits of straw yet spins a single leaf as gentle as a maid. Sometimes it coils for rest in darkling pools and sometimes it leaps its banks and shatters in the air. In autumn, I've seen it breathe a mist so thick and grey you'd never know old Wear was there at all. Each day, for years and years, I've gone and sat in it. Usually at dusk I clamber down and slowly sink myself to where it laps against my breast. Is it too much to say, in winter, that I die? Something of me dies at least. First there's the fiery sting of cold that almost stops my breath, the aching torment in my limbs. I think I may go mad, my wits so outraged that they seek to flee my skull like rats a ship that's going down. I puff. I gasp. Then inch by inch a blessed numbness comes. I have no legs, no arms. My very heart grows still. These floating hands are not my hands. The ancient flesh I wear is rags for all I feel of it. "Praise, Praise!" I croak. Praise God for all that's holy, cold, and dark. Praise him for all we lose, for all the river of the years bears off. Praise him for stillness in the wake of pain. Praise him for emptiness. And as you race to spill into the sea, praise him yourself, old Wear. Praise him for dying and the peace of death. In the little church I built of wood for Mary, I hollowed out a place for him. Perkin brings him by the pail and pours him in. Now that I can hardly walk, I crawl to meet him there. He takes me in his chilly lap to wash me of my sins. Or I kneel down beside him till within his depths I see a star. Sometimes this star is still. Sometimes she dances. She is Mary's star. Within that little pool of Wear she winks at me. I wink at her. The secret that we share I cannot tell in full. But this much I will tell. What's lost is nothing to what's found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.

She makes me crazy. She makes me happy. I think she's so beautiful that I want to just sit and look at her for hours. One minute I'm perfectly sane, and the next I'm totally losing it. She couldn’t give a shit less about the fact that I'm rich, and I think the woman is blind because I swear she doesn't even notice that I'm scarred. The way she looks at me sometimes makes me feel like I'm ten feet tall. And she's looking at me. Not the billionaire, not the wealthy executive. Just the man. She can be as stubborn as a damn mule, but I even like that because she's determined. Smart. Kind. And she puts up with my cranky ass, accepts me exactly as I am." Breathless from his tirade, Simon sucked in a trembling, uneven gulp of air. He slumped forward, his anger spent. "So, yeah. If these wild lunatic, possessive feelings for her that I have every fucking minute of every day are love...I'm screwed. I'm can't even imagine having to live my life without her.

I know why you said you don't see a future for us.' My heart races like it's trying to take flight as I blurt out the words. 'Do you?' Of course he isn't going to make this easy. I'm not sure the man even knows what easy is. 'You want me,' I say, looking him in the eyes. 'And no, I'm not just talking about in bed. You. Want. Me, Xaden Riorson. You might not say it, but you do one better and show it. You show it every time you choose to trust me, every time your eyes linger on mine. You show it with every sparring lesson you don't have time for and every flight lesson that pulls you away from your own studies. You show it when you refuse to touch me because you're worried I don't really want you, then show it again when you take the time to hunt down violets before a leadership meeting so I don't wake up feeling alone. You show it in a million different ways. Please don't deny it.' His jaw flexes, but he doesn't deny it. 'You think we don't have a future because you're scared that I won't like who you really are behind all those walls you keep. And I@m scared, too. I can admit it. You're graduating. I'm not. You'll be gone in a matter of weeks, and we're probably setting ourselves up for heartbreak. But if we let fear kill whatever this is between us, then we don't deserve it.' I lift one hand to the back of his neck. 'I told you that I was the one who would decide when I'm ready to risk my heart, and I'm saying it.' The way he looks at me, with the same mix of hope and apprehension currently flooding my system, gives me absolute life. 'You don't mean that,' he says, shaking his head. And there he goes, sucking the life right out again. 'I mean it.

