Pages Block Quotes

I… What are you saying, Zsadist?" she stammered, even though she'd heard every word. He glanced back down at the pencil in his hand and then turned to the table. Flipping the spiral notebook to a new page, he bent way over and labored on top of the paper for quite a while. Then he ripped the sheet free. His hand was shaking as he held it out. "It's messy." Bella took the paper. In a child's uneven block letters there were three words: I LOVE YOU Her lips flattened tight as her eyes stung. The handwriting got wavy and then disappeared.   "Maybe you can't read it," he said in a small voice. "I can do it over."   She shook her head. "I can read it just fine. It's… beautiful." "I don't expect anything back. I mean… I know that you don't… feel that for me anymore. But I wanted you to know. It's important that you knew.

Meggie Folchart: Having writer's block? Maybe I can help. Fenoglio: Oh yes, that's right. You want to be a writer, don't you? Meggie Folchart: You say that as if it's a bad thing. Fenoglio: Oh no, it's just a lonely thing. Sometimes the world you create on the page seems more friendly and alive than the world you actually live in.

Is there anything in the world better than words on the page? Magic signs, the voices of the dead, building blocks to make wonderful worlds better than this one, comforters, companions in loneliness. Keepers of secrets, speakers of the truth...all those glorious words.

When they bombed Hiroshima, the explosion formed a mini-supernova, so every living animal, human or plant that received direct contact with the rays from that sun was instantly turned to ash. And what was left of the city soon followed. The long-lasting damage of nuclear radiation caused an entire city and its population to turn into powder. When I was born, my mom says I looked around the whole hospital room with a stare that said, "This? I've done this before." She says I have old eyes. When my Grandpa Genji died, I was only five years old, but I took my mom by the hand and told her, "Don't worry, he'll come back as a baby." And yet, for someone who's apparently done this already, I still haven't figured anything out yet. My knees still buckle every time I get on a stage. My self-confidence can be measured out in teaspoons mixed into my poetry, and it still always tastes funny in my mouth. But in Hiroshima, some people were wiped clean away, leaving only a wristwatch or a diary page. So no matter that I have inhibitions to fill all my pockets, I keep trying, hoping that one day I'll write a poem I can be proud to let sit in a museum exhibit as the only proof I existed. My parents named me Sarah, which is a biblical name. In the original story God told Sarah she could do something impossible and she laughed, because the first Sarah, she didn't know what to do with impossible. And me? Well, neither do I, but I see the impossible every day. Impossible is trying to connect in this world, trying to hold onto others while things are blowing up around you, knowing that while you're speaking, they aren't just waiting for their turn to talk -- they hear you. They feel exactly what you feel at the same time that you feel it. It's what I strive for every time I open my mouth -- that impossible connection. There's this piece of wall in Hiroshima that was completely burnt black by the radiation. But on the front step, a person who was sitting there blocked the rays from hitting the stone. The only thing left now is a permanent shadow of positive light. After the A bomb, specialists said it would take 75 years for the radiation damaged soil of Hiroshima City to ever grow anything again. But that spring, there were new buds popping up from the earth. When I meet you, in that moment, I'm no longer a part of your future. I start quickly becoming part of your past. But in that instant, I get to share your present. And you, you get to share mine. And that is the greatest present of all. So if you tell me I can do the impossible, I'll probably laugh at you. I don't know if I can change the world yet, because I don't know that much about it -- and I don't know that much about reincarnation either, but if you make me laugh hard enough, sometimes I forget what century I'm in. This isn't my first time here. This isn't my last time here. These aren't the last words I'll share. But just in case, I'm trying my hardest to get it right this time around.

As I pedal down the street ... the city blocks peel away like pages in a book I’m rifling through to find a single, highlighted sentence.

Once upon a time there was a woman who was just like all women. And she married a man who was just like all men. And they had some children who were just like all children. And it rained all day. The woman had to skewer the hole in the kitchen sink, when it was blocked up. The man went to the pub every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The other nights he mended his broken bicycle, did the pool coupons, and longed for money and power. The woman read love stories and longed for things to be different. The children fought and yelled and played and had scabs on their knees. In the end they all died.

One of the strangest things is the act of creation. You are faced with a blank slate—a page, a canvas, a block of stone or wood, a silent musical instrument. You then look inside yourself. You pull and tug and squeeze and fish around for slippery raw shapeless things that swim like fish made of cloud vapor and fill you with living clamor. You latch onto something. And you bring it forth out of your head like Zeus giving birth to Athena. And as it comes out, it takes shape and tangible form. It drips on the canvas, and slides through your pen, it springs forth and resonates into the musical strings, and slips along the edge of the sculptor’s tool onto the surface of the wood or marble. You have given it cohesion. You have brought forth something ordered and beautiful out of nothing. You have glimpsed the divine.

One thing I knew about the novelist’s task: when in doubt, write; when empty, write; when afraid, write. Nothing is more impenetrable than the blank page. The blank page is the void, the absence of sense and feeling, the white light of literary death.

Before Jesse could say another word, the bedroom door jerked open and Lucie’s father stood on the threshold, looking alarmed. “Lucie?” he said. “Did you call out? I thought I heard you.” Lucie tensed, but the expression in her father’s blue eyes didn’t change—mild worry mixed with curious puzzlement. He really couldn’t see Jesse. Jesse looked at her and, very irritatingly, shrugged as if to say, I told you so. “No, Papa,” she said. “Everything is all right.” He looked at the manuscript pages scattered all over the rug. “Spot of writer’s block, Lulu?” Jesse raised an eyebrow. Lulu? he mouthed. Lucie considered whether it was possible to die of humiliation. She did not dare look at Jesse.

You, Doctor Martin, walk from breakfast to madness. Late August, I speed through the antiseptic tunnel where the moving dead still talk of pushing their bones against the thrust of cure. And I am queen of this summer hotel or the laughing bee on a stalk of death. We stand in broken lines and wait while they unlock the doors and count us at the frozen gates of dinner. The shibboleth is spoken and we move to gravy in our smock of smiles. We chew in rows, our plates scratch and whine like chalk in school. There are no knives for cutting your throat. I make moccasins all morning. At first my hands kept empty, unraveled for the lives they used to work. Now I learn to take them back, each angry finger that demands I mend what another will break tomorrow. Of course, I love you; you lean above the plastic sky, god of our block, prince of all the foxes. The breaking crowns are new that Jack wore. Your third eye moves among us and lights the separate boxes where we sleep or cry. What large children we are here. All over I grow most tall in the best ward. Your business is people, you call at the madhouse, an oracular eye in our nest. Out in the hall the intercom pages you. You twist in the pull of the foxy children who fall like floods of life in frost. And we are magic talking to itself, noisy and alone. I am queen of all my sins forgotten. Am I still lost? Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself, counting this row and that row of moccasins waiting on the silent shelf.

One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing—writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.

Don’t you want it?” “Want what?” “The engagement ring.” “Oh, is that what’s in the box? You threw my engagement ring at me?” Boy, this was such a big transgression I would have to write it in block letters on its own page, and show it to our children when they grew up as an example of how not to do something.

The symptoms of a writer who hasn’t found their way clear of the needs of Self yet are easy to spot. I should say the symptoms are easy for everyone else to spot, that is, and not so easy for the writer themself to see. You’ll see a writer who does not trust the characters to speak and move on their own, but has to puppeteer them; a writer who does not trust the reader to understand what’s written. One who must insert parentheticals in various forms to explain the work to the reader; flashbacks to explain; big black blocks of text on the page to explain; question-and-answer dialog between characters who aren’t in a courtroom; walk-and-talk characters with their mouths full of dialog of what the story is about; too many stage directions that make the script read like a novel…

Unfortunately, many people suffer from BPS - Blank Page Syndrome. Let's face it: starting to write is scary. Seeing the cursor blinking at you on that bright white screen, realizing that you now have to come up with three or ten or twenty pages of text all on your own - it's enough to give anyone a major case of writer's block!

Confront the page that taunts you with its whiteness. Face your enemy and fill it with words. You are bigger and stronger than a piece of paper.

I could block myself out, I was a person I didn't know, I'd gaze into what felt like the universe, my eye a planet of its own. I must be somewhere in there, I'd think.

There was once a Minecraft Grass Block named Minecraft Grass Block. Minecraft Grass Block liked doing the things most Minecraft Grass Block children did. Minecraft Grass Block wanted to learn how to be a better Minecraft Grass Block, but how would Minecraft Grass Block become a better Minecraft Grass Block than the other Minecraft Grass Blocks who hoped to become better Minecraft Grass Blocks, or at least better Minecraft Grass Blocks than Minecraft Grass Block was at being a Minecraft Grass Block and hopefully even the best Minecraft Grass Blocks a Minecraft Grass Block could possibly become? Just turn the page, and follow the adventures of Minecraft Grass Block in this Minecraft Grass Block Diary of a 12-year-old Minecraft Grass Block named Minecraft Grass Block, a Minecraft Grass Block boy who hopes to become a true Minecraft Grass Block or at least a better Minecraft Grass Block than the other Minecraft Grass Blocks.

