Pal Do Pal Quotes

And they'd [the Death Eaters] love to have me," said Harry sarcastically. "We'd be best pals if they didn't keep trying to do me in.

The Death Eaters can't all be pure-blood, there aren't enough pure-blood wizards left," said Hermione stubbornly. "I expect most of them are half-bloods pretending to be pure. It's only Muggle-borns they hate, they'd be quite happy to let you and Ron join up" "There is no way they'd let me be a Death Eater!" said Ron indignantly...."My whole family are blood traitors! That's as bad as Muggle-borns to Death Eaters!" "And they'd love to have me," said Harry sarcastically. "We'd be best pals if they didn't keep trying to do me in.

Do you think the penis ever gets tired?" Whose? Anybody's. I mean anybody with one. Does the penis ever just think: for God's sake pal, give it a rest? Or is it all: Woo-who!! Here we go again!

This story is not and never was meant to challenge anyone's faith; however, if one's faith can be shaken by stories in a humorous novel, one may have a bit more praying to do.

Joshua's ministry was three years of preaching, sometimes three times a day, and although there were some high and low points, I could never remember the sermons word for word, but here's the gist of almost every sermon I ever heard Joshua give. You should be nice to people, even creeps. And if you: a) believed that Joshua was the Son of God (and) b) he had come to save you from sin (and) c) acknowledged the Holy Spirit within you (became as a little child, he would say) (and) d) didn't blaspheme the Holy Ghost (see c) then you would: e) live forever f) someplace nice g) probably heavan However, if you: h) sinned (and/or) i) were a hypocrite (and/or) j) valued things over people (and) k) didn't do a, b, c, and d, then you were: l) fucked

I've tried to get the angel to watch MTV so I can learn the vocabulary of your music, but even with the gift of tongues, I'm having trouble learning to speak hip-hop. Why is it that one can busta rhyme or busta move anywhere but you must busta cap in someone's ass? Is "ho" always feminine, and "muthafucka" always masculine, while "bitch" can be either? How many peeps in a posse, how much booty before baby got back, do you have to be all that to get all up in that, and do I need to be dope and phat to be da bomb or can I just be "stupid"? I'll not be singing over any dead mothers until I understand.

I've got to think that that was unethical," Joshua said. "Josh, faking demonic possession is like a mustard seed." "How is it like a mustard seed?" "You don't know, do you? Doesn't seem at all like a mustard seed, does it? Now you see how we all feel when you liken things unto a mustard seed? Huh?

I once spoke to someone who had survived the genocide in Rwanda, and she said to me that there was now nobody left on the face of the earth, either friend or relative, who knew who she was. No one who remembered her girlhood and her early mischief and family lore; no sibling or boon companion who could tease her about that first romance; no lover or pal with whom to reminisce. All her birthdays, exam results, illnesses, friendships, kinships—gone. She went on living, but with a tabula rasa as her diary and calendar and notebook. I think of this every time I hear of the callow ambition to 'make a new start' or to be 'born again': Do those who talk this way truly wish for the slate to be wiped? Genocide means not just mass killing, to the level of extermination, but mass obliteration to the verge of extinction. You wish to have one more reflection on what it is to have been made the object of a 'clean' sweep? Try Vladimir Nabokov's microcosmic miniature story 'Signs and Symbols,' which is about angst and misery in general but also succeeds in placing it in what might be termed a starkly individual perspective. The album of the distraught family contains a faded study of Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths—until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about.

You see," I explained to Joshua, "what Joy is doing is ironic, yet that's not her intent. That's the difference between irony and sarcasm. Irony can be spontaneous, while sarcasm requires volition. You have to create sarcasm." "No kidding?" said Josh. "Why do I waste my time with you?

Being alone is not the most awful thing in the world. You visit your museums and cultivate your interests and remind yourself how lucky you are not to be one of those spindly Sudanese children with flies beading their mouths. You make out To Do lists - reorganise linen cupboard, learn two sonnets. You dole out little treats to yourself - slices of ice-cream cake, concerts at Wigmore Hall. And then, every once in a while, you wake up and gaze out of the window at another bloody daybreak, and think, I cannot do this anymore. I cannot pull myself together again and spend the next fifteen hours of wakefulness fending off the fact of my own misery. People like Sheba think that they know what it's like to be lonely. They cast their minds back to the time they broke up with a boyfriend in 1975 and endured a whole month before meeting someone new. Or the week they spent in a Bavarian steel town when they were fifteen years old, visiting their greasy-haired German pen pal and discovering that her hand-writing was the best thing about her. But about the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. They don't know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the laundrette. Or to sit in a darkened flat on Halloween night, because you can't bear to expose your bleak evening to a crowd of jeering trick-or-treaters. Or to have the librarian smile pityingly and say, ‘Goodness, you're a quick reader!’ when you bring back seven books, read from cover to cover, a week after taking them out. They don't know what it is to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor's hand on your shoulder sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin. I have sat on park benches and trains and schoolroom chairs, feeling the great store of unused, objectless love sitting in my belly like a stone until I was sure I would cry out and fall, flailing, to the ground. About all of this, Sheba and her like have no clue.

OK, now let’s have some fun. Let’s talk about sex. Let’s talk about women. Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything. What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them. Why are so many people getting divorced today? It’s because most of us don’t have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to. A few Americans, but very few, still have extended families. The Navahos. The Kennedys. But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it’s a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it’s a man. When a couple has an argument, they may think it’s about money or power or sex, or how to raise the kids, or whatever. What they’re really saying to each other, though, without realizing it, is this: “You are not enough people!” I met a man in Nigeria one time, an Ibo who has six hundred relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, the best possible news in any extended family. They were going to take it to meet all its relatives, Ibos of all ages and sizes and shapes. It would even meet other babies, cousins not much older than it was. Everybody who was big enough and steady enough was going to get to hold it, cuddle it, gurgle to it, and say how pretty it was, or handsome. Wouldn't you have loved to be that baby?

The Encyclopedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun to Be With. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing devision of the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes,

Confucius is like the Torah, rules to follow. And Lao-Tzu is even more conservative, saying that if you do nothing you won't break any rules. You have to let tradition fall sometime, you have to take action, you have to eat bacon.

You don’t like romantic shit,” Luke remarks and frowns at me. “I don’t like watching you lay the romantic shit on my best friend, pal. It’s disgusting. This,” I gesture around the room with my hands, “is not a movie. But I do like watching Zac Efron, Channing Tatum, and a number of other hot actors lay on the romantic shit in a movie. I have a vagina.” “I’m aware,” Luke remarks earning a glare from Nate. “Although, not first-hand,” he quickly adds.

So hey, once Joshua heals your brother, you want to go do something, get some pomegranate juice, a falafel,or get married or something?

Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it’s written.) Now I surely will not plague you With such words as plaque and ague. But be careful how you speak: Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; Cloven, oven, how and low, Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe. Hear me say, devoid of trickery, Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, Exiles, similes, and reviles; Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Solar, mica, war and far; One, anemone, Balmoral, Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, Melpomene, mankind. Billet does not rhyme with ballet, Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Viscous, viscount, load and broad, Toward, to forward, to reward. And your pronunciation’s OK When you correctly say croquet, Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live. Ivy, privy, famous; clamour And enamour rhyme with hammer. River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Doll and roll and some and home. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour. Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age. Query does not rhyme with very, Nor does fury sound like bury. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath. Though the differences seem little, We say actual but victual. Refer does not rhyme with deafer. Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Mint, pint, senate and sedate; Dull, bull, and George ate late. Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, Science, conscience, scientific. Liberty, library, heave and heaven, Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven. We say hallowed, but allowed, People, leopard, towed, but vowed. Mark the differences, moreover, Between mover, cover, clover; Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, Chalice, but police and lice; Camel, constable, unstable, Principle, disciple, label. Petal, panel, and canal, Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, Senator, spectator, mayor. Tour, but our and succour, four. Gas, alas, and Arkansas. Sea, idea, Korea, area, Psalm, Maria, but malaria. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean. Doctrine, turpentine, marine. Compare alien with Italian, Dandelion and battalion. Sally with ally, yea, ye, Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key. Say aver, but ever, fever, Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver. Heron, granary, canary. Crevice and device and aerie. Face, but preface, not efface. Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. Large, but target, gin, give, verging, Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. Ear, but earn and wear and tear Do not rhyme with here but ere. Seven is right, but so is even, Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen, Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work. Pronunciation (think of Psyche!) Is a paling stout and spikey? Won’t it make you lose your wits, Writing groats and saying grits? It’s a dark abyss or tunnel: Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale, Islington and Isle of Wight, Housewife, verdict and indict. Finally, which rhymes with enough, Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? Hiccough has the sound of cup. My advice is to give up!!!