I feel to that the gap between my new life in New York and the situation at home in Africa is stretching into a gulf, as Zimbabwe spirals downwards into a violent dictatorship. My head bulges with the effort to contain both worlds. When I am back in New York, Africa immediately seems fantastical – a wildly plumaged bird, as exotic as it is unlikely. Most of us struggle in life to maintain the illusion of control, but in Africa that illusion is almost impossible to maintain. I always have the sense there that there is no equilibrium, that everything perpetually teeters on the brink of some dramatic change, that society constantly stands poised for some spasm, some tsunami in which you can do nothing but hope to bob up to the surface and not be sucked out into a dark and hungry sea. The origin of my permanent sense of unease, my general foreboding, is probably the fact that I have lived through just such change, such a sudden and violent upending of value systems. In my part of Africa, death is never far away. With more Zimbabweans dying in their early thirties now, mortality has a seat at every table. The urgent, tugging winds themselves seem to whisper the message, memento mori, you too shall die. In Africa, you do not view death from the auditorium of life, as a spectator, but from the edge of the stage, waiting only for your cue. You feel perishable, temporary, transient. You feel mortal. Maybe that is why you seem to live more vividly in Africa. The drama of life there is amplified by its constant proximity to death. That’s what infuses it with tension. It is the essence of its tragedy too. People love harder there. Love is the way that life forgets that it is terminal. Love is life’s alibi in the face of death. For me, the illusion of control is much easier to maintain in England or America. In this temperate world, I feel more secure, as if change will only happen incrementally, in manageable, finely calibrated, bite-sized portions. There is a sense of continuity threaded through it all: the anchor of history, the tangible presence of antiquity, of buildings, of institutions. You live in the expectation of reaching old age. At least you used to. But on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, those two states of mind converge. Suddenly it feels like I am back in Africa, where things can be taken away from you at random, in a single violent stroke, as quick as the whip of a snake’s head. Where tumult is raised with an abruptness that is as breathtaking as the violence itself.

LOOK, I’M ONLY IN THIS FOR THE PIZZA. The publisher was like, “Oh, you did such a great job writing about the Greek gods last year! We want you to write another book about the Ancient Greek heroes! It’ll be so cool!” And I was like, “Guys, I’m dyslexic. It’s hard enough for me to read books.” Then they promised me a year’s supply of free pepperoni pizza, plus all the blue jelly beans I could eat. I sold out. I guess it’s cool. If you’re looking to fight monsters yourself, these stories might help you avoid some common mistakes—like staring Medusa in the face, or buying a used mattress from any dude named Crusty. But the best reason to read about the old Greek heroes is to make yourself feel better. No matter how much you think your life sucks, these guys and gals had it worse. They totally got the short end of the Celestial stick. By the way, if you don’t know me, my name is Percy Jackson. I’m a modern-day demigod—the son of Poseidon. I’ve had some bad experiences in my time, but the heroes I’m going to tell you about were the original old-school hard-luck cases. They boldly screwed up where no one had screwed up before. Let’s pick twelve of them. That should be plenty. By the time you finish reading about how miserable their lives were—what with the poisonings, the betrayals, the mutilations, the murders, the psychopathic family members, and the flesh-eating barnyard animals—if that doesn’t make you feel better about your own existence, then I don’t know what will. So get your flaming spear. Put on your lion-skin cape. Polish your shield, and make sure you’ve got arrows in your quiver. We’re going back about four thousand years to decapitate monsters, save some kingdoms, shoot a few gods in the butt, raid the Underworld, and steal loot from evil people. Then, for dessert, we’ll die painful tragic deaths. Ready? Sweet. Let’s do this.