My trip to the former Yugoslavia had opened the world for me, and my hunger for the world. In doing so, it undid the contained, safe borders of my existence. Suddenly a woman weeping over her lost son in an image on the front page of The New York Times was no longer a theoretical entity. She was real, a woman I might have met, might have known. I was connected to her. I could no longer divorce myself from her pain, her suffering. Initially this was overwhelming. I had nightmares. I felt restless and wrong in my comforting life in America. Everything seemed absurd and pointless. I came to understand why we block out the pain and atrocities of others. That pain, if we allow it to enter us, makes our lives impossible. It forces us to examine our own values and reality. It insists that we be responsible for others. It thrusts us into the messy world where there are no easy solutions or reasons, only struggles and questions. It creates great fissures in the landscape of our insulated, so-called safe reality. Fissures that, once split open, can never close again. It compels us to act.

Sometimes ideas flow from my mind in a raging river of stringed sentences; I can scarcely scribble on the page fast enough to keep up with the mental current. Sometimes, however, beavers move in and dam the whole thing up.

The scientist in me worries that my happiness is nothing more than a symptom of bipolar disease, hypergraphia from a postpartum disorder. The rest of me thinks that artificially splitting off the scientist in me from the writer in me is actually a kind of cultural bipolar disorder, one that too many of us have. The scientist asks how I can call my writing vocation and not addiction. I no longer see why I should have to make that distinction. I am addicted to breathing in the same way. I write because when I don’t, it is suffocating. I write because something much larger than myself comes into me that suffuses the page, the world, with meaning. Although I constantly fear that what I am writing teeters at the edge of being false, this force that drives me cannot be anything but real, or nothing will ever be real for me again.

Why not admit that my dissatisfaction reveals an excessive ambition, perhaps a megalomaniac delirium? For the writer who wants to annul himself in order to give voice to what is outside him, two paths open: either write a book that could be the unique book, that exhausts the whole in its pages; or write all books, to pursue the whole through its partial images. The unique book, which contains the whole, could only be the sacred text, the total world revealed. But I do not believe totality can be contained in language; my problem is what remains outside, the unwritten, the unwritable. The only way left me is that writing of all books, writing the books of all possible authors. If I think I must write one book, all the problems of how this book should be and how it should not be block me and keep me from going forward. If, on the contrary, I think that I am writing a whole library, I feel suddenly lightened: I know that whatever I write will be integrated, contradicted, balanced, amplified, buried by the hundreds of volumes that remain for me to write.

There are few experiences as depressing as that anxious barren state known as writer's block, where you sit staring at your blank page like a cadaver, feeling your mind congeal, feeling you talent run down your leg and into your sock.

Each book is a new book. I’ve never written it before and I have to teach myself how to write it as I go along. The fact that I’ve written books in the past seems to play no part in it. I always feel like a beginner and I’m continually running into the same difficulties, the same blocks, the same despairs. You make so many mistakes as a writer, cross out so many bad sentences and ideas, discard so many worthless pages, that finally what you learn is how stupid you are. It’s a humbling occupation.

She looked at the empty page, which remained blank, apart from the small wet dots from her tears, for hours. Her mind was a turmoil of sadness, rage, fear and all those emotions that gave her inspiration. However her heart lacked the will as the empty words enclosed her soul pulling it down towards the frenzied ravenous imps that stalked hells pantry....

Every new self-discovery leads you to more wholeness, opens your heart, makes you humble, and a better person to serve and love others." Page 8

Writing is a competition between the writer and the page. When the page wins, you fail as a writer.

In my younger days dodging the draft, I somehow wound up in the Marine Corps. There's a myth that Marine training turns baby-faced recruits into bloodthirsty killers. Trust me, the Marine Corps is not that efficient. What it does teach, however, is a lot more useful. The Marine Corps teaches you how to be miserable. This is invaluable for an artist. Marines love to be miserable. Marines derive a perverse satisfaction in having colder chow, crappier equipment, and higher casualty rates than any outfit of dogfaces, swab jockeys, or flyboys, all of whom they despise. Why? Because these candy-asses don't know how to be miserable. The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation. The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell." Page 68

By the time these words are read, the centuries-old cedar, hemlock, and balsm of the cutblock known as Leah Block 2 will be a distant memory, long since processed into siding, two-by-fours, perhaps even the paper that has been recycled into the pages of this book.

Doc bought a package of yellow pads and two dozen pencils. He laid them out on his desk, the pencils sharpened to needle points and lined up like yellow soldiers. At the top of a page he printed: OBSERVATIONS AND SPECULATIONS. His pencil point broke. He took up another and drew lace around the O and the B, made a block letter of the S and put fish hooks on each end. His ankle itched. He rolled down his sock and scratched, and that made his ear itch. “Someone’s talking about me,” he said and looked at the yellow pad. He wondered whether he had fed the cotton rats. It is easy to forget when you’re thinking.

Gemma hadn’t noticed me until my shadow blocked the light. I lowered my finger and the ladybug flew down onto the page. “What’s his name?” She looked up and smiled suddenly. Gemma would get the craziest crushes on characters and would talk to me about them for days. I didn’t mind so long as they weren’t real.

I have never experienced writers block and I've written every day since June 1972. But I have experienced the need to get up and walk around, eat ice cream, let ideas percolate, forget the story for a time, and then return to the page. Even the muse needs a vacation to rest up before she gives more of herself.

Style is not how you write. It is how you do not write like anyone else. * * * How do you know if you're a writer? Write something everyday for two weeks, then stop, if you can. If you can't, you're a writer. And no one, no matter how hard they may try, will ever be able to stop you from following your writing dreams. * * * You can find your writer's voice by simply listening to that little Muse inside that says in a low, soft whisper, "Listen to this... * * * Enter the writing process with a childlike sense of wonder and discovery. Let it surprise you. * * * Poems for children help them celebrate the joy and wonder of their world. Humorous poems tickle the funny bone of their imaginations. * * * There are many fine poets writing for children today. The greatest reward for each of us is in knowing that our efforts might stir the minds and hearts of young readers with a vision and wonder of the world and themselves that may be new to them or reveal something already familiar in new and enlightening ways. * * * The path to inspiration starts Beyond the trails we’ve known; Each writer’s block is not a rock, But just a stepping stone. * * * When you write for children, don't write for children. Write from the child in you. * * * Poems look at the world from the inside out. * * * The act of writing brings with it a sense of discovery, of discovering on the page something you didn't know you knew until you wrote it. * * * The answer to the artist Comes quicker than a blink Though initial inspiration Is not what you might think. The Muse is full of magic, Though her vision’s sometimes dim; The artist does not choose the work, It is the work that chooses him. * * * Poem-Making 101. Poetry shows. Prose tells. Choose precise, concrete words. Remove prose from your poems. Use images that evoke the senses. Avoid the abstract, the verbose, the overstated. Trust the poem to take you where it wants to go. Follow it closely, recording its path with imagery. * * * What's a Poem? A whisper, a shout, thoughts turned inside out. A laugh, a sigh, an echo passing by. A rhythm, a rhyme, a moment caught in time. A moon, a star, a glimpse of who you are. * * * A poem is a little path That leads you through the trees. It takes you to the cliffs and shores, To anywhere you please. Follow it and trust your way With mind and heart as one, And when the journey’s over, You’ll find you’ve just begun. * * * A poem is a spider web Spun with words of wonder, Woven lace held in place By whispers made of thunder. * * * A poem is a busy bee Buzzing in your head. His hive is full of hidden thoughts Waiting to be said. His honey comes from your ideas That he makes into rhyme. He flies around looking for What goes on in your mind. When it is time to let him out To make some poetry, He gathers up your secret thoughts And then he sets them free.

Handwritten in neat block letters on a page torn from a novel by Nikolay Gogol, it read: S.O.S. I NEED YOUR HELP. I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HERE I AM ALL ALONE, THIS IS NO JOKE. IN THE NAME OF GOD, PLEASE REMAIN TO SAVE ME. I AM OUT COLLECTING BERRIES CLOSE BY AND SHALL RETURN THIS EVENING. THANK YOU, CHRIS MCCANDLESS. AUGUST?

There are eight worlds, the first one said. They lie side by side, in degrees of perfection. This world is the most perfect one. Below these lines, written in a different ink, was: There is one single world, divided into three levels which are partitioned off from each other by greased membranes. Then in red ink: There are two worlds and they overlap. The first is the land of Day, which belongs to the humans. The second is the land of Twilight, which belongs to the free folk, and of which the woods is a little backwater part. Both lands must obey Time, but the Twilight is ruled by the Heart, whereas the Day is ruled by Thought. At the bottom of the page, large block letters proclaimed: ALL OF THIS IS TRUE.

It’s important to put aside your internal editor and just get words down on the page when working on a first draft.

I knew all too well the damage of scarlet ink smeared across page-after-page offering neither encouragement nor any compliments at all.

Begin your new story on a blank page, and like lonely footprints along a snowy path, the rest will follow...

I can arrange words on a page but I can't seem to organize books on a shelf. Over the years, My Secret has shelved thousands and thousands, held each one in his hands. He thinks they might have seeped into him, through his skin, as much as the books he's read. At night and on his days off we spend hours talking about writing. He reads three or four books at a time. When he's not working at the bookstore he goes to other bookstores around the city and browses until closing time. Holding more volumes in his hands, filling himself up with words.