For it is written that "if the wise man appears always stupid, his failures do not disappoint, and his success gives pleasant surprise.

If you come to a river and find a boat at the edge, you will use that boat and it will serve you well, but once across the river, do you put the boat on your shoulders and carry it with you on the rest of your journey?

Kayla, be careful with me.” Surprised by that, I ask, “What do you mean?” “I know you think I’m strong. But the problem with strong things is that they’re brittle. They can’t bend under stress. They just break.

Nodding, Parker ate. “He’s an exceptional kisser.” “He really is. He . . . How do you know?” When Parker just smiled, Emma’s jaw dropped. “You? You and Jack? When? How?” “I think it’s disgusting,” Mac muttered. “Yet another best pal moving on my imaginary ex.” “Two kisses, my first year at Yale, after we ran into each other at a party and he walked me back to the dorm. It was nice. Very nice. But as exceptional a kisser as he is, it was too much like kissing my brother. And as exceptional a kisser as I am, I believe he felt it was too much like kissing his sister. And that’s how we left it. I gather that wasn’t an issue for you and Jack.

Somewhere behind me, Zia yelled, "Hippo!" Which I thought was a little late. She stumbled toward me over the rocking deck, the tip of her staff on fire. Our ghostly pal Setne floated behind her, grinning with delight. "There is it!" Setne shook his diamond pink rings. "Told ya Apophis would send a monster to kill you." "You're so smart!" I shouted. "Now, how do we stop it?

Does the work get easier once you know what you are doing?" "Your lungs grow thick with stone dust and your eyes bleary from the sun and fragments thrown up by the chisel. You pour your lifeblood out into works of stone for Romans who will take your money in taxes to feed soldiers who will nail your people to crosses for wanting to be free. Your back breaks, your bones creak, your wife screeches at you, and your children torment you with open begging mouths, like greedy baby birds in the nest. You go to bed every night so tired and beaten that you pray to the Lord to send the angel of death to take you in your sleep so you don't have to face another morning. It also has its downside.

You cannot believe what you do not believe, Rumi siad. I am an Untouchable because my karma dictates it.

Faith isn't an act of intelligence, it's an act of imagination. Every time you give them a new metaphor, a mustard seed, a field, a garden, a vineyard, it's like pointing something out to a cat - the cat looks at your finger, not at what you're pointing at. They don't need to understand it, they only need to believe, and they do. They imagine the kingdom as they need it to be, they don't need to grasp it, it's there already, they can let it be. Imagination, not intellect.

Being a childless woman of childbearing age, I am a walking target for people’s concerned analysis. No one looks at a single man with a Labrador retriever and says, “Will you look at the way he throws the tennis ball to that dog? Now there’s a guy who wants to have a son.” A dog, after all, is man’s best friend, a comrade, a pal. But give a dog to a woman and people will say she is sublimating. If she says that she, in fact, doesn’t want children, they will nod understandingly and say, “You just wait.” For the record, I do not speak to my dog in baby talk, nor when calling her do I say, “Come to Mama.

Thanks pal, but I tend to avoid any substance that makes me feel smarter, stronger, or better looking than I know I actually am." There were, in his opinion, drugs that diminished ego and drugs that engorged ego, which is to say, revelatory drugs and delusory drugs, and on a psychic level, at least, he favored awe over swagger. Should he ever aspire to become voluntarily delusional, then good old-fashioned alcohol would do the job effectively and inexpensively, thank you, and without the dubious bonus of jaw-clenching jitters.

Young men are all very well in their place, but it doesn’t do to drag them into everything, does it? Diana and I are thinking seriously of promising each other that we will never marry but be nice old maids and live together forever

you can do all sorts of stuff that full-grown wizards can't, Viktor always said --" Ron looked around at her so fast he appeared to crick his neck; rubbing it, he said, "Yeah? What did Vicky say?" "Ho ho," said Hermione in a bored voice. "He said Harry knew how to do stuff even he didn't, and he was in the final year at Durmstrang." Ron was looking at Hermione suspiciously. "You're not still in contact with him are you?" "So what if I am?" said Hermione coolly, though her face was a little pink. "I can have a pen pal if I --" "He didn't only want to be your pen pal," said Ron accusingly. Hermione shook her head exasperatedly and ignored Ron, who was continuing to watch her.

He hated weapons, and not just because they'd so often been aimed at him. You got into more trouble if you had a weapon. People shot you instantly if they thought you were going to shoot them. But if you were unarmed, they often stopped to talk. Admittedly, they tended to say things like, "You'll never guess what we're going to do to you, pal," but that took time. And Rincewind could do a lot with a few more seconds. He could use them to live longer in.

Joshua grinned: “I think we’ll both do better than my cousin John and his ‘hold them underwater until they agree with you’ sermon.

I liked my own company. I wanted pals, but I grew to like my own company. There was me, and there was all yous. I liked that feeling. I still do.

So, tell me, Love,” Dad asked as I stared at my new friend with beady eyes. “What kind of person do you want to be in life? A butterfly?” He paused. “Or a caterpillar?

A reaper emerges from the crowd with glossy, black wings, and Akila takes off her headset and runs dizzily over. She puts her arms around me and says, I am so happy right now. I do my best to be cool about this contact, but it has never happened before, and I pat her awkwardly on the shoulder, terrified that a too-enthusiastic reciprocation will alert her to her error, like the way a white person might raise a jungle cat from birth and be pals for a time until the cat turns five and realizes it is, in fact, a carnivore. If I’m honest, all my relationships have been like this, parsing the intent of the jaws that lock around my head. Like, is he kidding, or is he hungry? In other words, all of it, even the love, is a violence.

It's not so bad." Melancholia looked at her. "You're lying." "I'll get used to it. So will you." "I... I don't think I'll be able to." "I'll be there to help when you need it." "But I hate you." Valkyrie smiled. "No you don't." "No, I do. I want to kill you and stuff." "We actually became friends in those caves." "That's not what happened, " said Melancholia. "We're pals. We're buddies.” "If my wrists weren't in shackles, my hands would be round your throat." "You want to hug my throat because we're friends.

I hope,' muttered Jasper, 'we do not ever shop again at a place where vampires can buy clip-on bow ties. You would think with all of eternity in front of them, they could take the time to learn a simple knot.

He stretched out in the grass too, leaning on his elbow, facing his friend, the pal of his heart, happy to watch him, fondly, his face. The grass was wonderfully cool in the shadows. It gave a fringy brush to his legs. Doyler grinned. He took the grass stem from his mouth and tickled its ear under Jim's chin. 'You can tell does a fellow like you with a spear of grass, did you know that?' 'How do you tell?' 'You wave it under his chin, and if his face goes red at all, then you know.' Jim laughed. The blush had risen, as of course it must, but for once he could be glad of it. He thought how lovely it would be to touch at this moment. The notion hadn't formed before Doyler's leg came to rest against his own. It pressed ever so lightly, and Jim pressed lightly back. he smiled with his bottom lip caught in his teeth, for it was wonderful to lie in the long grass, with just this tiny pressure of touch between. Then Doyler said, 'I think I'm going to ask for a kiss.' And Jim said, 'I think I hoped if you would.

A three-star Italian chef pal of mine was recently talking about why he — a proud Tuscan who makes his own pasta and sauces from scratch daily and runs one of the best restaurant kitchens in New York — would never be so foolish as to hire any Italians to cook on his line. He greatly prefers Ecuadorians, as many chefs do: 'The Italian guy? You screaming at him in the rush, "Where's that risotto?! Is that fucking risotto ready yet? Gimme that risotto!" . . . and the Italian . . . he's gonna give it to you . . . An Ecuadorian guy? He's gonna just turn his back . . . and stir the risotto and keep cooking it until it's done the way you showed him. That's what I want.

don't know whether there's a law that stops my doing this, Jim; but if there is, you've got to get round it. You're a lawyer and you know the game. You're my pal and the best pal I've had, Jim, and you'll do it for me." The dying man looked

I remember when I was probably about ten years old I had a pen pal, and writing letters back and forth with him was one of my favorite things to do. His name was Steve and he lived in one of those huge mansions that's so big it has a name. It was called the Louisiana State Penitentiary, and he told me it was even bigger than the mayor's mansion. We'd send letters back and forth and he'd ask me to send him my favorite books and small pieces of metal or wood that were lying around and all the money I could find in my house. And I'd gather them all up and put cute little stickers of cats on the packages and send them away. It was so fun. Eventually we stopped writing because I moved to another city and he moved out to live on his own. He called it "solitary confinement." I was always so impressed by his vocabulary.

In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand stated that there's no such thing as real altruism. She espoused the principle of ethical egotism, meaning that a person's moral obligation is to promote their own welfare. Translation? I still have the musical sensibilities of a teenage girl and I kind of want to see a shitty pop concert in the guise of doing something nice for my pal's kid, so I need to find a way to make it happen.

