O'connell Quotes

[H]iding how you really feel and trying to make everyone happy doesn't make you nice, it just makes you a liar.

Sean O'Connell: Sometimes I don't. If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don't like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.

Evelyn: Look, I... I may not be an explorer, or an adventurer, or a treasure-seeker, or a gunfighter, Mr. O'Connell, but I am proud of what I am. Rick: And what is that? Evelyn: I... am a librarian. The Mummy (1999)

...he wondered if maybe just occasionally the gods designed a woman fit for a king or a prince and then gave her to an ordinary man. Maybe they did such a thing once in a while, knowing an ordinary man would treasure her more, love her better. Maybe they even let him keep her - for a while.

Look, I... I may not be an explorer, or an adventurer, or a treasure-seeker, or a gunfighter, Mr. O'Connell, but I am proud of what I am. And what is that? I... am a librarian.

Sometimes change was good. Sometimes it was even exactly what you needed.

I don’t want to have to be the one who mourns everything when everyone else has clearly forgotten. It’s mortifying. It’s mortifying to be the one who remembers.

I don’t believe in love at first sight but I do believe in seeing someone from across the room and knowing instantly that they’re going to matter to you.

I guess relationships are just funny like that. It's impossible to figure out why some work out and others don't. Why someone can be so imperfect and still be the perfect person for you. Maybe, in the end, it's not about changing the person you care about. Maybe it's about learning what you can live with. Or maybe it's really about learning what you can't live without.

You know, Annie, a long time ago an old man told me beauty doesn't mean much in a woman. It disappears with age. But he said some women have something better. They have a special glow that lasts all their life and just gets richer. You're like that. You really shine.

maybe it's not about having a plan, or even a plan B. Maybe it's about seeing where life takes you and learning to enjoy the ride.

You ass-sniffing, butt-crack licking, litter-box-using fuckhole!

Wear your pain like lip gloss!

Her hands cupped his face, thumbs caressing his cheekbones. "I love you, Mr. Bennett." "Good thing. Hate to be the only one afflicted.

If a man could taste wind and fire, they would taste like Katherine. When he stood in high places looking down on things made small by distance, he tried to feel what the eagle felt soaring free on the wind. He was an earthbound man. Only his spirit could ever soar, and only Katherine raised him so high.

Sometimes the worst kind of love teaches you the best lessons.

Do not blame my tone of voice, my lack of patience, or my bad mood on PMS. It's not my period that's my problem.

I want to know you. You seem like someone worth knowing. Every day I feel like I’m surrounded by people with hard edges and sour faces but I get the sense that you’re different. Too often people seem to think that they have the answers to everything. Their faces are trapped in permascowls and they can’t be bothered with anything besides their own narcissism. You aren’t like that. You still ask questions. You’re still looking for the answers.

GUY TIP #18: Just because you can urinate anywhere you want doesn't mean you should-even if your aim is so good you can spell out "Red Sox Rule" in capital letters with once taking a break.

As ugly as the truth is, it's even uglier when someone says out loud what you've been thinking to yourself.

My love is unique. No one can rival her, for she is the most beautiful girl alive. Just by passing, she has stolen my heart.

You’ll always care about your first love. That doesn’t make you crazy, it just makes you human. When relationships end, it’s not so cut and dry. You carry everyone you’ve ever loved into every relationship thereafter.

You will fall in love with your friends. Deep, passionate love. You will create a second family with them, a kind of tribe that makes you feel less vulnerable. Sometimes our families can’t love us all the time. Sometimes we’re born into families who don’t know how to love us properly. They do as much as they can but the rest is up to our friends. They can love you all the time, without judgement. At least the good ones can.

After my first book was published, I received an envelope full of religious material from a fan who wanted to save my soul. That’s when I knew I was on to something.

How was it possible to hate him so much and still need him so much at the same time?

Your penis will not shrivel up and die if you admit you want an umbrella instead of standing in the rain acting like a little water never hurt anyone. It's an unbrella, not a purse.

Your skin is white, but I think the white god made a mistake, or maybe he did it on purpose to play a joke. He gave you an Apache heart.

People can have nicknames. Body parts should not.

In your twenties, you expect to accumulate a graveyard's worth of failed romances. But what you don't count on is having to bury so many treasured friendships alongside them.

You can only really grow when you start being honest with yourself about who you are in the first place.

He shook her gently. "Listen to me, listen, there's nothing anybody could do to you that would make me not want you - no hurt, no scar, nothing. These past days I've been afraid they broke you, ruined all the fire. I'd mourn, Annie - I don't want you different - but I'd still want you. I love you.

Dr. Craig says you're the only patient he ever treated who kept saying nothing hurt when he examined you right until you passed out. You think I believe your ribs are all right?

People owe us nothing: they can blow through our lives, make us feel hopeful and loved, and then disappear with no explanation or apology.

We've created a dating culture in which we never say what we really feel.

I knew he was a prick, but a part of me wanted to hear what he'd say, to hear him say how sorry he really was that he'd screwed up. I wanted groveling for forgiveness and pledges of undying love. As dumb as I knew it was, I wanted him to fight for me, to prove that I hadn't made a mistake by believing in him. Or us.

Crazy is a place," said Janos. "You go, you come back.

What makes you think I want to marry you?” “What makes you think you have a choice?

As far as I can tell, there are three guarantees in life: death, taxes, and someone deciding they don't love you anymore.