I like blank paper. To meet people I find interesting. Writing puts me into a world that has not been written yet. I spend much of my time contemplating love and death. When I am writing a surge of complete happiness takes over. To make readers hear the sound of their own heartbeats, that sound that whispers up to us: you are alive. When I manage to turn pages and pages of crap into a little bit of art, I feel like that girl in the Diamonds Are Forever ad. Writing gives me permission to be a child and to play with words the way that children play with blocks or twigs or mud. Writing makes me a god, each new page enabling me to create and destroy as many worlds as I please. It allows me to spy on my neighbors. It’s the only socially acceptable way to be a compulsive liar. I want to cleanse the past. To discover, to express, to celebrate, to acknowledge, to witness, to remember who I am. I find out what might have been, what should have happened, and what I fear will happen. It’s a means of asking questions, though the answers may be as puzzling as a rune. This question drives me crazy. There is nothing else I want to do more. My soul will not be still until the words are written on paper. Because I can. Because I must. I can’t not. If I don’t I will explode. I want to be good at something and I’ve tried everything else.

The missing remained missing and the portraits couldn't change that. But when Akhmed slid the finished portrait across the desk and the family saw the shape of that beloved nose, the air would flee the room, replaced by the miracle of recognition as mother, father, sister, brother, aunt, and cousin found in that nose the son, brother, nephew, and cousin that had been, would have been, could have been, and they might race after the possibility like cartoon characters dashing off a cliff, held by the certainty of the road until they looked down -- and plummeted is the word used by the youngest brother who, at the age of sixteen, is tired of being the youngest and hopes his older brother will return for many reasons, not least so he will marry and have a child and the youngest brother will no longer be youngest; that youngest brother, the one who has nothing to say about the nose because he remembers his older brother's nose and doesn't need the nose to mean what his parents need it to mean, is the one who six months later would be disappeared in the back of a truck, as his older brother was, who would know the Landfill through his blindfold and gag by the rich scent of clay, as his older brother had known, whose fingers would be wound with the electrical wires that had welded to his older brother's bones, who would stand above a mass grave his brother had dug and would fall in it as his older brother had, though taking six more minutes and four more bullets to die, would be buried an arm's length of dirt above his brother and whose bones would find over time those of his older brother, and so, at that indeterminate point in the future, answer his mother's prayer that her boys find each other, wherever they go; that younger brother would have a smile on his face and the silliest thought in his skull a minute before the first bullet would break it, thinking of how that day six months earlier, when they all went to have his older brother's portrait made, he should have had his made, too, because now his parents would have to make another trip, and he hoped they would, hoped they would because even if he knew his older brother's nose, he hadn't been prepared to see it, and seeing that nose, there, on the page, the density of loss it engendered, the unbelievable ache of loving and not having surrounded him, strong enough to toss him, as his brother had, into the summer lake, but there was nothing but air, and he'd believed that plummet was as close as they would ever come again, and with the first gunshot one brother fell within arms' reach of the other, and with the fifth shot the blindfold dissolved and the light it blocked became forever, and on the kitchen wall of his parents' house his portrait hangs within arm's reach of his older brother's, and his mother spends whole afternoons staring at them, praying that they find each other, wherever they go.

Our legacy is really the lives we touch, the inspiration we give, altering someone's plan---if even for a moment---and getting them to think, rage, cry, laugh, argue...Walk around the block, dazed...More than anything, we are remembered for our smiles; the ones we share with our closest and dearest, and the ones we bestow on a total stranger, who needed it RIGHT THEN, and God put you there to deliver. ---Carrie Louise Hamilton, dedication page

Hemingway once said that ‘there is nothing to writing, you just sit down at a typewriter and bleed.’ What Hemingway failed to mention is that bleeding is the easy part. To cut is what makes writing hard. Sitting down to write and hitting that first key or touching the tip of your pen to that blank sheet of paper - that’s the hard part. Once you start - once you spill that first bit of ink and let it bleed into the page, the rest takes care of itself. There’s nothing to it. You just sit there and bleed until it stops. It is not for this reason, but it’s still interesting and worth mentioning that the word ‘write’ comes from the Proto-Germanic word ‘writan,’ which literally meant to scratch, tear, or cut.

Your average genre novel is like a high speed car chase ending in a massive crash, with death, destruction, and balls of flame, from which the main characters (usually) emerge mostly unscathed. Everything builds up to the crash, and it’s the anticipation that keeps us turning pages. Anthony Trollope, by contrast, is like a pleasant Sunday afternoon drive through the countryside in an open carriage behind a pair of matched horses. There’s conflict, sure; a herd of sheep blocks the road, two countrymen come to blows outside the pub, the cows in this field are looking daggers at the cows in that field. But the point of the drive is the drive itself, not the destination, because of course you’re just going to end up at home anyway.

13 September. Again barely two pages. At first I thought my sorrow over the Austrian defeats and my anxiety for the future (anxiety that appears ridiculous to me at bottom, and base too) would prevent me from doing any writing. But that wasn’t it, it was only an apathy that forever comes back and forever has to be put down again. There is time enough for sorrow when I am not writing. The thoughts provoked in me by the war resemble my old worries over F. in the tormenting way in which they devour me from every direction. I can’t endure worry, and perhaps have been created expressly in order to die of it. When I shall have grown weak enough –it won’t take very long –the most trifling worry will perhaps suffice to rout me. In this prospect I can also see a possibility of postponing the disaster as long as possible.

At several points in the writing, I will realize I have embarked on an impossible task. I will have fewer than a hundred pages, always fewer than a hundred, and they are all bad. I will be seized with paralyzing existential dread that I will never finish this book. Who I was an hour ago no longer exists. This is not writer’s block. This is chaos with no way out. The metaphoric connections have been cut. The wonders are gone. The worst has happened. I am no longer a writer. And then, after another five minutes of self-flagellation, I start writing again.

And so I make my way across the room steadily, carefully. Hands shaking, I pull the string, lifting my blinds. They rise slowly, drawing more moonlight into the room with every inch And there he is, crouched low on the roof. Same leather jacket. The hair is his, the cheekbones, the perfect nose . . . the eyes: dark and mysterious . . . full of secrets. . . . My heart flutters, body light. I reach out to touch him, thinking he might disappear, my fingers disrupted by the windowpane. On the other side, Parker lifts his hand and mouths: “Hi.” I mouth “Hi” back. He holds up a single finger, signalling me to hold on. He picks up a spiral-bound notebook and flips open the cover, turning the first page to me. I recognize his neat, block print instantly: bold, black Sharpie. I know this is unexpected . . . , I read. He flips the page. . . . and strange . . . I lift an eyebrow. . . . but please hear read me out. He flips to the next page. I know I told you I never lied . . . . . . but that was (obviously) the biggest lie of all. The truth is: I’m a liar. I lied. I lied to myself . . . . . . and to you. Parker watches as I read. Our eyes meet, and he flips the page. But only because I had to. I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with you, Jaden . . . . . . but it happened anyway. I clear my throat, and swallow hard, but it’s squeezed shut again, tight. And it gets worse. Not only am I a liar . . . I’m selfish. Selfish enough to want it all. And I know if I don’t have you . . . I hold my breath, waiting. . . . I don’t have anything. He turns another page, and I read: I’m not Parker . . . . . . and I’m not going to give up . . . . . . until I can prove to you . . . . . . that you are the only thing that matters. He flips to the next page. So keep sending me away . . . . . . but I’ll just keep coming back to you. Again . . . He flips to the next page. . . . and again . . . And the next: . . . and again. Goose bumps rise to the surface of my skin. I shiver, hugging myself tightly. And if you can ever find it in your (heart) to forgive me . . . There’s a big, black “heart” symbol where the word should be. I will do everything it takes to make it up to you. He closes the notebook and tosses it beside him. It lands on the roof with a dull thwack. Then, lifting his index finger, he draws an X across his chest. Cross my heart. I stifle the happy laugh welling inside, hiding the smile as I reach for the metal latch to unlock my window. I slowly, carefully, raise the sash. A burst of fresh honeysuckles saturates the balmy, midnight air, sickeningly sweet, filling the room. I close my eyes, breathing it in, as a thousand sleepless nights melt, slipping away. I gather the lavender satin of my dress in my hand, climb through the open window, and stand tall on the roof, feeling the height, the warmth of the shingles beneath my bare feet, facing Parker. He touches the length of the scar on my forehead with his cool finger, tucks my hair behind my ear, traces the edge of my face with the back of his hand. My eyes close. “You know you’re beautiful? Even when you cry?” He smiles, holding my face in his hands, smearing the tears away with his thumbs. I breathe in, lungs shuddering. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, black eyes sincere. I swallow. “I know why you had to.” “Doesn’t make it right.” “Doesn’t matter anymore,” I say, shaking my head. The moon hangs suspended in the sky, stars twinkling overhead, as he leans down and kisses me softly, lips meeting mine, familiar—lips I imagined, dreamed about, memorized a mil ion hours ago. Then he wraps his arms around me, pulling me into him, quelling every doubt and fear and uncertainty in this one, perfect moment.