He went to the Palo Alto public library to read about rocket engineering and started calling experts, asking to borrow their old engine manuals. At a gathering of PayPal alumni in Las Vegas, he sat in a cabana by the pool reading a tattered manual for a Russian rocket engine. When one of the alums, Mark Woolway, asked him what he planned to do next, Musk answered, “I’m going to colonize Mars. My mission in life is to make mankind a multiplanetary civilization.” Woolway’s reaction was unsurprising. “Dude, you’re bananas.

In fact, amid all the musical laments over not having a heart, a brain, or the nerve, did anyone notice that they didn’t have a penis among them? I think it would have shown on the Lion and the Tin Man, and when the Scarecrow has his pants destuffed, you don’t see a flying monkey waving an errant straw Johnson around anywhere, do I think I know what song I’d be singing: Oh, I would while away the hours, Wanking in the flowers, my heart all full of song, I’d be gilding all the lilies as I waved about my willie If I only had a schlong.

You see, my plan is working. For it is written that ‘if the wise man always appears stupid, his failures do not disappoint, and his success gives pleasant surprise.

It just goes to show, girls, that with enough good pals, a bit of organization, and a naked grandmother or two, you can do anything.

Who do we seek, my spies? Again and again, I announce to the world: I. M. Realdom! I. M. Realdom! I. M. Realdom! I cannot say it too often! Do you have that?

You gotta be prepared for something, pal. No matter how much you think you're doing the right thing, life can still take a wrong turn on you.

Do you think I’m crazy, fantasizing about a guy I’ve never met in person, Jeremiah? Hell, we haven’t even spoken on the phone or video chatted—just old-fashioned, hand-written letters.

But between the founding and the actual PayPal, it was just this tug-of-war where it was like, 'We're trying this, this week." Every week you go to investors and say, "We're doing this, exactly this. We're really focused. We're going to be huge." The next week you're like, "That was a lie.

Her mom could easily clue in on the whole Iris likes girls thing just by looking at her room, but straight people do really love to gal-pal us up rather than face the truth—even when it’s hung on the walls.

The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as ‘Your Plastic Pal Who’s Fun To Be With’.

Why is it that one can busta rhyme or busta move anywhere but you must busta cap in someone's ass? Is "ho" always feminine and "muthafucka" always masculine, while "bitch" can be either? How many peeps in a posse, how much booty before baby got back, do you have to be all that to get all up in that, and do I need to be dope and phat to be da bomb or can I just be "stupid"?

The Encyclopedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as “Your Plastic Pal Who’s Fun to Be With.” The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as “a bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes,” with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent. Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as “a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came.

If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight." Sun Tzu said that, and I'd say he knows a little more about fighting then you do pal because he invented it, and then he perfected it so that no living man could best him in the ring of honor.

You really want to know?” He drags out the suspense. “Yes.” I grow restless. “Spill.” “Well, for starters… most guys our age aren’t looking to date.” He elaborates. “They just want to fuck around. And those who do want to date are only looking for a girl to make them feel good about themselves.” “Meaning?” “Meaning they want her to laugh at their jokes, stroke their egos, give good head and… that’s pretty much it.” He draws a small smile out of me. “So, when guys like that see a girl like you, a girl who doesn’t look easy or desperate, they get intimidated. Label her high-maintenance and run like hell. You’re beauty and brains, Vee. You’re an immature high school boy’s worst nightmare.

I do my best to be cool about this contact, but it has never happened before, and I pat her awkwardly on the shoulder, terrified that a too-enthusiastic reciprocation will alert her to her error, like the way a white person might raise a jungle cat from birth and be pals for a time until the cat turns five and realizes it is, in fact, a carnivore. If I’m honest, all my relationships have been like this, parsing the intent of the jaws that lock around my head. Like, is he kidding, or is he hungry? In other words, all of it, even the love, is a violence.

He was pal o' me heart, so he was. I try not to think of him, only I can't get him off my mind. He's with me always day and night. I do see him places he's never been, in the middle of a crowd I see him. His face looks out from the top of a tram, a schoolboy wouldn't pass but I'm thinking it's him. I try to make him go away, for I'm a soldier now and I'm under orders. But he's always there and I'm desperate to hold him. I doubt I'm a man expect he's by me.

The goal - at least the way I think about entrepreneurship - is you realize one day that you can't really work anyone else. You have to start your own thing. It almost doesn't matter what the thing is. We had six different business plan changes, and then the last one was PayPal. If that one didn't work out, if we still had the money and the people, obviously we would not have given up. We would have iterated on the business model and done something else. I don't think there was ever clarity as to who we were until we knew it was working. By then, we'd figured out our PR pitch and told everyone what we do and who we are. But between the founding and the actual PayPal, it was just like this tug-of-war where it was like, "We're trying this, this week." Every week you go to investors and say, "We're doing this, exactly this. We're really focused. We're going to be huge." The next week you're like, "That was a lie.

(Judah could never get the knack of being an adulteress. He’d stand there stiff as Lot’s wife. You can’t do that. An adulteress has to be wily and nimble-footed.)

Katie cleared her throat again. Then she looked into the window at her gums. She said, "To change the subject, do you think I could tell if I had gingivitis?

Para ser honesto era muito raro ferver, mas gostava do som da expressão "fervoroso pagão" e creio que seria um nome fantástico para uma banda de rock cristã.

Jeong. You never say the word, but you live it anyway. I will be honest, I did not expect to find it in a guy such as yourself. It's like we've met each other before. No, not really. We are friends at once, we would instantly do what friends would do for each other. Not just pals. Friends. Blood brothers. You just feel it. We instead of you and me. That's jeong.

It's ok to do your own thing for a while sometimes the call of the soul is a much more enticing path then one of a drunken phone call from your pals, call it the 21st century or whatever you wish but most live for the weekend untying the knots & ropes of slavery from during the week with no drive nor purpose to become something more than a pay check & a good time every 5 days.

The Encyclopedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as “Your Plastic Pal Who’s Fun to Be With.” The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as “a bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes,” with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent.

Dear Pen Pal, I know it’s been a few years since I last wrote you. I hope you’re still there. I’m not sure you ever were. I never got any letters back from you when I was a kid. But in a way it was always therapeutic. Everyone else judges everything I say. And here you are: some anonymous person who never says “boo.” Maybe you just read my letters and laughed or maybe you didn’t read my letters or maybe you don’t even exist. It was pretty frustrating when I was young, but now I’m glad that you won’t respond. Just listen. That’s what I want. My dog died. I don’t know if you remember, but I had a beagle. He was a good dog. My best friend. I’d had him as far back as I could remember, but one day last month he didn’t come bounding out of his red doghouse like usual. I called his name. But no response. I knelt down and called out his name. Still nothing. I looked in his doghouse. There was blood everywhere. Cowering in the corner was my dog. His eyes were wild and there was an excessive amount of saliva coming out of his mouth. He was unrecognizable. Both frightened and frightening at the same time. The blood belonged to a little yellow bird that had always been around. My dog and the bird used to play together. In a strange way, it was almost like they were best friends. I know that sounds stupid, but… Anyway, the bird had been mangled. Ripped apart. By my dog. When he saw that I could see what he’d done, his face changed to sadness and he let out a sound that felt like the word ‘help.’ I reached my hand into his doghouse. I know it was a dumb thing to do, but he looked like he needed me. His jaws snapped. I jerked my hand away before he could bite me. My parents called a center and they came and took him away. Later that day, they put him to sleep. They gave me his corpse in a cardboard box. When my dog died, that was when the rain cloud came back and everything went to hell…

On his next return to this world, Duncan Cobb, oldest son, faithless cousin, cautious lover, and pal of killers, awoke infused with the lucidity born of no escape, and a mortal dose of honesty.

I wish I would have known that there was no need to wait. I went to college. I went to law school. I worked in law and banking, though not for terribly long. But not until I started PayPal did I fully realize that you don’t have to wait to start something. So if you’re planning to do something with your life, if you have a 10-year plan of how to get there, you should ask: Why can’t you do this in 6 months? Sometimes, you have to actually go through the complex, 10-year trajectory. But it’s at least worth asking whether that’s the story you’re telling yourself, or whether that’s the reality.

<...> I think we didn't know what we were doing. I think the hallmark of a really good entrepreneur is that you're not really going to build one specific company. The goal—at least the way I think about entrepreneur- ship—is you realize one day that you can't really work for anyone else. You have to start your own thing. It almost doesn't matter what that thing is. We had six different business plan changes, and then the last one was PayPal.