You know how it is. You make up your mind about something, and then you stop seeing anything that doesn't fit the way you already think things are.

When I was in my early twenties I didn't have a need to rub together, back when my life was a series of wants and whims. But recently I had felt overwhelmed by longings that seemed to lunge out of me in the most awkward situations.

It was here in Mayfair, that adjectives such as gracious elegant sophisticated and sublime trip off the tongue like coins into a parking meter.

A pair of Blahniks and a girl can vanquish anything

All I had to say to anyone that doubted our love was, "Eat your knickers!".

Because only when you discover that you know nothing can you really start to learn something.

There are so many people in this world who make you feel like an alien. When you find someone who "gets it," you don't take it for granted.

If the situation was hopeless, their propoganda would be unessasary

We need stressful days in order to be happy. We need days when we get zero sleep and are working tirelessly on a deadline. Because if we didn’t, the lazy days wouldn’t feel good … We need to always be working towards something in order to feel useful and have a sense of purpose.

He touched me. We kissed and we held hands sometimes. It was proper. Do you think I should have been with him in that way?" "Hell, no. He's probably not capable." "He's married now. They have children." "Must be Catholic." "What makes you say that?" "Virgin births.

London is speared by the tube map of fashion zone: zone one is classic-edgy, zone two is edgy-dowdy while the counties do a classic, edgy, dowdy hotch potch - epitomised so beautifully by Kate Moss.

The spirit of Mayfair beats in the soul of dandies and dandizettes everywhere.

I had walked all over the fragile bloom of his heart like a Boadicea in Blahniks

My astrologer predicted a year of successful enterprise and good fortune. So what went wrong? Had there been some ghastly beaureaucratic astral mix up?

The Only place to love a man or fight a man is below the belt

Men think wiles charming unless they find out your charms are wiles.

The things you see when you’re not carrying a gun

I’ve got you under my skin, or is it just my eczma again?

The Duke is worried you lack the fitness to walk up Bond Street. You’re generation lacks the drive.

I suppose you’re young,’ she conceded, managing once again to make youth sound like impetigo

What he needed was a metaphorical Bobbit job

I suppose a cycle courier knows better than anyone how a murder on Marble Arch can hold up traffic.

The Classic Notting Hill junkie, i.e; Armani underwear, Pink’s shirt and Burberry belt tourniquets

She was the sort of woman who could suck out free will and self esteem with a look.

One can’t be too safe, only too sorry.

Chic rarely bothers to leave the Rue De Faubourg Saint-Honore.

Men are mystifying creatures. For instance why do all men think their penis is a panacea for all the world’s problems?

Never take drugs before Marmalade

It's called joining the property market - and it shits on war for stress

I wasn't the same person I was eight months ago, and that was okay with me. Sometimes change was good. Sometimes it was even exactly what you needed.

The first thing I learned from Judy Blume was that God is the wrong one to ask for bigger breasts. (Stephanie Lessing)

He was Pinocchio to my Gepetto.

Pleasantly bustling shoppers streamed past us on Bond Street - smart-suited men and well-heeled women whose commitment to luxury goods glazed over their eyes like a bad case of malaria.

I had wasted my life in the pursuit of a career, romance, financial independence and the best heels in town when it seems I could have done more for my self esteem with a .38 calibre handgun

I fall in love with ideas and fantasies rather than whole beings and then I sit here and wonder why I’m still alone. It’s because I don’t fucking pay attention. I’m too busy thinking about tomorrow that today falls through the cracks.

Not only was Miss Cribbe bearded, and always trying to get chummy with us like we we're her real children or something, but she had a disgusting incontinent springer spaniel called Misty, who was constantly sneaking in to the dorms and weeing on our duvets

He was your usual man when it came to romance, which is to say he couldn’t recite Baa Baa Black Sheep when sober, whereas when drunk, sixteen cantos of Byron’s Don Juan was par for the course.

We live in different times. I would not have described London as a city of gun-toters but that was when Londoners still said sorry when you knock them over and called cappuccinos fluffy coffees & policemen, bobbies!

But rarely do you ever tell people about the true depths of your loneliness, about how you feel more and more alienated from your friends each passing day and you’re not sure how to fix it. It seems like everyone is just better at living than you are.

Maybe occasionally the gods designed a woman fit for a king or a prince and gave her to an ordinary man. Maybe they did such a thing once in a while, knowing an ordinary man would treasure her more, love her better.

She was to my ego what Rasputin was to morality, whittling away at my self-image with menaces and put downs viewed as compliments until I realised I was too old, too fat, too tall, too dull, too everything to ever find love.