Thanks to the Internet, there is even a new variety of continuously updated on-line memoir sometimes called the blog (from Web-log). Thousands of authors simply write their diaries directly onto Web pages for the rest of the world to read. Why do people want to recount their lives? What

all good things beyond sleep come precisely because we defy gravity while we live. Besides, somewhere in the basement of The Jolly Corner to this day, mildewing amidst the pages of an equally mildewed paperback, is a 3-x-5 card on which I had scribbled this quote from Flaubert: Books aren’t made the way babies are: they are made like pyramids. There’s some long-pondered plan, and then great blocks of stone are placed one on top of the other, and it’s back-breaking, sweaty, time-consuming work. And all to no purpose! It just stands there on the desert! But it towers over it prodigiously. Jackals piss at the base of it, and the bourgeois clamber to the top of it, etc. Continue this comparison. I was eight when I jotted down that quote, but even then, the part I enjoyed the most was the delightful “Continue this comparison.” And even then, I understood at once that the pissing jackals were critics.

Go to Zillicks down the block. It has three booths at the back. Go in the middle one and wait. When you lamp me turning the pages of the directory outside, shove your money in the return-coin slot and walk out. Take it easy. Don't let the druggist see you. Your stuff'll be there when you go back for it. If you're even a dime short don't show up, it won't do ya no good. Twelve o'clock tonight.' 'Twelve o'clock;' Fisher agreed. They separated. How many a seemingly casual street-corner conversation like that on the city's streets has just such an unguessed, sinister topic. Murder, theft, revenge, narcotics. While the crowd goes by around it unaware. ("I'm Dangerous Tonight")

In order to understand how engineers endeavor to insure against such structural, mechanical, and systems failures, and thereby also to understand how mistakes can be made and accidents with far-reaching consequences can occur, it is necessary to understand, at least partly, the nature of engineering design. It is the process of design, in which diverse parts of the 'given-world' of the scientist and the 'made-world' of the engineer are reformed and assembled into something the likes of which Nature had not dreamed, that divorces engineering from science and marries it to art. While the practice of engineering may involve as much technical experience as the poet brings to the blank page, the painter to the empty canvas, or the composer to the silent keyboard, the understanding and appreciation of the process and products of engineering are no less accessible than a poem, a painting, or a piece of music. Indeed, just as we all have experienced the rudiments of artistic creativity in the childhood masterpieces our parents were so proud of, so we have all experienced the essence of structual engineering in our learning to balance first our bodies and later our blocks in ever more ambitious positions. We have learned to endure the most boring of cocktail parties without the social accident of either our bodies or our glasses succumbing to the force of gravity, having long ago learned to crawl, sit up, and toddle among our tottering towers of blocks. If we could remember those early efforts of ours to raise ourselves up among the towers of legs of our parents and their friends, then we can begin to appreciate the task and the achievements of engineers, whether they be called builders in Babylon or scientists in Los Alamos. For all of their efforts are to one end: to make something stand that has not stood before, to reassemble Nature into something new, and above all to obviate failure in the effort.

But a quill on paper was different from a stick on the bottom of a stream or a fingertip on my forearm. Its scratch was like the dry sparking of a flint and a page with fresh marks on it like a blazing porcupine. A tale written down must be like that, I thought. It must be like the block of wood of the body sprouting tiny tongues of fire and who knows where the next one will rise and burn.

When I'm not writing, I'm thinking about writing. Filling pages and people with inspiration. When my thoughts don't want to rest on a page, we argue. We argue that one merely is ready just too comfortable playing in The Nile [denial] river. So we compromise. We grow, water metaphors and plant simile trees of golden-almond manifested love dreams. Then at that moment, we forgot what we were arguing about. Beauty can do that for you. That's the beauty of writing.

once we wanted to make a cookie with a really concentrated flavor. So, we threw cookies into the dehydrator, and turned them into powder. This created a new building block for flavor. [Instead of the flour you would normally use in your dough,] you weigh the powdered cookies out as your starch in your normal cookie recipe. But this starch is now a carrier of flavor for the end product—so the resulting cookie now tastes more like it “should” than it would have just using regular flour.

Even at that early date, the basic building blocks of web search had been already set in stone. Search was a four-step process. First came a sweeping scan of all the world’s web pages, via a spider. Second was indexing the information drawn from the spider’s crawl and storing the data on racks of computers known as servers. The third step, triggered by a user’s request, identified the pages that seemed best suited to answer that query. That result was known as search quality. The final step involved formatting and delivering the results to the user.

But other things have gotten clearer, and each time I’ve sat down with the pad it feels like I’m honing something, I’m paring something down, I’m that car commercial where the guy stands in front of a block of clay and carves out a new design. And it was the idea of talking to you, that the flames would engulf these pages and the words would roll into the smoke and float through the veil and you would be there for it, that helped me figure out a way to get this all out. Down on paper. Thank you. I love you. I’m sorry. Thank you. I love you. I’m sorry. For the things that still need to be written out.

I recall a frosty sunny morning in March when I was sitting in the interrogator's office. He was asking his customary crude questions and writing down my answers, distorting my words as he did so. The sun played in the melting latticework of frost on the wide window... In the gaps where the frost had melted, the rooftops of Moscow could be seen, rooftop after rooftop, and above them merry little puffs of smoke. But I was staring not in that direction but at a mound of piled-up manuscripts which had been dumped there a little while before and had not yet been examined. In notebooks, in file folders, in homemade binders, in tied and untied bundles, and simply in loose pages. The manuscripts lay there like the burial mound of some interred human spirit, its conical top rearing higher than the interrogator's desk, almost blocking me from his view. And brotherly pity ached in me for the labor of that unknown person who had been arrested the previous night, these spoils from the search of his premises having been dumped that very morning on the parquet floor of the torture chamber... I sat there and I wondered: Whose extraordinary life had they brought in for torment, for dismemberment, and then for burning? Oh, how many idea and works had perished in that building - a whole lost culture? Oh, soot, soot, from the Lubyanka chimneys! And the most hurtful thing of all was that our descendants would consider our generation more stupid, less gifted, less vocal than in actual fact it was.

Who built the seven gates of Thebes? The books are filled with names of kings. Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone? And Babylon, so many times destroyed. Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima’s houses, That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it? In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song. Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend The night the seas rushed in, The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves. Young Alexander conquered India. He alone? Caesar beat the Gauls. Was there not even a cook in his army? Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears? Frederick the Great triumphed in the Seven Years War. Who triumphed with him? Each page a victory At whose expense the victory ball? Every ten years a great man, Who paid the piper? So many particulars. So many questions.

I read a lot, but what I liked was almost always written by men, not women. It seemed to me that the voice of men came from the pages, and that voice preoccupied me, I tried in every way to imitate it. Even when I was around thirteen — just to hold on to a clear memory — and had the impression that my writing was good, I felt that someone was telling me what should be written and how. At times he was male but invisible. I didn't even know if he was my age or grown up, perhaps old. More generally, I have to confess, I imagined becoming male yet at the same time remaining female. This impression, luckily, disappeared almost completely with the end of adolescence. I say "almost" because, even if the male voice had departed, there was a residual stumbling block: the impression that my woman's brain held me back, limited me, like a congenital slowness. Not only was writing difficult in itself but I was a girl and so would never be able to write books like those of the great writers. The quality of the writing in those books, their power, fired me with ambitions, dictated intentions that seemed far beyond my possibilities.

Quickly she shredded the cabbage on the chopping block and tossed it along with the onion and tomatoes in a blue Pyrex bowl. Then she slid the lamb chops, encrusted with fresh rosemary, into the oven. While the lamb baked, she brushed her hair in the washroom and pinned it back again. Then she zipped on a silk floral dress she'd purchased in Bristol and retrieved her grandmother's rhinestone necklace, one of the few family heirlooms her mother packed for her, to clasp around her neck. At the foot of the bed was the antique trunk she'd brought from her childhood home in Balham more than a decade ago. Opening the trunk, she removed her wedding album along with her treasured copy of 'The Secret Garden' and the tubes of watercolors her father had sent with her and her brother. Her father hoped she would spend time painting on the coast, but Maggie hadn't inherited his talent or passion for art. Sometimes she wondered if Edmund would have become an artist. Carefully she took out her newest treasures- pieces of crystal she and Walter hd received as wedding presents, protected by pages and pages of her husband's newspaper. She unwrapped the crystal and two silver candlesticks, then set them on the white-cloaked dining table. She arranged the candlesticks alongside a small silver bowl filled with mint jelly and a basket with sliced whole-meal bread from the bakery. After placing white, tapered candles into the candlesticks, she lit them and stepped back to admire her handiwork. Satisfied, she blew them out. Once she heard Walter at the door, she'd quickly relight the candles. When the timer chimed, she removed the lamb chops and turned off the oven, placing the pan on her stovetop and covering it with foil. She'd learned a lot about housekeeping in the past decade, and now she was determined to learn how to be the best wife to Walter. And a doting mother to their children. If only she could avoid the whispers from her aunt's friends.