To: Anna Oliphant From: Etienne St. Clair Subject: Uncommon Prostitues I have nothing to say about prostitues (other than you'd make a terrible prostitute,the profession is much too unclean), I only wanted to type that. Isn't it odd we both have to spend Christmas with our fathers? Speaking of unpleasant matters,have you spoken with Bridge yet? I'm taking the bus to the hospital now.I expect a full breakdown of your Christmas dinner when I return. So far today,I've had a bowl of muesli. How does Mum eat that rubbish? I feel as if I've been gnawing on lumber. To: Etienne St. Clair From: Anna Oliphant Subject: Christmas Dinner MUESLY? It's Christmas,and you're eating CEREAL?? I'm mentally sending you a plate from my house. The turkey is in the oven,the gravy's on the stovetop,and the mashed potatoes and casseroles are being prepared as I type this. Wait. I bet you eat bread pudding and mince pies or something,don't you? Well, I'm mentally sending you bread pudding. Whatever that is. No, I haven't talked to Bridgette.Mom keeps bugging me to answer her calls,but winter break sucks enough already. (WHY is my dad here? SERIOUSLY. MAKE HIM LEAVE. He's wearing this giant white cable-knit sweater,and he looks like a pompous snowman,and he keeps rearranging the stuff on our kitchen cabinets. Mom is about to kill him. WHICH IS WHY SHE SHOULDN'T INVITE HIM OVER FOR HOLIDAYS). Anyway.I'd rather not add to the drama. P.S. I hope your mom is doing better. I'm so sorry you have to spend today in a hospital. I really do wish I could send you both a plate of turkey. To: Anna Oliphant From: Etienne St. Clair Subject: Re: Christmas Dinner YOU feel sorry for ME? I am not the one who has never tasted bread pudding. The hospital was the same. I won't bore you with the details. Though I had to wait an hour to catch the bus back,and it started raining.Now that I'm at the flat, my father has left for the hospital. We're each making stellar work of pretending the other doesn't exist. P.S. Mum says to tell you "Merry Christmas." So Merry Christmas from my mum, but Happy Christmas from me. To: Etienne St. Clair From: Anna Oliphant Subject: SAVE ME Worst.Dinner.Ever.It took less than five minutes for things to explode. My dad tried to force Seany to eat the green bean casserole, and when he wouldn't, Dad accused Mom of not feeding my brother enough vegetables. So she threw down her fork,and said that Dad had no right to tell her how to raise her children. And then he brought out the "I'm their father" crap, and she brought out the "You abandoned them" crap,and meanwhile, the WHOLE TIME my half-dead Nanna is shouting, "WHERE'S THE SALT! I CAN'T TASTE THE CASSEROLE! PASS THE SALT!" And then Granddad complained that Mom's turkey was "a wee dry," and she lost it. I mean,Mom just started screaming. And it freaked Seany out,and he ran to his room crying, and when I checked on him, he was UNWRAPPING A CANDY CANE!! I have no idea where it came from. He knows he can't eat Red Dye #40! So I grabbed it from him,and he cried harder, and Mom ran in and yelled at ME, like I'd given him the stupid thing. Not, "Thank you for saving my only son's life,Anna." And then Dad came in and the fighting resumed,and they didn't even notice that Seany was still sobbing. So I took him outside and fed him cookies,and now he's running aruond in circles,and my grandparents are still at the table, as if we're all going to sit back down and finish our meal. WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY FAMILY? And now Dad is knocking on my door. Great. Can this stupid holiday get any worse??

I consider a tree. I can look on it as a picture: stiff column in a shock of light, or splash of green shot with the delicate blue and silver of the background. I can perceive it as movement: flowing veins on clinging, pressing pith, suck of the roots, breathing of the leaves, ceaseless commerce with earth and air—and the obscure growth itself. I can classify it in a species and study it as a type in its structure and mode of life. I can subdue its actual presence and form so sternly that I recognise it only as an expression of law — of the laws in accordance with which a constant opposition of forces is continually adjusted, or of those in accordance with which the component substances mingle and separate. I can dissipate it and perpetuate it in number, in pure numerical relation. In all this the tree remains my object, occupies space and time, and has its nature and constitution. It can, however, also come about, if I have both will and grace, that in considering the tree I become bound up in relation to it. The tree is now no longer It. I have been seized by the power of exclusiveness. To effect this it is not necessary for me to give up any of the ways in which I consider the tree. There is nothing from which I would have to turn my eyes away in order to see, and no knowledge that I would have to forget. Rather is everything, picture and movement, species and type, law and number, indivisibly united in this event. Everything belonging to the tree is in this: its form and structure, its colours and chemical composition, its intercourse with the elements and with the stars, are all present in a single whole. The tree is no impression, no play of my imagination, no value depending on my mood; but it is bodied over against me and has to do with me, as I with it — only in a different way. Let no attempt be made to sap the strength from the meaning of the relation: relation is mutual.