It’s taboo to admit that you’re lonely. You can make jokes about it, of course. You can tell people that you spend most of your time with Netflix or that you haven’t left the house today and you might not even go outside tomorrow. Ha ha, funny. But rarely do you ever tell people about the true depths of your loneliness, about how you feel more and more alienated from your friends each passing day and you’re not sure how to fix it. It seems like everyone is just better at living than you are. A part of you knew this was going to happen. Growing up, you just had this feeling that you wouldn’t transition well to adult life, that you’d fall right through the cracks. And look at you now. La di da, it’s happening. Your mother, your father, your grandparents: they all look at you like you’re some prized jewel and they tell you over and over again just how lucky you are to be young and have your whole life ahead of you. “Getting old ain’t for sissies,” your father tells you wearily. You wish they’d stop saying these things to you because all it does is fill you with guilt and panic. All it does is remind you of how much you’re not taking advantage of your youth. You want to kiss all kinds of different people, you want to wake up in a stranger’s bed maybe once or twice just to see if it feels good to feel nothing, you want to have a group of friends that feels like a tribe, a bonafide family. You want to go from one place to the next constantly and have your weekends feel like one long epic day. You want to dance to stupid music in your stupid room and have a nice job that doesn’t get in the way of living your life too much. You want to be less scared, less anxious, and more willing. Because if you’re closed off now, you can only imagine what you’ll be like later. Every day you vow to change some aspect of your life and every day you fail. At this point, you’re starting to question your own power as a human being. As of right now, your fears have you beat. They’re the ones that are holding your twenties hostage. Stop thinking that everyone is having more sex than you, that everyone has more friends than you, that everyone out is having more fun than you. Not because it’s not true (it might be!) but because that kind of thinking leaves you frozen. You’ve already spent enough time feeling like you’re stuck, like you’re watching your life fall through you like a fast dissolve and you’re unable to hold on to anything. I don’t know if you ever get better. I don’t know if a person can just wake up one day and decide to be an active participant in their life. I’d like to think so. I’d like to think that people get better each and every day but that’s not really true. People get worse and it’s their stories that end up getting forgotten because we can’t stand an unhappy ending. The sick have to get better. Our normalcy depends upon it. You have to value yourself. You have to want great things for your life. This sort of shit doesn’t happen overnight but it can and will happen if you want it. Do you want it bad enough? Does the fear of being filled with regret in your thirties trump your fear of living today? We shall see.

That's what happens when you don't know who you are yet: you let someone else decide for you.

Having self-love is like nurturing a plant. If you don't take the time to water it, if you start to skip days and get distracted, it will die.

Transitioning to adulthood is hard enough. Having your friends judge your progress doesn't make it any easier.

You think you know death, but you don't, not until you've seen it, really seen it... And it gets under your skin and lives inside you. You also think you know life, stand on the edge of things and what you go by but you're not living it, not really, you're just a tourist, a ghost, then you see it, really see it, it gets under your skin and lives inside you, and there's no escape, there's nothing to be done, and you know what? it's good, it's a good thing. And that’s all I’ve got to say about it.

You make me feel like I’ve lost control… of my thoughts… my emotions.” “Is that so bad?” Ethan presses her palm to his chest so she can feel the rhythmic beating of his heart. “You’re not the only one who feels that way. The moment I saw you… my heart beat your name.” Ethan O'Connell & Olivia James - Intractable Souls

How To Tell If Somebody Loves You: Somebody loves you if they pick an eyelash off of your face or wet a napkin and apply it to your dirty skin. You didn’t ask for these things, but this person went ahead and did it anyway. They don’t want to see you looking like a fool with eyelashes and crumbs on your face. They notice these things. They really look at you and are the first to notice if something is amiss with your beautiful visage! Somebody loves you if they assume the role of caretaker when you’re sick. Unsure if someone really gives a shit about you? Fake a case of food poisoning and text them being like, “Oh, my God, so sick. Need water.” Depending on their response, you’ll know whether or not they REALLY love you. “That’s terrible. Feel better!” earns you a stay in friendship jail; “Do you need anything? I can come over and bring you get well remedies!” gets you a cozy friendship suite. It’s easy to care about someone when they don’t need you. It’s easy to love them when they’re healthy and don’t ask you for anything beyond change for the parking meter. Being sick is different. Being sick means asking someone to hold your hair back when you vomit. Either love me with vomit in my hair or don’t love me at all. Somebody loves you if they call you out on your bullshit. They’re not passive, they don’t just let you get away with murder. They know you well enough and care about you enough to ask you to chill out, to bust your balls, to tell you to stop. They aren’t passive observers in your life, they are in the trenches. They have an opinion about your decisions and the things you say and do. They want to be a part of it; they want to be a part of you. Somebody loves you if they don’t mind the quiet. They don’t mind running errands with you or cleaning your apartment while blasting some annoying music. There’s no pressure, no need to fill the silences. You know how with some of your friends there needs to be some sort of activity for you to hang out? You don’t feel comfortable just shooting the shit and watching bad reality TV with them. You need something that will keep the both of you busy to ensure there won’t be a void. That’s not love. That’s “Hey, babe! I like you okay. Do you wanna grab lunch? I think we have enough to talk about to fill two hours!" It’s a damn dream when you find someone you can do nothing with. Whether you’re skydiving together or sitting at home and doing different things, it’s always comfortable. That is fucking love. Somebody loves you if they want you to be happy, even if that involves something that doesn’t benefit them. They realize the things you need to do in order to be content and come to terms with the fact that it might not include them. Never underestimate the gift of understanding. When there are so many people who are selfish and equate relationships as something that only must make them happy, having someone around who can take their needs out of any given situation if they need to. Somebody loves you if they can order you food without having to be told what you want. Somebody loves you if they rub your back at any given moment. Somebody loves you if they give you oral sex without expecting anything back. Somebody loves you if they don’t care about your job or how much money you make. It’s a relationship where no one is selling something to the other. No one is the prostitute. Somebody loves you if they’ll watch a movie starring Kate Hudson because you really really want to see it. Somebody loves you if they’re able to create their own separate world with you, away from the internet and your job and family and friends. Just you and them. Somebody will always love you. If you don’t think this is true, then you’re not paying close enough attention.