Sometimes you don’t just want to risk making mistakes; you actually want to make them—if only to give you something clear and detailed to fix. Making mistakes is the key to making progress. Of course there are times when it is really important not to make any mistakes—ask any surgeon or airline pilot. But it is less widely appreciated that there are also times when making mistakes is the only way to go. Many of the students who arrive at very competitive universities pride themselves in not making mistakes—after all, that’s how they’ve come so much farther than their classmates, or so they have been led to believe. I often find that I have to encourage them to cultivate the habit of making mistakes, the best learning opportunities of all. They get “writer’s block” and waste hours forlornly wandering back and forth on the starting line. “Blurt it out!” I urge them. Then they have something on the page to work with. We philosophers are mistake specialists. (I know, it sounds like a bad joke, but hear me out.) While other disciplines specialize in getting the right answers to their defining questions, we philosophers specialize in all the ways there are of getting things so mixed up, so deeply wrong, that nobody is even sure what the right questions are, let alone the answers. Asking the wrongs questions risks setting any inquiry off on the wrong foot. Whenever that happens, this is a job for philosophers! Philosophy—in every field of inquiry—is what you have to do until you figure out what questions you should have been asking in the first place. Some people hate it when that happens. They would rather take their questions off the rack, all nicely tailored and pressed and cleaned and ready to answer. Those who feel that way can do physics or mathematics or history or biology. There’s plenty of work for everybody. We philosophers have a taste for working on the questions that need to be straightened out before they can be answered. It’s not for everyone. But try it, you might like it. In

The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. Oh, what a pleasure that was! Mollie Katzen's handwritten and illustrated recipes that recalled some glorious time in upstate New York when a girl with an appetite could work at a funky vegetarian restaurant and jot down some tasty favorites between shifts. That one had the Pumpkin Tureen soup that Margo had made so many times when she first got the book. She loved the cheesy onion soup served from a pumpkin with a hot dash of horseradish and rye croutons. And the Cardamom Coffee Cake, full of butter, real vanilla, and rich brown sugar, said to be a favorite at the restaurant, where Margo loved to imagine the patrons picking up extras to take back to their green, grassy, shady farmhouses dotted along winding country roads. Linda's Kitchen by Linda McCartney, Paul's first wife, the vegetarian cookbook that had initially spurred her yearlong attempt at vegetarianism (with cheese and eggs, thank you very much) right after college. Margo used to have to drag Calvin into such phases and had finally lured him in by saying that surely anything Paul would eat was good enough for them. Because of Linda's Kitchen, Margo had dived into the world of textured vegetable protein instead of meat, and tons of soups, including a very good watercress, which she never would have tried without Linda's inspiration. It had also inspired her to get a gorgeous, long marble-topped island for prep work. Sometimes she only cooked for the aesthetic pleasure of the gleaming marble topped with rustic pottery containing bright fresh veggies, chopped to perfection. Then Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells caught her eye, and she took it down. Some pages were stuck together from previous cooking nights, but the one she turned to, the most splattered of all, was the one for Onion Soup au Gratin, the recipe that had taught her the importance of cheese quality. No mozzarella or broken string cheeses with- maybe- a little lacy Swiss thrown on. And definitely none of the "fat-free" cheese that she'd tried in order to give Calvin a rich dish without the cholesterol. No, for this to be great, you needed a good, aged, nutty Gruyère from what you couldn't help but imagine as the green grassy Alps of Switzerland, where the cows grazed lazily under a cheerful children's-book blue sky with puffy white clouds. Good Gruyère was blocked into rind-covered rounds and aged in caves before being shipped fresh to the USA with a whisper of fairy-tale clouds still lingering over it. There was a cheese shop downtown that sold the best she'd ever had. She'd tried it one afternoon when she was avoiding returning home. A spunky girl in a visor and an apron had perked up as she walked by the counter, saying, "Cheese can change your life!" The charm of her youthful innocence would have been enough to be cheered by, but the sample she handed out really did it. The taste was beyond delicious. It was good alone, but it cried out for ham or turkey or a rich beefy broth with deep caramelized onions for soup.

Page 141: Group Polarization Patterns Political anger and demands for privileges are, of course, not limited to the less privileged. Indeed, even when demands are made in the name of less privileged racial or ethnic groups, often it is the more privileged members of such groups who make the demands and who benefit from policies designed to meet such demands. These demands may erupt suddenly in the wake of the creation (or sharp enlargement) of a newly educated class which sees its path to coveted middle-class professions blocked by competition of other groups--as in India, French Canada, or Lithuania, for example. * * * A rapid expansion of education is thus a factor in producing inter-group conflict, especially where the education is of a kind which produces diplomas rather than skills that have significant economic value in the marketplace. Education of a sort useful only for being a clerk, bureaucrat, school teacher--jobs whose numbers are relatively fixed in the short run and politically determined in the long run--tend to increase politicized inter-group strife. Yet newly emerging groups, whether in their own countries or abroad, tend to specialize precisely in such undemanding fields. Malay students, for example, have tended to specialize in Malay studies and Islamic studies, which provide them with no skills with which compete with the Chinese in the marketplace, either as businessmen, independent professionals, or technicians. Blacks and Hispanics in the United States follow a very similar pattern of specializing disproportionately in easier fields which offer less in the way of marketable skills. Such groups then have little choice but to turn to the government, not just for jobs but also for group preferences to be imposed in the market place, and for symbolic recognition in various forms. *** While economic interests are sometimes significant in explaining political decisions, they are by no means universally valid explanations. Educated elites from less advanced groups may have ample economic incentives to promote polarization and preferential treatment policies, but the real question is why the uneducated masses from such groups give them the political support without which they would be impotent. Indeed, it is often the less educated masses who unleash the mob violence from which their elite compatriots ultimately benefit--as in Malaysia, Sri Lanka, or parts of India, Africa, or the United States, where such violence has led to group preference policies in employment, educational institutions, and elsewhere. The common denominator in these highly disparate societies seems to be not only resentment of other groups' success but also fear of an inability to compete with them, combined with a painful embarrassment at being so visibly "under-represented"--or missing entirely—in prestigious occupations and institutions. To remedy this within apolitically relevant time horizon requires not simply increased opportunities but earmarked benefits directly given on a racial or ethnic basis.

We don’t need to reach the end of the road to learn that we were on the wrong road." Page 7.

Retired missionaries taught us Arts & Crafts each July at Bible Camp: how to glue the kidney, navy, and pinto bean into mosaics, and how to tool the stenciled butterfly on copper sheets they'd cut for us. At night, after hymns, they'd cut the lights and show us slides: wide-spread trees, studded with corsage; saved women tucking T-shirts into wrap-around batiks; a thatched church whitewashed in the equator's light. Above the hum of the projector I could hear the insects flick their heads against the wind screens, aiming for the brightness of that Africa. If Jesus knocks on your heart, be ready to say, "Send me, O Lord, send me," a teacher told us confidentially, doling out her baggies of dried corn. I bent my head, concentrating hard on my tweezers as I glued each colored kernel into a rooster for Mother's kitchen wall. But Jesus noticed me and started to knock. Already saved, I looked for signs to show me what else He would require. At rest hour, I closed my eyes and flipped my Bible open, slid my finger, ouija-like, down the page, and there was His command: Go and do ye likewise— Let the earth and all it contains hear— Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire—. Thursday night, at revival service, I held out through Trust and Obey, Standing on the Promises, Nothing But the Blood, but crumpled on Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling, promising God, cross my heart, I'd witness to Rhodesia. Down the makeshift aisle I walked with the other weeping girls and stood before the little bit of congregation left singing in their metal chairs. The bathhouse that night was silent, young Baptists moving from shower to sink with the stricken look of nuns. Inside a stall, I stripped, slipped my clothes outside the curtain, and turned for the faucet— but there, splayed on the shower's wall, was a luna moth, the eye of its wings fixed on me. It shimmered against the cement block: sherbet-green, plumed, a flamboyant verse lodged in a page of drab ink. I waved my hands to scare it out, but, blinkless, it stayed latched on. It let me move so close my breath stroked the fur on its animal back. One by one the showers cranked dry. The bathhouse door slammed a final time. I pulled my clothes back over my sweat, drew the curtain shut, and walked into a dark pricked by the lightening bugs' inscrutable morse.

Cut or copy the selected text: On the popup menu, tap Cut to copy and remove the text, or tap Copy to simply copy the text. The copied text will go into the Clipboard. Paste and insert text: Tap the position in the text where you want to paste the contents of the Clipboard. A marker will appear below the text field, and you can drag this marker to adjust the position of the blinking cursor if necessary. Next, tap the marker and then tap Paste on the menu that appears. The text from the Clipboard will be inserted at the position of the cursor. Paste and replace text: First select the block of text you want to replace, as explained above. Then, tap Paste on the popup menu. The contents of the Clipboard will replace the selected text. Delete a block of text: Select the text you want to delete, as explained above. Then press the Backspace key (). Note that the Clipboard works across all built-in Kindle Fire software as well as installed apps. So for example, if you copied a web address (a URL) from a web page, you could later paste it into the Search/Address field in the browser, eliminating the need to manually type the web address, a slow and error-prone process. (The browser

Content” is anything from blog posts and web pages to ebooks and reports…and

It seemed like a hybrid of Spinal Tap, the British The Office, and something entirely original. Scenes would be blocked and rehearsed almost like a play, with entire scenes performed top to bottom many times. Two or three cameras would find the action and just follow the actors as they moved around. Actors often didn’t know when they were on camera or where the cameras were. “Spy shots” lent a sense of intimacy to moments. Actors were allowed to look into the camera to show their reactions to things and spoke directly to the camera with “talking heads,” used to further the story or display another side of what a character was feeling.15, 16 Camera operators were very close or very far away but a dynamic part of the action. We would shoot eight or nine pages in a twelve-hour day, which is about double what one shoots on a feature film.