I didn’t want to love you,” Anthony whispered. “It was the one thing I feared above all. I’d grown rather used to my rather odd little outlook on life. Almost comfortable, actually. But love—” His voice caught; the choking sound seemed unmanly, it made him vulnerable. But he didn’t care, because this was Kate. And it didn’t matter if she saw his deepest fears, because he knew she’d love him no matter what. It was a sublimely freeing feeling. “I’ve seen true love,” he continued. “I wasn’t the cynical jade society made me out to be. I knew love existed. My mother— my father—” He stopped, sucking in a ragged breath. This was the hardest thing he’d ever done. And yet he knew the words had to be said. He knew, no matter how difficult it was to get them out, that in the end, his heart would soar. “I was so sure that it was the one thing that could make this . . . this . . . I don’t really know what to call it— this knowledge of my own mortality . . .” He raked his hand through his hair, fighting for words. “Love was the only thing that was going to make that unbearable. How could I love someone, truly and deeply, knowing that it was doomed?” “But it’s not doomed,” Kate said, squeezing his hand. “I know. I fell in love with you, and then I knew. Even if I am right, even if I’m fated to live only as long as my father did before me, I’m not doomed.” He leaned forward and brushed a feather-light kiss on her lips. “I have you,” he whispered, “and I’m not going to waste a single moment we have together.” Kate’s lips spread into a smile. “What does that mean?” “It means that love isn’t about being afraid that it will all be snatched away. Love’s about finding the one person who makes your heart complete, who makes you a better person than you ever dreamed you could be. It’s about looking in the eyes of your wife and knowing, all the way to your bones, that she’s simply the best person you’ve ever known.” “Oh, Anthony,” Kate whispered, tears streaming down her cheeks. “That’s how I feel about you.” -Anthony & Kate