The best thing I did as a manager at PayPal was to make every person in the company responsible for doing just one thing. Every employee’s one thing was unique, and everyone knew I would evaluate him only on that one thing. I had started doing this just to simplify the task of managing people. But then I noticed a deeper result: defining roles reduced conflict. Most fights inside a company happen when colleagues compete for the same responsibilities. Startups face an especially high risk of this since job roles are fluid at the early stages. Eliminating competition makes it easier for everyone to build the kinds of long-term relationships that transcend mere professionalism. More than that, internal peace is what enables a startup to survive at all. When a startup fails, we often imagine it succumbing to predatory rivals in a competitive ecosystem. But every company is also its own ecosystem, and factional strife makes it vulnerable to outside threats. Internal conflict is like an autoimmune disease: the technical cause of death may be pneumonia, but the real cause remains hidden from plain view.

Giving a nod to his old pal, Fate, he felt a slow smile crease his cheeks,"So," he said. "We really are alone." "Yeah," she said, then her eyes widened comically."Hey, no-stay over there. What are you doing? Personal space!

La Lo­te­ría, con su re­par­to se­ma­nal de enor­mes pre­mios, era el único acon­te­ci­mien­to pú­bli­co al que los pro­les pres­ta­ban ver­da­de­ra aten­ción. Era pro­ba­ble que hu­bie­se mi­llo­nes de pro­les para quie­nes la Lo­te­ría fuese la razón prin­ci­pal, si no la única, para se­guir con vida. Era su de­lei­te, su lo­cu­ra, su anal­gé­si­co, su es­ti­mu­lan­te in­te­lec­tual. En lo que se re­fe­ría a la Lo­te­ría, hasta quie­nes ape­nas sa­bían leer y es­cri­bir eran ca­pa­ces de lle­var a cabo in­trin­ca­dos cálcu­los y sor­pren­den­tes lo­gros me­mo­rís­ti­cos. Había toda una tribu de in­di­vi­duos que se ga­na­ban la vida ven­dien­do sis­te­mas, pre­dic­cio­nes y amu­le­tos de la suer­te. Wins­ton no tenía nada que ver con la Lo­te­ría, que se ges­tio­na­ba desde el Mi­nis­te­rio de la Abun­dan­cia, pero sabía (como cual­quier otro miem­bro del Par­ti­do) que los pre­mios eran casi todos ima­gi­na­rios. Solo se pa­ga­ban pe­que­ñas sumas y los ga­na­do­res de los pre­mios gor­dos en reali­dad no exis­tían. En au­sen­cia de ver­da­de­ra co­mu­ni­ca­ción entre una parte de Ocea­nía y otra, no re­sul­ta­ba di­fí­cil ama­ñar­lo.

On Ponkawtasset, since, we took our way, Down this still stream we took our meadowy way, A poet wise has settled, whose fine ray Doth faintly shine on Concord's twilight day. Like those first stars, whose silver beams on high, Shining more brightly as the day goes by, Most travellers cannot at first descry, But eyes that wont to range the evening sky, And know celestial lights, do plainly see, And gladly hail them, numbering two or three; For lore that's deep must deeply studied be, As from deep wells men read star-poetry. These stars are never pal'd, though out of sight, But like the sun they shine forever bright; Aye, they are suns, though earth must in its flight Put out its eyes that it may see their light. Who would neglect the least celestial sound, Or faintest light that falls on earthly ground, If he could know it one day would be found That star in Cygnus whither we are bound, And pale our sun with heavenly radiance round?

People complain about the obscurity of poetry, especially if they're assigned to write about it, but actually poetry is rather straightforward compared to ordinary conversation with people you don't know well which tends to be jumpy repartee, crooked, coded, allusive to no effect, firmly repressed, locked up in irony, steadfastly refusing to share genuine experience--think of conversation at office parties or conversation between teenage children and parents, or between teenagers themselves, or between men, or between bitter spouces: rarely in ordinary conversation do people speak from the heart and mean what they say. How often in the past week did anyone offer you something from the heart? It's there in poetry. Forget everything you ever read about poetry, it doesn't matter--poetry is the last preserve of honest speech and the outspoken heart. All that I wrote about it as a grad student I hereby recant and abjure--all that matters about poetry to me is directness and clarity and truthfulness. All that is twittery and lit'ry: no thanks, pal. A person could perish of entertainment, especially comedy, so much of it casually nihilistic, hateful, glittering, cold, and in the end clueless. People in nusing homes die watching late-night television and if I were one of them, I'd be grateful when the darkness descends. Thank God if the pastor comes and offers a psalm and a prayer, and they can attain a glimmer of clarity at the end.

When spies aren't in sewer tunnels, they're usually crawling through air ducts. I'm not sure exactly why this is. It makes you kind of wonder: Are spies just frustrated maintenance men? Is that what spies really want to be doing? Plumbing? Air conditioner repair? I fear the day that they follow their dream, lay down their laser-gun cigarette lighters, and pick up wrenches. Our country will be in great peril, though with fewer toilets backing up and more of our houses at a uniform sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit.

Dear Forrest, I am sorry there was no time for us to speech other before I left. The doctors made their decision quickly, and before I knew it, I was being taken away, but I asked if I could stop long enough to write you this note, because you have been so kind to me whileI was here. I sense, Forrest, that you are on the verge of something very significant in your life, some change, or event that will move you in a different direction, and you must seize the moment, and not let it pass. When I think back on it now, there is something in your eyes, some tiny flash of fire that comes now and then, mostly when you smile, and , on those infrequent occasions, I believe what I saw was almost a Genesis of our ability as humans to think, to create, to be. This war is to for you, old pal - nor me - and I am well out of it as I'm sure you will be in time. The crucial question is, what will you do? I don't think you're an idiot at all. Perhaps by the measure of tests or the judgement of fools, you might fall into some category or other, but deep down, Forrest, I have seen that glowing sparkle of curiosity burning deep in your mind. Take the tide, my friend, and as you are carried along, make it work for you, fight the shallows and the snags and never give up. You are a good fellow, forrest, and you have a big heart. Your pal, Dan

I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I spin to leave. “No fucking way.” It clicks in his mind. “Little Vee?” Here he is. “You’re that girl Finn and I used to…” He doesn’t complete his sentence, but I know all too well what he was going to say. “Annoy? Tease? Torture? Why, yes, that would be me. Did you seriously just figure that out? A bit slow, are we?” I snark. My outburst only seems to amuse him. “Look, in my defense, your mom only ever called you ‘Vee.’ I thought it was short for Vicky or Vivian or something. And it was ten years ago. I can’t even remember what I had for dinner last night.” “Whatever.” I shrug. “Shit, I’ve got to say, Vee.” He gives me a once-over. “Puberty did you a solid.” My cheeks combust. “Wish I could say the same about you,” I lie through my teeth. Xavier smiles at my failed attempt to deny the undeniable. Let’s not pretend like puberty didn’t do every female on earth a solid when Xavier Emery went from “cute” to “sinfully hot” in the span of a summer. “I think you mispronounced thank you.” He flashes a smug grin that makes me want to knee him where it hurts.

I wish I would have known that there was no need to wait. I went to college. I went to law school. I worked in law and banking, though not for terribly long. But not until I started PayPal did I fully realize that you don’t have to wait to start something. So if you’re planning to do something with your life, if you have a 10-year plan of how to get there, you should ask: Why can’t you do this in 6 months? Sometimes, you have to actually go through the complex, 10-year trajectory. But it’s at least worth asking whether that’s the story you’re telling yourself, or whether that’s the reality.

There’s some great early stories of him in his sales days. When American Express, for example, wouldn’t buy advertising on TBS because they were ‘too downscale’…and ‘too this, too that’…Ted pulls out an American Express card, slides it across the table and says, ‘I use your product, but you don’t use mine. I have a real problem with that’. “They were saying our audience was downscale, and he’s like, ‘I watch TBS, and I’m worth half a billion dollars, pal!’ He rejected people’s snobbery of ‘it’s gotta be this fancy programming’. He was like ‘look, I’m doing a ‘3’ rating at 6:05, so screw you’.

My dad at the baccarat table, in the air-conditioned midnight. There’s always more to things, a hidden level. Luck in its darker moods and manifestations. Consulting the stars, waiting to make the big bets when Mercury was in retrograde, reaching for a knowledge just beyond the known. Black his lucky color, nine his lucky number. Hit me again pal. There’s a pattern and we’re a part of it. Yet if you scratched very deep at that idea of pattern (which apparently he had never taken the trouble to do), you hit an emptiness so dark that it destroyed, categorically, anything you’d ever looked at or thought of as light.