J. Edgerton/ The Spirit of Christmas Page 17 Continued JONAS AND JAMES (SINGING) “O come all ye faithful. Joyful and triumphant. O come ye, o come ye to Bethlehem. Come and behold him. Born the king of angels. O come let us adore him. O come let us adore him. O come let us adore him. Christ the lord.” “Sing, choirs of angels, Sing in exultations. Sing, all ye citizens of heavn above; Glory to god, Glory in the highest. O come let us adore him. O come let us adore him. O come let us adore him, Christ the lord!” An occasional passer-by dropped a coin into the cup held by the littlest Nicholas. Thorn tipped his hat to them, trying to keep his greedy looks to a minimum. “Sing loudly my little scalawags. We’ve only a few blocks to go of skullduggery. Then you’ll have hot potato soup before a warm fire.” The Nicholas boys sang louder as they shivered from the falling snow and the wind that seemed to cut right through their shabby clothes, to their very souls. A wicked smile spread over the face of the villainous Mr. Thorn, as he heard the clink of a coin topple into the cup. “That’s it little alley muffins, shiver more it’s good for business.” His evil chuckle automatically followed and he had to stifle it. They trudged on, a few coins added to the coffer from smiling patrons. J. Edgerton/ The Spirit of Christmas Page 18 Mr. Angel continued to follow them unobserved, darting into a doorway as Mr. Thorn glanced slyly behind him, like a common criminal but there was nothing common about him. They paused before the Gotham Orphanage that rose up with its cold stone presence and its’ weathered sign. Thorn’s deep voice echoed as ominous as the sight before them, “Gotham Orphanage, home sweet home! A shelter for wayward boys and girls and a nest to us all!” He slyly drew a coin from his pocket, and twirled it through his fingers. Weather faced Thorn then bit down on the rusty coin, to make sure that it was real. He then deposited all of the coin into the inner pocket of his coat, with an evil chuckle. IV. “GOTHAM ORPHANAGE” “Now never you mind about the goings on of my business. You just mind your own. Now off with ya. Get into the hall to prepare for dinner, such as it is,” Thorn’s words echoed behind them. “And not a word to anyone of my business or you’ll see the back of me hand.” He pushed the boy toward the dingy stone building that was their torment and their shelter. The tall Toymaker glanced after them and then trod cautiously towards Gotham Orphanage. Jonas and James paced along the cracked stone pathway and up the front steps of the main entryway, that towered in cold stone before them. Thorn ushered the boys through the weathered front door to Gotham’s Orphanage. Mr. Angel paced after them and paused, unobserved, near the entrance. As they trudged across the worn hard wood floors of Gotham Orphanage, gala Irish music was heard coming from the main hall of building. Thorn herded the boys into the main hall of the orphanage that was filled with every size and make of both orphan boys and girls seated quietly at tables, eating their dinner. Then he turned with an evil look and hurriedly headed down the long hallway with the money they’ve earned. Jonas and James paced hungrily through the main hall, before a long table with a large, black kettle on top of it and loaves of different types of bread. They both glanced back at a small makeshift stage where orphans in shabby clothes sat stone faced with instruments, playing an Irish Christmas Ballad. Occasionally a sour note was heard. At a far table sat Men and Women of the Community who had come to have dinner and support the orphanage. In front of them was a small, black kettle with a sign that said “Donations”.

Guideline #2: Keep the résumé as brief as possible. Today, given the myriad of voices vying for attention and the scores of résumés that are crossing the desks of hiring authorities, shorter is better. A solid one-or two-page résumé is the norm, but not without exception. If you have a strategic reason to write a résumé longer than one or two pages, by all means do so. But be careful not to conduct the interview in the résumé or ask the reader to labor through pages and pages of “stuff.” Be precise and on message, and keep your résumé as brief as possible.

Guideline #7: Be professionally innovative and different. Yes, you can use pictures, graphics, and graphs on your résumé. Yes, you can use color, shading, and boxes so messages JUMP OFF THE PAGE! Yes, you can include short references or testimonials within the résumé itself. That being said, you must know your audience and play to their emotions and expectations. Some forums still require a more traditional presentation. Be as bold and innovative as you can without coming across as gimmicky or amateurish. Be confidently courageous and professionally astute.

Here are eight tips for writing effective cover letters.   Address the cover letter to a specific person, ensuring the correct name, title, company, and address. This shows respect for the person you are sending the résumé to. “To Whom It May Concern” salutations should be used only if you can’t determine the name of the hiring person or the company (for instance, when responding to a blind ad). If you were referred by someone, be sure this is included in the first sentence of the cover letter: “Jennifer Wells suggested I contact you in regard to an accounts receivable position you have open …” It’s an attention grabber. If asked to include salary history or requirements, you must address this or risk being disqualified. Provide a healthy range, such as “Over the past five years I have earned between $35,000 and $48,000. However, I am open to any reasonable offer consistent with my ability to produce results and meet your performance expectations.” If asked for salary requirements, use the same strategy: “I am aware that the salary range for a loss prevention manager in the Houston area averages between $75,000 and $110,000. Given my experience and, most importantly, my ability to make significant contributions to your company, I would hope to be on the upper end of this scale.” If you are sending the résumé out electronically, the cover letter can be inserted as the e-mail itself; just attach your résumé. If you prefer that your cover letter is the first page of the attachment, that’s fine. But the general guideline is not to attach multiple files. Make it easy on the hiring manager and send only one attachment or file to open (unless you have a good reason to do otherwise). Do not rehash what is on the résumé. This is disrespectful of the reader’s time. If you have done a good job with your résumé, you want the cover letter to quickly entice the hiring manager to read your résumé. Cover letters should not be preachy. Sales managers know that sales are the heartbeat of any company; you don’t have to lecture them on this. Nurse supervisors know the importance of compassionate patient care; you don’t have to tell them what they already know. Keep the letter short and concise. The cover letter is not the place to preach or teach. It’s the place to invite recipients to read your résumé! Finally, the four most important words on the cover letter are “I respect your time.” The following cover letter is a sample template to use in these challenging and troubled times. Notice the first four words of the second paragraph.

When you review the sample résumés on the following pages, you’ll notice that the three messages, the Ultimate Results, Core Strengths, and Value-Added messages, make up most of the showcase. Remember that your résumé must answer three questions in 15 to 20 seconds: 1) What position(s) are you seeking or what are you qualified to do that would be of value to our company or organization? 2) What results and contributions make you better than other qualified candidates? and 3) What skills, qualifications, and assets do you bring to the job that would lead us to believe you can produce the results you say you can produce? Your showcase is designed to answer those three questions in that time frame.

his argument might have involved a threat of excommunication and quite possibly her being unfriended and permanently blocked from the Vatican’s Facebook page.

I didn’t write it to try to teach anything. My goal was just to figure out for myself what worked and why it worked. That’s what the writing’s about—not the magazine articles so much, but the books. Figuring stuff out.” “Taking other people there too.” “Maybe, hopefully, that happens in the process if I write it right. Which I suppose is why the books sell. And that just shows that there must be a lot of us in the same boat. Maybe most of us.” “So.” Gina hesitated, then figured what the hell. She wanted to know. “What about writer’s block? Do you ever get that?” “No. I don’t.” “Never?” Now Stuart broke one of his first true smiles. “I’m talking to a writer, aren’t I?” Gina lifted her shoulders, let them down. “Halfway through a bad legal thriller. Wondering how you get all the way to the end.” “Just keep going.” “Ha.” “Well, it’s what I do. I suppose I get times where the ideas don’t exactly flow, but the best definition of writer’s block I ever heard was that it was a failure of nerve. It’s not something outside of you, trying to stop you. It’s your own fear that you won’t say it right, or get it right, or won’t be smart or clever enough. But once you acknowledge it’s just fear, you decide you’re not going to let it beat you, and you keep pushing on. Kind of like climbing Whitney. Except that if it’s never any fun, then maybe it’s something inside trying to tell you that you probably don’t want to be a writer. You’re not having fun with your book?” “Not too much. Some. At the beginning. Then I got all hung up on whether anyone would want to read it and if they’d care about my characters and I started writing for them, those imaginary, in-the-future readers, whoever they might be.” “Well, yeah, but that’s not why you write. You write to see where you’re gonna go. At least I do. And in your case, nobody’s paying you for your stuff yet, are they?” “No. Hardly.” “Well, then just do it for yourself and have some fun with it. Or start another story that you like better. Or take up cooking instead. Or get up to the mountains more. But if you want to write, write. A page a day, and in a year you’ve got a book. And anybody who can’t write a page a day…well, there’s a clue that maybe you’re not a writer.” “A page a day…” “Cake,” Stuart said.

Down the street and around the block was a spot called Mean Bean. It advertised gourmet coffee drinks and pay-to-play WiFi, plus printing services at a quarter a page. A quarter a page? Jesus. For that kind of money I could buy my own printer and throw it away when I was finished.

Henny started to check things over—cables, speedometer, tire pressure, mirror adjustment—and then he sprayed the chain with WD40. He always does this, even if he’s going two blocks to the grocery. “Almost ready,” he said, when I thought he was all done. “I’m going to fill the water bottle and throw a bag of dried fruit into the seat pack.” Then he made one more trip for a bandage, just in case. When we finally got going, it was the hottest part of the day. I didn’t want to know how hot it was, but I knew Henny was going to tell me. “Did you check the thermometer?” he called up to me at the first intersection. “A hundred and five in the shade. It’s hot enough to uncurl your hair. We’ll die of heat exhaustion out here on the high-way. Can’t we go in something air-conditioned?” Henny never does anything without a few complaints. He has terrible things to say about trumpet lessons but he likes to play the trumpet. And then there are book reports. Henny reads the long, nonfiction books, the Yellow Pages, everything. Just don’t ask him to write up a report, because he will complain about it forever, and then turn in thirty pages.