That was an important thing for me to realize. It's perhaps the best lesson I could have ever taught myself. Getting it would eventually be the one thing that released me from my neuroses and let me be truly happy. I'm not special.

«I may not be an explorer, or an adventurer, or a treasure seeker, or a gunfighter, Mr. O'Connell, but I am proud of what I am. ... I am a librarian ... !» Stephen Sommers (The Mummy, 1999. Line spoken by Rachel Weisz as Evie Carnahan)

It wasn't like I was expecting Senior year to be some amazing experience. If anything, I was prepared for it to be pretty much a letdown. Everyone would be looking ahead to college and getting sick of seeing the same faces we've been looking at for the last three years.

Irony is a treacherous servant; unless it's very carefully watched over, it has a tendency to expose the foolishness of its apparent master.

Sometimes I think I surround myself with conflict so I have reasons to justify the sadness. That it’s circumstantial. That it doesn’t live deep in my bones.

Clamboring over building detritus was not the lifestyle Karl Lagerfeld had in mind for this sweet little powder-blue suit. As he oversaw the hand stitching in his atelier he had probably imagined the suit living a life of tea parties and lunches with the girls at the Ivy

Getting angry at the world for your problems isn't going to bring you any closer to a dream job or relationship or whatever else you feel like you deserve. It's going to keep you thousands of miles away from it.

You can try on different personalities like they're clothing for as long as you want, but I guarantee that the outfit you were originally wearing will always be the one that fits best.

I think the reason why twentysomethings are so fixated on age is because we feel a pressure to be a certain way at 23, at 25, at 29. There are all of these invisible deadlines with our careers and with love and drinking and drugs. I can’t do coke at 25. I need to be in a LTR at 27. I can’t vomit from drinking at 26. I just can’t! We feel so much guilt for essentially acting our age and making mistakes. We’re obsessed with this idea of being domesticated and having our shit together. It’s kind of sad actually because I don’t think we ever fully get a chance to enjoy our youth. We’re so concerned about doing things "the right way" that we lose any sense of pleasure in doing things the wrong way. Youth may be truly wasted on the young.

Reed: "What's up?" Vanessa: "There must be an accident or something." Reed: "I'm the accident." Vanessa: "I couldn't agree more." Reed: "What I meant was, those people out there are waiting for me.

Annie, last year.... That day in the yard.... I made a mistake not strapping on a gun the minute I found you, and it wasn't that I was against marrying you, it was that I was against letting them make me do anything. So they almost killed Foxface and threatened to shoot the horses, and I gave in. But they could have shot everything in five miles to pieces and couldn't have made me crawl." A tremor passed through her, but he continued. "That was last year. Now if somebody pointed a gun at you, really could hurt you, I'd crawl on my belly or my knees or do anything else. Maybe that's part of why loving is frightening. I'd rather pay the price and have you than be invincible because I have nothing.

Frank actually looked shaken as he asked, "Does she get like that often?" "Nope, you seem to rile her." Cord knew quite well how very few women had ever disconcerted his brother. "I rile her? She wants to kill you, dismember you, and disperse your body parts, and I rile her?

I truly believe that the boredom of illness is parlous to one's health

but all I know is that you’re mine, and your ass is going to stay that way until I take my last breath.

College is about figuring out who you are, and in order to do that, you need to become a lot of people you aren’t.

I was starting to understand that nothing in this life is owed to me and that it’s quite possible to sabotage yourself if you don’t pay attention.

I wasn't thinking clearly. You never are after a breakup. You have to pretend that everything is fine when secretly you're dying a thousand deaths a minute.

Martha said, "Do you have any idea of the kind of surprise your brothers are in for sooner or later? Or are you doing it on purpose?" Cord put his hat on and pulled it low, hiding his eyes. "Grown man walks around with his eyes shut tight, he shouldn't be surprised if he bumps into something he didn't see. You aren't trying to convince anybody of anything they don't want to believe." Martha laughed. "You win. I just hope I'm there when the blind men hit the wall.

I twirl my ring and think about what Judy has tried so hard to say: You are not any one thing. You are many. Don't let them make you believe that this is an either/or world. - Laura Ruby

Jessup said, "Doesn't surprise me somehow. I feel I'm walking out of a wolf den in one piece by the grace of God." He glanced at Anne. "Just what you need to be doing, adding to this family." "My influence will be gentling." There were at least three derisive snorts around the room, and Jessup laughed out loud.

What if, instead of worrying about scaring pregnant women, people told them the truth? What is pregnant women were treated like thinking adults? What if everyone worried less about giving women a bad impression of motherhood?

She was out of a cage and finding her wings. No one would cage her again, and he admired her courage and determination. As

But the ultimate irony of being insecure is that you're consumed with your least favorite subject, yourself.

My parents were consistently inconsistent.

It's an old story, really: seduced and corrupted, in the end, by an obsessive love for the text.

In other words, what we know for sure is entirely limited, and all the rest is basically opinion.

Lies can boost your confidence, they can get you accepted by a group of friends..., but anything that's not the truth is going to fade.

Most people who have achieved a modicum of success right after they graduated did it by being brave and laughing at anyone who told them no.

I love watching someone put on a show, only to slowly settle into the person they really are.