What's Toraf's favorite color?" She shrugs. "Whatever I tell him it is." I raise a brow at her. "Don't know, huh?" She crosses her arms. "Who cares anyway? We're not painting his toenails." "I think what's she's trying to say, honey bunches, is that maybe you should paint your nails his favorite color, to show him you're thinking about him," Rachel says, seasoning her words with tact. Rayna sets her chin. "Emma doesn't paint her nails Galen's favorite color." Startled that Galen has a favorite color and I don't know it, I say, "Uh, well, he doesn't like nail polish." That is to say, he's never mentioned it before. When a brilliant smile lights up her whole face, I know I've been busted. "You don't know his favorite color!" she says, actually pointing at me. "Yes, I do," I say, searching Rachel's face for the answer. She shrugs. Rayna's smirk is the epitome of I know something you don't know. Smacking it off her face is my first reflex, but I hold back, as I always do, because of the kiss I shared with Toraf and the way it hurt her. Sometimes I catch her looking at me with that same expression she had on the beach, and I feel like fungus, even though she deserved it at the time. Refusing to fold, I eye the buffet of nail polish scattered before me. Letting my fingers roam over the bottles, I shop the paints, hoping one of them stands out to me. To save my life, I can't think of any one color he wears more often. He doesn't have a favorite sport, so team colors are a no-go. Rachel picked his cars for him, so that's no help either. Biting my lip, I decide on an ocean blue. "Emma! Now I'm just ashamed of myself," he says from the doorway. "How could you not know my favorite color?" Startled, I drop the bottle back on the table. Since he's back so soon, I have to assume he didn't find what or who he wanted-and that he didn't hunt them for very long. Toraf materializes behind him, but Galen's shoulders are too broad to allow them both to stand in the doorway. Clearing my throat, I say, "I was just moving that bottle to get to the color I wanted." Rayna is all but doing a victory dance with her eyes. "Which is?" she asks, full of vicious glee. Toraf pushes past Galen and plops down next to his tiny mate. She leans into him, eager for his kiss. "I missed you," she whispers. "Not as much as I missed you," he tells her. Galen and I exchange eye rolls as he walks around to prop himself on the table beside me, his wet shorts making a butt-shaped puddle on the expensive wood. "Go ahead, angelfish," he says, nodding toward the pile of polish. If he's trying to give me a clue, he sucks at it. "Go" could mean green, I guess. "Ahead" could mean...I have no idea what that could mean. And angelfish come in all sorts of colors. Deciding he didn't encode any messages for me, I sigh and push away from the table to stand. "I don't know. We've never talked about it before." Rayna slaps her knee in triumph. "Ha!" Before I can pass by him, Galen grabs my wrist and pulls me to him, corralling me between his legs. Crushing his mouth to mine, he moves his hand to the small of my back and presses me into him. Since he's still shirtless and I'm in my bikini, there's a lot of bare flesh touching, which is a little more intimate than I'm used to with an audience. Still, the fire sears through me, scorching a path to the furthest, deepest parts of me. It takes every bit of grit I have not to wrap my arms around his neck. Gently, I push my hands against his chest to end the kiss, which is something I never thought I'd do. Giving him a look that I hope conveys "inappropriate," I step back. I've spent enough time in their company to know without looking that Rayna's eyes are bugging out of their sockets and Toraf is grinning like a nutcracker doll. With any luck, Rachel didn't even see the kiss. Stealing a peek at her, she meets my gaze with openmouthed shock. Okay, it looked as bad as I thought it did.

You guys could handle this on your own. Why risk getting kicked out of your He-Man-Monster-Haters Club?" "Because we can't handle this on our own. At least I don't think we can." "You said yourself you already have some Prodigium working with you. Why not go to them?" "We have a handful," he said, frustration creeping into his voice. "And most of them suck. Look, just consider it a peace offering, okay? My way of saying I'm sorry for lying to you. And pulling a knife in your presence, even if it was just to open a damn window to get out before you vaporized me." Most girls got flowers. I got a dirt put used for demon raising. Nice. "Thanks," I replied. "But don't you want in on this?" He looked at me, and not for the first time, I wished his eyes weren't so dark. It would have been nice to have some idea of what was going on in his head. "That's up to you," he said. Mom always liked to say that we hardly ever know the decisions we make that change our lives,mostly because they're little ones. You take this bus instead of that one and end up meeting your soul mate, that kind of thing. But there was no doubt in my mind that this was one of those life-changing moments. Tell Archer no,and I'd never see him again. And Dad and Jenna wouldn't be mad at me, and Cal...Tell Archer yes, and everything suddenly got twistier and more complicated than Mrs. Casnoff's hairdo. And even though I'm a twisty and complicated girl, I knew what my answer had to be. "It's too much of a risk, Cross. Maybe one day when I'm head of the Council, and you're...well, whatever you're going to be for L'Occhio di Dio, we could work on some kind of collaboration." That brought up depressig images of me and Archer sittig across a boardroom table, sketching out battle plans on a whiteboard, so my voice was a little shaky when I continued. "But for now, it's too dangerous." And not just because basically everyone in our lives would want to kill us if they found out, I thought. But because I was pretty sure I was still in love with him, and I thought he might feel something similar for me, and there was no way we could work together preventing the Monster Apocalypse/World War III without that becoming an issue. Not that I could say any of that. Archer's face was blank as he said, "Cool. Got it." "Cross," I started to say, but then his eyes slid past me and went wide with horror. At the same time, I became aware of a slithering noice behind me. That just could not be good; in my experience, nothing pleasant slithers. Still, I was not prepared for the nightmares climbing out of the crater.