You’ll be pleased to learn that these fancy cork jackets really do a remarkable job of keeping a person afloat,” she heard spill out of her mouth after a full minute had passed. Everett, annoyingly enough, kept reading, but then his head snapped up and he narrowed his eyes on her. “I do beg your pardon, Millie, I was completely engrossed in my book, but . . . what did you just say? Something about keeping a person afloat?” “I said these jackets are remarkably effective.” She twirled around to show off the jacket she was wearing. Everett shot out of the chair before she could finish her twirling. “Where are the children?” he demanded as he rushed for the door, scowling down at her when she, seemingly unable to help herself, moved to block his way. “They’re languishing, which means lingering, in the ocean, having a most marvelous time of it, I might add.” Everett actually picked her up and set her aside right before he froze. “Elizabeth was right, Miss Longfellow. You really are a lunatic.” “And you, Mr. Mulberry, are rapidly turning out to be a rather unlikeable sort,” Millie shot back. “Do you honestly believe if the children had gone overboard that I’d waste time seeking out your assistance instead of jumping into the ocean after them?” “You don’t know how to swim.” “Which is why I’m wearing this jacket, and which is also why, because you know I can’t swim, you should have stayed topside with the children instead of burying yourself in here with what appears to be some type of novel.” She peered over at the desk, but couldn’t make out what he was reading. “Did you forget the children’s fascination with walking the plank?” “They were considering walking a plank?” “Don’t be silly,” Millie said with a sniff. “After what happened the last time they tried that game, I do think their interest in that has dimmed simultaneously.” Everett’s brows drew together. “Simultaneously?” Fumbling with the cork jacket, Millie stuck her hand in a pocket and retrieved her dictionary. Flipping through the pages, she glanced over different words. “Ah, here we go. I think significantly might have been what I meant to say.” She lifted her head and refused to sigh when she realized Everett was now scowling her way. “Why would you bring up the whole plank business when you knew the children had abandoned their interest in it?” he asked. “You annoyed me.” “The amount of money I’m currently paying you to nanny the children should hold any and all annoyance you may think you feel for me at bay.” “Even if you paid me twice what you are, I’d still get annoyed with you on a frequent basis.” “I’m

I'm not sure why, but I decided to check out 'Diary of a Minecraft Grass Block'. There was an introduction, and it read: There was once a Minecraft Grass Block named Minecraft Grass Block. Minecraft Grass Block liked doing the things most Minecraft Grass Block children did. Minecraft Grass Block wanted to learn how to be a better Minecraft Grass Block, but how would Minecraft Grass Block become a better Minecraft Grass Block than the other Minecraft Grass Blocks who hoped to become better Minecraft Grass Blocks, or at least better Minecraft Grass Blocks than Minecraft Grass Block was at being a Minecraft Grass Block and hopefully even the best Minecraft Grass Blocks a Minecraft Grass Block could possibly become? Just turn the page, and follow the adventures of Minecraft Grass Block in this Minecraft Grass Block Diary of a 12-year-old Minecraft Grass Block named Minecraft Grass Block, a Minecraft Grass Block boy who hopes to become a true Minecraft Grass Block or at least a better Minecraft Grass Block than the other Minecraft Grass Blocks. Wow. I had no trouble sleeping afterward.

If your schedule is disrupted, you should, at the next available moment, take a few minutes to create a revised schedule for the time that remains in the day. You can turn to a new page. You can erase and redraw blocks. Or do as I do: Cross out the blocks for the remainder of the day and create new blocks to the right of the old ones on the page (I draw my blocks skinny so I have room for several revisions).

the chain-of-custody document to the back of the search warrant application and was ready to go. “I’m out of here,” she announced. “You ever want to get together after work, I’m here, Amy. At least until the late show starts.” “Thanks,” Dodd said, seeming to pick up on Ballard’s worry. “I might take you up on that.” Ballard took the elevator down and then crossed the front plaza toward her car. She checked the windshield and saw no ticket. She decided to double down on her luck and leave the car there. The courthouse was only a block away on Temple; if she was fast and Judge Thornton had not convened court, she could be back to the car in less than a half hour. She quickened her pace. Judge Billy Thornton was a well-regarded mainstay in the local criminal justice system. He had served both as a public defender and as a deputy district attorney in his early years, before being elected to the bench and holding the position in Department 107 of the Los Angeles Superior Court for more than a quarter century. He had a folksy manner in the courtroom that concealed a sharp legal mind—one reason the presiding judge assigned wiretap search warrants to him. His full name was Clarence William Thornton but he preferred Billy, and his bailiff called it out every time he entered the courtroom: “The Honorable Billy Thornton presiding.” Thanks to the inordinately long wait for an elevator in the fifty-year-old courthouse, Ballard did not get to Department 107 until ten minutes before ten a.m., and she saw that court was about to convene. A man in blue county jail scrubs was at the defense table with his suited attorney sitting next to him. A prosecutor Ballard recognized but could not remember by name was at the other table. They appeared ready to go and the only party missing was the judge on the bench. Ballard pulled back her jacket so the badge on her belt could be seen by the courtroom deputy and went through the gate. She moved around the attorney tables and went to the clerk’s station to the right of the judge’s bench. A man with a fraying shirt collar looked up at her. The nameplate on his desk said ADAM TRAINOR. “Hi,” Ballard whispered, feigning breathlessness so Trainor would think she had run up the nine flights of steps and take pity. “Is there any chance I can get in to see the judge about a wiretap warrant before he starts court?” “Oh, boy, we’re just waiting on the last juror to get here before starting,” Trainor said. “You might have to come back at the lunch break.” “Can you please just ask him? The warrant’s only seven pages and most of it’s boilerplate stuff he’s read a million times. It won’t take him long.” “Let me see. What’s your name and department?” “Renée Ballard, LAPD. I’m working a cold case homicide. And there is a time element on this.” Trainor picked up his phone, punched a button, and swiveled on his chair so his back was to Ballard and she would have difficulty hearing the phone call. It didn’t matter because it was over in twenty seconds and Ballard expected the answer was no as Trainor swiveled toward her. But she was wrong. “You can go back,” Trainor said. “He’s in his chambers. He’s got about ten minutes. The missing juror just called from the garage.” “Not with those elevators,” Ballard said. Trainor opened a half door in the cubicle that allowed Ballard access to the rear door of the courtroom. She walked through a file room and then into a hallway. She had been in judicial chambers on other cases before and knew that this hallway led to a line of offices assigned to the criminal-court judges. She didn’t know whether to go right or left until she heard a voice say, “Back here.” It was to the left. She found an open door and saw Judge Billy Thornton standing next to a desk, pulling on his black robe for court. “Come in,” he said. Ballard entered. His chambers were just like the others she had been

we think of “cutting steel” as a media expense. Cutting steel is what you do when you build a mold to create a custom product—you buy a big block of steel and then cut it into a mold in the shape you want. It’s an expensive process with little room for error; it’s why many companies choose generic or stock bottles instead of investing in custom ones. But when we compared the cost of cutting steel to the cost of marketing, the ROI suddenly started looking much better. For us, it costs an average of $150,000 to create a new unique bottle design, which looks expensive compared to selecting a stock bottle with no tooling cost. But if we saved that $150K and invested it in marketing instead, what would it buy us? Not much. Not even one quarter-page ad in a national magazine. Yet the unique bottle design can generate millions in free press and social media attention! Not to mention the marketing power it will retain, capturing retailers’ attention, landing better shelf space, and inspiring impulse purchases from new customers. Our belief was that if we created a product that exceeded expectations, people would talk about it and drive word-of-mouth. Because Method could never win the advertising battle by shouting louder, we needed the product to shout for us.

The world she lives in is not mine. Life is faster for her; time runs slower. Her eyes can follow the wingbeats of a bee as easily as ours follow the wingbeats of a bird. What is she seeing? I wonder, and my brain does backflips trying to imagine it, because I can’t. I have three different receptor-sensitivities in my eyes: red, green and blue. Hawks, like other birds, have four. This hawk can see colours I cannot, right into the ultraviolet spectrum. She can see polarised light, too, watch thermals of warm air rise, roil, and spill into clouds, and trace, too, the magnetic lines of force that stretch across the earth. The light falling into her deep black pupils is registered with such frightening precision that she can see with fierce clarity things I can’t possibly resolve from the generalised blur. The claws on the toes of the house martins overhead. The veins on the wings of the white butterfly hunting its wavering course over the mustards at the end of the garden. I’m standing there, my sorry human eyes overwhelmed by light and detail, while the hawk watches everything with the greedy intensity of a child filling in a colouring book, scribbling joyously, blocking in colour, making the pages its own. And all I can think is, I want to go back inside.