I'll keep in touch, says Lige, ain't going to let you go. This makes John Coke very quiet. John is a tall man and thin and maybe he don't have much painted on his face. He likes to make his decisions and then do a thing. He has my back and he wants the best world for Winona and he don't neglect his pals. When Lige Magan intimates his seeming love for him, John Cole does show something on his face though. Maybe remembers the old sick days when John Cole couldn't move a muscle and that Lige danced attendance. Why should a man help another man? No need, the world don't care about that. The world is just a passing parade of cruel moments and long drear stretches where nothing is going on but the chicory drinking and whiskey and cards. No requirement for nothing else tucked in there. We're strange people, soldiers stuck out in wars. We ain't saying no laws in Washington. We ain't walking on yon great lawns. Storms kill us, and battles, and the earth closes over and no one need say a word and I don't believe we mind. Happy to breathe because we seen terror and horror and then for a while they ain't in dominion. Bibles weren't wrote for us nor any books. We ain't maybe what people do call human since we ain't partaking in the bread of heaven. But if God was trying to make an excuse for us He might point at that strange love between us. Like when you fumbling about in the darkness and you light a lamp and the light comes up and rescue things. Objects in a room and the face of the man who seeing a dug-up treasure to you. John Cole. Seems a food. Bread of earth. The lamplight touching his eyes and another light answering.

Dream Song 187 Them lady poets must not marry, pal. Miss Dickinson—fancy in Amherst bedding hér. Fancy a lark with Sappho, a tumble in the bushes with Miss Moore, a spoon with Emily, while Charlotte glare. Miss Bishop’s too noble-O. That was the lot. And two of them are here as yet, and—and: Sylvia Plath is not. She—she her credentials has handed in, leaving alone two tots and widower to what he makes of it— surviving guy, & when Tolstoy’s pathetic widow doing her whung (after them decades of marriage) & kids, she decided he was queer & loving his agent. Wherefore he rush off, leaving two journals, & die. It is a true error to marry with poets or to be by them.

We can’t go home,” Joshua said at last. “I don’t know enough yet.” “No,” said Gaspar, “I suspect that you don’t. But you know all that you will learn here. If you come to a river and find a boat at the edge, you will use that boat to cross and it will serve you well, but once across the river, do you put the boat on your shoulders and carry it with you on the rest of your journey?” “How big is the boat?” I asked. “What color is the boat?” asked Joshua. “How far is the rest of the journey?” I queried. “Is Biff there to carry the oars, or do I have to carry everything?” asked Josh. “No!” screamed Gaspar. “No, you don’t take the boat along on the journey. It has been useful but now it’s simply a burden. It’s a parable, you cretins!

Trust your faith, Peter,” I yelled. “If you doubt you won’t be able to do it.” Then Peter stepped with both feet onto the surface of the water, and for a split second he stood there. And we were all amazed. “Hey, I’m—” Then he sank like a stone. He came up sputtering. We were all doubled over giggling, and even Joshua had sunk up to his ankles, he was laughing so hard. “I can’t believe you fell for that,” said Joshua. He ran across the water and helped us pull Peter into the boat. “Peter, you’re as dumb as a box of rocks. But what amazing faith you have. I’m going to build my church on this box of rocks.” “You would have Peter build your church?” asked Philip. “Because he tried to walk on the water.” “Would you have tried it?” asked Joshua. “Of course not,” said Philip. “I can’t swim.

...a final word to "the children": do you want to get suckered like your big brothers and sisters? Those saps who spent 2008 standing behind the Obamessiah swaying and chanting, "We are the dawning of the Hopeychange" like brainwashed cult extras? Sooner or later you guys have to crawl out from under the social engineering and rediscover the contrarian spirit for which youth was once known...This will be the great battle of the next generation--to reclaim your birthright from those who spent it. If you don't, the entire global order will teeter and fall. But, if you do, you will have won a great victory. Every time a politician proposes new spending, tell him he's already spent your money, get his hand out of your pocket. Every time a politician says you can stay a child until your twenty-seventh birthday, tell him, "No, you're the big baby, not me--you've spent irresponsibly, and me and my pals are the ones who are gonna have to be the adults and clean up your mess. Don't treat met like a kid when your immaturity got us into this hole." This is a battle for the American idea, and it's an epic one, but--to reprise the lamest of lame-o-lines--you can do anything you want to do. So do it.

but even with the gift of tongues, I’m having trouble learning to speak hip-hop. Why is it that one can busta rhyme or busta move anywhere but you must busta cap in someone’s ass? Is “ho” always feminine, and “muthafucka” always masculine, while “bitch” can be either? How many peeps in a posse, how much booty before baby got back, do you have to be all that to get all up in that, and do I need to be dope and

...And indeed it did take me a long time for me to find someone I wanted to marry. But I'm so glad I waited. What I know about Pete and me is that the flame will never go out. I do not look up from tossing the salad and think, Oh, God, how the hell did I ever get here? I do not look a the back of his head and think, I don't know you at all. I wake up with my pal, and go to sleep with my lover. He still thrills me, not only sexually but because of the way he regards the life that unfolds around him. I am interested in what he says about me and the children and our respective jobs, but I am also interested in what he says about the Middle East and the migratory patterns of monarchs and the amount of nutmeg that should be grated into the mashed potatoes and the impact that being a thwarted artist had on the life of Hitler. I believe he is a truly honest and awake and kind individual. If we live more than once, I want to find him again.

You forgot the straws,” I told him. He ripped the plastic off of the Twizzler box and bit the ends off of two Twizzlers. Then he put them in the cup. He grinned broadly. He looked so proud of himself. I’d forgotten all about our Twizzler straws. We used to do it all the time. We sipped out of the straws at the same time, like in a 1950s Coke commercial—heads bent, foreheads almost touching. I wondered if people thought we were on a date. Jeremiah looked at me, and he smiled in this familiar way, and suddenly I had this crazy thought. I thought, Jeremiah Fisher wants to kiss me. Which, was crazy. This was Jeremiah. He’d never looked at me like that, and as for me, Conrad was the one I liked, even when he was moody and inaccessible the way he was now. It had always been Conrad. I’d never seriously considered Jeremiah, not with Conrad standing there. And of course Jeremiah had never looked at me that way before either. I was his pal. His movie-watching partner, the girl he shared a bathroom with, shared secrets with. I wasn’t the girl he kissed.

When assigning responsibilities to employees in a startup, you could start by treating it as a simple optimization problem to efficiently match talents with tasks. But even if you could somehow get this perfectly right, any given solution would quickly break down. Partly that’s because startups have to move fast, so individual roles can’t remain static for long. But it’s also because job assignments aren’t just about the relationships between workers and tasks; they’re also about relationships between employees. The best thing I did as a manager at PayPal was to make every person in the company responsible for doing just one thing. Every employee’s one thing was unique, and everyone knew I would evaluate him only on that one thing. I had started doing this just to simplify the task of managing people. But then I noticed a deeper result: defining roles reduced conflict. Most fights inside a company happen when colleagues compete for the same responsibilities. Startups face an especially high risk of this since job roles are fluid at the early stages. Eliminating competition makes it easier for everyone to build the kinds of long-term relationships that transcend mere professionalism. More than that, internal peace is what enables a startup to survive at all. When a startup fails, we often imagine it succumbing to predatory rivals in a competitive ecosystem. But every company is also its own ecosystem, and factional strife makes it vulnerable to outside threats. Internal conflict is like an autoimmune disease: the technical cause of death may be pneumonia, but the real cause remains hidden from plain view.

I'll keep in touch, says Lige, ain't going to let you go. This makes John Cole very quiet. John is a tall man and thin and maybe he don't have much painted on his face. He likes to make his decisions and then do a thing. He has my back and he wants the best world for Winona and he don't neglect his pals. When Lige Magan intimates his seeming love for him, John Cole does show something on his face though. Maybe remembers the old sick days when John Cole couldn't move a muscle and that Lige danced attendance. Why should a man help another man? No need, the world don't care about that. The world is just a passing parade of cruel moments and long drear stretches where nothing is going on but the chicory drinking and whiskey and cards. No requirement for nothing else tucked in there. We're strange people, soldiers stuck out in wars. We ain't saying no laws in Washington. We ain't walking on yon great lawns. Storms kill us, and battles, and the earth closes over and no one need say a word and I don't believe we mind. Happy to breathe because we seen terror and horror and then for a while they ain't in dominion. Bibles weren't wrote for us nor any books. We ain't maybe what people do call human since we ain't partaking in the bread of heaven. But if God was trying to make an excuse for us He might point at that strange love between us. Like when you fumbling about in the darkness and you light a lamp and the light comes up and rescue things. Objects in a room and the face of the man who seeing a dug-up treasure to you. John Cole. Seems a food. Bread of earth. The lamplight touching his eyes and another light answering.