Cord softened his voice as he addressed Anne. "Thought I'd see if you want to come home with me, babe." She crossed the room in two leaps and threw herself at him. Cord kept the rifle trained on Wells, but he caught Anne with his left arm and crushed her to him. He buried his mouth and nose in her hair and breathed deeply of her. Until this moment there had been no room for any emotion but fear in Cord. Now, with Anne safe in his arms, rage seared through him. If they did not get out of here quickly, he would leave the room drenched in blood.

When strangers on a train or a plane ask what I do for a living, I say, "I kill people." This response makes for a short conversation. No eye contact and no sudden movement from my seat-mate. Only peace and quiet. Rare is the fellow passenger who asks why I do it. I suppose I got tired hanging out in a book all day waiting for a story to begin. I write the kind of novels I want to read. And why the theme of solving murders? Violent death is larger than life and it's the great equalizer. By law, every victim is entitled to a paladin and a chase, else life would be cheapened. And the real reason I do this? My brain is simply bent this way. There is nothing else I would rather do. This neatly chains into my theory of the writing life. If you scratch an artist, under the skin you will find a bum who cannot hold down a real job. Conversely, if you scratch a bum... but I have never done that. The heart of my theory has puritan roots: if you love what you do, you cannot call it honest work.

I don't believe in love at first sight but I do believe in seeing someone from across the room and knowing instantly that they're going to matter to you. They're going to play a major role in your life.

What she'd done was give him a glimpse of something that scared the bejesus out of him, something never meant for men like him that could start a hunger that would eat away what little was left inside him that didn't need to be shoved into the dark place.

Maybe occasionally the gods designed a woman fit for a king or a prince and gave her to an ordinary man. Maybe they did such a thing once in a while, knowing an ordinary man would treasure her more, love her better. Maybe they even let him keep her—for a while.

You will fall in love with someone for one night and one night only. They’ll come to you when you need them and be gone in the morning when you don’t. At first, this will make you feel empty and you’ll try to convince yourself that you could’ve loved this person for longer than a night, but you can’t. Some people are just meant to make cameo appearances, some are destined to be a pithy footnote. That’s okay though. Not every person we love has to stick around. Sometimes it’s better to leave while you’re still ahead. Sometimes it’s better to leave before you get unloved.

The golden age of Luncheon Vouchers ended ten years ago. For ten years Mickey had been saying, “The golden age of Luncheon Vouchers is over.” And that’s what Archie loved about O’Connell’s. Everything was remembered, nothing was lost. History was never revised or reinterpreted, adapted or whitewashed. It was as solid and as simple as the encrusted egg on the clock.

It seemed to me that transhumanism was an expression of the profound human longing to transcend the confusion and desire and impotence and sickness of the body, cowering in the darkening shadow of its own decay. This longing had historically been the domain of religion, and was now the increasingly fertile terrain of technology.

It was not the building of bunkers beneath private land that would allow us to survive the catastrophes we faced, but the strengthening of communities that already existed.

You know it's a dysfunctional family," said Riker, "when the one you like best is a mass murderer.

This is one of the problems with reality: the extent to which it resembles bad fiction.

That was a boy’s love for a dream he didn’t think would ever come true. What I feel for you is a man’s love for a woman, a wife.

It was best to be pined for when you went missing.

How can ladies bleed from inside for a week every month? You’d fall over dead.

Darling, I'm so unutterably bored as to be a hazard

Real strategists are warriors and must be willing and able to fight battles, to “see the elephant,” as Civil War soldiers were fond of saying.

He too was experimental and creatively disobedient, but he was still able to operate effectively in a fairly rigid hierarchy—something Americans do particularly well.

I hope to have God on my side; but I must have Kentucky,” Lincoln reputedly said.

I could’ve stayed like that forever: two boys in bed, giving themselves permission to be known.

I was starting to understand that nothing in this life is owed to me and that it's quite possible to sabotage yourself if you don't pay attention.

There are so many people in this world who make you feel like an alien. When you find someone who “gets it,” you don’t take it for granted. Great people don’t grow on trees.

All food is just a vehicle for transporting butter to my mouth

You were the first girl I ever really lusted over, you know. Not just a boy’s desire to do things to a woman, any woman, but a particular desire to do certain things to a certain woman.

Cord put his hat on and pulled it low, hiding his eyes. 'Grown man walks around with his eyes shut tight, he shouldn't be surprised if he bumps into something he didn't see. You aren't trying to convince anybody of anything they don't want to believe.

The History of Ireland in two words: Ah well. The Invasion by the Vikings: Ah well. The Invasion by the Normans. The Flight of the Earls, Mr Oliver Cromwell. Daniel O’Connell, Robert Emmett, The Famine, Charles Stewart Parnell, Easter Rising, Michael Collins, Éamon De Valera, Éamon De Valera again (Dear Germany, so sorry to learn of the death of your Mr Hitler), Éamon De Valera again, the Troubles, the Tribunals, the Fianna Fáil Party, The Church, the Banks, the eight hundred years of rain: Ah well. In the Aeneid Virgil tells it as Sunt lacrimae rerum, which in Robert Fitzgerald’s translation means ‘They weep for how the world goes’, which is more eloquent than Ah well but means the same thing.

Well, they came the day after you did, but they made me angry, so I sent them away." Noah did not understand. "Sent them away?" Cord rejoined the conversation. "Ran them out of the house with a rifle." Noah couldn't have shown more astonishment if they'd said a mouse had killed a cat.