There was once a Minecraft Grass Block named Minecraft Grass Block. Minecraft Grass Block liked doing the things most Minecraft Grass Block children did. Minecraft Grass Block wanted to learn how to be a better Minecraft Grass Block, but how would Minecraft Grass Block become a better Minecraft Grass Block than the other Minecraft Grass Blocks who hoped to become better Minecraft Grass Blocks, or at least better Minecraft Grass Blocks than Minecraft Grass Block was at being a Minecraft Grass Block and hopefully even the best Minecraft Grass Blocks a Minecraft Grass Block could possibly become? Just turn the page, and follow the adventures of Minecraft Grass Block in this Minecraft Grass Block Diary of a 12-year-old Minecraft Grass Block named Minecraft Grass Block, a Minecraft Grass Block boy who hopes to become a true Minecraft Grass Block or at least a better Minecraft Grass Block than the other Minecraft Grass Blocks. Wow. I had no trouble sleeping afterward.

We find ourselves in the wake of a global pandemic. COVID-19 has opened my eyes to many things; the least of which is how many more people are now walking around the block for exercise, mental health, and, at least some kind of, social interaction. But the pandemic has magnified, and helped me see more clearly, other ideas found on these pages: That we’re all in this together – locally, nationally, and globally. That lots of people doing little things – social distancing, wearing masks, taking care of one another – can bend the curve of history in a positive direction.

Just turn the page, and follow the adventures of Minecraft Grass Block in this Minecraft Grass Block Diary of a 12-year-old Minecraft Grass Block named Minecraft Grass Block, a Minecraft Grass Block boy who hopes to become a true Minecraft Grass Block or at least a better Minecraft Grass Block than the other Minecraft Grass Blocks.

It’s the block universe question,” Mathieu answered. “Does space-time exist as a single unchangeable block? Every event, for eternity, existing all at once. For years, physicists thought they had the answer. The passage of time, along with our free will to affect change, is just an illusion. We’re on page eighty-seven of a novel, and nothing we do will change the ending.

Option 2: Begin at the End It’s sometimes a very fun way to open a book that you show the reader the last scene, the last page, and let them figure out how we all end up there.

As he looked at the woman in her characteristic attitude, her thick arms reaching up for the line, her powerful marelike buttocks protruded, it struck him for the first time that she was beautiful. It had never before occurred to him that the body of a woman of fifty, blown up to monstrous dimensions by childbearing, then hardened, roughened by work till it was coarse in the grain like an overriped turnip, could be beautiful. But it was so, and after all, he thought, why not? The solid, contourless body, like a block of granite, and the rasping red skin, bore the same relation to the body of a girl as the rose-hip to the rose. Why should the fruit be held inferior to the flower?

As I write this, I’m sitting in a café in Paris overlooking the Luxembourg Garden, just off of Rue Saint-Jacques. Rue Saint-Jacques is likely the oldest road in Paris, and it has a rich literary history. Victor Hugo lived a few blocks from where I’m sitting. Gertrude Stein drank coffee and F. Scott Fitzgerald socialized within a stone’s throw. Hemingway wandered up and down the sidewalks, his books percolating in his mind, wine no doubt percolating in his blood. I came to France to take a break from everything. No social media, no email, no social commitments, no set plans . . . except one project. The month had been set aside to review all of the lessons I’d learned from nearly 200 world-class performers I’d interviewed on The Tim Ferriss Show, which recently passed 100,000,000 downloads. The guests included chess prodigies, movie stars, four-star generals, pro athletes, and hedge fund managers. It was a motley crew. More than a handful of them had since become collaborators in business and creative projects, spanning from investments to indie film. As a result, I’d absorbed a lot of their wisdom outside of our recordings, whether over workouts, wine-infused jam sessions, text message exchanges, dinners, or late-night phone calls. In every case, I’d gotten to know them well beyond the superficial headlines in the media. My life had already improved in every area as a result of the lessons I could remember. But that was the tip of the iceberg. The majority of the gems were still lodged in thousands of pages of transcripts and hand-scribbled notes. More than anything, I longed for the chance to distill everything into a playbook. So, I’d set aside an entire month for review (and, if I’m being honest, pain au chocolat), to put together the ultimate CliffsNotes for myself. It would be the notebook to end all notebooks. Something that could help me in minutes but be read for a lifetime.

He rose and held out a hand to her, and Jenny hoped it wasn’t the whisky inspiring Elijah’s overture. She gave him her hand and was tugged into an embrace, Elijah’s cheek resting against her hair. “While you sketch your cat, visit the sick with your mother, and seethe with frustrated artistic talent. Let’s hear a curse, Genevieve. Let the drink, the lateness of hour, and the company inspire you, hmm?” No cat came between them, no stays, no layers of proper attire. Held against Elijah’s body, Jenny felt the implacable structure of a large, fit man. His person was as soft and giving as a sculptor’s block of raw marble, but much, much warmer. “The only curse I know is damn—double damn.” “That’s a start, like a few lines on a page. Damn has promise, but it needs embellishment. Bloody double damn?” He spoke near her ear, his breath tickling her neck. “Bloody is vulgar and graphic. Also quite naughty, and daring.” “All the better. Come, let’s be vulgar and graphic on the subject of my sketches for the day.” He

Laura's mind was already racing with the creative possibilities presented to her. She whipped out her sketchbook and started to work away with a stump of charcoal, trying to capture the sweep of the hills and the patterns made by the blocks of light and dark. She half closed her eyes, the better to appreciate the variations in tone and depth. She was astonished to find just how brash and vivid and wonderfully discordant colors in nature could be. At this time of year there was no sense that things were attempting to blend or mingle or go unseen. Every tree, bush, and flower seemed to be shouting out its presence, each one louder than the next. On the lower slopes the leaves of the aged oak trees sang out, gleaming in the heat. On every hill bracken screamed in solid swathes of viridian. At Laura's feet the plum purple and dark green leaves of the whinberry bushes competed for attention with their own indigo berries. The kitsch mauve of the heather laughed at all notions of subtlety. She turned to a fresh page and began to make quick notes, ideas for a future palette and thoughts about compositions. She jotted down plans for color mixes and drew the voluptuous curve of the hills and the soft shape of the whinberry leaves.

Alignment The single change having the biggest impact in the preceding before-and-after example was the shift from center-aligned to left-justified text. In the original version, each block of text on the page is center-aligned. This does not create clean lines either on the left or on the right, which can make even a thoughtful layout appear sloppy. I tend to avoid center-aligned text for this reason.

Now that the scaffolding had been removed from the Bolivar County courthouse, Brewer could see where five giant slabs of limestone formed gleaming steps that sprawled nearly the entire front facade of the building. Recently renovated in polished granite and sandstone, Rosedale’s courthouse was untouched by the grit of the town that was designed around it. At right angles to the limestone stairs were twin cement blocks. Each served as the base for a shining white column, which supported an ornate cornice that circled the roof. Carrying five recently typed pages,

Personally, I type the left-hand side of my calendar on Microsoft Outlook, then print out the pages and write the right-hand side in longhand. That way I can easily revise my goals throughout the day using a pen, instead of tapping on my BlackBerry’s keyboard. Other people manage their calendar exclusively on their computer or smartphone, through Outlook or products such as Google Calendar. It doesn’t matter—do whichever works best for you. The Left-Hand Side: Meetings, Phone Calls, and Other Assignments Take a look at my schedule for the day. Note that I have not filled up every hour—there are several blocks of “free time” in my schedule.

His 1831 wood-block series, “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji,” is the world’s most famous work of ukiyo-e, and one of these prints in particular, The Great Wave of Kanagawa, is one of the most famous works of Japanese art.

What the nether is this?” Alex’s eyes grew wide at the foreign design blueprint on one of the papers. “I’ve never seen something like this before.” ​On one of the pages, there was a blueprint for some black square structure that we couldn’t make out entirely. I recalled the words I’d heard that night at Peter’s house about needing obsidian to build something.

It’s strange to read the insides of a villager. All sorts of gibberish in here – professions of love for emeralds, for example. But, I did come across a sentence that might interest you.” Timothy paused and turned back a few pages. “Here it is: I think Aisha is cute.

I read a post on Palestinian Refugee ResearchNet’s blog claiming that Facebook was blocking the term “Palestinian” from being used in page titles. The post included a screenshot of an attempt to create a page called “Palestinian Refugee ResearchNet,” with a warning splashed across the top that read: “Our automated system will not allow the name ‘Palestinian Refugee ResearchNet.’ It may violate our Pages Guidelines or contain a word or phrase that is blocked to prevent the creation of unofficial or otherwise prohibited Pages. If you believe this is an error, please contact our Customer Support team.” The blogger, Rex Brynen, tested several similar titles, replacing “Palestinian” with “Israeli” and “Afghan.” Both worked, so he wrote to the support team.

Lauren Slater depicts such a state a year after starting Prozac: It’s been almost a year now since I’ve composed a short story or a poem, I who always thought of myself as a writer, all tortured and intense. I can just manage this journal. So maybe I’m not a writer anymore. Maybe Prozac has made me into a nun, or a nurse, or worse, a Calgon Lady. Why can’t I manage a simple story? Why is my voice—all my voices—so lost to me? Every morning, before work, I come to the blank page and look at it. It looks like winter. It is February in my mind. I think of the things people have said about the blank page, all the images. Sheet of snow. Anesthetized skin. To those images I add my own: the white of Prozac powder, spread thin.

Your charge through this stage of writing is just to think less and feel more. Do not worry, do not edit, do not plan ahead. Never use writer’s block as an excuse. The only way to do it is to do it. When you’re stuck, the only way through it is through it. Just keep going. Put words on the page, worry about them later. Stop overthinking it and write.