And now, over to Romulus for our popular feature ‘Pals of Potter.’” “Thanks, River,” said another very familiar voice; Ron started to speak, but Hermione forestalled him in a whisper. “We know it’s Lupin!” “Romulus, do you maintain, as you have every time you’ve appeared on our program, that Harry Potter is still alive?” “I do,” said Lupin firmly. “There is no doubt at all in my mind that his death would be proclaimed as widely as possible by the Death Eaters if it had happened, because it would strike a deadly blow at the morale of those resisting the new regime. ‘The Boy Who Lived’ remains a symbol of everything for which we are fighting: the triumph of good, the power of innocence, the need to keep resisting.” A mixture of gratitude and shame welled up in Harry. Had Lupin forgiven him, then, for the terrible things he had said when they had last met? “And what would you say to Harry if you knew he was listening, Romulus?” “I’d tell him we’re all with him in spirit,” said Lupin, then hesitated slightly. “And I’d tell him to follow his instincts, which are good and nearly always right.” Harry looked at Hermione, whose eyes were full of tears. “Nearly always right,” she repeated. “Oh, didn’t I tell you?” said Ron in surprise. “Bill told me Lupin’s living with Tonks again! And apparently she’s getting pretty big too…” “…and our usual update on those friends of Harry Potter’s who are suffering for their allegiance?” Lee was saying. “Well, as regular listeners will know, several of the more outspoken supporters of Harry Potter have now been imprisoned, including Xenophilius Lovegood, erstwhile editor of The Quibbler,” said Lupin. “At least he’s still alive!” muttered Ron.

I wish I had asked myself when I was younger. My path was so tracked that in my 8th-grade yearbook, one of my friends predicted— accurately— that four years later I would enter Stanford as a sophomore. And after a conventionally successful undergraduate career, I enrolled at Stanford Law School, where I competed even harder for the standard badges of success. The highest prize in a law student’s world is unambiguous: out of tens of thousands of graduates each year, only a few dozen get a Supreme Court clerkship. After clerking on a federal appeals court for a year, I was invited to interview for clerkships with Justices Kennedy and Scalia. My meetings with the Justices went well. I was so close to winning this last competition. If only I got the clerkship, I thought, I would be set for life. But I didn’t. At the time, I was devastated. In 2004, after I had built and sold PayPal, I ran into an old friend from law school who had helped me prepare my failed clerkship applications. We hadn’t spoken in nearly a decade. His first question wasn’t “How are you doing?” or “Can you believe it’s been so long?” Instead, he grinned and asked: “So, Peter, aren’t you glad you didn’t get that clerkship?” With the benefit of hindsight, we both knew that winning that ultimate competition would have changed my life for the worse. Had I actually clerked on the Supreme Court, I probably would have spent my entire career taking depositions or drafting other people’s business deals instead of creating anything new. It’s hard to say how much would be different, but the opportunity costs were enormous. All Rhodes Scholars had a great future in their past. the best paths are new and untried. will this business still be around a decade from now? business is like chess. Grandmaster José Raúl Capablanca put it well: to succeed, “you must study the endgame before everything else. The few who knew what might be learned, Foolish enough to put their whole heart on show, And reveal their feelings to the crowd below, Mankind has always crucified and burned. Above all, don’t overestimate your own power as an individual. Founders are important not because they are the only ones whose work has value, but rather because a great founder can bring out the best work from everybody at his company. That we need individual founders in all their peculiarity does not mean that we are called to worship Ayn Randian “prime movers” who claim to be independent of everybody around them. In this respect, Rand was a merely half-great writer: her villains were real, but her heroes were fake. There is no Galt’s Gulch. There is no secession from society. To believe yourself invested with divine self-sufficiency is not the mark of a strong individual, but of a person who has mistaken the crowd’s worship—or jeering—for the truth. The single greatest danger for a founder is to become so certain of his own myth that he loses his mind. But an equally insidious danger for every business is to lose all sense of myth and mistake disenchantment for wisdom.

I’m crossing our backyard to the Pearces’, trying to juggle the bag and the portable speakers and my phone, when I see John Ambrose McClaren standing in front of the tree house, staring up at it with his arms crossed. I’d know the back of his blond head anywhere. I freeze, suddenly nervous and unsure. I’d thought Peter or Chris would be here with me when he arrived, and that would smooth out any awkwardness. But no such luck. I put down all my stuff and move forward to tap him on the shoulder, but he turns around before I can. I take a step back. “Hi! Hey!” I say. “Hey!” He takes a long look at me. “Is it really you?” “It’s me.” “My pen pal the elusive Lara Jean Covey who shows up at Model UN and runs off without so much as a hello?” I bite the inside of my cheek. “I’m pretty sure I at least said hello.” Teasingly he says, “No, I’m pretty sure you didn’t.” He’s right: I didn’t. I was too flustered. Kind of like right now. It must be that distance between knowing someone when you were a kid and seeing them now that you’re both more grown-up, but still not all the way grown-up, and there are all these years and letters in between you, and you don’t know how to act. “Well--anyway. You look…taller.” He looks more than just taller. Now that I can take the time to really look at him, I notice more. With his fair hair and milky skin and rosy cheeks, he looks like he could be an English farmer’s son. But he’s slim, so maybe the sensitive farmer’s son who steals away to the barn to read. The thought makes me smile, and John gives me a curious look but doesn’t ask why. With a nod, he says, “You look…exactly the same.” Gulp. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? “I do?” I get up on my tiptoes. “I think I’ve grown at least an inch since eighth grade.” And my boobs are at least a little bigger. Not much. Not that I want John to notice--I’m just saying.

One cool morning—a rainstorm had swept through the night before; now the City of Angels sparkled like Eden itself—he was walking between soundstages in Culver City, carrying a cardboard cup of coffee, nodding to this glorious creature (dressed as a harem girl), then that glorious creature (a cowgirl), then that glorious creature (a secretary?)—they all smiled at him—when he ran into, of all people, an old pal of his from the Major Bowes days, a red-haired pianist who’d bounced around the Midwest in the 1930s, Lyle Henderson (Crosby would soon nickname him Skitch). Henderson was strolling with a creature much more glorious, if possible, than the three Sinatra had just encountered. She was tall, dark haired, with sleepy green eyes, killer cheekbones, and absurdly lush lips, lips he couldn’t stop staring at. Frankie! Henderson said, as they shook hands. His old chum was doing all right these days. Sinatra smiled, not at Henderson. The glorious creature smiled back bashfully, but with a teasing hint of directness in her dark eyes. The pianist—he was doing rehearsal duty at the studio—then got to say the six words that someone had to say, sometime, but that he and he alone got to say for the first time in history on this sparkling morning: Frank Sinatra, this is Ava Gardner.

There is a foolproof way to distinguish peer-distorted counterwill from the genuine drive for autonomy: the maturing, individuating child resists coercion whatever the source may be, including pressure from peers. In healthy rebellion, true independence is the goal. One does not seek freedom from one person only to succumb to the influence and will of another. When counterwill is the result of skewed attachments, the liberty that the child strives for is not the liberty to be his true self but the opportunity to conform to his peers. To do so, he will suppress his own feelings and camouflage his own opinions, should they differ from those of his peers. Are we saying that it may not be natural, for example, that a teenager may want to stay out late with his friends? No, the teen may want to hang out with his pals not because he is driven by peer orientation, but simply because on occasion that's just what he feels like doing. The question is, is he willing to discuss the matter with his parents? Is he respectful of their perspective? Is he able to say no to his friends when he has other responsibilities or family events or when he simply may prefer being on his own? The peer-oriented teenager will brook no obstacle and experiences intense frustration when his need for peer contact is thwarted. He is unable to assert himself in the face of peer expectations and will, proportionately, resent and oppose his parents’ desires.

Interestingly, a point that never emerged in the press but that Tim Donovan revealed to the police was that Annie had specifically "asked him to trust her" for that night's doss money. This "he declined to do." Had this incident become common knowledge, it's likely that Donovan would have faced an even worse public backlash for his role in Annie's demise. "You can find money for your beer, and you can't find money for your bed." the deputy keeper is said to have spoken in response to her request. Annie, not quite willing to admit defeat, or perhaps in a show of pride, responded with a sigh: "Keep my bed for me. I shan't be long." Ill and drunk, she went downstairs and "stood in the door for two or three minutes," considering her options. Like the impecunious lodger described by Goldsmith, she too would have been contemplating from whom among her "pals" it might have been "possible to borrow the halfpence necessary to complete {her} doss money." More likely, Annie was mentally preparing "to spend the night with only the sky for a canopy." She then set off down Brushfield Street, toward Christ Church, Spitalfields, where the homeless regularly bedded down. Her thoughts as she stepped out onto Dorest Street, as the light from Crossingham's dimmed at her back, can never be known. What route she wove through the black streets and to whom she spoke along the will never be confirmed. All that is certain is her final destination. Of the many tragedies that befell Annie Chapman in the final years of her life, perhaps one of the most poignant was that she needn't have been on the streets on that night, or on any other. Ill and feverish, she needn't have searched the squalid corners for a spot to sleep. Instead, she might have lain in a bed in her mother's house or in her sisters' care, on the other side of London. She might have been treated for tuberculosis; she might have been comforted by the embraces of her children or the loving assurances of her family. Annie needn't have suffered. At every turn there had been a hand reaching to pull her from the abyss, but the counter-tug of addiction was more forceful, and the grip of shame was just as strong. It was this that pulled her under, that had extinguished her hope and then her life many years earlier. What her murderer claimed on that night was simply all that remained of what drink had left behind.