My generation is the first to be in charge of their image. We call the shots and tell you how to feel about our lives. It doesn't matter if what we are projecting is phony. If someone believes it, that makes it true.

What if having a hard time adjusting to motherhood wasn’t some moral failure or a failure of imagination? What if we thought of the whole endeavor like we do work? Like how a career starts out with a lot of dues-paying, a lot of indignity, a lot of feeling unappreciated and complaining to your friends but then incrementally gets easier or more fulfilling. You get better at it. It becomes part of you. And you start to think, Well, what else would I do all day?

Veteran trader Marty O’Connell calls this the firehouse effect. He had observed that firemen with much downtime who talk to each other for too long come to agree on many things that an outside, impartial observer would find ludicrous (they

I myself am the apocalypse of which I speak.

People say they’re lucky or whine that they’re not, but I don’t believe in luck. I decide my own fate.

You’re lucky I let you have a coffee. I’m not going out with you. I’m not going to fuck you and, unless someone dies, I don’t need any more friends.

This man makes me feel stabby. Luckily for him, I don’t work with many sharp knives.

His touch trails fire along my skin. I arch against him and our mouths meet in a fusion of desire

Her neon yellow t-shirt said Suck It Up, Buttercup. It was baggy, but she wasn’t wearing a bra. This long-legged bitch tempts me.

This alpha will not bully me. I am my own woman and not some subordinate in his pack. I can match him in rage.

it was in defeat more than victory that Polybius saw the essence of Rome’s greatness. It

I had entered a world that no one with an evolved sense of joie de vivre would touch with a barge pole - it's called "Joining the Property Market" and it trumps war for stress!

I will go on quietly and slowly, but I will go on firmly, and with a certainty of success.

The culture of the Epic Fail, in its rituals of comic sacrifice, is a culture of sublimated predation.

And the civilian yelled, "I'm from the Times!" which made him a reporter and thus a legal kill in the codebook of the NYPD.

Never underestimate how easy it is to ruin someone's life.

Sugar gave rise to the slave trade; now sugar has enslaved us.

While the morality of slavery alone might have eventually led to a showdown, it was America’s sprawling growth that made the issue explosive.

Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.

Only a very few women ever looked the way Anne looked now, and they had to be loved to achieve it - to be loved and to know they were loved.

My mother is my lifeline and I love her a scary amount, but sometimes when I talk to her, I can’t help but feel like it’s going at the pace of a Sofia Coppola movie.

Don’t ever forget that Millennials are hustlers.

You know how it is. You make up your mind about something, and then you stop seeing anything that doesn’t fit the way you already think things are.

I can have brave love that's dripping with intimacy.

Rome, on the other hand, lost—suffering on that one day more battle deaths than the United States during the entire course of the war in Vietnam, suffering more dead soldiers than any other army on any single day of combat in the entire course of Western military history.

its badness is so potent that it seems to undermine the very idea of literature, to expose the whole endeavour of making art out of language as essentially and irredeemably fraudulent

About the best that can be done is to try to place oneself in a position to get lucky. Nothing is certain, but shrewd, well-informed planning, a determined use of every possible advantage, and a continuous awareness and acceptance of an ever-shifting environment can raise the odds.

The idea of whole brain emulation - which was, in effect, the liberation from matter, from the physical world - seemed to me an extreme example of the way in which science, or the belief in scientific progress, was replacing religion as the vector of deep cultural desires and delusions.

Veteran trader Marty O’Connell calls this the firehouse effect. He had observed that firemen with much downtime who talk to each other for too long come to agree on many things that an outside, impartial observer would find ludicrous (they develop political ideas that are very similar). Psychologists give it a fancier name, but my friend Marty has no training in behavioral sciences.

I heard Mr. Ingersoll many years ago in Chicago. The hall seated 5,000 people; every inch of standing-room was also occupied; aisles and platform crowded to overflowing. He held that vast audience for three hours so completely entranced that when he left the platform no one moved, until suddenly, with loud cheers and applause, they recalled him. He returned smiling and said: 'I'm glad you called me back, as I have something more to say. Can you stand another half-hour?' 'Yes: an hour, two hours, all night,' was shouted from various parts of the house; and he talked on until midnight, with unabated vigor, to the delight of his audience. This was the greatest triumph of oratory I had ever witnessed. It was the first time he delivered his matchless speech, 'The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child'. I have heard the greatest orators of this century in England and America; O'Connell in his palmiest days, on the Home Rule question; Gladstone and John Bright in the House of Commons; Spurgeon, James and Stopford Brooke, in their respective pulpits; our own Wendell Phillips, Henry Ward Beecher, and Webster and Clay, on great occasions; the stirring eloquence of our anti-slavery orators, both in Congress and on the platform, but none of them ever equalled Robert Ingersoll in his highest flights. {Stanton's comments at the great Robert Ingersoll's funeral}

Now I remember. Sports Illustrated and the girl in the string bikini, looking like she ate men for breakfast. The water making her tiny triangle top cling to her small breasts. Those long legs. Fuck me. That’s her?

He entered her in a single hard thrust, opening her, stretching her and forcing a moan of surprise from her. She was ready, so ready, and yet totally unprepared. She’d been wrong. She was still virgin to this, to his strength and her need, to the pleasure and the pain and the sheer triumph of having him. He drove into her and she rose to him, clutched him tighter, harder. Her nails raked and dug into his back, her teeth into his neck.

Charles did not hear the door close, yet he knew that he was alone. Though he might not always see her coming, he could always tell when he had been left behind. So simple, really. He kept getting hit by the same damn train.

He wanted to bring up his plan for a retreat, but something told him not to. “Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?” he opened instead. “Yes,” Grant replied chewing on a cigar. “Lick ’em tomorrow, though.”75

She toyed with the top button of his shirt. “Do Apaches kiss?” “The people believe the mouth is only for eating.” “Oh.” She didn’t try to hide her disappointment. He shifted her against him a little and cupped her breast with one hand, his thumb rubbing across the nipple. “They also believe a woman’s breast is only for nursing a child.” Lowering his mouth over hers, he ran his tongue between her lips, exploring her tongue, making her shiver with a stroke along the roof of her mouth. When he raised his head at last, she whispered, “I’m glad you’re an unbeliever.

It is both a privilege and a curse of being a writer that throwing yourself into your work so often involves immersing yourself deeper into the exact anxieties and obsessions other people throw themselves into their work to avoid.

So maybe my own life is not so drastic and dreadful...maybe I am just like all those other girls who have come before me with their oily T-zones and random terrible days and bittersweet triumphs, the world billowing out behind them.

On the way home from school, we stop off for a slice of pizza -- Phoebe's treat. She says there's an upside to what they did to me today. I've marked my place in the annals of school history. She says, "They'll never get that bloodstain out.

Or imagine him in the middle of a battle coming upon a soldier cowering behind a tree and loudly proclaiming his intention to desert—prompting Sherman to shower the tree with rocks, convincing the reluctant warrior he was under even heavier fire.

Facing him, she saw what she didn’t need to see to know. Even if most wives experienced being washed by a fully aroused, naked husband, they would never know this — a man no words had been invented to describe, beyond handsome, beyond beautiful. His skin glowed copper in the light from the fire, shadows emphasizing the curves of muscle and planes of bone. His erection was hers, for her.

The little man behind that desk was the joke candidate of election years, best remembered for his trademark yellow bowtie. In Riker's fashion philosophy, bows should be reserved to the pigtails of little girls or the collars of tiny dogs hatched from peanut shells.

You know, Annie, a long time ago an old man told me beauty doesn’t mean much in a woman. It disappears with age. But he said some women have something better. They have a special glow that lasts all their life and just gets richer. You’re like that. You really shine.

Day and night bled into each other, coalescing into one big nightmare. My clothes were indistinguishable from pajamas. A lamp was always on. We were in the middle of what felt like an ongoing emergency. Like someone was playing a practical joke on us. Endure the car crash of childbirth, then, without sleeping, use your broken body to keep your tiny, fragile, precious, heartbreaking, mortal child alive.

Once upon a time Sister Mary Margaret had answered a loud knocking at the door of the orphanage. It was very early one morning, before the city was awake. All the pigeons had their heads tucked under their wings and all the rats were curled up tight behind the dustbins. All the cars and lorries were asleep in their garages and depots, and all the trains slumbered on their tracks at Connolly Station. All the boats bobbed gently in the harbor, dreaming of the high seas, and all the bicycles slept leaning along the fences. Even the angels were asleep at the foot of the O’Connell Monument, fluttering their wings as they dreamt, quite forgetting to hold still and pretend to be statues.

He entered her slowly, determined to keep a tight hold on the lust pounding in his veins. She wrapped her legs higher, took him deeper and deeper. Her hands dug into the muscles of his rear, urging, telling him what she wanted and what he needed were the same. He obeyed and thrust harder, driving into her not with anger but with a desperate raw need. He felt her climax, her body arching, tightening and contracting around him as she cried out against his neck. He shuddered with the intensity of the explosion that wracked his body and spirit and wrung a deep cry from him. “Katherine.” I was afraid. I missed you. I love you.

…Anne believed she would in the end hear the words she, like all women, longed to hear, but if he never spoke of it, she would be content with this. He loved her, and she knew it, and he was capable of such tenderness it left her trembling, overwhelmed by her own love for him.” ---The heroine, Anne, spoken of the hero, Cord

Anne had lived her whole life following the dictates of others. Now all the decisions were hers. What to do, when to do it, how to do it, so much depended on her, but instead of feeling weighed down, minute by minute, hour by hour, this new life wove a spell around her, leaving her feeling lighter and freer than she had ever dreamed possible.

~Enueg II world world world and the face grave cloud against the evening de moriturus nihil nisi and the face crumbling shyly too late to darken the sky blushing away into the evening shuddering away like a gaffe veronica mundi veronica munda give us a wipe for the love of Jesus sweating like Judas tired of dying tired of policemen feet in marmalade perspiring profusely heart in marmalade smoke more fruit the old heart the old heart breaking outside congress doch I assure thee lying on O'Connell Bridge gogglin at the tulips of the evening the green tulips shining round the corner like an anthrax shining on Guinness's barges the overtone the face too late to brighten the sky doch doch I assure thee

because somehow the two of us could bear what neither one of us could alone

I used to believe it was a privilege to be loved by anybody. Not anymore.