But you must admit,it's taking up an inordinate amount of your time. Why it's taken us six months to have dinner together." "Is that all?" He misinterpreted the quiet response, and the gleam in her eyes.And leaned toward her. She slapped a hand on his chest. "Don't even think about it.Let me tell you something,pal.I do more in one day with my school than you do in a week of pushing papers in that office your grandfather gave you between your manicures and amaretto lattes and soirees. Men like you hold no interest for me whatsoever,which is why it's taken six months for this tedious little date.And the next time I have dinner with you,we'll be slurping Popsicles in hell.So take your French tie and your Italian shoes and stuff them." Utter shock had him speechless as she shoved open her door.As insult trickled in,his lips thinned. "Obviously spending so much time in the stables has eroded your manners, and your outlook." "That's right, Chad." She leaned back in the door. "You're too good for me. I'm about to go up and weep into my pillow over it." "Rumor is you're cold," he said in a quiet, stabbing voice. "But I had to find out for myself." It stung,but she wasn't about to let it show. "Rumor is you're a moron. Now we've both confirmed the local gossip." He gunned the engine once,and she would have sworn she saw him vibrate. "And it's a British tie." She slammed the car door, then watched narrow-eyed as he drove away. "A British tie." A laugh gurgled up,deep from the belly and up into the throat so she had to stand, hugging herself, all but howling at the moon. "That sure told me." Indulging herself in a long sigh, she tipped her head back,looked up at the sweep of stars. "Moron," she murmured. "And that goes for both of us." She heard a faint click, spun around and saw Brian lighting up a slim cigar. "Lover's spat?" "Why yes." The temper Chad had roused stirred again. "He wants to take me to Antigua and I simply have my heart set on Mozambique.Antigua's been done to death." Brian took a contemplative puff of his cigar.She looked so damn beautiful standing there in the moonlight in that little excuse of a black dress, her hair spilling down her back like fire on silk.Hearing her long, gorgeous roll of laughter had been like discovering a treasure.Now the temper was back in her eyes,and spitting at him. It was almost as good. He took another lazy puff, blew out a cloud of smoke. "You're winding me up, Keeley." "I'd like to wind you up, then twist you into small pieces and ship them all back to Ireland." "I figured as much." He disposed of the cigar and walked to her. Unlike Chad, he didn't misinterpret the glint in her eyes. "You want to have a pop at someone." He closed his hand over the one she'd balled into a fist, lifted it to tap on his own chin. "Go ahead." "As delightful as I find that invitation, I don't solve my disputes that way." When she started to walk away, he tightened his grip. "But," she said slowly, "I could make an exception." "I don't like apologizing, and I wouldn't have to-again-of you'd set me straight right off." She lifted an eyebrow.Trying to free herself from that big, hard hand would only be undignified.

Put your glasses on mate ….. Come down from there, you’re gonna kill yourself …. Well, what does your Method Statement say? …. Right, let’s get you re-inducted. You need a reminder of site rules ….. Where are your outriggers, mate? ….. Put your glasses on ….. Put your glasses on …. Put your glasses on …. Oh, they steam up, do they? I’ve never heard that one before …. Where’s your mask? If you breathe this shit in you’re going to kill yourself. Silicosis is incurable ….. Right STOP! Do not reverse another inch without a banksman ….. Don’t put your glasses on just because you see me walk around the corner. They won’t protect MY eyes …. Hook yourself on, what’s the matter with you? Are all you scaffolders superhuman or something? ….. Put your glasses on ….. Oi! What stops me walking right in there? Where’s your barriers and signage? ….. Oi! I’m getting showered in fucking sparks here. And so is that can of petrol ….. Put your glasses on …. Where’s the flashback arrestor on this bottle of propane? ….. Hey, pal, stop welding until you’ve sheeted up ….. What are you doing climbing up there? Where’s your supervisor? What did he say about access in this morning’s Safe Start briefing? Nothing? Right, he can sit through another induction tomorrow ….. Where are the retaining pins to the joint clamps in this concrete pump line? SEAMUS! Fucking deal with this, will you? ….Put your glasses on …. Hey! Hey! Come here! Why have you got a nail instead of an ‘R’ clip to the quick-hitch system on your excavator bucket? NO! IT WON’T DO! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? If that bucket falls on someone they’re not going to get up again. And you trust a fucking nail to hold it in position! Take this machine out of service immediately until you’ve got the proper ‘R’ clip! ….. Put your glasses on …. Where’s the edge protection. Who removed the edge protection? Right, let me phone for a scaffolder ….. Put your glasses on ….. Oi! Get out from under there! Never, ever stand underneath a suspended load. Even if all the equipment’s been inspected, which it obviously has, you can never trust the crane driver. He can be taken ill suddenly ….. Come here, mate, let’s have a little chat. Why are you working on Fall Arrest? You’re supposed to be working on Fall Restraint (FR ‘restrains’ you going near the perimeter edge of the building, FA ‘arrests’ your fall if, well, if you fall. If you’re hanging off a building we’ve got less than ten minutes to reach you before you start going into toxic shock brought on by suspension trauma. In other words, we need a Rescue Plan, which is why we’d prefer people work on Fall Restraint)

You look…exactly the same.” Gulp. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? “I do?” I get up on my tiptoes. “I think I’ve grown at least an inch since eighth grade.” And my boobs are at least a little bigger. Not much. Not that I want John to notice--I’m just saying. “No, you look…just like how I remembered you.” John Ambrose reaches out, and I think he’s trying to hug me but he’s only trying to take my bag from me, and there’s a brief but strange dance that mortifies me but he doesn’t seem to notice. “So thanks for inviting me.” “Thanks for coming.” “Do you want me to take this stuff up for you?” “Sure,” I say. John takes the bag from me and looks inside. “Oh, wow. All of our old snacks! Why don’t you climb up first and I’ll pass it to you.” So that’s what I do: I scramble up the ladder and he climbs up behind me. I’m crouched, arms outstretched, waiting for him to pass me the bag. But when he gets halfway up the ladder, he stops and looks up at me and says, “You still wear your hair in fancy braids.” I touch my side braid. Of all the things to remember about me. Back then, Margot was the one who braided my hair. “You think it looks fancy?” “Yeah. Like…expensive bread.” I burst out laughing. “Bread!” “Yeah. Or…Rapunzel.” I get down on my stomach, wriggle over to the edge, and pretend like I’m letting down my hair for him to climb. He climbs up to the top of the ladder and passes me the bag, which I take, and then he grins at me and gives my braid a tug. I’m still lying down but feel an electric charge like he’s zapped me. I’m suddenly feeling very anxious about the worlds that will be colliding, the past and the present, a pen pal and a boyfriend, all in this little tree house. Probably I should have thought this through a bit better. But I was so focused on the time capsule, and the snacks, and the idea of it--old friends coming back together to do what we said we’d do. And now here we are, in it. “Everything okay?” John asks, offering me his hand as I rise to my feet. I don’t take his hand; I don’t want another zap. “Everything’s great,” I say cheerily. “Hey, you never sent back my letter,” he says. “You broke an unbreakable vow.” I laugh awkwardly. I’d kind of been hoping he wouldn’t bring that up. “It was too embarrassing. The things I wrote. I couldn’t bear the thought of another person seeing it.” “But I already saw it,” he reminds me.