At their core, Tiger Eyes, Forever..., and Sally J. Freeman are all books about teenage issues, but to an adult reader, the parents' story lines seem to almost overshadow their daughters. I'm bringing an entirely new set of experiences to these novels now, and my reward is a fresh set of story lines that i missed the first time around. I'm sure that in twenty or thirty years I'll read these books again and completely identify with all the grandparent characteristics. That's the wonderful thing about Judy Blume - you can revisit her stories at any stage in life and find a character who strikes a deep chord of recognition. I've been there, I'm in the middle of this, someday that'll be me. The same characters, yet somehow completely different. (Beth Kendrick)

Don’t you tell me in over twenty years of marriage you and Judith never had a marital quarrel. I’m so angry I’d like to beat him worse than Meeks did. I’d like to shoot him so full of holes he could be a sieve. I’d like to cut off his head and bury it somewhere far away from his body, but I’ll get over it. We’ll work it out and life will go on, and in the meantime, it’s none of your business.

Slowly, my shock and pain morph into something else. Anger. “All I wanted was to be left in peace, to build a life. And some asshole thinks they can take that away. To hell with that.” That’s my strong girl. Ian looks proud. We’ll turn this around on the son of a bitch. They back me and it helps. I’m not alone in this. If I find them first, I’m going to break their arms and legs, then hurt them.

Given the world, given the situation, the question that remains is whether having children is a statement of hope, an insistence on the beauty and meaningfulness and basic worth of being here, or an act of human sacrifice.

There is an undeniably daffy aspect to Sherman. Calling him a motormouth understates the case: he was a veritable volcano of verbiage, as borne out by a mountain of letters, memoranda, and other official papers, not to mention the uniformly gabby impression he left among contemporaries. If there were a contest for who spoke the most words in a lifetime, Sherman would have been a finalist—he lived a long time and slept very little; otherwise he was talking. He said exactly what was on his mind at that instant, until his quicksilver brain turned to an entirely different matter, then to a third, and perhaps to a fourth, then back to the first—unceasing—spewing orders, analysis, advice, and anecdotes in a random pattern that often left listeners stunned and amazed. One prominent Civil War historian, Gary Gallagher, described Sherman as lacking cognitive filters. It all came out. And this is a real problem in trying to resurrect the man’s nature.

They went to a protest against the war in Gaza the other week with Connell and Niall. There were thousands of people there, carrying signs and megaphones and banners. Marianne wanted her life to mean something then, she wanted to stop all violence committed by the strong against the weak, and she remembered a time several years ago when she had felt so intelligent and young and powerful that she almost could have achieved such a thing, and now she knew she wasn’t at all powerful, and she would live and die in a world of extreme violence against the innocent, and at most she could help only a few people. It was so much harder to reconcile herself to the idea of helping a few, like she would rather help no one than do something so small and feeble, but that wasn’t it either. The protest was very loud and slow, lots of people were banging drums and chanting things out of unison, sound systems crackling on and off. They marched across O’Connell Bridge with the Liffey trickling under them. The weather was hot, Marianne’s shoulders got sunburned.

With stuff this big, almost any way of looking at it can be true. We all talked like we were going to eventually reach some grand conclusion, some correct stance, but in fact it was different for everybody, impossible to pin down. Was childbirth traumatic or transcendent? Was pregnancy a time of wonder and awe or a kind of temporary disability? Were we supposed to fit our lives around our children or fit our children into our lives? My feelings changed every minute, depending on my mood and on the company I kept. It felt essential, though, to keep asking the question.

Complex operations, in which agencies assume complementary roles and operate in close proximity-often with similar missions but conflicting mandates-accentuate these tensions. The tensions are evident in the processes of analyzing complex environments, planning for complex interventions, and implementing complex operations. Many reports and analyses forecast that these complex operations are precisely those that will demand our attention most in the indefinite future. As essayist Barton and O'Connell note, our intelligence and understanding of the root cause of conflict, multiplicity of motivations and grievances, and disposition of actors is often inadequate. Moreover, the problems that complex operations are intended and implemented to address are convoluted, and often inscrutable. They exhibit many if not all the characteristics of "wicked problems," as enumerated by Rittel and Webber in 1973: they defy definitive formulations; any proposed solution or intervention causes the problem to mutate, so there is no second chance at a solution; every situation is unique; each wicked problem can be considered a symptom of another problem. As a result, policy objectives are often compound and ambiguous. The requirements of stability, for example, in Afghanistan today, may conflict with the requirements for democratic governance. Efforts to establish an equitable social contract may well exacerbate inter-communal tensions that can lead to violence. The rule of law, as we understand it, may displace indigenous conflict management and stabilization systems. The law of unintended consequences may indeed be the only law of the land. The complexity of the challenges we face in the current global environment would suggest the obvious benefit of joint analysis - bringing to bear on any given problem the analytic tools of military, diplomatic and development analysts. Instead, efforts to analyze jointly are most often an afterthought, initiated long after a problem has escalated to a level of urgency that negates much of the utility of deliberate planning.

At the risk of stating the obvious: nobody is going to make America great again. Nobody even seriously imagines it to be a possibility. America might, it is true, eventually stop outsourcing its manufacturing to China, but if those jobs are ever brought back home, they will return in the form of automated labor. Robots and algorithms will not make America great again—unless by “America” you mean billionaires, and by “great” you mean even richer. Its middle class has been gutted, sold off for scrap. Trump is only the most visible symptom of a disease that has long been sickening the country’s blood—a rapidly metastasizing tumor of inequality, hyper-militarism, racism, surveillance, and fear that we might as well go