Thanks again, sir.” Jules shook his hand again. “You’re welcome again,” the captain said, his smile warm. “I’ll be back aboard the ship myself at around nineteen hundred. If it’s okay with you, I’ll, uh, stop in, see how you’re doing.” Son of a bitch. Was Jules getting hit on? Max looked at Webster again. He looked like a Marine. Muscles, meticulous uniform, well-groomed hair. That didn’t make him gay. And he’d smiled warmly at Max, too. The man was friendly, personable. And yet . . . Jules was flustered. “Thanks,” he said. “That would be . . . That’d be nice. Would you excuse me, though, for a sec? I’ve got to speak to Max, before I, uh . . . But I’ll head over to the ship right away.” Webster shook Max’s hand. “It was an honor meeting you, sir.” He smiled again at Jules. Okay, he hadn’t smiled at Max like that. Max waited until the captain and the medic both were out of earshot. “Is he—” “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Jules said. “But, oh my God.” “He seems nice,” Max said. “Yes,” Jules said. “Yes, he does.” “So. The White House?” “Yeah. About that . . .” Jules took a deep breath. “I need to let you know that you might be getting a call from President Bryant.” “Might be,” Max repeated. “Yes,” Jules said. “In a very definite way.” He spoke quickly, trying to run his words together: “I had a very interesting conversation with him in which I kind of let slip that you’d resigned again and he was unhappy about that so I told him I might be able to persuade you to come back to work if he’d order three choppers filled with Marines to Meda Island as soon as possible.” “You called the President of the United States,” Max said. “During a time of international crisis, and basically blackmailed him into sending Marines.” Jules thought about that. “Yeah. Yup. Although it was a pretty weird phone call, because I was talking via radio to some grunt in the CIA office. I had him put the call to the President for me, and we did this kind of relay thing.” “You called the President,” Max repeated. “And you got through . . .?” “Yeah, see, I had your cell phone. I’d accidently switched them, and . . . The President’s direct line was in your address book, so . . .” Max nodded. “Okay,” he said. “That’s it?” Jules said. “Just, okay, you’ll come back? Can I call Alan to tell him? We’re on a first-name basis now, me and the Pres.” “No,” Max said. “There’s more. When you call your pal Alan, tell him I’m interested, but I’m looking to make a deal for a former Special Forces NCO.” “Grady Morant,” Jules said. “He’s got info on Heru Nusantra that the president will find interesting. In return, we want a full pardon and a new identity.” Jules nodded. “I think I could set that up.” He started for the helicopter, but then turned back. “What’s Webster’s first name? Do you know?” “Ben,” Max told him. “Have a nice vacation.” “Recovering from a gunshot wound is not a vacation. You need to write that, like, on your hand or something. Jeez.” Max laughed. “Hey, Jules?” He turned back again. “Yes, sir?” “Thanks for being such a good friend.” Jules’s smile was beautiful. “You’re welcome, Max.” But that smile faded far too quickly. “Uh-oh, heads up—crying girlfriend on your six.” Ah, God, no . . . Max turned to see Gina, running toward him. Please God, let those be tears of joy. “What’s the verdict?” he asked her. Gina said the word he’d been praying for. “Benign.” Max took her in his arms, this woman who was the love of his life, and kissed her. Right in front of the Marines.

Like,” he repeats with distaste. “How about I tell you what I don’t like? I do not like postmodernism, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magic realism. I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where they shouldn’t be—basically, gimmicks of any kind. I find literary fiction about the Holocaust or any other major world tragedy to be distasteful—nonfiction only, please. I do not like genre mash-ups à la the literary detective novel or the literary fantasy. Literary should be literary, and genre should be genre, and crossbreeding rarely results in anything satisfying. I do not like children’s books, especially ones with orphans, and I prefer not to clutter my shelves with young adult. I do not like anything over four hundred pages or under one hundred fifty pages. I am repulsed by ghostwritten novels by reality television stars, celebrity picture books, sports memoirs, movie tie-in editions, novelty items, and—I imagine this goes without saying—vampires. I rarely stock debuts, chick lit, poetry, or translations. I would prefer not to stock series, but the demands of my pocketbook require me to. For your part, you needn’t tell me about the ‘next big series’ until it is ensconced on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Above all, Ms. Loman, I find slim literary memoirs about little old men whose little old wives have died from cancer to be absolutely intolerable. No matter how well written the sales rep claims they are. No matter how many copies you promise I’ll sell on Mother’s Day.” Amelia blushes, though she is angry more than embarrassed. She agrees with some of what A.J. has said, but his manner is unnecessarily insulting. Knightley Press doesn’t even sell half of that stuff anyway. She studies him. He is older than Amelia but not by much, not by more than ten years. He is too young to like so little. “What do you like?” she asks. “Everything else,” he says. “I will also admit to an occasional weakness for short-story collections. Customers never want to buy them though.” There is only one short-story collection on Amelia’s list, a debut. Amelia hasn’t read the whole thing, and time dictates that she probably won’t, but she liked the first story. An American sixth-grade class and an Indian sixth-grade class participate in an international pen pal program. The narrator is an Indian kid in the American class who keeps feeding comical misinformation about Indian culture to the Americans. She clears her throat, which is still terribly dry. “The Year Bombay Became Mumbai. I think it will have special int—” “No,” he says. “I haven’t even told you what it’s about yet.” “Just no.” “But why?” “If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit that you’re only telling me about it because I’m partially Indian and you think this will be my special interest. Am I right?” Amelia imagines smashing the ancient computer over his head. “I’m telling you about this because you said you liked short stories! And it’s the only one on my list. And for the record”—here, she lies—“it’s completely wonderful from start to finish. Even if it is a debut. “And do you know what else? I love debuts. I love discovering something new. It’s part of the whole reason I do this job.” Amelia rises. Her head is pounding. Maybe she does drink too much? Her head is pounding and her heart is, too. “Do you want my opinion?” “Not particularly,” he says. “What are you, twenty-five?” “Mr. Fikry, this is a lovely store, but if you continue in this this this”—as a child, she stuttered and it occasionally returns when she is upset; she clears her throat—“this backward way of thinking, there won’t be an Island Books before too long.

Robert Askins Brings ‘Hand to God’ to Broadway Chad Batka for The New York Times Robert Askins at the Booth Theater, where his play “Hand to God” opens on Tuesday. By MICHAEL PAULSON The conceit is zany: In a church basement, a group of adolescents gathers (mostly at the insistence of their parents) to make puppets that will spread the Christian message, but one of the puppets turns out to be more demonic than divine. The result — a dark comedy with the can-puppets-really-do-that raunchiness of “Avenue Q” and can-people-really-say-that outrageousness of “The Book of Mormon” — is “Hand to God,” a new play that is among the more improbable entrants in the packed competition for Broadway audiences over the next few weeks. Given the irreverence of some of the material — at one point stuffed animals are mutilated in ways that replicate the torments of Catholic martyrs — it is perhaps not a surprise to discover that the play’s author, Robert Askins, was nicknamed “Dirty Rob” as an undergraduate at Baylor, a Baptist-affiliated university where the sexual explicitness and violence of his early scripts raised eyebrows. But Mr. Askins had also been a lone male soloist in the children’s choir at St. John Lutheran of Cypress, Tex. — a child who discovered early that singing was a way to make the stern church ladies smile. His earliest performances were in a deeply religious world, and his writings since then have been a complex reaction to that upbringing. “It’s kind of frustrating in life to be like, ‘I’m a playwright,’ and watch people’s face fall, because they associate plays with phenomenally dull, didactic, poetic grad-schoolery, where everything takes too long and tediously explores the beauty in ourselves,” he said in a recent interview. “It’s not church, even though it feels like church a lot when we go these days.” The journey to Broadway, where “Hand to God” opens on Tuesday at the Booth Theater, still seems unlikely to Mr. Askins, 34, who works as a bartender in Brooklyn and says he can’t afford to see Broadway shows, despite his newfound prominence. He seems simultaneously enthralled by and contemptuous of contemporary theater, the world in which he has chosen to make his life; during a walk from the Cobble Hill coffee shop where he sometimes writes to the Park Slope restaurant where he tends bar, he quoted Nietzsche and Derrida, described himself as “deeply weird,” and swore like, well, a satanic sock-puppet. “If there were no laughs in the show, I’d think there was something wrong with him,” said the actor Steven Boyer, who won raves in earlier “Hand to God” productions as Jason, a grief-stricken adolescent with a meek demeanor and an angry-puppet pal. “But anybody who is able to write about such serious stuff and be as hilarious as it is, I’m not worried about their mental health.” Mr. Askins’s interest in the performing arts began when he was a boy attending rural Texas churches affiliated with the conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod denomination; he recalls the worshipers as “deeply conservative, old farm folks, stone-faced, pride and suffering, and the only time anybody ever really livened up was when the children’s choir would perform.” “My grandmother had a cross-stitch that said, ‘God respects me when I work, but he loves me when I sing,’ and so I got into that,” he said. “For somebody who enjoys performance, that was the way in.” The church also had a puppet ministry — an effort to teach children about the Bible by use of puppets — and when Mr. Askins’s mother, a nurse, began running the program, he enlisted to help. He would perform shows for other children at preschools and vacation Bible camps. “The shows are wacky, but it was fun,” he said. “They’re badly written attempts to bring children to Jesus.” Not all of his formative encounters with puppets were positive. Particularly scarring: D